scholarly journals Israelijew Jewisraeli: Yoram Kaniuk’s Adam Resurrected and the Problem of the Human

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Netta van Vliet

This article considers the political and philosophical genealogies of the category “Israeli Jew” in terms of Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk’s Adam Resurrected, which I situate within the wider context of contemporary Israel. Israel is defined by some as a colonial and occupying state and by others as a liberal democracy founded on narratives of modern nationalism, but also on the Abrahamic narrative of 2000 years of Jewish exile. The category “Israeli Jew” thus brings together the figure of the diasporic Jew as not fully sovereign with Zionism’s figure of the “New Jew,” based on European modernity’s ideal of a sovereign, autonomous, citizen subject. I show how, by bringing these figures together, rather than replacing one with the other, the category “Israeli Jew” brings together the specificity of the different genealogies that these terms carry. In this regard, I argue, Israel can be understood as an instantiation of the historical legacy of the philosophical binary between the Athenian and the Hebraic, which, as Miriam Leonard, Jacques Derrida, and others have pointed out, informs the long durée of Western political philosophy.

Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington

Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques Derrida, by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Part I follows the fate of a line from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that “the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king,” as it is quoted and misquoted, and progressively Christianized, by authors including Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boétie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. Part II begins again, as it were, with Plato and Aristotle, and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly impacts and tends to undermine that sovereignist tradition, and, more especially in detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, develops a notion of “proto-democracy” as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such, and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Mateusz Falkowski

The article is devoted to the famous The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie. The author considers the theoretical premises underlying the concept of “voluntary servitude”, juxtaposing them with two modern concepts of will developed by Descartes and Pascal. An important feature of La Boétie’s project is the political and therefore intersubjective – as opposed to the individualistic perspective of Descartes and Pascal – starting point. It is therefore situated against the background of, on the one hand, the historical evolution of early modern states (from feudal monarchies, through so-called Renaissance monarchies up to European absolutisms) and, on the other hand – of the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Hobbes.


Author(s):  
Anne Norton

This chapter examines how the Muslim question is tied to the question of democracy. In his book Voyous (translated as Rogues), Jacques Derrida referred to the United States and Islam as the enemies of democracy. In particular, he called Islam “the other of democracy.” Only Islam, Derrida insisted, refuses democracy. Derrida was not the only scholar to have made that claim. His account echoes Samuel Huntington. John Rawls thought Islam so alien that he was obliged to treat it separately. There are countless scholars, left and right, Anglo-American and Continental, who have insisted that Islam is the other of democracy. The chapter suggests that political philosophy in the Muslim (but not simply Muslim) tradition offers visions of democracy, cosmopolitanism, immigration, and integration that are remarkably familiar.


Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Achia Anzi

My paper examines Mieke Bal’s concept of migratory aesthetics through the prism of hospitality. Critical of academic and institutional tendencies that either deny particularism or pin agents and artefacts to their alleged context, Bal develops her concept as a way of accommodating contemporary mobility without undermining cultural specificity. While arguing that “there is no such thing as site-unspecific art”, Bal is also critical of new historicism’s and traditional art history’s overemphasis on “provenance”, and underscores the political ramifications of this approach. Her critique can be read through the framework of hospitality. The notion of “provenance” frames the guest as the other and limits her ability to participate in the host’s culture. Hospitality, however, as Jacques Derrida maintains, is an ambivalent concept. While extending a friendly welcome, it also preserves hierarchy between the host and the guest. In my paper, I examine this other side of hospitality in Yael Bartana’s film True Finn (2014) and in Lost in Space (2005) of Mieke Bal and Shahram Entekhabi. I explore how these films organise the host/guest relation and how they deal with the political entanglement of hospitality.


1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Minogue

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I FIND KARL POPPER BOTH FASCINATING and irritating. His vigour and lucidity are irresistible, and no one could complain that he fails to engage with the big questions. The problems begin when we consider his political thought. Some think him one of the great liberal philosophers of the century. I on the other hand, while being fascinated by The Open Society and its Enemies, am repelled by the grossness of its caricaturing of most of the thinkers it touches. The Poverty of Historicism is a marvellous text in the philosophy of the social sciences, but the idea of historicism is a straw man. The paradox seems to be that while there is a lot that refers to the political questions of the day, there is virtually nothing which takes up issues of political philosophy directly. The result is that he seems to me always to be on the wrong foot, and my problem is to discover why.


