Freedom: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (Patterson, Orlando//Freedom)

by Orlando Patterson | Nonfiction |
ISBN: 0465025358 Global Overview for this book
Registered by footsoldier of Charlotte, North Carolina USA on 2/10/2006
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by footsoldier from Charlotte, North Carolina USA on Friday, February 10, 2006
Patterson, a Harvard sociologist, argues that the idea of freedom is the supreme value in the Western world and increasingly so in the rest of the world. This book, the first of a projected two-volume inquiry, seeks to answer the question of how it became such a powerful and popular value. His basic thesis is that freedom as a value derived from the experience of slavery in the ancient world. He then traces the fate of the idea of freedom in the Roman empire, during the rise of Christianity, and in the Middle Ages. He further distinguishes between personal, sovereign, and civic freedom and analyzes the potential evils in each of these freedoms; e.g., personal liberty has led to unbridled capitalism, sovereign freedom to dictatorship, and civic freedom to the oppression of minorities. This is a scholarly treatise

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