This book discusses the justifications and limits of cultural nationalism from a liberal perspective. Chaim Gans presents a normative typology of nationalist ideologies, distinguishing between cultural liberal nationalism and statist liberal nationalism. Statist nationalisms argue that states have an interest in the cultural homogeneity of their citizenries. Cultural nationalisms argue that people have interests in adhering to their cultures and in sustaining these cultures for generations. Gans argues that freedom- and identity-based justifications for cultural nationalism common in (...) literature can only support the adherence thesis, while the historical thesis could only be justified by the interest people have in the long-term endurance of their personal and group endeavors. The Limits of Nationalism examines demands often made in the name of cultural nationalism, such as claims for national self-determination, historical rights claims to territories and demands entailed by cultural particularism as opposed to cultural cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

This book examines the central questions concerning the duty to obey the law: the meaning of this duty; whether and where it should be acknowledged; and whether and when it should be disregarded. Many contemporary philosophers deny the very existence of this duty, but take a cautious stance toward political disobedience. This 'toothless anarchism', Professor Gans argues, should be discarded in favour of a converse position confirming the existence of a duty to obey the law which can be outweighed (...) by values and principles of political morality. Informed by the Israeli experience of political disobedience motivated by radically differing moral outlooks, the author sets out the principles which should guide our attitude to law and political authority even amidst clashing ideologies and irreconcilable moralities. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of law, philosophy and politics, and anyone concerned with the individual's responsibilties toward his or her political community. (shrink)

The legitimacy of the Zionist project--establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine--has been questioned since its inception. In recent years, the voices challenging the legitimacy of the State of Israel have become even louder. Chaim Gans examines these doubts and presents an in-depth, evenhanded philosophical analysis of the justice of Zionism.

Can states' immigration policies favor groups with whom they are culturally and historically tied? I shall answer this question here positively, but in a qualified manner. My arguments in support of this answer will be of distributive justice, presupposing a globalist rather than a localist approach to justice. They will be based on a version of liberal nationalism according to which individuals can have fundamental interests in their national culture, interests which are rooted in freedom, identity, and especially in ensuring (...) the meaningfulness of their endeavor. The prevalent means for protecting these interests is the right to national self-determination. Many believe that this right should be conceived of as a right to a state. I shall show that this conception of self-determination implies purely nationalist immigration policies. I shall present reasons for rejecting such policies, reasons which together with other reasons form a strong case against the statist interpretation of the right to self-determination. They form a strong case in favor of understanding self-determination as a bundle of privileges to which nations are entitled within the states dominating their homelands. Some of these privileges have to do with immigration policies. I shall argue for three principles which should regulate these immigration privileges and discuss the relation between them and Israel's Law of Return. (shrink)

The interest individuals have in the preservation of their culture raises various difficulties pertaining to the meaning of this interest, its justification, and its normative implications. In this Paper, I wish to make several comments on these issues and the relationships between them. I will discuss the meaning of the interest individuals have in the preservation of their culture and the justification of this interest by referring to Margalit and Halbertal’s article “Liberalism and the Right to Culture.” I will then (...) comment on the classification of cultural preservation rights by referring to Kymlicka’s notions of poly-ethnic rights, self-government rights and representation rights. I will conclude with questions concerning the justification of some particular rights to cultural preservation by resorting to Brian Barry’s discussion of Québec language rights and some examples of Israel’s immigration policies. (shrink)

