This response to Jason A. Springs’s Healthy Conflict in Contemporary Society praises Springs for his recommendations for improving the discourse found in ethical conflicts in public life. Springs’s main prescription is for culture to stop repressing conflict. But if Springs ought to be praised for desiring to give conflict its due in public life, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary Life ought also to be criticized for not always being clear on whether there are criteria that authorize excluding some people (e.g. white (...) supremacists) from participating in nonviolent cultural conflict. The essay concludes by suggesting a rehabilitation in religious ethics of the category of the enemy. (shrink)

This essay on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt challenges her argument from two opposing sides. First, it critiques all jeremiads. It asks how a person uttering prophetic indictments, whether in the form of a classical jeremiad or the more moderate form that Kaveny argues for, can possibly know of what she speaks, given the otherness of God. Second, it calls for more jeremiads. It asks whether a person, whether religious or not, might indeed know enough to offer withering jeremiads, in (...) those cases where she sees the target of her jeremiad making flagrantly incompatible commitments. (shrink)

Abstract The work of Martin Buber oscillates between talk in which transcendence is experienced and talk in which transcendence is merely postulated. In order to show and mend this incoherence in Buber's thought, this essay attends to the rhetoric of verification ( Bewährung ), primarily but not solely in I and Thou (1923), both in order to show how it is a symptom of this incoherence, and also to show a broad pragmatic strain in Buber's thought. Given this pragmatic (...) strain, the essay argues that a weak notion of Buberian verification, in which taking a dialogic stance with reference to others evinces the right to talk of the real possibility of transcendence (a You-world, or God as the “eternal You“), is all that is necessary to combat despair. Strong notions of encounter are unnecessary, and also sink Buber in a morass of theodicy, in which he interprets historical misfortune and destruction as evidence of history's meaning. (shrink)

In all of these discourses, she has sought to cultivate an awareness of how the self is situated and influenced, as well as the ways in which a self can influence others.In this volume, twelve scholars examine and display the influence of ...

Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy contests the ancient opposition between Athens and Jerusalem by retrieving the concept of meontology - the doctrine of nonbeing - from the Jewish philosophical and theological tradition. For Emmanuel Levinas, as well as for Franz Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen and Moses Maimonides, the Greek concept of nonbeing clarifies the meaning of Jewish life. These thinkers of 'Jerusalem' use 'Athens' for Jewish ends, justifying Jewish anticipation of a future messianic era as well as portraying the (...) subjects intellectual and ethical acts as central in accomplishing redemption. This book envisions Jewish thought as an expression of the intimate relationship between Athens and Jerusalem. It also offers new readings of important figures in contemporary Continental philosophy, critiquing previous arguments about the role of lived religion in the thought of Jacques Derrida, the role of Plato in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the centrality of ethics in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig. (shrink)

The second volume of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy provides a comprehensive overview of Jewish philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present day. Written by a distinguished group of experts in the field, its essays examine how Jewish thinking was modified in its encounter with modern Europe and America and challenge longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of modern Jewish philosophy. The volume also treats modern Jewish philosophy's continuities with premodern texts and thinkers, the relationship between philosophy (...) and theology, the ritual and political life of the people of Israel and the ways in which classic modern philosophical categories help or hinder Jewish self-articulation. These essays offer readers a multi-faceted understanding of the Jewish philosophical enterprise in the modern period. (shrink)

Levinas's Talmudic readings have played an important role in defending the claim that the discipline of modern Jewish philosophy cannot be reduced to a list of assimilationist thinkers. This article argues that this claim is defendable, but only if the premise of the claim ceases to be the content of Levinas's Talmudic readings: "The Temptation of Temptation" wrongly takes its sugya as representative of Judaism as a whole, the differing mathematical calculations between Levinas and the sugya he treats in "The (...) Pact" suggest that the Talmud assumes a Rousseauian amour-propre , and "And God Created Woman" implies that Jewish ethics is not opposed to Jews' assimilation. I instead suggest that Levinas's Talmudic readings serve to promote the fecundity of Judaism; it is only through such "bad" readings that historical determinism can be conquered, and a messianic future becomes possible. (shrink)

