By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totalitarianism, and permanent nuclear terror. They concluded that, far from offering a solution to these problems, the ideals of the Enlightenment, including emancipation and equality, had instead created them. The historian of political thought Samuel Moyn argues that the liberal intellectuals of the Cold War era--among them Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, and (...) Lionel Trilling--transformed liberalism but left a disastrous legacy for our time. In his iconoclastic style, Moyn outlines how Cold War liberals redefined the ideals of their movement and renounced the moral core of the Enlightenment for a more dangerous philosophy: preserving individual liberty at all costs. In denouncing this stance, as well as the recent nostalgia for Cold War liberalism as a means to counter illiberal values, Moyn presents a timely call for a new emancipatory and egalitarian liberal philosophy--a path to undoing the damage of the Cold War and to ensuring the survival of liberalism."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was among the most accomplished Jewish philosophers of modern times. This newly translated collection of his writings illuminates his achievements for student readers and rectifies lapses in his intellectual reception by prior generations.

This essay reconstructs conceptually and situates historically contemporary French philosopher Marcel Gauchet's theory of the origins and development of modern selfhood. It argues that his history of the self as the interiorization of constitutive alienation, and of the history of self-consciousness as the progressive recognition of this alienation, originated out of a unique combination of historical factors—the radical politics of May 1968, the rise of the antipsychiatry movement, and the new psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan. The essay considers Gauchet's study, together (...) with his partner Gladys Swain, of the foundations of psychiatry, and investigates the connections of their narrative of origins to Michel Foucault's work. The essay concludes by turning to Gauchet's more recent contributions and considering the implications of his history of the self for Anglo-American scholarship. (shrink)

This paper is a study of the account offered by Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) of the origins of modern historical thought. It investigates the German origins of his project, offers an overview of the developments he found in historical thinking from the Hebrew Bible to the twentieth century, compares his project to existing tendencies in scholarship, and offers a critical analysis of its uses and limits. The main thesis of the paper is that Funkenstein's chief originality lay in his argument that (...) the origins of historical methods cannot be studied apart from revolutions in Western historical consciousness more generally. (shrink)

True Bergsonianism : beginnings of a philosopher -- The controversy over intersubjectivity -- Nazism and crisis : the interruption of a trajectory -- Totaliter aliter : revelation in interwar thought -- Levinas's discovery of the other in the making of French existentialism -- The ethical turn : philosophy and Judaism in the Cold War.

This article is a study of the trajectory of the contemporary French liberal philosopher Marcel Gauchet from his early, ‘anarchist’ commitments through the 1970s to his discovery and defense of liberalism, notably as expressed in his 1980 revival and interpretation of his 19th-century countryman Benjamin Constant’s post-revolutionary liberalism. Discussed in the article are Gauchet’s devotion to and revision of the portrait of primitive society he inherited from the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres, how his early political and theoretical concerns are transmuted (...) in Gauchet’s reading of Constant, and the relevance of this trajectory for comprehending even Gauchet’s most recent pronouncements about the nature and future of liberal society. (shrink)

Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront the challenges and controversies that may arise, this original resource explains the concepts, concerns, practice, and promise of "global intellectual history," featuring essays by leading scholars on various approaches that are taking shape across the discipline. The contributors to _Global Intellectual History_ explore the different (...) ways in which one can think about the production, dissemination, and circulation of "global" ideas and ask whether global intellectual history can indeed produce legitimate narratives. They discuss how intellectuals and ideas fit within current conceptions of global frames and processes of globalization and proto-globalization, and they distinguish between ideas of the global and those of the transnational, identifying what each contributes to intellectual history. A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study. (shrink)

Brief introduction to an interview with Pierre Rosanvallon, conducted by Javier Fernández Sebastián, in Madrid, September 28, 2006.

This paper shows that Hannah Arendt was a theorist both of secularization as a process and the secular as a goal of modern politics. It reconstructs these arguments in her corpus, especially her book "On Revolution," and argues that this dimension of her work may have been a response to Carl Schmitt (and is in any event now usefully read in such a way). The paper ends by examining how Arendt might reply to currently influential challengers of a secular politics.

A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study.

Abstract:Hannah Arendt wasn't a liberal, she repeatedly declared. Yet in a series of ways she was a fellow traveler of Cold War liberals. And caught up as she also was in neo-imperial and racist entanglements that go entirely unmentioned in promotional accounts of Cold War liberalism and have barely begun to be challenged even today, she helps cast their thought in relief. Yet there is a proviso. From another, exceptional, and unique perspective—that of their Middle Eastern politics—Cold War liberals did (...) challenge liberal Eurocentrism, following Arendt who did so more briefly. (shrink)

This paper is a study of the origins of Leo Strauss's thought, arguing that its early development must be understood in the context of the philosophy of religion of late Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. More specifically, it shows that Strauss's early works were written against the background of Kantian philosophy and post-Kantian accounts of religious experience, and that his turn towards medieval law as a topic and ideal was precipitated by the critique of those accounts by radical Protestant theologians writing (...) in the post-World War I era of crisis. Ironically, then, Strauss's investment in premodern Judaism—and his related rejection of modern philosophy—had important Christian origins. (shrink)

The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust by Carolyn J. Dean History in Transit: Experience, Identity, and Critical Theory by Dominick LaCapra.

This paper traces some changes in Catholic political theory eventually taken up and extended during World War II by Jacques Maritain, who became the foremost philosophical exponent of the idea of "human rights" on the postwar scene. I show that the invention of the idea of the "dignity of the human person" as embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights occurred not in biblical or other longstanding traditions, but instead in very recent and contingent history. In conclusion, I speculate (...) on what the restoration of Maritain's route to human rights to its proper contexts might suggest about the cultural meaning the idea had in postwar Continental Europe, which became its homeland. (shrink)

_Democracy Past and Future_ is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises of the present. (...) In so doing, he lays out an influential new theory of how to write the history of politics. Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the "pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy. Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are nowhere to be found. Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization. Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort. Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. _Democracy Past and Future_ begins with Rosanvallon's groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought. (shrink)

_Democracy Past and Future_ is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises of the present. (...) In so doing, he lays out an influential new theory of how to write the history of politics. Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the "pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy. Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are nowhere to be found. Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization. Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort. Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. _Democracy Past and Future_ begins with Rosanvallon's groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought. (shrink)

Not since the days of Cambridge don Herbert Butterfield has an Anglophone historian so interestingly taken up the history of his own discipline and the problem of historical judgment the way that D...

This chapter contains sections titled: Biblical Foundations Post‐biblical Variations Modern Legacies References and Further Reading.

The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust by Carolyn J. Dean History in Transit: Experience, Identity, and Critical Theory by Dominick LaCapra.

Motivated by a desire to narrate and contextualize the deluge of "French theory," After the Deluege showcases recent work by today's brightest scholars of French intellectual history that historicizes key debates, figures, and turning points in the postwar era of French thought.

Samuel Moyn’s books center around dramatic turns in the history of political thought. The Last Utopia argued that it was not until the 1970s that human rights became the centerpiece of our vision o...