It may be that the appropriate demographic objective of Israel as a country in which the Jewish people realize their right to self-determination is the existence of a Jewish public in Israel in numbers sufficient to allow its members to live in the framework of their culture. It may also be that the appropriate demographic objective of Israel should be the existence of a Jewish majority within it. While I discussed this issue elsewhere; here I discuss the legitimate means for (...) the realization of these goals. Israel’s principal means for realizing these objectives thus far has been its Law of Return and its Citizenship Law. These laws afford every Jew anywhere in the world the right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen of the State of Israel. Many liberals and left-wingers consider these laws to be tainted with racism, because they regard any nationally-based preference with regard to immigration to be a form of racism. In the first part of my paper I argue against this position. I offer three justifications for nationality-based preferences in immigration. However, the fact that nationality-based priorities in immigration are not necessarily racist and that there are legitimate human interests justifying such priorities, does not entail that the specific priorities manifested by Israel’s Law of Return and its other immigration and citizenship policies are just. These policies in effect mean that all Jews and only Jews have the right to immigrate to Israel and to become fully integrated in Israeli life. In the second part of the paper, I argue that these two aspects of Israel’s immigration policies, namely, its almost categorical inclusion of all Jews and its almost categorical exclusion of all non-Jews, are somewhat problematic. In addition to the Law of Return, a number of additional ways to ultimately increase the number of Jews in relation to the number of Arabs have been proposed and even adopted in Israel in recent years. During the incumbency of the fifteenth Knesset, right-wing Member of Knesset Michael Kleiner tabled a draft bill intended “to encourage people that do not identify with the Jewish character of the state [i.e., Palestinian citizens of Israel C.G.] to leave.” The Israeli Government later tabled a bill—that was eventually passed—to amend the Israeli Citizenship Law in a manner that would deny Arabs who are Israeli citizens and have married Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories the right to live in Israel with their spouses and children. In the third part of the paper, I clarify why in contrast to granting Jews priority in immigration, both the aforementioned laws, namely, Kleiner’s law and the law pertaining to family unification are racist and are therefore morally unacceptable. (shrink)

The right of national groups to self-government should be universally conceived of in sub-statist forms. Instead of interpreting the right to national self-determination in terms of independent statehood, it should in all cases be conceived of as a package of privileges to which each national group is entitled in its main geographic location, normally within the state that coincides with its homeland. According to this sub-statist conception, self-determination is not a right of majority nations within states vis-a-vis national minorities, but (...) rather a right of homeland groups vis-a-vis non-homeland groups. It is a right to which each national group in the world is entitled, and which must be realized in at least one place. (shrink)

According to cultural nationalism, members of groups sharing a common history and societal culture have a fundamental, morally significant interest in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Moreover, this interest should be protected by states. I shall examine three theses included in this statement. The first, theadherence thesis,relates to the basic interest people have in adhering to their national culture. The second thesis ishistorical.It concerns the basic interest people have in recognizing and protecting the multigenerational dimension (...) of their culture. The third thesis, apoliticalone, holds that the interests people have in living their lives within their culture and in sustaining this culture for generations should be protected politically. Some contemporary writers who support a liberal version of cultural nationalism do so by arguing that people have an interest in culture mainly because it is a prerequisite for their freedom and also because it is a component of their identity. (shrink)

According to cultural nationalism, members of groups sharing a common history and societal culture have a fundamental, morally significant interest in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Moreover, this interest should be protected by states. I shall examine three theses included in this statement. The first, theadherence thesis,relates to the basic interest people have in adhering to their national culture. The second thesis ishistorical.It concerns the basic interest people have in recognizing and protecting the multigenerational dimension (...) of their culture. The third thesis, apoliticalone, holds that the interests people have in living their lives within their culture and in sustaining this culture for generations should be protected politically. Some contemporary writers who support a liberal version of cultural nationalism do so by arguing that people have an interest in culture mainly because it is a prerequisite for their freedom and also because it is a component of their identity. (shrink)

Supporters of a Palestinian right of return assume that Israeli Jews bear responsibility for both the past and present suffering of the Palestinian refugees. Accordingly, the Palestinian claim for return is a demand to realize this responsibility by way of the return of the refugees to their places of origin or to uninhabited regions in the Land of Israel/palestine. The purpose of this article is to examine the responsibility of the Israeli Jews for the Palestinian return of the refugees in (...) light of the question of the justice of Zionism. Part I presents various approaches rejecting or affirming Zionism. The subsequent parts investigate the implications of the disparities between these approaches rejecting/affirming Zionism and Zionism’s actual history as it unfolded in terms of Jewish responsibility for the Palestinian plight and the question of Palestinian return. I argue that some of the approaches to Zionism are irrelevant to the dispute over the Palestinian right of return as it is understood within the framework of Israeli internal discourse and the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. However, my main point is that those approaches rejecting/ affirming Zionism that are relevant, though they may vary in their implications for the scope of Jewish responsibility for Palestinian suffering, nevertheless lead to very similar conclusions with respect to discharging that responsibility by way of Palestinian repatriation. (shrink)

