ALIENS IN AMERICA
The Strange Truth about Our Souls
By Peter Augustine Lawler
List Item No. 312
ISBN: 1-882926-71-4 (cloth)
350 pages
List Price: $24.95
Internet Special: $21.21 — 
[ Review & Change Shopping Cart Contents ] [ Secure Checkout ]
Beginning with a consideration of David Brooks's popular and influential characterization of modern Americans as "bourgeois bohemians," Lawler paints a picture that is not altogether hopeful. If Brooks and other contemporary social commentators are correct, our elites care about little more than their own psychological and physical comfort. Though they at times still realize that simply being affluent, tolerant, and democratic consumers is not entirely satisfying, their laissez-faire libertarianism leads them to consent to the "alien extermination program" being carried out—for ostensibly humanitarian reasons—under the aegis of biotechnological science.
In understated and often ironic prose, Lawler shows how the soft tyranny of the utopian biotechnological project is the logical outcome of, and is supported by, various strands of modern thought, including atheistic scientism, liberal pragmatism, Lockean individualism, and the cult of therapeutic democracy. He demonstrates how, in different ways, the ideas popularized by thinkers lilke Francis Fukayama, Carl Sagan, and Richard Rorty are intended to make us forget that a truly human life is necessarily limited, that we can only live well by accepting the misery, sense of homelessness, and alienation that accompany life as much as do joy and love.
With help from Alexis de Tocqueville and Walker Percy, Lawler offers a defense of the common experience of ordinary men and women in all its harsh ambiguity. Our instinctual opposition to attempts to transform us through chemicals, technology, language, or the machinery of the state is not, as some liberal communitarians think, rooted in a fearful attempt to escape the world, but in a positive affirmation of this world's fundamental goodness and the love, both human and divine, to be found within it. Our souls are not yet lost. But they will be if we refuse to acknowledge that, in this world at least, we are destined to be aliens.
What They're Saying...
"One of the 'Ten Books Every Preacher Should Read in 2003'"
— Preaching Magazine
"The title is derived from Walker Percy's Christian perspective, enunciated by Scripture and St. Augustine, that we are truly pilgrims or aliens on this planet, as our true home lies elsewhere."
— Chronicles
"[L]awler's book defies…easy description. Lawler may be conservative, but he's also among the most alien of thinkers in contemporary America. He's critical of the Enlightenment basis of the American founding, yet is an ardent patriot…. In short, he's not easy to label, and it's pointless to attempt doing so. One reads him to witness the unfolding of a subtle mind grappling with the most profound issues facing modern America in light of the most profound ideas that have shaped the American soul."
— Philadelphia Inquirer
"As conservatives ponder why and how to resist the temptation to reach for all good things in this life, they would be well advised to do so with Lawler by their side."
— First Things
"[P]eter Augustine Lawler has established himself as a noteworthy voice in the debate over reason and revelation in contemporary political life…. In Aliens in America, Lawler treats the human soul in all its dimensions, as reflecting the Biblical God and the Platonic-Aristotelian nous, as part of political man and transpolitical man. He warns against interpretations of the Declaration of Independence and America that 'lead an unreal and unvirtuous independence from nature and God."
— Claremont Review of Books
"[A]liens in America is a deeply satisfying, richly provocative read."
— Texas Mercury
Read What Else They're Saying...
Chapters Include:
- Bourgeois Bohemian Virtue and the Future of Human Liberty
- The End of History Today
- Francis Fukuyama as Teacher of Evil
- Aliens Are Us?
- Richard Rorty's America
- American Political Science
- The New Liberalism
- Natural Law and the American Proposition
- Religion, Philosophy, and the American Founding
- Religion and the American Idea of Liberty
- Walker Percy and Alex de Tocqueville on American Aristocracy and Democracy
|
News & Notes |
Browse Our Shelves |
Meet Our Authors |
Journals |
About ISI Books |
| Ordering Information |
Join Our Mailing List |
HOME |
ISI BOOKS © 2000-2002
