Citizenship Papers or Spinoza

Citizenship Papers

Author: Wendell Berry

There are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with "Patriot" offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry's application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life's blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today's readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity. Citizenship Papers, a collection of 19 essays, is a ringing call of alarm to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

Kirkus Reviews

Cagey uses of the essay as a town meeting to air threats to the commonweal. Our times are uneasy, Berry (Jayber Crow, 2000, etc.) states; critical elements of the American democratic tradition are being lifted wholesale from the foundation and carted away in broad daylight. A case in point is our new national-security policy, which "depends on the acquiescence of a public kept fearful and ignorant, subject to manipulation by the executive power, and on the compliance of an intimidated and office-dependent legislature." That ignorance will spell our doom, as will the "selfishness, wastefulness, and greed that we have legitimized here as economic virtues." Berry doesn't flinch when exhorting us to meet "the responsibility to be as intelligent, principled, and practical as we can be." His agrarian argument, which he has been making and remaking for decades, requires the recognition of our dependence on and responsibility to nature, and the concomitant responsibility for human culture. Likewise, Berry champions human-scale projects and an intimate knowledge of-not to mention reverence and gratitude for-our landscapes. "Consumers who understand their economy," he contends, "will not tolerate the destruction of the local soil or ecosystem or watershed as a cost of production." His refusal to abandon the local for the global, to sacrifice neighborliness, community integrity, and economic diversity for access to Wal-Mart, has never seemed more appealing, nor his questions of personal accountability more powerful. Where did the meat on our plates come from? Under what conditions were the clothes we're wearing made? Does biotechnology make sense considering the unforeseeable consequences? Mostblistering of all: "How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) 'at peace'?" A clangor of worries, offering the antidotes of civility, responsibility, curiosity, skill, kindness, and an awareness of the homeplace.

Table of Contents:

	A Citizen's Response	1
	Thoughts in the Presence of Fear	17
	The Failure of War	23
	Going to Work	33
	In Distrust of Movements	43
	Twelve Paragraphs on Biotechnology	53
	Let the Farm Judge	57
	The Total Economy	63
	A Long Job, Too Late to Quit	77
	Two Minds	85
	The Prejudice Against Country People	107
	The Whole Horse	113
	Stupidity in Concentration	127
	Watershed and Commonwealth	135
	The Agrarian Standard	143
	Still Standing	153
	Conservationist and Agrarian	165
	Tuscany	175
	Is Life a Miracle?	181

Book review: Xbox 360 Achievements or Real World Nikon Capture NX

Spinoza: Theological-Political Treatise

Author: Benedictus de Spinoza

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) is one of the most important philosophical works of the early modern period. In it Spinoza discusses at length the historical circumstances of the composition and transmission of the Bible, demonstrating the fallibility of both its authors and its interpreters. He argues that free enquiry is not only consistent with the security and prosperity of a state but actually essential to them, and that such freedom flourishes best in a democratic and republican state in which individuals are left free while religious organizations are subordinated to the secular power. His Treatise has profoundly influenced the subsequent history of political thought, Enlightenment 'clandestine' or radical philosophy, Bible hermeneutics, and textual criticism more generally. It is presented here in a new translation of great clarity and accuracy by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel, with a substantial historical and philosophical introduction by Jonathan Israel.