In the spirit of this group of articles commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Religious Ethics, dealing with tradition-based reasoning, this article takes up a passage from Deuteronomy 20 that allows the “fearful and faint-hearted” person not to participate in battle, as well as the rabbinic and medieval appropriations of this passage in the Jewish tradition. It argues that this verse gives primacy to affect in a way that complicates standard interpretations of the Jewish tradition on just war (...) and allows us to see the pliability of tradition. Finally, the article argues that scholars assessing the justice of conflicts need to attend to the circulation of affects in a reasoning community, as is currently happening on scholarship on moral injury. (shrink)

We are now, I think, in the midst of a sea change in Levinas interpretation. Increasingly in the course of the last third of the twentieth century, Levinas’s phenomenological ethics was seen as a resource for intellectuals to protest a certain kind of, shall we say, methodological naturalism in philosophy. Not only scientific positivism but also existential phenomenology with its apparent emphasis on immanence were feared to be terminally infected with neopagan or proto-fascist elements. If the result of these movements (...) was an embrace of (or a failure to adequately critique) modern secularized civilization and its bureaucratized projects — problematic because such a dimension of modernity was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust, as ZygmuntBauman has argued — then the putative solution was to bend the stick toward the opposite pole. Scholars could invoke either the broadly monotheistic overtones of Levinas’s discourse of the Infinite or the specifically Judaic texts of the Bible and Talmud that Levinas saw himself as translating into philosophy, in the hope that these acts of citation would persuade scholars’ audiences that a return to monotheism or the Judaeo-Christian tradition could get the West past its embarrassingcentury-long flirtation with human-made mass death. This reading of Levinas would be coherent with a broader trend in American thought from the 1950s onward that would include Abraham Joshua Heschel, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King Jr., wherein secularism (especially as evidenced by communism) is the problem, religion is the solution. (shrink)

In accounts of Emmanuel Levinas’s relationship to the Jewish theological tradition, scholars often analyze Levinas’s essays about Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, and specifically his 1824 book Soul of Life (Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim). This article treats two essays that Levinas wrote in the mid-1980s on that book, and shows that Levinas’s praise for that book involves coming close to endorsing its theology of suffering, a theology that strikes this article’s author as obscene. In Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim, those who suffer deserve their suffering, their (...) suffering is in proportion to the sins that gave rise to it, and their suffering purifies and atones for their sin—in the language of the Jewish theological tradition, “it is God’s way to sweeten bitter with bitter.” This marks a departure from Levinas’s standard treatment of issues of theodicy in essays such as “Useless Suffering” (1982). In the article’s conclusion, the possibility is raised that Levinas’s account of divine illeity liberates theologians from problems of theodicy. (shrink)

In accounts of Emmanuel Levinas’s relationship to the Jewish theological tradition, scholars often analyze Levinas’s essays about Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, and specifically his 1824 book Soul of Life. This article treats two essays that Levinas wrote in the mid-1980s on that book, and shows that Levinas’s praise for that book involves coming close to endorsing its theology of suffering, a theology that strikes this article’s author as obscene. In Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim, those who suffer deserve their suffering, their suffering is (...) in proportion to the sins that gave rise to it, and their suffering purifies and atones for their sin—in the language of the Jewish theological tradition, “it is God’s way to sweeten bitter with bitter.” This marks a departure from Levinas’s standard treatment of issues of theodicy in essays such as “Useless Suffering”. In the article’s conclusion, the possibility is raised that Levinas’s account of divine illeity liberates theologians from problems of theodicy. (shrink)

