This article defends three basic premises. First, the same conditions and forces favorable to revolution may serve to impede efforts at post-revolutionary consolidation. Second, one can assess prospects for consolidation based on the capacity of prospective hegemonic parties to achieve several interrelated objectives: developing a shared worldview among disparate segments of the population, delivering social and economic goods, and establishing order. Third, while democratization is a home-grown process, it may require particular forms of limited intervention to offset anti-democratic forces. The (...) goal of this article is to provide an analytical framework that informs the ongoing debates over democratic transitions while suggesting where and how external engagement may influence the transition process. (shrink)

The argument that sectarian conflicts in the Arab Middle East have been persistent since time immemorial is erroneous. While these views may seem compelling with the rise of ISIL, they are in fact very dangerous: they downgrade Islamic societies to primordial, selective and static features. I will argue for a different set of propositions. First, violence is not unique to Islamic societies. Extreme illiberal ideologies prevailed in Christian Europe both during the Thirty Years War and during the fascist interwar period. (...) Second, Islamist belligerence was partly a response to the ill-effects of globalization, just as European fascist movements were exacerbated by the advance of industrial capitalism in Europe. Third, post-Second World War human rights efforts may inform new paths beyond the tragedies that continue to plague the Middle East. (shrink)

This essay revisits Karl Marx’s understanding of consumption, in an effort to rescue it from the overshadowing legacy of critical theory which has construed Marx as inveighing against false needs. It is argued that Marx regarded the expansion of needs entailed by capitalism in a generally favourable way, but saw capitalism as a system yoking use-value to the imperatives of profit accumulation, hence limiting and subjugating the consumption of the masses. While Marx’s position was radically different from conventional anti-consumerism it (...) is equally incompatible with complacent affirmations of ‘the consumer society’ in that Marx at all times aimed at a revolutionary change which will transform consumption both quantitatively and qualitatively. Marx’s views are first discussed as expressed in the perennially-cited text, the 1844Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. The second part moves on to examine the further evolution of Marx’s ideas as found in later texts, particularly theGrundrisse. (shrink)

This book explores the emergence and significance of 'a Nietzschean heroic model' in 20th-century popular culture, some notable examples of which are James Bond, Tarzan, and Hannibal Lecter.

This book explores the emergence and significance of 'a Nietzschean heroic model' in 20th-century popular culture, some notable examples of which are James Bond, Tarzan, and Hannibal Lecter.

In 2019, protests in the streets of Algeria and Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq brought back the fragrance of the Jasmine revolution. Can the pendulum swing back towards democracy and human rights in the M...

(1996). The historical lessons of human rights: In search of a new approach. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 498-503.

The emergence and persistence of the jews other.

Rabbinic literature contains several examples of a manner of silencing impious arguments that is usually identified only with later forms of piety, namely, ascribing the arguments to the evil inclination . Arguments attributed to the yetzer represent serious discursive threats against rabbinic doctrine, marking fundamental problems in both its legal and nonlegal parts. Identifying a question or refutation as belonging to the yetzer automatically invalidates it. By ascribing arguments to the yetzer , the rabbis prevent their audience from actually engaging (...) them, thus marking the limits of rabbinic dialogism. (shrink)

The Crown and the Courts: Separation of Powers in the Early Jewish Imagination. By David C. Flatto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 367. $39.95.

In this article, I study several midrashic passages preserved in the Babylonian Talmud that deal with Satan. The verses that they are based on are nearly all drawn from the book of Job. I find that these midrashim strongly support the conclusions of Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s monograph Demonic Desires in several ways, notably that Satan is not the font and origin of evil in the world as he is in other branches or wings of the ancient Jewish imagination.

The monograph Drei Wurzeln des Krieges. Und warum nur eine nicht ins Verderben führt by Bernhard Taureck was published in 2019. It is one of the few current philosophical contributions on the theory of war that is not limited to the question of the moral justification of war (such as Michael Walzer’s work). Instead, the book contains not only various references to the war discourses of antiquity and their multiple references to actuality, but also a detailed examination of the question (...) of how radically war determines our history, present and future. In this book, interdisciplinary statements on Taureck’s concisely summarised approach make critical reference to this question in the common interest of finding ways out of this situation. With contributions by Lothar Brock, Hans-Georg Ehrhart, Martin Kahl, Wolfgang Knöbl, Barbara Kuchler, Ishay Landa, Burkhard Liebsch, Herfried Münkler, Max Mutschler, Norman Paech, Christopher Pollmann, Bernhard H. F. Taureck and Pascal Weitmann. (shrink)