La rhetorique n'est pas la discipline qui s'occupe essentiellement des figures de rhetorique: celles-ci ne sont plus qu'un outil parmi d'autres pour persuader et convaincre un auditoire. Dans toute sa generalite, elle constitue une theorie de l'argumentation, qui se sert de raisonnements qu'Aristote qualifiait de dialectiques. En ce sens la rhetorique, qui englobe la dialectique des Anciens, est le pendant de la logique formelle, car c'est l'instrument indispensable de toute pensee qui ne se reduit pas a un calcul. Toute deliberation, (...) toute discussion, toute controverse, toute presentation d'idees nouvelles qui fait appel a la raison, est obligee d'y recourir. La rhetorique est ainsi l'instrument indispensable de toute pensee et de toute philosophie critique. L'etude des techniques d'argumentation, et de leurs presupposes, longtemps negligee par le rationalisme classique, d'inspiration mathematique, est presentee dans ses perspectives historiques et philosophiques. (shrink)

Substantial research demonstrates that ethical leaders improve a broad range of outcomes for their employees, but considerably less attention has been devoted to the performance and success of the leaders themselves. The present study explores the extent to which being ethical relates to leaders’ performance and promotability. We address this question by examining ethical leadership from the two ethical perspectives most common in Western traditions—i.e., the “right” and the “good”—and whether one might be more closely associated than the other with (...) performance and promotability evaluations. Results from 117 employee-supervisor-manager triads show that supervisors with a deontological outlook are more likely to be seen as ethical leaders and that utilitarian leaders are more likely to earn higher performance evaluations. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on ethical leadership. (shrink)

Titel oversat: Islamisk, medicinsk etik i det tyvende århundrede.

The New Rhetoric is founded on the idea that since “argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced,” says Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, and they rely, in particular, for their theory of argumentation on the twin concepts of universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed to a specific individual or group, the orator decides what information and what approaches will achieve (...) the greatest adherence according to an ideal audience. This ideal, Perelman explains, can be embodied, for example, "in God, in all reasonable and competent men, in the man deliberating or in an elite.” Like particular audiences, then, the universal audience is never fixed or absolute but depends on the orator, the content and goals of the argument, and the particular audience to whom the argument is addressed. These considerations determine what information constitutes "facts" and "reasonableness" and thus help to determine the universal audience that, in turn, shapes the orator's approach. /// The adherence of an audience is also determined by the orator's use of values, a further key concept of the New Rhetoric. Perelman's treatment of value and his view of epideictic rhetoric sets his approach apart from that of the ancients and of Aristotle in particular. Aristotle's division of rhetoric into three genres–forensic, deliberative, and epideictic–is largely motivated by the judgments required for each: forensic or legal arguments require verdicts on past action, deliberative or political rhetoric seeks judgment on future action, and epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric concerns values associated with praise or blame and seeks no specific decisions. For Aristotle, the epideictic genre was of limited importance in the civic realm since it did not concern facts or policies. Perelman, in contrast, believes not only that epideictic rhetoric warrants more attention, but that the values normally limited to that genre are in fact central to all argumentation. "Epideictic oratory," Perelman argues, "has significant and important argumentation for strengthening the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds.” These values are central to the persuasiveness of arguments in all rhetorical genres since the orator always attempts to "establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience.”. (shrink)

Combining ethnographic, semiotic, and performative approaches, this book examines texts and accompanying acts of writing of national commemoration. The commemorative visitor book is viewed as a mobilized stage, a communication medium, where visitors' public performances are presented, and where acts of participation are authored and composed. The study contextualizes the visitor book within the material and ideological environment where it is positioned and where it functions. The semiotics of commemoration are mirrored in the visitor book, which functions as a participatory (...) platform that becomes an extension of the commemorative spaces in the museum. The study addresses tourists' and visitors' texts, i.e. the commemorative entries in the book, which are succinct dialogical utterances. Through these public performances, individuals and groups of visitors align and affiliate with a larger imagined national community. Reading the entries allows a unique perspective on communication practices and processes, and vividly illustrates such concepts as genre, voice, addressivity, indexicality, and the very acts of writing and reading. The book's many entries tell stories of affirming, but also resisting the narrative tenets of Zionist national identity, and they illustrate the politics of gender and ethnicity in Israel society. The book presents many ethnographic observations and interviews, which were done both with the management of the site, and with the visitors themselves. The observations shed light on processes and practices involved in writing and reading, and on how visitors decide on what to write and how they collaborate on drafting their entries. The interviews with the site's management also illuminate the commemoration projects, and how museums and exhibitions are staged and managed. (shrink)