2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 763-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Morris

Theorists of deliberation and deconstruction each claim commitments to a more open and legitimate democracy than existing liberal democracy. Eschewing traditional foundations such as natural law, historical inheritance, or the constitutive formation of the nation, they seek to develop a theory of democracy that is more inclusive in conditions of social diversity and complexity. This article investigates the meaning of the open political space that fosters the democratic experience under such conditions. First, a sociologically informed political theory, such as Jürgen Habermas' powerful if flawed attempt, is required to conceive participation in the democratic political sphere. Drawing on Jacques Derrida and others, the author then argues that deconstructive insights that introduce an openness to the non-identical contribute to a more complete democratic theory, offering a crucial mode of democratic inclusion of the other and an acknowledgment of difference that might assist in reforming current institutions. Thus a blend of Habermasian orientation toward deliberation and deconstruction's ethical sensibilities presents a promising development of democratic possibilities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Hasan Jashari

In politics we will always have friends, opponents and outsiders. They constantly appear to us and at that moment when we have won one and as such has lost the support of the electorate. But political struggle goes on with other people who use the loss of one to take his post in the electorate. But even the opposition has its announced and not announced opponents. The purpose of this research is that through the theoretical and empirical elaboration of the topic we will collect data on the political power struggle between the four main political parties in Macedonia. By means of statistical data, previous surveys and surveys of 100 students we will analyze various indicators and will make their interpretation. Today, in our political and social level, we all work against one another. To work against others, strategies must be prepared to carry out self-proclaiming to the people, how to deface the opponent, how to elaborate, reveal discoveries about the shortcomings and weaknesses of the enemy camp. It is summed up in the goals - to have information that the other is corrupt, unable,so that we can attack. But the question is that working against others is it becoming a political philosophy and permanent strategy,is it becoming a business, but also a struggle without any moral boundaries, especially in Macedonia but also in Albania and Kosovo.


Author(s):  
James M. Glass

This article examines the relation between paranoia and political philosophy. It suggests that internal psychological conflict affects political reality through the force of belief systems and explains that belief derives from the complex interplay between the structuralization of the inner self, its affective and developmental foundations, and what the external world produces as data and sensation. It also contends that both realms of experience, the psychological internal and the political external, infuse each other and each depends on the other.


1958 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 470-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard B. White

To understand the political philosophy of Francis Bacon, or what he tried to do in political philosophy, one must make the clear-cut distinction he saw, I believe, between a provisional and a definitive political teaching. The latter, which he put chiefly in the New Atlantis and the De Sapientia Veterum, could be but imperfectly explored, because man could only build a final political teaching out of an as yet unconstructed natural philosophy. The former, on the other hand, could be known and conveyed with some precision. It was to serve the purpose of furnishing a temporary station for mankind, one that would be liveable and even comfortable as a dwelling place, and one that would at the same time, permit philosophy or science its own discovery of something better. Of the provisional political order, as Bacon saw it, there were three pillars: crown, church, and empire. The imperial pillar is certainly the most important to him of the three, and its construction required a greater boldness than the construction of either of the others.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-336
Author(s):  
Alexander Livingston

The question of what political consequences, if any, follow from American pragmatism is nearly as old as pragmatism itself. David Rondel’s Pragmatist Egalitarianism breathes new life into this old debate. Rondel outlines a distinctively pluralistic and problem-oriented approach to political philosophy that claims to “reconcile and mediate” the false dichotomies and interminable debates marking philosophical discourses of egalitarian justice. This article identifies two competing visions of the political consequences of Rondel’s egalitarian brand of pragmatism: one Rortyan and deflationary, the other Deweyan and reconstructive. Rondel’s reconstructive argument shows how pragmatism’s democratic radicalism pushes beyond the liberal consensus of contemporary theories of justice and towards a more robust conception of democratic socialism, yet the full implications of this position are cut short by the book’s competing deflationary mode.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document