The Monarchic Imperative in Rabbinic Perspective

AJS Review ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Historical Institution

Recent decades have seen a flowering of research into the political tradition and culture of the Jewish people. It seems appropriate, therefore, to undertake an investigation of key rabbinic discussions of a central biblical and historical institution: the monarchy. This study opens with a close reading of the sources and attempts to understand them in their conceptual and literary contexts, moves on to a consideration of possible historical contexts and repercussions, and concludes with some reflections on the relation of our topic to the messianic element in Israel's faith.

Reading Politics with Machiavelli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Schmidt, Jr
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Family Farm ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
White Nationalism ◽  
The Republic

Reading Politics with Machiavelli is an anachronistic reading of certain key concepts in Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses (as well as some of his correspondence). In 1513, soon after the Medici returned to power in Florence, Machiavelli lost his position as First Secretary to the Republic, and he was exiled. On his family farm, he began a self-consciously anachronistic reading of great political figures of antiquity, and, in combination with his own experience as a diplomat, crafted a unique perspective on the political crises of his time. At our own moment of democratic crisis, as the democratic imagination, as well as democratic habits and institutions face multiple attacks from neoliberalism, white nationalism, and authoritarianism, I argue that a similar method, in which we read Machiavelli’s work as he read Livy’s and Plutarch’s, can help us see the contingency, and the increasingly forgotten radical potential, of our politics. Louis Althusser argued that Machiavelli functions for us as an uncanny authority, one whose apparent familiarity is dispelled as we examine his epistolary yet opaque account of history, politics, and authority. This makes his readings a potentially rich resource for a time of democratic crisis. With that challenge in mind, we will examine the problems of conspiracy, prophecy, torture, and exile and use a close reading of Machiavelli’s work to make out new perspectives on the politics of our time.

Coleridge's “ideal Realism”: an alternative to the “doctors of the Absolute”?

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mary Anne Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
First Time

A few months ago I read Peter Nicholson's The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists for the first time. In the index I found more than a hundred references to Hegel and only one to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. However, as many of the latter's writings, published for the first time in recent years, become generally accessible there is an increasing sense that he has been unfairly deprived of his due status as a philosopher. This is partly, no doubt, the syndrome of the prophet in his own country and partly the inevitable consequence of much of his later work remaining unpublished until recent years. Coleridge himself, with what some would take to be confirmation of an over-sensitivity to criticism, felt the neglect of his work went deeper and betrayed an anti-philosophical trait in British character. Despite his close reading of the work of many of his German contemporaries it seems that he did not read more than sixtyone pages of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik. His margin notes to this work are, on the whole, negative in their criticism. However, despite significant disagreements, there is much common ground in theme, argument and conclusion between his many drafts of the ‘Logosophia’, his intended magnum opus, and Hegel's system.

scholarly journals Justice as Lawfulness

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-278
Author(s):  
TRISTAN J. ROGERS
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Individual Justice ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWhat is the relationship between justice as an individual virtue and justice as an institutional virtue? The latter has been exhaustively explored by political philosophers, whereas the former remains underexplored in the literature on virtue ethics. This article defends the view that individual justice is logically prior to institutional justice, and argues that this view requires a conception of individual justice I call ‘justice as lawfulness’. The resulting view consists of three claims. First, just institutions are composed of the relations between just persons. Second, the just person has a disposition to act in accordance with the legal and social norms (collectively, thenomoi) of the existing political tradition. Third, departures from thenomoirequire that the just person act with practical wisdom to reform thenomoiaccording to an implicit standard of justice in the political tradition.

Ber Borochov's “The Tasks of Yiddish Philology”

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

ArgumentBer Borochov (1881–1917), the Marxist Zionist revolutionary who founded the political party Poyle Tsien (Workers of Zion), was also one of the key theoreticians of Yiddish scholarship. His landmark 1913 essay, “The Tasks of Yiddish Philology,” was his first contribution to the field and crowned him as its chief ideologue. Modeled after late nineteenth-century European movements of linguistic nationalism, “The Tasks” was the first articulation of Yiddish scholarship as a discrete field of scientific research. His tasks ranged from the practical: creating a standardized dictionary and grammar, researching the origins and development of the language, and establishing a language institute; to the overtly ideological: the “nationalizing and humanizing” of the Yiddish language and its speakers. The essay brought a new level of sophistication to the field, established several of its ideological pillars, and linked Yiddish scholarship to the material needs of the Jewish people. Although “The Tasks” was greeted with a great deal of skepticism upon its publication, after his death, Borochov became widely accepted as the “founder” of modern Yiddish studies.

Protodemocracy and the Fall of Sovereignty (Hobbes, Aristotle)

2021 ◽  
pp. 203-249
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Rhetorical Dimension ◽  
Models Of Reading

A close reading of Hobbes stresses the latter’s recognition of a democratic or proto-democratic moment at the root of the political, at the aporetic moment of transition from the state of nature to the political state. This rather effaced priority of democracy sits uneasily with Hobbes’s deep suspicion of it, and its constant association in his work with rhetoric and oratory. A reading of Hobbes’s language theory in light of Aristotle’s distinction between phonè and logos shows how this rhetorical dimension of language is in fact irreducible (and indeed exuberantly exploited in Hobbes’s own writing), and how, especially in Hobbes’s elaborate and fascinating discussion of counsel, it relates to the structural failing both of the sovereignty Hobbes is concerned to defend and of the models of reading he promotes in the Leviathan.

Creating Gendered Images of the Soldier Figure in Literary Works

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-120
Author(s):  
Yan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Military Academy ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Female Soldier

The fourth chapter operates as a deviation from the previous chapter by looking at a literary perspective of the soldier image through works by writers with direct army or combat experiences. Moreover, this chapter also aims to examine how these writers managed to assert their own influence as social critics, to achieve personal independence, and to advocate for women’s political participation. Xu offers a close reading of three different literary works, including one by a female soldier who had studied at Whampoa Military Academy, in order to critically inspect the gendered images of soldiers and advocate for the participation of women within the political and social sphere of the time.

Competing for Liberty: The Republican Critique of Democracy

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 607-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
NADIA URBINATI
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Freedom as non-domination has acquired a leading status in political science. As a consequence of its success, neo-roman republicanism also has achieved great prominence as the political tradition that delivered it. Yet despite the fact that liberty in the Roman mode was forged not only in direct confrontation with monarchy but against democracy as well, the relationship of republicanism to democracy is the great absentee in the contemporary debate on non-domination. This article brings that relationship back into view in both historical and conceptual terms. It illustrates the misrepresentations of democracy in the Roman tradition and shows how these undergirded the theory of liberty as non-domination as a counter to political equality as a claim to taking part inimperium. In so doing it brings to the fore the “liberty side” of democratic citizenship as the equal rights of all citizens to exercise their political rights, in direct or indirect form.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document