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Ever since the Holocaust seared the landscape of Western history a number of scholars have attempted to deal with its still largely unexplored implications for Western civilization by trying to place the event within various theoretical... more
Ever since the Holocaust seared the landscape of Western history a number of scholars have attempted to deal with its still largely unexplored implications for Western civilization by trying to place the event within various theoretical perspectives. The works of Hannah Arendt, Richard L. Rubenstein, Terence Des Pres, Yehuda Bauer, Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedlander and Helen Fein, among others, especially come to mind. The onset of the new decade has brought about another addition to these serious efforts to explore the lessons of the Holocaust for what they reveal about the human condition in the 20th century. Now, to the distinguished company of pioneering scholars above we must include the names of George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport. The fruit of their collaboration, The Holocaust and The Crisis of Human Behavior, is a significant step toward a psycho-social understanding of the Holocaust. What is novel about their effort is their attempt to synthesize the various insights arrived at by certain of the preceding scholars, particularly those of Arendt and Rubenstein. Additionally, they offer us new measures toward a comprehensive view of the different aspects of the Holocaust. Although a number of writers have emphasized that we must view the Holocaust as historically unprecedented, Kren and Rappoport delineate a number of concepts that help us to understand it as such. In the past, for example, there has been considerable confusion about the meaning of such terms as "mass-murder," "genocide," and "Holocaust" as well as how all three relate to each other. Without relying on misleading lexical definitions, the authors elucidate criteria which show concisely how the Holocaust differs in essence as a form of mass-murder from any other in recorded history. They show, in some detail, why and how the Holocaust is unique and unprecedented in ways that must be acknowledged if confusion in understanding is to be avoided. They point out, for example, that the
... Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Paul Marcus and Alan Rosenberg i. Historical Overview: A Mosaic of Psychoanalytic Therapies 12 Edith Kurzweil 2. Jung's Vision of the Human Psyche and Analytic Practice 37 Murray Stein... more
... Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Paul Marcus and Alan Rosenberg i. Historical Overview: A Mosaic of Psychoanalytic Therapies 12 Edith Kurzweil 2. Jung's Vision of the Human Psyche and Analytic Practice 37 Murray Stein 3. Alfred Adler: Classical Theory and ...
Maurice Blanchot, has since the 1940s been a dominant voice in French philosophy and letters, initiating a postmodern discourse which has had a profound impact on Bataille, Levinas, Foucault and Derrida. His early writings, between 1930... more
Maurice Blanchot, has since the 1940s been a dominant voice in French philosophy and letters, initiating a postmodern discourse which has had a profound impact on Bataille, Levinas, Foucault and Derrida. His early writings, between 1930 and 1940, consisted of cultural and political criticism. The experience of the Second World War led him to disengage from politics and he became an essayist and novelist. His works have included novels, narratives, and criticism, notably. Since the 1970s he has produced a series of fragmentary writings in which the line between literature and philosophy is shattered and, since the 1980s, meditations on language, death, the 'disaster' and community.
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Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, Edited by Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext (e), 2001). The title of the seminar within which these lectures were given, was “Discourse and Truth.” While the title of the volume at hand, Fearless... more
Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, Edited by Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext (e), 2001). The title of the seminar within which these lectures were given, was “Discourse and Truth.” While the title of the volume at hand, Fearless Speech, encapsulates an important ...
The literature on the significance of the Holocaust contains a number of enigmas and paradoxes. We are told that we must understand the Holocaust so that it will not happen again, but we are also told that it is a unique event beyond... more
The literature on the significance of the Holocaust contains a number of enigmas and paradoxes. We are told that we must understand the Holocaust so that it will not happen again, but we are also told that it is a unique event beyond comprehension. We are told that the event is a historical aberration, and yet we are asked that it be taught as part of history. We are often reminded by survivors that the only true response to the event should be silence; yet this point is made with thousands of words. We are told that the horrors and violence of the Holocaust have rendered language inadequate; yet the same language is used in many attempts to convey the significance of the event.
Page 1. NO Echoes from the Holocaust Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time Alan Rosenberg and Gerald E. Myers, Editors Page 2. I Page 3. ECHOES FROM THE HOLOCAUST Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time s One 2ASS-X65-UZ2S Page 4. ...
