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基本説明
Translated and introduced by Allan Cameron. Including a Reply to Critics.
Full Description
Politicians and pundits have long disparaged their opponents with polemicist cries of "leftist!" or "rightist!", but with the fall of communism and the recent growth of conservatism many commentators have declared that the traditional left/right distinction has lost its relevance. However, in this study Bobbio asserts that this distinction still endures because it reflects the essential antithetical nature and dynamics of democratic politics. He constructs an historical, analytic division of the political universe along two foundational axes, from equality to inequality, from liberty to authoritarianism. He then charts the past and present tendencies of the left and the right, in both their moderate and more virulently extreme forms. Ultimately, his main contention is that the measure of postmodern democracy will lie on how we position ourselves relative to these critical left/right parameters, and on whether we cast ourselves, our votes and our era in terms of political expediency, social viability or moral responsibility.
