Seyla Benhabib Libros

Exploring Hannah Arendt's political philosophy, this book delves into the historical and cultural contexts that shaped her ideas. It offers a fresh interpretation of her reluctance towards modernism, revealing how her experiences and the sociopolitical climate influenced her thoughts. By examining these insights, the work provides a deeper understanding of Arendt's contributions to political theory and her complex relationship with modernity.

The Rights of Others examines the boundaries of political community by focusing on political membership.

Ranging over themes such as sovereignty, citizenship, genocide, European anti- semitism, and the 'scarf affair' in contemporary Europe and Turkey, this major new book by one of our leading political theorists reflects upon the political transformations of our times and makes a compelling case for a cosmopolitanism without illusions.

Analysing in detail the transformation of citizenship practices in European Union countries, Benhabib concludes that flexible citizenship, certain kinds of legal pluralism and models of institutional powersharing are quite compatible with deliberative democracy, as long as they are in accord with egalitarian reciprocity, voluntary self-ascription and freedom of exit and association.

This is an outstanding collection of essays which brings together for the first time the work of a group of writers well--known in the Marxist--feminist tradition. The essays range from Marx to Foucault and go beyond them to offer genuine advances in the way social and political life can be reconceptualized in the light of feminist critique.

Focusing on contemporary debates in moral and political theory, Situating the Self argues that a non--relative ethics, binding on us in virtue of out humanity, is still a philosophically viable project.

This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law.

Exile, Statelessness, and Migration explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century--in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Hirschman, and Judith Shklar, as well as Hans Kelsen, Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss. Informed by their Jewish identity and experiences of being outsiders, these thinkers produced one of the most brilliant and effervescent intellectual movements of modernity. Political philosopher Seyla Benhabib's starting point is that these thinkers faced migration, statelessness, and exile because of their Jewish origins, even if they did not take positions on specifically Jewish issues personally. The sense of belonging and not belonging, of being “eternally half-other,” led them to confront essential questions: What does it mean for the individual to be an equal citizen and to wish to retain one's ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, or perhaps even to rid oneself of these differences altogether in modernity? Benhabib isolates four themes in their works: dilemmas of belonging and difference; exile, political voice, and loyalty; legality and legitimacy; and pluralism and the problem of judgment. Surveying the work of influential intellectuals, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration recovers the valuable plurality of their Jewish voices and develops their universal insights in the face of the crises of this new century

Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), a key figure in critical theory, has gained renewed recognition in Germany over the past decade, particularly following the 1985 publication of his Collected Works. This collection of essays by German and American scholars aims to introduce English-speaking audiences to significant insights from Horkheimer's recent scholarship. Alongside a companion volume, it offers a comprehensive view of his contributions to modern social theory. The essays cover various aspects of Horkheimer's intellectual journey, including Alfred Schmidt's exploration of his intellectual physiognomy and Jurgen Habermas's remarks on the evolution of his work. Hauke Brunkhorst discusses Horkheimer's materialist critique of philosophy, while Wolfgang Bonss examines the interdisciplinary research that laid the groundwork for critical theory. Thomas McCarthy addresses the relationship between critical theory and philosophy, and Wolf Schafer analyzes Horkheimer's connections with John Desmond Bernal. Further contributions include Axel Honneth's critique of the sociological shortcomings in critical theory, Moishe Postone and Barbara Brick's insights into political economy, and Stefan Breuer's examination of the theoretical rifts between Horkheimer and Adorno. Other essays delve into Horkheimer's engagement with German idealism, his reflections on anti-Semitism, and the interplay between mass culture and aesthetic redemption, culm