With wit and passion, Ceaser traces the origins of the negative images of America, beginning with French scientists in the middle of the eighteenth century who viewed the country as a land of racial and physical degeneracy, and continuing with German thinkers from Hegel to Nietzsche, Spengler, and Heidegger, who viewed America as culturally inferior and a technological wasteland. Ceaser puts these critics of America in a dialogue with the country's defenders - among them Alexander Hamilton, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Leo Strauss. By revealing the sources of the hostility to America, Ceaser undermines the position of its present attackers. He contends that only if we reassert political science rather than cultural and literary criticism as the proper intellectual discipline for directing politics will we free the real America from the symbolic America and vindicate its name.
- ISBN10 0300070535
- ISBN13 9780300070538
- Publish Date 25 August 1997
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 16 May 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 300
- Language English