The second volume of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy provides a comprehensive overview of Jewish philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present day. Written by a distinguished group of experts in the field, its essays examine how Jewish thinking was modified in its encounter with modern Europe and America and challenge longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of modern Jewish philosophy. The volume also treats modern Jewish philosophy's continuities with premodern texts and thinkers, the relationship between philosophy (...) and theology, the ritual and political life of the people of Israel and the ways in which classic modern philosophical categories help or hinder Jewish self-articulation. These essays offer readers a multi-faceted understanding of the Jewish philosophical enterprise in the modern period. (shrink)

In the 1980s and 1990s, the theoretical energy in the study of religion came from postmodern theory and its appropriation by scholars who worked in, or at the margins of, the subfield called “philosophy of religion.” Today, philosophy of religion—at least in departments of religion and religious studies—threatens to kill itself with its own jargon; the theoretical energy in the study of religion comes from young scholars working in American religious history (such as John Modern, author of Secularism in Antebellum (...) America) and a coterie of thinkers associated with the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR), notably Russell McCutcheon and Timothy Fitzgerald. These thinkers and others argue in various ways that the academic study of religion is rightly constrained by its academic context, and therefore requires the bracketing of all discourse from the study of religion (whether in the discipline of history of religions, or that of theology) that assumes a natural human. (shrink)

The writings of Martha Nussbaum broadly defend an account of transcendence as internal, always rooted in the human context. Her account implies that any and all projects of normative theological ethics are superfluous, since they transcend the natural bounds of human experience and reason. This essay points toward a space for theology, specifically Jewish theology, in Nussbaum's work, through an analysis of her recent philosophical and autobiographical writings on Judaism. Nussbaum's account in Upheavals of Thought associates Judaism with carnality and (...) vulnerability; this essay supplements her account by pointing to a non-natural origin of emotional judgments in some of the texts Nussbaum treats. This move serves to temper the emphasis on autonomy in liberal Jewish thought, and provides an account of transcendence which can serve as the basis of a more traditional Jewish theological ethics. (shrink)

This essay takes on the implicit claim in Taylor's A Secular Age, forecast in some of his earlier writings, that the desire for a meaningful life can never be satisfied in this life. As a result, A Secular Age is suffused with a tragic view of existence; its love of narratives of religious longing makes no sense otherwise. Yet there are other models of religion that lend meaning to existence, and in the majority of this essay, I take up one (...) model that Taylor ignores in A Secular Age, namely that of a God who is immanent in social life throughout religious law. Turning to Maimonides's account of divine law in the Guide of the Perplexed, I argue that a vision of the divine law that is divine because of its effects in society, namely the promotion of human welfare, can mend the relations between varying kinds of believers and unbelievers in a way that Taylor thinks is impossible. A God who commands laws is a God who inaugurates an “anthropocentric shift” long before current understandings of secularization see it beginning. (shrink)

Exploring the status of feminism in this "postfeminist" age, this sophisticated meditation on feminist thinking over the past three decades moves away from the all too common dependence on French theorists and male thinkers and instead builds on a wide-ranging body of feminist theory written by women. These writings address the question "Where are we going?" as well as "Where have we come from?" As evidenced in the essays compiled here, the multiplicity of directions available to this new feminism ranges (...) from poststructuralist academic theory through cultural activism to re-readings of law, literature, and representation. Contributors include Mieke Bal, Lauren Berlant, Rosi Braidotti, Elisabeth Bronfen, Judith Butler, Rey Chow, Drucilla Cornell, Ann Cvetkovich, Jane Gallop, Beatrice Hanssen, Claire Kahane, Ranjana Khanna, Biddy Martin, Juliet Mitchell, Anita Haya Patterson, and Valerie Smith. _Feminist Consequences_, representing the forefront of international feminist thought, marks a new and long-desired stage of feminist criticism where women are themselves making theory rather than reacting to male production. (shrink)

Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund" full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H. C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Mulsow shows that even in (...) the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Mulsow studied the writings of countless hitherto unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corrosively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. (shrink)

