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A celebrated Israeli author explores the roots of the divide between religion and secularism in Israel today, and offers a path to bridging the divide "A thoughtful social, political, and philosophical examination of Judaism. . . . A cogent consideration of the place of religion in the modern world."--Kirkus Reviews Zionism began as a movement full of contradictions, between a pull to the past and a desire to forge a new future. Israel has become a place of fragmentation, between those who sanctify religious tradition and those who wish to escape its grasp. Now, a new middle ground is emerging between religious and secular Jews who want to engage with their heritage--without being restricted...
This book delves into the philosophical presuppositions of modern political agency. Michal Rozynek explores the place of nationalism in an increasingly cosmopolitan world by approaching the fundamental questions of modern subjectivity from a new angle. Taking as a starting point the transformations of the modern self, this volume argues that the project of modernity leads to an unresolvable tension within the self-- one which seemingly jeopardizes our ability to participate in a public world. Rozynek goes on to show how nationhood can offer a resolution to this tension, building on the pioneering work of Liah Greenfeld. Far from being a defense of tribalism, this book attempts to tackle both the questions of national solidarity and cosmopolitan duties, by problematizing the account of nationalism in contemporary political theory and advocating a revised model of universalism.
Leaving Other People Alone reads contemporary North American Jewish fiction about Israel/Palestine through an anti-Zionist lens. Aaron Kreuter argues that since Jewish diasporic fiction played a major role in establishing the centroperipheral relationship between Israel and the diaspora, it therefore also has the potential to challenge, trouble, and ultimately rework this relationship. Kreuter suggests that any fictional work that concerns itself with Israel/Palestine and Zionism comes with heightened responsibilities, primarily to make narrative space for the Palestinian worldview, the dispossessed Other of the Zionist project. In engaging prose, the book features a wide range of scholarship and new, compelling readings of texts by Theodor Herzl, Leon Uris, Philip Roth, Ayelet Tsabari, and David Bezmozgis. Throughout, Kreuter develops his concept of diasporic heteroglossia, which is fiction's unique ability to contain multiple voices that resist and write back against national centres. This work makes an important and original contribution to Jewish studies, diaspora studies, and world literature.
This book tracks the development of the emerging international legal principle of a responsibility to protect over the past two decades. It contrasts the influential version of the principle introduced by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001 with subsequent interpretations of the responsibility to protect advocated by the United Nations through its human protection agenda, and reviews the dangers and inconsistencies inherent in both perspectives. The author demonstrates that the evolving responsibility to protect principle can be recruited to support a wide range of irreconcilable projects, from those of cosmopolitan constitutionalism to those of hegemon...
"Nietzsche's ideas were widely disseminated among and appropriated by the first Hebrew Zionist writers and leaders. It seems quite appropriate, then, that the first Zionist Congress was held in Basle, where Nietzsche spent several years as a professor of classical philology. This coincidence gains profound significance when we see Nietzsche's impact on the first Zionist leaders and writers in Europe as well as his presence in Palestine and, later, in the State of Israel."—from the IntroductionThe early Zionists were deeply concerned with the authenticity of the modern Jew qua person and with the content and direction of the reawakening Hebrew culture. Nietzsche too was propagating his high...
Heidegger scholars consider the philosopher's recently published notebooks, including the issues of Heidegger's Nazism and anti-Semitism. For more than forty years, the philosopher Martin Heidegger logged ideas and opinions in a series of notebooks, known as the “Black Notebooks” after the black oilcloth booklets into which he first transcribed his thoughts. In 2014, the notebooks from 1931 to 1941 were published, sparking immediate controversy. It has long been acknowledged that Heidegger was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi Party in the early 1930s. But the notebooks contain a number of anti-Semitic passages—often referring to the stereotype of “World-Jewry”—written even a...
The essays in this volume discuss and assess the philosophies and writings of Professor David Vital. They aim to develop his work within modern diplomacy, issues relating to modern Jewish history, and within the State of Israel and its conduct of foreign relations.
The moral and political philosophy of pluralism has become increasingly influential. To pluralists, when values genuinely conflict we should aim to strike an appropriate balance or trade-off between them, though this means accepting that compromise will be inevitable. Politics, as a result, appears as a thoroughly tragic affair. Drawing on a 'hermeneutical' conception of interpretation, the author develops an original account of practical reasoning, one which assumes that, though making compromises in the face of conflicts is indeed often unavoidable, there are times when reconciliation, as distinct from compromise, is feasible. For this to be so, however, citizens must strive to converse - and not just negotiate - with each other, thus fulfilling the good that is at the heart of their shared political community. This is the central message of the patriotic alternative to pluralist politics that the author defends here.
Based on an insightful and innovative reading of Kant's theory of knowledge, this book explores the political implications of Kant's philosophical writings on knowledge. It suggests that Kant offers a stable foundation for the reconsideration of the idea of progress as crucial in matters of political management at the outset of the 21st Century.
Colonialism has three foundational concerns - violence, territory, and population control - all of which rest on racialist discourse and practice. Placing the Zionist project in Israel/Palestine within the context of settler colonialism reveals strategies and goals behind the region’s rules of governance that have included violence, repressive state laws and racialized forms of surveillance. In Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit, Elia Zureik revisits and reworks fundamental ideas that informed his first work on colonialism and Palestine three decades ago. Focusing on the means of control that are at the centre of Israel’s actions toward Palestine, this book applies ...