In this classic text, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, George Lakoff analyzes the unconscious and rhetorical worldviews of liberals and conservatives, discovering radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath.

Lakoff takes a fresh look at how we think and talk about politics and shows that political and moral ideas develop in systematic ways from our models of ideal families. Arguing that conservatives have exploited the connection between morality, the famility and politics, while liberals have failed to recognize it, Lakoff expalins why the conservative moral position has not been effectively challenged.

Public disenchantment with politics has become a key feature of the world in which we live. Politicians are increasingly viewed with suspicion and distrust, and electoral turnout in many modern democracies continues to fall. But are we right to display such contempt towards our elected representatives? Can politicians be morally good or is politics destined to involve dirty hands or the loss of integrity, as many modern philosophers claim? In this book, Susan Mendus seeks to address these important questions to assess whether this apparent tension between morality and politics is real and, if so, why. Beginning with an account of integrity as involving a willingness to stand by ones most fundamental moral commitments, the author discusses three reasons for thinking that politics undermines integrity and is incompatible with morality. These are: the relationship between politics and utilitarian calculation; the possibility that the realm of politics is a separate realm of value; and the difficulty of reconciling the demands of different social roles. She concludes that, in the modern world, we all risk losing our integrity. To that extent, we are all politicians. Moreover, we have reason to be glad that politicians are not always morally good. Written with verve and clarity, this book provides students and general readers an accessible guide to the philosophical debates about the complex relationship between politics and morality in the contemporary world.

This book completes the project, begun in Nietzsche’s Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy, of critically reconstructing a Nietzschean left politics. Nietzsche's incompatibilist ideal of amor fati requires reconceiving legitimacy as the breeding of a people whose material conditions enable it to affirm its social order. Justice is founded in a future, higher type’s right to exist against present individuals who internalize the contradictions of past societies. In opposition to Nietzsche’s self-undermining aristocratism, this right can only be realized through a universal promotion of the pluralistic unity of the manifold soul, secured by an equally manifold form of democracy. Against the covert aristocratism of liberal proceduralism, authentic democracy produces a true people grounded in shared, concrete happiness, requiring a comprehensive egalitarianism maintained by a permanent socialist state and achievable only through a populist, coalitional politics across identities that radically transforms the material conditions of our shared social life.

Why do some countries have 'Culture Wars' over morality issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage while other countries hardly experience any conflict? This book argues that morality issues only generate major conflicts in political systems with a significant conflict between religious and secular parties.

An updated third edition of the modern classic that applies cognitive science to the world of politics—to explain how our unconscious views shape our votes. When Moral Politics was first published, it redefined how Americans think and talk about politics through the lens of cognitive political psychology. Today, George Lakoff’s classic text has become all the more relevant, as liberals and conservatives have come to hold even more vigorously opposed views of the world, with the underlying assumptions of their respective worldviews at the level of basic morality. Even more so than when Lakoff wrote, liberals and conservatives simply have very different, deeply held beliefs about what is right and wrong. Lakoff reveals radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. Moral worldviews, like most deep ways of understanding the world, are unconscious—part of our hard-wired brain circuitry. When confronted with facts that don’t fit our moral worldview, our brains work automatically and unconsciously to ignore or reject these facts, and it takes extraordinary openness and awareness of this phenomenon to pay critical attention to the countless facts we’re presented with each day. For this edition, Lakoff has added a new preface and afterword, extending his observations to various ideological conflicts since the book’s original publication, from the Affordable Care Act to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the 2008 financial crisis, and the effects of global warming. One might have hoped such massive changes and challenges would bring people together, but the reverse has actually happened; the divide between liberals and conservatives has become stronger and more virulent. To have any hope of bringing mutual respect to the current social and political divide, we need to clearly understand the problem and make it part of our contemporary public discourse. Moral Politics offers a much-needed wake-up call to both the left and the right. “An intelligent take on the way politics is conducted in America.” —Publishers Weekly “That conservatives and liberals see the world differently comes as no news to most, but Lakoff’s look into just why that should be so makes for interesting reading.” —Kirkus Reviews

Divisions abound as to whether politics should be held responsible to a higher moral standard or whether pragmatic considerations, or realpolitik, should prevail. The two poles are represented most conspicuously by Aristotle (for whom the proper aim of politics is moral virtue) and Machiavelli (whose prince exalted political pragmatism over morality). The fourteen contributions to this volume address perennial concerns in political and moral theory. They underscore the rekindled yearning of many to hold the political realm to a higher standard despite the skepticism of dissenters who question the likelihood, or even the desirability, of success.