Is Jewish self-hate (JSH) a predominant characteristic of the American Jewish community? Is there a large number of American Jews who despise themselves because they arc Jews? There are, to bc surc, frequent political and moral uses of... more
Is Jewish self-hate (JSH) a predominant characteristic of the American Jewish community? Is there a large number of American Jews who despise themselves because they arc Jews? There are, to bc surc, frequent political and moral uses of the slogan of JSH, but thcse are often better understood as ways of denigrating positions within the Jewish community that one is opposed to, and arc not necessarily signs that there is a substantial problem faced by a largc number of American Jews. Observers such as Israeli all thor Amos Oz have indicated that there is such a problem: "Yes, Jewish self-hatrcd exists and is alive and wcll."] Jacob Neusner has stated: "It [JSH] characterizes the community as a whole."2 Examples of what we take to be moral and political uses of the term JSll are available in American and Jewish-American publications. One spokesman for a particular Jewish group labels as a selfhatcr another Jewish leader who disagrees with his position. Some right-wing Orthodox zealots who have different religious views from Reform Jews on such matters as divorce, marriage, and conversion have in their polemics called other Jewish leaders sclfhaters and anti-Scmites, simply because they believe that any Jew who has a differcnt religious perspective on Judaism must necessarily wish to undermine and ultimately destroy the foundations of the Jewish people.3
Martin Heidegger's rectorate (1933–1934) was characterized by an incontestable involvement with Nazism. However, neither the rectorate, nor Heidegger's ambitious project for the transformation of the university within which it was... more
Martin Heidegger's rectorate (1933–1934) was characterized by an incontestable involvement with Nazism. However, neither the rectorate, nor Heidegger's ambitious project for the transformation of the university within which it was embedded, was reducible to Nazism. Indeed, Heidegger's project to transform the university dates from his earliest lecture courses at Freiburg University in 1919 and was a hallmark of his thinking long before the rise of Nazism. That project was itself linked to the long-standing dispute in German academia over the role of the university in the modern world, which involved such thinkers as Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Despite the entanglement with Nazism, which stamped his rectorate, Heidegger's thinking about the university as a site for the transformation of human existence is especially pertinent today.
In a vast body of published work that lays bare the contours of what can be termed the'carceral archipelago', and its swelling expanse in modernity, Michel Foucault has included no sustained meditation on Nazism and the... more
In a vast body of published work that lays bare the contours of what can be termed the'carceral archipelago', and its swelling expanse in modernity, Michel Foucault has included no sustained meditation on Nazism and the Holocaust.'The absence of any ...
Page 1. Postmodernism and the Holocaust Edited by Alan Rosenberg 72 VALUE INQUIRY BOOK SERIES Page 2. Page 3. POSTMODERNISM AND THE HOLOCAUST B One A8H7-X2E-PZDU Page 4. VALUE INQUIRY BOOK ...
The publication of Victor Farfas's Heidegger and Nazism in 19871 set off the Heidegger wars, which have grown in intensity over the succeeding years. The bitter controversy ignited in France by Farfas's contention that both... more
The publication of Victor Farfas's Heidegger and Nazism in 19871 set off the Heidegger wars, which have grown in intensity over the succeeding years. The bitter controversy ignited in France by Farfas's contention that both Heidegger's life and thought were integrally linked to Nazism, has now spread across the Rhine, to Germany, and the Atlantic, to America, where new fronts
... In his Powers of Freedom, Nikolas Rose translates assujettissement as ???subjectification,??? which seems to us particularly felicitous, as it does not foreclose any of the range of possible meanings that... more
... In his Powers of Freedom, Nikolas Rose translates assujettissement as ???subjectification,??? which seems to us particularly felicitous, as it does not foreclose any of the range of possible meanings that Foucault's term contains.77 ...
... allows the reader—whether practicing clinician, academic researcher, or lay person—the opportunity to compare a wide range of approaches and draw conclusions. While primarily functioning as a resource, it will also serve as historical... more
... allows the reader—whether practicing clinician, academic researcher, or lay person—the opportunity to compare a wide range of approaches and draw conclusions. While primarily functioning as a resource, it will also serve as historical record to the Holocaust's unprecedented ...
This essay is animated by the conviction that a critical encounter between antiessentialist Marxism and Foucauldian-inspired governmentality studies can provide us with a purchase on a history of the present—that it can facilitate a... more
This essay is animated by the conviction that a critical encounter between antiessentialist Marxism and Foucauldian-inspired governmentality studies can provide us with a purchase on a history of the present—that it can facilitate a diagnosis of the contemporary world. A ...
