Reason and Politics: The Nature of Political Phenomena

Reason and Politics explores the central phenomena of political life and, by extension, of human affairs in general. Amidst the seemingly endless books on more and more narrowly specialized topics within politics, Mark Blitz offers something very different.Reason and Politics: The Nature of Political Phenomena examines the central phenomena of political life in order to clarify their meaning, source, and range.Blitz gives particular attention to the notions of freedom, rights, justice, virtue, power, property, nationalism, and the common good.At the same time, Blitz shows how, in order to understand political matters correctly, we must also understand how they affect us directly.We do not merely theorize over political questions; we experience them.Blitz also considers matters such as the powers and motions of the soul, the nature of experience, and the varieties of pleasure and attachment. Living at a time when technological change makes it difficult even to claim convincingly that th