Under Construction Documents in this collection» DEMOCRACY
Author: Sidney Hook*, revised by Jean Bethke Elshtain
Type: Web article
The present article, from Encyclopedia Americana, is an analysis of the concept of democracy and the necessary conditions for the existence of a democratic regime.
Its author, Sidney Hooks (1902-1989) was a prominent American philosopher. An expert of Karl Marx's philosophy, he was himself a Marxist and close to the Communist Party. In 1933, Hook broke away form the communist movement. With the Moscow trials and the Great Purges, he started to doubt Marxism. In 1939, he formed the Committee for Cultural Freedom, a short-lived organization that set the stage for his postwar politics by opposing "totalitarianism" on the left and right. By the time of the Cold War, Hook was a prominent anti-Communist, although he continued to consider himself a democratic socialist throughout his life.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, who revised this article, is a political philosopher whose task has been to show the connections between political and ethical convictions. Professor Elshtain who teaches at the University of Chicago writes widely for journals of civic opinion, and lectures, both in the United States and abroad, on whether democracy will prove sufficiently robust and resilient to survive.
» ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM AND PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY
Author: Fereidun (Fereidoun) Adamiat
Published: October 1, 1961
Type: Book chapter The present text in Persian is a short chapter on the history and philosophy of freedom and democracy by an eminent Iranian historian, Fereidun Adamiat. The chapter is from his book The Idea of Liberty and the Origins of the Constitutionalist Movement (in Iran). In writing this chapter, Fereidun Adamiat has widely referred to the work of his professor, the British political scientist, Harold Laski's 1936 book The Rise of Liberalism.
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