In the early months of 1991, the United States—in alliance with a number of other nations—fought a large scale air and ground war to evict Iraq's occupying army from the emirate of Kuwait. In this paper, I will consider the question of whether this U.S. military campaign was a just war according to the criteria of traditional just war theory—the only developed moral theory of warfare that we have. My aim, however, is not so much to reach a verdict about (...) the morality of the Gulf War, as it is to identify relevant moral issues, and to reveal certain serious problems of application that are inherent in just war theory itself. Just war theory divides into two parts concerning, respectively, the question of whether or not to fight a particular war , and the question of how the war is conducted . I begin by considering whether it was just, according to the justice of war criteria, for the U.S. to fight the Gulf War at all. I then turn to the question of whether the way the war was conducted satisfied the criteria of justice in war. (shrink)

In fact, it requires two major social institutions--morality and government--working in a coordinated fashion to do so. This is one of the main themes of Hobbes's philosophy that will be developed in this book.

Why do we need government? A common view is that government is necessary to constrain people's conduct toward one another, because people are not sufficiently virtuous to exercise the requisite degree of control on their own. This view was expressed perspicuously, and artfully, by liberal thinker James Madison, in The Federalist, number 51, where he wrote: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Madison's idea is shared by writers ranging across the political spectrum. It finds clear expression in (...) the Marxist view that the state will gradually wither away after a communist revolution, as unalienated “communist man” emerges. And it is implied by the libertarian view that government's only legitimate function is to control the unfortunate and immoral tendency of some individuals to violate the moral rights of others. (shrink)

Divided into four parts, this treatise begins with well-known criticisms of nonreligious ethics and then develops an atheistic metaethics. In Part 2, Martin criticizes the Christian foundation of ethics, specifically the ’divine command theory’ and the idea of imitating the life of Jesus as the basis of Christian morality. Part 3 demonstrates that life can be meaningful in the absence of religious belief. Part 4 criticizes the theistic point of view in general terms as well as the specific Christian (...) doctrines of the atonement, salvation, and the resurrection. (publisher, edited). (shrink)

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)

This collection of texts (originally published in German under the title Holzwege) is Heidegger's first post-war book and contains some of the major expositions of his later philosophy. Of particular note are 'The Origin of the Work of Art', perhaps the most discussed of all of Heidegger's essays, and 'Nietzsche's Word 'God is Dead',' which sums up a decade of Nietzsche research. Although translations of the essays have appeared individually in a variety of places, this is the first English translation (...) to bring them all together as Heidegger intended. The text is taken from the last edition of the work, which contains the author's final corrections together with important marginal annotations that provide considerable insight into the development of his thought. This fresh and accurate new translation will be an invaluable resource for all students of Heidegger, whether they work in philosophy, literary theory, religious studies, or intellectual history. (shrink)

In recent years serious attempts have been made to systematize and develop the moral and political themes of great philosophers of the past. Kant, Locke, Marx, and the classical utilitarians all have their current defenders and arc taken seriously as expositors of sound moral and political views. It is the aim of this book to introduce Hobbes into this select group by presenting a plausible moral and political theory inspired by Leviathan. Using the techniques of analytic philosophy and elementary game (...) theory, the author develops a Hobbesian argument that justifies the liberal State and reconciles the rights and interests of rational individuals with their obligations. Hobbes's case against anarchy, based on his notorious claim that life outside the political State would be a "war of all against all," is analyzed in detail, while his endorsement of the absolutist State is traced to certain false hypotheses about political sociology. With these eliminated, Hobbes's principles support a liberal redistributive State and a limited right of revolution. Turning to normative issues, the book explains Hobbes's account of morality based on enlightened self-interest and shows how the Hobbesian version of social contract theory justifies the political obligations of citizens of satisfactory States. (shrink)

And, as The Promise of Salvation makes clear through abundant empirical evidence, religion will not disappear as long as these promises continue to help people ...