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"Professional athletes taking a knee during the national anthem. Student activists holding candlelight vigils to commemorate victims of sexual violence. Jewish activists reciting the Mourner's Kaddish on the streets of New York City in the wake of another police shooting. Why are members of these groups performing these particular actions to express their political views? Noting that these are examples of ritual performance, Molly Farneth argues that rituals, in general, are acts that mark boundaries, shape habits and dispositions, express commitments and attitudes, inculcate norms, and create, sustain, or transform the communities to which the ritual performers belong. Because rituals have the potential to either sustain or challenge power relations within communities, they are-she argues-deeply political. Drawing on these and other examples, this book is an investigation into the inescapable political significance and power of ritual. While readily acknowledging that rituals can enable authoritarian regimes and facilitate relationships of domination, Farneth here pays particular attention to the rituals of democratic life-those that create, sustain, and transform properly democratic communities, contest unjust power relations and political structures, and encourage and cultivate habits of participation"--Información proporcionada por el editor comercial.

Hegel’s Social Ethics offers a fresh and accessible interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s most famous book, the Phenomenology of Spirit. Drawing on important recent work on the social dimensions of Hegel’s theory of knowledge, Molly Farneth shows how his account of how we know rests on his account of how we ought to live. Farneth argues that Hegel views conflict as an unavoidable part of living together, and that his social ethics involves relationships and social practices that allow people to cope with conflict and sustain hope for reconciliation. Communities create, contest, and transform their norms through these relationships and practices, and Hegel’s model for them are often the interactions and rituals of the members of religious communities. The book’s close readings reveal the ethical implications of Hegel’s discussions of slavery, Greek tragedy, early modern culture wars, and confession and forgiveness. The book also illuminates how contemporary democratic thought and practice can benefit from Hegelian insights. Through its sustained engagement with Hegel’s ideas about conflict and reconciliation, Hegel’s Social Ethics makes an important contribution to debates about how to live well with religious and ethical disagreement.

Molly Elliot Seawell (1860-1916) was a popular American author who wrote novels, collections of short stories, and political columns for several newspapers.