In this short video, filmed at the recent Telos Conference in L’Aquila, Editor Russell A. Berman talks about the central themes and concerns of Telos 168 (Fall 2014): The West: Its Past and Its Prospects. We have posted Russell’s full introduction here, and you can order your copy of the issue in our online store.
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Telos 168 (Fall 2014) is now available for purchase in our store. Renewing the West by Renewing Common Sense Announcing a call for papers and plenary session panelists for an international congress to discuss the revolutionary proposal “Renewing the West by Renewing Common Sense” Location: Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, 440 West Neck Road, Huntington, Long Island, NY 11743 Dates: Thursday afternoon July 17, 2014, to Sunday morning July 20, 2014 |
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This special issue of Telos investigates the concept of the West. Far more than a geographical term, in intellectual, philosophical, and cultural history, it has been common to speak of a Western tradition in order to name lineages of thought from antiquity to the modern world. In cultural and political debates, Western values are invoked that are linked historically to a deep tradition specifically dedicated to desiderata such as freedom and individual dignity: at stake is the general possibility of any long-term tradition, the durability of culture over time, but also this very specific, distinctively Western tradition as the carrier of particular values. Politically this usage explains the reference to Western democracies (as opposed to the “peoples’ democracies” of the Soviet era) with the suggestion that democratic political forms and norms have emerged from the “Western tradition” and have generated the institutions of both liberal democracy, i.e., democratic procedures that assert popular sovereignty, while simultaneously protecting individual rights, and market economies shaped by the rule of law and the protection of private property. 
