The difficult mission of a regime change: Toshio Nishi gives an account of how America converted the Japanese mindset from war to peace following World War II.

The difficult mission of a regime change: Toshio Nishi gives an account of how America converted the Japanese mindset from war to peace following World War II.

A philosophical study of the relationships and connections among natural rights, material goods, and democracy. A defense of ethical absolutism is presented in the appendix.

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals.

Americans valorize resistance to conformity. "Be yourself!" "Don't just follow the crowd!" Such injunctions pervade contemporary American culture. We praise individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Steve Jobs who chart their own course in life and do something new. Yet surprisingly, recent research in social psychology has shown that, in practice, Americans are averse and at times, even hostile to individuals who express traits associated with non-conformity, such as individuality, free judgment, and creativity. This disjunction between our public rhetoric and practice raises fundamental questions: Why is non-conformity valuable? Is it always valuable-or does it pose dangers as well as promise benefits for democratic societies? What is the relationship between non-conformity as an individual ideal and democracy as a form of collective self-rule? Contesting Conformity provides a new interpretive lens to the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche to investigate non-conformity and its relationship to modern democracy. While there are important differences among them, all three thinkers worry that certain aspects of democracy--namely, the power of public opinion, the tyranny of social majorities, and the commitment to moral equality--encourage conformity, thus suppressing dissent, individuality, and creativity. Taken together, Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche show us that to the extent that we are committed to democracy, we must find ways to foster non-conformity, but we must do so within certain moral and political constraints. Drawing new insight from their work, Jennie Ikuta argues that non-conformity is an intractable issue for democracy. While non-conformity is often important for cultivating a just polity, non-conformity can also undermine democracy. In other words, democracy needs non-conformity, but not in an unconditional way. This book examines this intractable relationship, and offers resources for navigating the relationship in contemporary democracies in ways that promote justice and freedom.

Americans valorize resistance to conformity. "Be yourself!" "Don't just follow the crowd!" Such injunctions pervade contemporary American culture. We praise individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Steve Jobs who chart their own course in life and do something new. Yet surprisingly, recent research in social psychology has shown that, in practice, Americans are averse and at times, even hostile to individuals who express traits associated with non-conformity, such as individuality, free judgment, and creativity. This disjunction between our public rhetoric and practice raises fundamental questions: Why is non-conformity valuable? Is it always valuable-or does it pose dangers as well as promise benefits for democratic societies? What is the relationship between non-conformity as an individual ideal and democracy as a form of collective self-rule? Contesting Conformity provides a new interpretive lens to the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche to investigate non-conformity and its relationship to modern democracy. While there are important differences among them, all three thinkers worry that certain aspects of democracy--namely, the power of public opinion, the tyranny of social majorities, and the commitment to moral equality--encourage conformity, thus suppressing dissent, individuality, and creativity. Taken together, Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche show us that to the extent that we are committed to democracy, we must find ways to foster non-conformity, but we must do so within certain moral and political constraints. Drawing new insight from their work, Jennie Ikuta argues that non-conformity is an intractable issue for democracy. While non-conformity is often important for cultivating a just polity, non-conformity can also undermine democracy. In other words, democracy needs non-conformity, but not in an unconditional way. This book examines this intractable relationship, and offers resources for navigating the relationship in contemporary democracies in ways that promote justice and freedom.