Heidegger’s Jewish Conceptions of Being, Language, and Time

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 168-181
Author(s):  
Daniel Dahlstrom ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Negative Theology ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Similar Line ◽  
Do So

The aim of this paper is to consider ways that Heidegger’s thinking relates to some main lines of traditional Jewish thought. Following Heidegger’s own hermeneutical principle of trying to think what an author leaves unthought, Marlene Zarader took up a similar line of consideration in her aptly named work, La dette impensée: Heidegger et l’heritage hébraique. Zarader’s work has come in for at least two sorts of criticism. She has been criticized for (a) leaving the impression that there is a single Hebraic tradition to which Heidegger’s debt can be traced and (b) largely restricting her account of that tradition to twentieth century scholars (notably, Scholem). In my opinion, these criticisms, though not without merit, overreach. Still, while such considerations mitigate the force of these criticisms, they do so by conceding that they have a point. Accordingly, the present paper is meant to serve as a complement to Zarader’s project, in light of these criticisms. In the interest of indicating how Heidegger’s thinking echoes various Hebraic traditions, I discuss three distinct sources of those echoes: Maimonides’ negative theology, Mendelssohn’s conception of language (as it contrasts with Solomon Maimon’s conception), and the messianic idea of the Lurianic Kabbalastic tradition.

The Samarin Family and the Parish Question in the Russian Empire. 1860s–1910s

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Alexey L. Beglov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The article examines the contribution of the representatives of the Samarin family to the development of the Parish issue in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The issue of expanding the rights of the laity in the sphere of parish self-government was one of the most debated problems of Church life in that period. The public discussion was initiated by D.F. Samarin (1827-1901). He formulated the “social concept” of the parish and parish reform, based on Slavophile views on society and the Church. In the beginning of the twentieth century his eldest son F.D. Samarin who was a member of the Special Council on the development the Orthodox parish project in 1907, and as such developed the Slavophile concept of the parish. In 1915, A.D. Samarin, who took up the position of the Chief Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, tried to make his contribution to the cause of the parish reforms, but he failed to do so due to his resignation.

Guarding the Public Interest: England's Coroners and Organ Transplants, 1960–1975

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 926-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Spare Part ◽  
Organ Transplants ◽  
Legal Requirement ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

AbstractFrom the mid-twentieth century, England's coroners were crucial to the supply of organs to transplant, as much of this material was gleaned from the bodies of people who had been involved in accidents. In such situations the law required that a coroner's consent first be obtained lest removing the organs destroy evidence about the cause of the person's death. Surgeons challenged the legal requirement that they seek consent before taking organs, arguing that doing so hampered their quick access to bodies. Some coroners willingly cooperated with surgeons while others refused to do so, coming into conflict with particular transplanters whom they considered untrustworthy. This article examines how the phenomenon of “spare part” surgery challenged long-held conceptions of the coroner's role.

scholarly journals Vile Sovereigns in Bioethical Debate

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Hall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Lecture Series ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Bioethical Debate ◽  
Do So

<p>In this paper, I critically assess transhumanist philosophy and its influence in bioethics by turning to resources in the work of Michel Foucault. I begin by outlining transhumanism and drawing out some of the primary goals of transhumanist philosophy. In order to do so, I focus on the work of Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, two prominent contributors to this thinking. I then move to explicate Foucault&rsquo;s work, in the early iterations of the <em>Abnormal</em> lecture series, on the concept of vile sovereignty. Foucault used the concept of vile sovereignty to critique psychiatric witnesses that had been utilized in mid twentieth-century French courts of law. Turning back to transhumanism, I analyze transhumanist discourse on the basis of Foucault&rsquo;s vile sovereignty. Transhumanists promote human enhancement in a way that rejects the body&mdash;especially the disabled body&mdash;and pose the question of what lives are worth living, as well as attempt to answer it. I conclude that because of the undeserved influence and ableism of transhumanism, it is important for feminist philosophers, philosophers of disability, and other disability scholars, who collide at the nexus of bioethical debate (especially with regard to reproductive technology and the body), to work together to intervene upon transhumanist discourse.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p>Keywords: bioethics; enhancement; Foucault; transhumanism; ableism</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

scholarly journals The Tragic Mulatta and Storytelling in Their Eyes Were Watching God

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Ana Belén Pérez García
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Zora Neale Hurston ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Black Race ◽  
Antebellum Literature ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
White Person ◽  
Do So

The figure of the tragic mulatta placed its origin in antebellum literature and was extensively used in the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Much has been written about this literary character in a time when the problem of miscegenation was at its highest point, and when studies established that races were inherently different, meaning that the black race was inferior to the white one. Many authors have made use of this trope for different purposes, and Zora Neale Hurston was one of them. In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston creates Janie, a mulatta that a priori follows all the characteristics of this type of female character who, however, breaks away from most of them. She overcomes all stereotypes and prejudices, those imposed on her because of her condition of interracial offspring, and is able to take charge of her own life and challenge all these impositions feeling closer to her blackness and celebrating and empowering her female identity. In this vein, storytelling becomes the liberating force that helps her do so. It will become the tool that will enable her to ignore the need of passing as a white person and provide her with the opportunity to connect with her real identity and so feel free and happy, breaking with the tragic destiny of mulatta characters. Keywords: storytelling, tragic mulatta, blackness, Hurston.  

