Georg Simmel’s Logic of the Future: ‘The Stranger’, Zionism, and ‘Bounded Contingency’

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Amos Morris-Reich
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Descent ◽  
The Stranger

For reasons that have more to do with the historiographical traditions of modern Jewish history and the history of critical thought than history itself, Georg Simmel – of Jewish descent – is rarely discussed within the frame of modern Jewish history. Bringing the two together as a theoretical contribution to Simmel studies and modern Jewish history alike, this article explores Simmel’s logic of contingency in the context of modern Jewish history. Which forms and types could Jews realistically seek to fulfill from the perspective of Simmel’s thought? Which could they hope to escape and what could they expect from the future? The author suggests that in answering these questions we disclose a peculiar notion of ‘bounded contingency’ embedded in Simmel’s positing of a non-binary, ‘gray area’ between the necessary and the impossible. This hypothesis is tested in several distinct contexts: a letter on Zionism from around 1900; an odd passage on love in the excursus on ‘The Stranger’ (1908); and a letter on individuals of Jewish background in German academia (1906). Simmel’s coherency lies in the ‘realist’ approach he adopts to reality as the domain of the contingently possible. When applied to Jewish history in general and Zionism in particular, this notion not only explains why Zionism is unfeasible but also demystifies its emergence as an attempt to escape the status of stranger in Europe. It also evinces why this Jewish national enterprise inevitably carried within it the seeds of the problem it sought to solve.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Based ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Future ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of

The introduction presents the book’s core argument that twentieth-century Jewish archives were not just about the past but also about the future: We can look to a process whereby Jews turned increasingly toward archives as anchors of memory in a rapidly changing world. Jews in Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine all sought to gather the files of the past in order to represent their place in Jewish life and articulate a vision of the future. It situates these projects in the history of community-based archiving and archival theory and methodology, as well as Jewish history at large. It also dives into the ways we can see archive making as a metaphor for the broader patterns in modern Jewish history, as Jews sought to gather the sources and resources of their culture both before the Holocaust and especially in its aftermath.

The Predicament of Europe’s ‘Last Dictator’

2021 ◽  
pp. 223386592110183
Author(s):  
Yuliya Brel-Fournier ◽  
Minion K.C. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Electoral Fraud ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

Belarusian citizens elected their first president in 1994. More than 20 years later, in October 2015, the same person triumphantly won the fifth consecutive presidential election. In August 2020, President Lukashenko’s attempt to get re-elected for the sixth time ended in months’ long mass protests against the electoral fraud, unspeakable violence used by the riot police against peaceful protesters and the deepest political crisis in the modern history of Belarus. This article analyzes how and why the first democratically elected Belarusian president attained this long-serving status. It suggests that his political longevity was conditioned by a specific social contract with the society that was sustained for many years. In light of the recent events, it is obvious that the contract is breached with the regime no longer living up to the bargain with the Belarusian people. As a result, the citizens seem unwilling to maintain their obligation for loyalty. We analyze the escalating daily price for maintaining the status quo and conclude considering the possible implications of this broken pact for the future of Belarus.

scholarly journals Quasi-monolithic mirror suspensions in ground-based gravitational-wave detectors: an overview and look to the future

2018 ◽  
Vol 376 (2120) ◽  
pp. 20170281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria A. van Veggel
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Wave ◽  
Seismic Isolation ◽  
Thermal Noise ◽  
Fused Silica ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Future ◽  
Gravitational Wave Detectors ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

At the commencement of a new era in astrophysics, with added information from direct detections of gravitational-wave (GW) signals, this paper is a testament to the quasi-monolithic suspensions of the test masses of the GW detectors that have enabled the opening of a new window on the universe. The quasi-monolithic suspensions are the final stages in the seismic isolation of the test masses in GW detectors, and are specifically designed to introduce as little thermal noise as possible. The history of the development of the fused-silica quasi-monolithic suspensions, which have been so essential for the first detections of GWs, is outlined and a glimpse into the status of research towards quasi-monolithic suspensions made of sapphire and silicon is given. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The promises of gravitational-wave astronomy’.

Spinoza’s Jewish Modernities

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
Great Culture

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Anna Hájková
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Claim

The introduction outlines the objectives of the book and contextualizes it in terms of existing Holocaust studies scholarship in general and Theresienstadt in particular. It offers a brief chronology of the ghetto and explains why it was a ghetto and not a concentration camp. It also relates the work to issues pertinent to modern Jewish history, the history of everyday life, and research on ethnicity and Central Europe. Specifically, it shows how ethnicity became the central category of difference in the prisoner society, one directly linked to stratification. This introduction also lays out the central claim of the book that social interaction continues under extreme circumstances and brings Holocaust and Jewish history into the wider context of modern history. It also discusses forms of prisoners’ agency in the everyday of the ghetto.