In the past generation, restitution law has emerged as a global phenomenon. From its Oxbridge home, restitution migrated to the rest of the Commonwealth, and ongoing Europeanization projects have brought the common law of restitution into contact with the Romanist concept of unjust enrichment, further internationalizing this movement. In contrast, in the United States, scholarly interest in restitution, in terms of books, articles, treatises, symposia and courses on restitution, is meager. Similarly, while restitution, equity and tracing cases receive considerable treatment (...) at the highest levels of the English judiciary, US courts seem uninterested in these issues, rarely producing the theory-laden opinions that have become quite common in the House of Lords. The situation is particularly curious because restitution is generally thought to be the invention of late nineteenth-century American scholars. This article explains this divergence. I argue that the Commonwealth restitution discourse is largely a product of pre- or anti-realist legal thought which generates scepticism within the American academic-legal establishment. The article identifies the two dominant camps in American private law thought—left-leaning redistributionalists and the centre-right legal economists—and shows that neither has any use for the Commonwealth's discourse. I conclude by analysing the emerging drafts of the Restatement of Restitution and forecast the future of American restitution law. (shrink)

While the practice of Western medicine is known today to doctors of all ethnic and religious groups, its standards are subject to the availability of resources. The medical ethics guiding each doctor is influenced by his/her religious or cultural background or affiliation, and that is where diversity exists. Much has been written about Jewish and Christian medical ethics. Islamic medical ethics has never been discussed as an independent field of ethics, although several selected topics, especially those concerning sexuality, birth control (...) and abortions, have been more discussed than others. Islamic medical ethics in the 20th century will be characterised on the basis of Egyptian fatawa (legal opinions) issued by famous Muslim scholars and several doctors. Some of the issues discussed by Islamic medical ethics are universal: abortions, organ transplants, artificial insemination, cosmetic surgery, doctor-patient relations, etc. Other issues are typically Islamic, such as impediments to fasting in Ramadan, diseases and physical conditions that cause infringement of the state of purity, medicines containing alcohol, etc. Muslims' attitudes to both types of ethical issues often prove that pragmatism prevails and the aim is to seek a compromise between Islamic heritage and the achievements of modern medicine, as long as basic Islamic dogma is not violated. (shrink)

本书分两个部分：第一部分通过对神仙信仰的文化、心理根源的发掘揭示神仙信仰的来源、变化，介绍神仙信仰的内容，如成仙的境界、成仙的方术等等；第二部分则根据对历代的神仙传说和这些被尊为神仙的历史、传说人物的 真实史实的照片，介绍了这些在民间影响巨大的神仙。.

Explorer l'Allemagne, c'est explorer quelque chose qui était là avant d'exister : un emplacement sur la carte de l'Europe, une tache dans son histoire, au mieux une "culture", comme on dit quand on ne sait comment nommer les choses. C'est aussi se confronter à des constructions intellectuelles grandioses qui ont eu pour auteurs, entre autres Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, mais aussi Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger. Pourtant, si la philosophie a pour territoire l'universel, pourquoi s'intéresser à la philosophie allemande? Et d'abord, peut-il (...) y avoir quelque chose de tel? C'est à une enquête sur la spécificité de la philosophie d'expression allemande que nous invite ce livre. Enquête qui réfléchit en même temps le parcours de son auteur. Ainsi l'entretien avec Thibaut Gress qui ouvre le livre montre le long commerce passionné entretenu par Jean-François Kervégan avec les penseurs allemands, de Kant et Hegel à Habermas et Honneth ; il éclaire son mode d'approche et la façon dont il comprend aujourd'hui l'activité philosophique. Cet échange dense et précis interroge la conception ambitieuse de la rationalité portée par cette philosophie : le projet d'autodétermination de la raison, son pouvoir normatif. Les chapitres ultérieurs détaillent ces formes et pouvoirs de la rationalité au prisme de l'événement révolutionnaire et scrutent les échos contemporains des thèmes et des problèmes issus de la tradition de l'idéalisme allemand. Ils évoquent enfin la question disputée de l'existence d'une pensée post-métaphysique. Un parcours engagé et érudit."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)