Fraternity and politics : choosing one's brothers / Fred E. Baumann.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [143]-146) and index.

Introduction: The Metaphor of Fraternity -- Ch. 1. Fraternity in America -- Ch. 2. Fraternity and SDS -- Ch. 3. Fraternity and the Sans-Culottes -- Ch. 4. "Fraternity-Terror": The Contribution of Jean-Paul Sartre -- Ch. 5. Conclusion.

Baumann examines the recurring efforts to establish fraternal relations in modern societies by political, and in particular, radical means. He proceeds by examining a series of related examples, beginning with a brief discussion of the metaphor for fraternity itself, and then he turns to a consideration of the historical development of the quest for fraternity. He first examines the quest for fraternity among the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. Baumann then turns to the sans-culotteS≪/i> before and during the period of the French Revolution. The third analysis is philosophical, rather than historical, and treats Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to understand radically and thus justify the relation of fraternity to terror. His conclusion sums up the argument about the necessary self-contradiction and failure of the pursuit of political fraternity and points to the long-discarded concept of aesthetic education developed as an alternative to the political pursuit of fraternity by the poet and philospher Friedrich Schiller. Show more Show less