Public Vision, Private Lives

“Elegantly organized and engagingly written, serving at once as a window into the origins of modernity and as a mirror of our present condition. . Highly Recommended”–Choice”Cladis’s new book does for Rousseau what his first book did for Durkheim. For he has provided a rich historical context for understanding Rousseau’s most important works while also shedding a great deal of fresh light on contemporary concerns in philosophy, political theory, and religious thought. This is the most important discussion of the conflicts between public and private life yet written by a specialist in modern religious thought. The writing is clearand vigorous, the thinking is careful and well-informed throughout. A wonderful book.“–Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion, Princeton University”Mark Cladis moves us to appreciate the ways in which heartfelt piety and robust democracy can check and cross-fertilize one another. More specifically, he highlights the necessity of balancing public rules and private aspirations, charitable concern for the common good and prudential love of self, group obligations and solitary affinities, the fallen city and the amoral garden, secular reason and sacred hope, etc. Elaborating Rousseau’s stance ‘at thecrossroads of Augustinian pessimism and Enlightenment optimism,’ Cladis is able to identify the ‘ineluctable tension’ between various political and personal goods, without simply dissolving all commitment intoone or the other. With Public Vision, Private Lives, Cladis takes his place among the leading contemporary theorists of democracy and its ongoing relation to religious sense and sensibility.“–Timothy P. Jackson, author of The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice”Though Mark Cladis is a careful and sympathetic reader of Rousseau’s writings, his book is not a conventional work of Rousseau scholarship. In fact, there is nothing conventional about it at all. Cladis likens it to a walking tour with Rousseau, a famous walker, at his side, not as his ‘guide’ but as his conversation partner. The conversation gives rise to a highly original, deepgoing reflection on private satisfactions and public challenges–and the painful,unavoidable conflicts between them. It takes some surprising turns in order to survey the present human condition from fresh angles of vision. Cladis is a perceptive observer of contemporary life, andits critic, but it is the life he shares, and he writes of it with love.“–Stephen Crites, Professor of Philosophy and Hedding Professor of Moral Science, Wesleyan University”Though Mark Cladis is a careful and sympathetic reader of Rousseau’s writings, his book is not a conventional work of Rousseau scholarship. In fact, there is nothing conventional about it at all. Cladis likens it to a walking tour with Rousseau, a famous walker, at his side, not as his ‘guide’ but as his conversation partner. The conversation gives rise to a highly original, deepgoing reflection on private satisfactions and public challenges–and the painful,unavoidable conflicts between them. It takes some surprising turns in order to survey the present human condition from fresh angles of vision. Cladis is a perceptive observer of contemporary life, andits critic, but it is the life he shares, and he writes of it with love.“–Stephen Crites, Professor of Philosophy and Hedding Professor of Moral Science, Wesleyan University”Mark Cladis moves us to appreciate the ways in which heartfelt piety and robust democracy can check and cross-fertilize one another. More specifically, he highlights the necessity of balancing public rules and private aspirations, charitable concern for the common good and prudential love of self, group obligations and solitary affinities, the fallen city and the amoral garden, secular reason and sacred hope, etc. Elaborating Rousseau’s stance ‘at thecrossroads of Augustinian pessimism and Enlightenment optimism,’ Cladis is able to identify the ‘ineluctable tension’ between various political and personal goods, without simply dissolving all commitment intoone or the other. With Public Vision, Private Lives, Cladis takes his place among the leading contemporary theorists of democracy and its ongoing relation to religious sense and sensibility.“–Timothy P. Jackson, author of The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice”Elegantly organized and engagingly written, serving at once as a window into the origins of modernity and as a mirror of our present condition. . Highly Recommended”– Choice”Cladis’s new book does for Rousseau what his first book did for Durkheim. For he has provided a rich historical context for understanding Rousseau’s most important works while also shedding a great deal of fresh light on contemporary concerns in philosophy, political theory, and religious thought. This is the most important discussion of the conflicts between public and private life yet written by a specialist in modern religious thought. The writing is clearand vigorous, the thinking is careful and well-informed throughout. A wonderful book.“–Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion, Princeton University

Mark S. Cladis is professor and chair of religious studies at Brown University. He has taught at the University of North Carolina, Stanford University, and Vassar College, where he served as chair. He is the editor of two books and the author of “A Communitarian Defense of Liberalism: Emile Durkheim” and “Contemporary Social Theory,”

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