The publication of Victor Farfas's Heidegger and Nazism in 19871 set off the Heidegger wars, which have grown in intensity over the succeeding years. The bitter controversy ignited in France by Farfas's contention that both... more
The publication of Victor Farfas's Heidegger and Nazism in 19871 set off the Heidegger wars, which have grown in intensity over the succeeding years. The bitter controversy ignited in France by Farfas's contention that both Heidegger's life and thought were integrally linked to Nazism, has now spread across the Rhine, to Germany, and the Atlantic, to America, where new fronts

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Accordingly, I take the volume at hand as a landmark achievement in its field. If it is taken as such, it deserves to be evaluated by stringent criteria. If such criteria are applied, a few observations should be made. All fifteen... more
Accordingly, I take the volume at hand as a landmark achievement in its field. If it is taken as such, it deserves to be evaluated by stringent criteria. If such criteria are applied, a few observations should be made. All fifteen contributions in the book, bar two, explicitly mention the pragmatist tradition of philosophy and Mead's membership in it. However, not one of the contributions makes any analytic use of the following pragmatist principles that are central in Mead's thought as well: (l) A fallibilistic basic conception of human action, resulting in (2) a replacement of theory of knowledge by a theory ofinquiry. Further consequences of the above suppositions are more indirect, but just as important: (3) a new conception of meaning, by which meaning is understood (3a) from the logical point of view as constituted by triadic relations and (3b) from an empirically descriptive point of view as a phenomenon that widely transcends the human mind and human language , a phenomenon "almost coextensive with life" as Mead once put it. Accordingly, there is still some further work to be done in showing how timeless a thinker Mead really was (and is) and how his thought has firm roots in a unique tradition. This task has become much easier thanks to the contribution of the present volume. Lanham, Lexington, 2013, xi + 315, incl. index. The collection by Sparrow and Hutchinson gathers together (mostly) philosophers and (a few) sociologists to discuss the ever fascinating yet surprisingly underplayed theme of habit: its history and place in the western philosophical tradition, from the ancients to the contemporary scene. A collection such as this has been long overdue, and surprisingly so, given the centrality of habits in our understanding and organization of ourselves and of the world. We human beings are in fact complex bundles of habits embodied in practices. Hence, our limits and possibilities are at least partially governed by the way in which we habitu-ate, dishabituate, and re-habituate ourselves. Although their presence is widely acknowledged, what such bundles of habits are and even more interestingly what we can make of them (and of ourselves through them)
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Friedrich Nietzsche's compelling diagnosis of the cultural crisis of the modern epoch, signaled by the " death of God, " of the metaphysical certitude that, in several forms, had shaped the West for nearly two millennia, together with his... more
Friedrich Nietzsche's compelling diagnosis of the cultural crisis of the modern epoch, signaled by the " death of God, " of the metaphysical certitude that, in several forms, had shaped the West for nearly two millennia, together with his commitment to genealogy, and perspectivism, which opened up the prospect of new modes for an art of living, present enormous interpretive challenges. To these must be added the difficulties presented by the very way in which Nietzsche writes his texts, which we believe are closely linked to the modes of thinking, feeling, and acting that Nietzsche sought to induce in his readers, and which are integral to what we see as a project of self-fashioning linked to an art of living. While the two are conjoined, there are distinctions between them as well. And the bases for such a distinction can best be illuminated by turning to Michel Foucault, whose own thinking ripened under the warm Nietzschean sun. Foucault's concern with Nietzsche begins early, and continues until his death. We can clearly see the beginning of that concern in his The Order of Things [Les Mots et les Choses] (1966), where Foucault links Nietzsche's death of God to what he sees as the " end of man, " the end of an historically specific understanding of human being and with it the whole of " … the entire modern episteme –-that which formed towards the end of the eighteenth century and still serves as the positive ground of our knowledge, that which constituted man's particular mode of being and the possibility of knowing him empirically …. " 1 For Foucault, then, Nietzsche initiated the end of that vision of " man, " that " invention " of human being, that had its inception at the end of the eighteenth century, and now was about to " … be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea. " 2 For both these thinkers, then, the death of God entailed the death of man as a transcendental subject, demanding for both a new concept of man, of human being: for Nietzsche, the notion of the " overman " (the Ubermensch); for Foucault, the idea that we have to create a new mode of subjectivity. Indeed, we believe that Foucault can provide a framework on the bases of which Nietzsche's own concern with an art of living can come into sharper focus. Foucault
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