Lloyd P. Gartner. History of the Jews in Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xi, 468 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-200
Author(s):  
Robert M. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
General Reader ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Professional Historian ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Developments

Lloyd Gartner has written an excellent survey for the serious student and a fine tour d'horizon for the professional historian, delineating long-range historical developments concisely and lucidly, providing apt, fresh illustrations throughout the narrative, and efficiently unpacking terminology and nomenclature that would be obscure to the general reader. His book supersedes previous overviews of modern Jewish history.

scholarly journals The interaction of the underived vocabulary of the Smolensk patois and the Belarusian language (incomplete lexical matches)

Neophilology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 202-212
Author(s):  
Ekaterina S. Lunkova
Keyword(s):  
Official Language ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Synchronous Language ◽  
Oral Form ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Language Laws

The work is focused on specific underived nouns that are functioning in the Smolensk patois and in the Belarusian language at the present stage of the existence of these language systems and are quite close, but not identical formations in semantic and structural terms. The subject of the study is the volume of lexical meaning and potential derivational connections of nouns recorded in two synchronous language formations. The relevance of the study is determined by the complex history of the Russian and Belarusian borderland, which is reflected both in the Smolensk patois and in the Belarusian language, which had been created on the dialect basis. The vocabulary of the Russian and Belarusian borderland belongs to a single cultural and historical continuum de-termined by the history of the region, it reflects the diverse material and spiritual ties of the two language idioms’ speakers. The complexity of the historical relations between the two language systems, one of which is codified and has the status of an official language (Belarusian language), and the second exists only in an oral form and has a norm due to internal language laws of devel-opment (Smolensk patois), has led to the fact that when studying two language formations at the present stage, it is possible to speak not only about unambiguous types of relations between words, but also about peripheral types, about zones of various transitions, changes in lexical and grammatical semantics, which can potentially be points of development of two idioms in the future and are therefore valuable for study.

scholarly journals THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE CAMBRIDGE LAW JOURNAL

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (S1) ◽  
pp. S8-S32
Author(s):  
Lionel Bently
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Introductory Essay ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Two Stages

This introductory essay reviews the history of the Journal, divided into two stages: the period from 1921 to 1953; and that from 1954 to today. It examines the changing institutional arrangements, personnel, as well as some of the highlights in the content of the Journal. If there is a theme, it is that the Journal was established by and developed its reputation because of the efforts of many of the outstanding scholars at Cambridge who over the decades offered the outputs of their talents to the Journal; and that the Journal has used that reputation more and more to attract the scholars outside Cambridge – indeed from all over the world. Whatever the aims of those who established the Cambridge Law Journal in 1921, and without much self-consciousness, the Journal incrementally acquired the status and practices of a learned journal. Finally, the essay reflects on the future, in particular the challenges of digitisation, open access and inclusivity.

American Jewish History

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasia Diner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Jewish History ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

American Jewish history as a field of scholarly inquiry takes as its subject-matter the experience of Jews in the United States and places it within the context of both modern Jewish history and the history of the United States. Its practitioners see their intellectual project as inextricably connected to both histories. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the enterprise of American Jewish history enjoys a condition of robust health. By the 1990s American immigration history had generally declined in favour within the ranks of American historians. That Jews, outsiders to American culture upon their arrival in the United States, were able to penetrate barriers and enter the mainstream clashes with the way historians want to see the American past. As a group who craved both economic security and respectability, their story lacks the dramatic punch of resisters and rebels to the American ethos.

Polish History through the Eyes of Three Jewish Popular Historians

1998 ◽  
pp. 312-318
Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski
Keyword(s):  
Large Volume ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides a comparison of Howard Sachar's book The Course of Modern Jewish History, which was first published in 1958, with two other general works on Jewish history. One is a large volume entitled A History of the Jewish People, edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, which was first published in Hebrew in 1969. The other is Robert M. Seltzer's Jewish People, Jewish Thought, which is more limited in size and scope and intended for a broad audience. The chapter considers only topics relating to Polish history, not those concerned with exclusively internal Jewish problems or the history of other nations. Nor will there be any general assessment of Sachar's book. Although Ben-Sasson's and Seltzer's works cover Jewish history from ancient to modern times, the story of the Jews in Poland is a relatively recent chapter in this history: it dates only from the creation of the Polish state in the tenth century. Both authors mention the early period of Polish history only briefly, beginning their real narratives of Polish Jewry with the detailed analysis of privileges granted to Jews by Polish kings in the thirteenth century.

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