By Camilla Stivers
''The darkness of the specter of terrorism is fast, yet both profound is the darkness of a misplaced public world,'' observes Camilla Stivers during this mirrored image at the vast gulf among executive and electorate. Stivers explores the conjunction of those forms of ''dark times'' within the United States-an period of pervasive worry and experience of vulnerability caused via the terrorist assaults of September eleven, and the darkness as a result of the lack of a public area within which voters overtly talk about shared matters. during this contemplative booklet, she probes the level to which the lack of public area makes us not able to stand the hot demanding situations confronting our executive. and since public directors are the nearest point of presidency to bland electorate, those doubly darkish instances query the that means of public carrier. Stivers analyzes the quest for fact and which means in public carrier from Kant and Hobbes to Arendt and Foucault, uncovering the philosophical assumptions assisting the present managerial belief of governance. She proposes another set that might allow public servants to foster extra optimistic democratic associations. The ebook concludes with a version for public carrier ethics.
Read or Download Governance in Dark Times: Practical Philosophy for Public Service PDF
Similar public affairs books
After the Great Complacence: Financial Crisis and the Politics of Reform
What's the courting among the economy and politics? In a democratic approach, what sort of regulate should still elected governments have over the monetary markets? What guidelines might be carried out to manage them? what's the position performed through various elites--financial, technocratic, and political--in the operation and rules of the economic system?
Institutional Constraints and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance
Examines the institutional principles of the sport that either form and are formed via human habit, concentrating on the neighborhood point preparations.
Reforming for Results in the UN System: A Study of UNOPS
The United international locations place of work for venture providers (UNOPS) is the single UN association that's self-financing via charges earned on undertaking management/provision of prone in all developmental and humanitarian fields. Following a disruptive merger method its destiny appeared doubtful. This publication describes and analyzes the consequent reform, its difficulties and successes, in addition to its relevance to different UN companies and New Public administration concept.
- Public Administration
- Housing and Finance in Developing Countries
- The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789-1837
- Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century (Transformational Trends in Governance & Democracy)
- Strategic Collaboration in Public and Nonprofit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach to Solving Shared Problems
Extra info for Governance in Dark Times: Practical Philosophy for Public Service
Sample text
And in fact, nine years after the essay appeared, Kant was chastised by the official censor for comments in his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone and forced to apologize. ” Everything included even reason itself. Reason has to examine not only public debate and religious orthodoxy but also the foundations of its own operations. Reason must shine its light on its own workings, but it can never fully establish its own grounds. You can’t reason your way to a complete justification of reason.
Human beings cannot stay in immediate touch with the ultimate terror of death. 5 The darkness that terrorism has thrust us into must be explored. At one level, darkness is obvious. The terrorists meant to terrify and they succeeded, if only for a time. On reflection, however, the situation in which we find ourselves can open other avenues of meaning. A place to start is the possibility that terrorism may not be a radical alteration of our world. Instead it may be a particularly powerful indicator of fundamental aspects of the modern age.
Leaving it up to science (for example, performance measurement) is like leaving it up to the ethics commission to say what is right or wrong rather than wrestling with tough questions by reflecting, talking to others, and then doing your best to judge what to do. Believing that not only is there a right answer but that someone in authority can tell you what it is meets Kant’s definition of immaturity. The only way to grow in wisdom is to exercise your own intelligence and understanding as best you can rather than leaving it completely up to authority, a person or a rule or a scientific study, to define the right course of action.