Jean Paulette Bethke Elshtain (1941–2013) was an American
ethicist,
political philosopher, and
public intellectual. She was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the
University of Chicago Divinity School with a joint appointment in the department of political science.
Biography
Early life
Elshtain was born on January 6, 1941, to Paul Bethke and Hellen Lind in
Windsor,
Colorado. She grew up in
Timnath, Colorado.
She was from a
Lutheran background. She received a
Bachelor of Arts degree from
Colorado State University
Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a public land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University System. Colorado State University is classified among "R1: ...
and master's degrees in history from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison and the
University of Colorado.
She received her
Doctor of Philosophy degree from
Brandeis University in
Massachusetts in 1973, writing her dissertation on ''Women and Politics: A Theoretical Analysis''.
Career
Elshtain taught from 1973 to 1988 at the
University of Massachusetts and then from 1988 to 1995 she taught at
Vanderbilt University as the first woman to hold an endowed professorship. Elshtain was selected as a
Phi Beta Kappa scholar, a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, a
Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of nine honorary degrees. In 1995 she became a professor at University of Chicago. She was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the
University of Chicago Divinity School, and a contributing editor for ''
The New Republic''. She was also a Visiting Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at
Baylor University.
In the 1990s, she chaired the Council on Civil Society, a joint project of the
Institute for American Values and the University of Chicago Divinity School, which issued the report ''A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths''.
She was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and she has served on the boards of the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the
National Humanities Center. She was the recipient of a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
, and received nine honorary degrees. In 2002, Elshtain received the Frank J. Goodnow award, the highest award for distinguished service to the profession given by the
American Political Science Association
The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library (now Tilton Hall) of Tulane University in New Orleans, ...
.
The focus of Elshtain's work is an exploration of the relationship between politics and ethics. Much of her work concerned the parallel development of male and female
gender roles as they pertain to public and private social participation. After the
September 11, 2001, attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...
she was one of the more visible academic supporters of
US military intervention in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
She published over five hundred essays and authored and/or edited over twenty books, including ''Democracy on Trial'', ''Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World'', ''Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy'', ''Augustine and the Limits of Politics'', and ''Sovereignty: God, State, Self''.
In 2006, she was appointed by US President
George W. Bush to the Council of the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and also delivered the prestigious
Gifford Lectures at the
University of Edinburgh, joining such previous Gifford Lecturers as
William James,
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
,
Karl Barth
Karl Barth (; ; – ) was a Swiss Calvinist theologian. Barth is best known for his commentary '' The Epistle to the Romans'', his involvement in the Confessing Church, including his authorship (except for a single phrase) of the Barmen Declara ...
, and
Reinhold Niebuhr. In 2008, Elshtain received a second presidential appointment to the
President's Council on Bioethics.
Elshtain contributed to national debates on the family, the roles of men and women, the state of American democracy, and international relations for more than thirty-five years.
Analysis of major works
Elshtain's importance to the United States stems both from her impact in political ethics, and also her position in society as a woman. Carlin Romano, author of ''America the Philosophical'', explains in his work that Elshtain's aim "was not so much to lobby for specific policies as to push for good civic-minded 'individualism' over the egoism of 'bad individualism'".
In one of her more popular titles, ''Women and War'', Elshtain examines women's roles in war as contrasted against masculine roles and why these concepts are important to society. Beginning by examining America's societal interpretations of gender roles during wartime (man as a brave fighter and woman as a pacifist), Elshtain argues that men may make poor civic soldiers due to the fact that they are predisposed to a dangerous kind of eager adolescence on the battlefield, while women may be enthusiastically patriotic and possess a kind of necessary maturity, which is vital to successful combat.
In one of her more famous works, ''Democracy on Trial'', Elshtain reflects on democracy in America, discussing how socio-cultural insistence on "difference" or "separatism" have evolved since the ratification of the Constitution, and how it may be detrimental to the system. Elshtain does not deny the importance of difference, especially within a civic body. Rather, she recognizes that Americans are no longer acting as representative bodies in governments, which embrace separate interests and also work as a collective towards the betterment of the whole. Elshtain, like
James Madison, explains that American factional hostility is only a detriment to society: "one makes war with enemies: one does politics – democratic politics – with opponents".
Death
She died on August 11, 2013, at the age of 72 of heart failure resulting from
endocarditis. She was buried at
Grandview Cemetery, Fort Collins
Grandview Cemetery is a cemetery in Fort Collins, Larimer County, Colorado.
The land for the cemetery was purchased in 1887; at the time it was west of the city limits of Fort Collins. Mountain Home Cemetery had been used prior to this, but it ...
.
Volga German Institute
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Published works
Books
* ''Sovereignty: God, State, Self'' (2008)
* ''Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World'' (2003)
* ''Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy'' (2002)
* ''Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities. Politics and Ethical Discourse'' (2000)
* ''New Wine in Old Bottles: International Politics and Ethical Discourse'' (1998)
* ''Real Politics: Political Theory and Everyday Life'' (1997)
* ''Augustine and the Limits of Politics'' (1996)
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* ''Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought'' (1981)
Articles and interviews
* "The Self: Reborn, Undone, Transformed". '' TELOS'' 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press
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References
Footnotes
Works cited
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External links
*
Jean Bethke Elshtain Papers
- Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University
Guide to the Jean Bethke Elshtain Papers 1935-2017
at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elshtain, Jean Bethke
1941 births
2013 deaths
20th-century American philosophers
20th-century Lutherans
21st-century American philosophers
21st-century Roman Catholics
American ethicists
American feminist writers
American Lutherans
American political philosophers
American women political scientists
American political scientists
American Roman Catholic religious writers
American women philosophers
Brandeis University alumni
Burials in Colorado
Catholic philosophers
Catholics from Colorado
Catholics from Tennessee
Christian ethicists
Colorado State University alumni
Communitarianism
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Lutheranism
Deaths from endocarditis
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Christians
Feminist philosophers
Georgetown University faculty
Individualist feminists
International relations scholars
Lutheran philosophers
People from Larimer County, Colorado
People from Windsor, Colorado
University of Chicago faculty
University of Colorado alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Vanderbilt University faculty
Writers from Colorado
21st-century American women