Thanatopography

Dismantlings ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Matt Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Ethical Codes ◽  
The World ◽  
Mutual Obligation ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Communal Responsibility ◽  
Do So

This chapter describes thanatopography as the drawing of a map of death, not the writing of a death. When new technologies respatialize the world, thanatopography teaches that they do so not because they construct a communicative network but instead because they build and distribute sites of machinic killing. In discussing Norbert Wiener's insistence on seeing the planet as a world of Belsen and Hiroshima, thanatopography pares back the presumed connection between technology and humanity, exposing something quite frightening underneath the network. A vision of the world that presumes no common similarities among people and peoples is a vertiginous vision that must see shared connections among extant technologies, not only telecommunication and computation but also war, racism, and dehumanizing labor. Communal responsibility and mutual obligation survive amid such technologies as ethical codes that negotiate difference rather than attempting to transcend it. But they also require a reckoning with very real legacies of twentieth-century machines. In place of the smooth-functioning global network, thanatopography offers a spatio-temporal figuration of mass death.

‘National Dignity’ and ‘Spiritual Reintegration’: The Discovery and Presentation of Jewish Folk Music in Germany

Jewishness ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 105-130
Author(s):  
Jascha Nemtsov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Martin Buber ◽  
Cultural Divide ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
East And West ◽  
West European ◽  
Modern Jewish Thought

This chapter details how Jewish folk music was presented as high art to concert audiences in early twentieth-century Germany and how that strategy was criticized. In January of 1901, the first issue of the journal Ost und West (East and West) appeared in Berlin. It served as the most important organ of cultural Zionism for the next two decades, and, as its title suggests, it attempted to bridge the cultural divide between east and west European Jews with the aim of creating an ethnic nationalist goal. The first issue contained, among other things, an article by the renowned Jewish philosopher Martin Buber entitled ‘Jewish Renaissance’ — a term that was to characterize this movement. Critical to this renaissance was the establishment of a common spirit binding a modern nation. Although based in Germany, the leaders of the movement envisioned that this spirit would be found in the ‘authentic folk’ of eastern Europe and the ethno-poetry of the folk song. The chapter then uncovers the often overlooked story of these leaders, particularly Leo Winz and Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann, and the significance of their renaissance movement for modern Jewish thought and culture.

The Varieties of Diplomacy

Worldview ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
William T. R. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Do So

In the world of the mid-twentieth century, dictation by any one power is impossible and wholesale agreement to federate is Utopian. We must therefore look for any possible agreement only on a retail basis, and this is a task for diplomatists. The choice is not whether to engage in diplomacy but how best to do so; that is, what tools to use in what combination. And how to make these tools as sharp and as precise as possible.In the adjustment of disputes between state members of a multiple sovereignty system (that is, between states which cannot ordinarily coerce each other except at the risk of war), there are several broad avenues through which in theory at least the difficulty may be adjusted.

The Interrelations of Societies in History

1963 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall G. S. Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Do So

It has been long pointed out that the destinies of the various sections of mankind began to be interrelated long before the twentieth century, with its global wars and cold wars; or even the nineteenth century, the century of European world hegemony. Here we will study certain of the historical ways in which these destinies were intertwined; in this way we may distinguish more valid modes of tracing large-scale history and of comparing the societies involved in it, from a number of popular but unsound modes of trying to do so. I shall speak mostly of the ages before modern times, noting only briefly at the end of the paper certain crucial ways in which modern interrelations among human societies have been different from earlier ones.

Analysing major recessions: an analytical summary of a new study of large recessions in the twentieth century

1999 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 70-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dow
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Context ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Do So

The book just published is a study of the five major recessions since 1920, and seeks to establish their causes. It focuses on the UK, but sets events there in their international context, and makes frequent comparisons with other countries. It concentrates on the major recessions not only because the effects are greater, but because behaviour in big and small recessions differ; and appears to be the first study to do so.

Political Judging and Judicial Restraint: The Case of Learned and Augustus Hand

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Jak Allen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So ◽  
Judicial Performance

Abstract In recent decades, accusations of partisanship by the U.S. judiciary have intensified. A consequence has been the erroneous framing of judges within the conventional, and sometimes epithetical, political binary of liberalism and conservatism. This article argues that the application of such labels has distorted the full thrust of the complex individuals who have constituted the American judiciary and proposes reframing our perception of judges, both past and present, by seeking more viable standards for measuring judicial performance. To do so, it draws on the early twentieth-century examples of Learned and Augustus Hand of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite being praised as symbols of judicial independence, scholars have often framed the judges in political terms. This article draws on the Hands’ public speeches, publications, and private correspondence to argue that they adopted a non-partisan view of judging that transcended political affiliations and displayed a much deeper consideration about their roles as judges than conventional political labels suggest. By inserting greater nuance into our historical understanding of the delicate relationship between politics and law, we can yet save courts from the threat that politically charged language poses to their legitimacy.

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