Family Politics by Scott Yenor

My Thesis topic has been accepted and tomorrow I will be getting my first book in the mail for research. Scott Yenor is a Professor at Boise State and released this book in February of this year. If I understood correctly Dr. Lawler, my thesis advisor, actually did a review on this book. He put the book and the author in high regards. Dr. Yenor is very strongly in favor of the family and his new book should provide strong evidence for my paper.

When I first found this book, I felt like it addressed my topic perfectly. Here is the book's product description from Amazon.

With crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to address contemporary society's disputes over the meanings of these human social institutions, Scott Yenor carefully examines a roster of major and unexpected modern political philosophers from Locke and Rousseau to Hegel and Marx to Freud and Beauvoir. He lucidly presents how these individuals developed an understanding of family in order to advance their goals of political and social reform. Through this exploration, Yenor unveils the effect of modern liberty on this foundational institution and argues that the quest to pursue individual autonomy has undermined the nature of marriage and jeopardizes its future.

Conservative [definition]

My upcoming capstone thesis will be from the point of view of a conservative. Not to say that I am a Republican (well, I am), but rather to say that I hold preservation in high regards. I consider myself a classy/old school person (my vehicle has no computer, I shave with a handmade straight razor, I love reading great books), yet at the same time I consider my self a tech-savy individual (I program computers, I am chained to my blackberry, I love my kindle). I believe in progress as well as conservation.

In Roger Scruton's book Arguments for Conservatism, he states that "the purpose of politics... is to maintain a vigilant resistance to the entropic forces that erode our social and ecological inheritance" (35). For me, being conservative means to acknowledge that which has been given to us inherently, to improve upon its achievements, and to learn from its mistakes. I do not mean conservatism to be a ball and chain for "progress" (although I feel that the term 'progress' often times improperly characterizes what should simply be considered 'change,' a different way of doing things that is not inherently better), but rather an educated observation followed by action. Taking the time to consider what has been done, we have the opportunity to become the best of what ever was; then we build upon it. We do not try to reinvent the wheel, but we definitely do not make them out of stone.

With that, I hope to provide  a definitional basis for my conservative argument for marriage.

First Blog Entry...

So, to be honest, I have never understood why most blogs exist. I have seen many people with them, but never understood why so many people have them. However, I hope to use this in order to better prepare my senior thesis for my capstone course. I am hoping that working out my thoughts will help me to produce a better product. Maybe publishing some smaller works, that are open or criticism, will be constructive. Also, perhaps any commentary would help me work out the kinks in my writing, logic, and flow from one idea to the next.

With that, here I go.