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"Jonathan Israel"
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The Radical Enlightenment in Germany
This volume investigates the impact of Radical Enlightenment thought on German culture during the eighteenth century. It takes recent work by Jonathan Israel as its point of departure and debates the precise nature of Enlightenment.
eBook
A NEW INTELLECTUAL HISTORY? JONATHAN ISRAEL'S ENLIGHTENMENT
This review points out the dangers of taking Jonathan Israel's volumes on the Enlightenment as a new framework for Enlightenment studies. Despite Israel's claim in Enlightenment contested to have historicized our understanding of the Enlightenment, his modus operandi is fundamentally unhistorical, and the result is a presentist interpretation with an oversimplified classification of thinkers into ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ camps. The review suggests more effective ways to make a truly historicized Enlightenment present for us now, especially by devoting more attention to the literary and rhetorical properties of Enlightenment texts.
Journal Article
Palestine and Jewish History
This provocative and personal series of meditations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict argues that it represents a struggle not as much about land and history as about space, time, and memory. Palestine and Jewish History enacts rather than reports on Bo
eBook
THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL
According to the textbook version of history, the Enlightenment played a crucial role in the creation of the modern, liberal democracies of the West. Ever since this view – which we might describe as the modernization thesis – was first formulated by Peter Gay, it has been repeatedly criticized as misguided: a myth. Yet, as this paper shows, it continues to survive in postwar historiography, in particular in the Anglophone world. Indeed, Gay's most important and influential successors – historians such as Robert Darnton and Roy Porter – all ended up defending the idea that the Enlightenment was a major force in the creation of modern democratic values and institutions. More recently, Jonathan Israel's trilogy on the Enlightenment has revived the modernization thesis, albeit in a dramatic new form. Yet, even Israel's work, as its critical reception highlights, does not convincingly demonstrate that the Enlightenment, as an intellectual movement, contributed in any meaningful way to the creation of modern political culture. This conclusion raises a new question: if the Enlightenment did not create our modern democracies, then what did it do? In answer to that question, this paper suggests that we should take more seriously the writings of enlightened monarchists like Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger. Studying the Enlightenment might not allow us to understand why democratic political culture came into being. But, as Boulanger's work underscores, it might throw light on an equally important problem: why democracy came so late in the day.
Journal Article
Rousseau, Diderot, and the “Radical Enlightenment”
The final contribution to the symposium on Jonathan Israel's Democratic Enlightenment, in which Israel responds to the preceding essays by Helena Rosenblatt and Joanna Stalnaker. Reprinted by permission of the Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
Journal Article
Becoming yellow
In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their willingness to trade with the West, and their presumed capacity to become Christianized. But by the end of the seventeenth century the category of whiteness was reserved for Europeans only. When and how did Asians become \"yellow\" in the Western imagination? Looking at the history of racial thinking, Becoming Yellow explores the notion of yellowness and shows that this label originated not in early travel texts or objective descriptions, but in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific discourses on race.
eBook
Different Types of Orientalism and Corresponding Views of Jews and Judaism: A Historical Overview of Shifting Perceptions and Stereotypes
The goal of this article is to examine the various forms of Orientalism generated
by the East-West distinction in European thought and the complexity of
corresponding perceptions of Judaism and Jews that emerged as a consequence.
What have been the major shifts in European self-perception and in European
perceptions of Jews and Judaism if one traces Europe's orientation in terms of
East and West? My starting point is not in Jewish history, but in Europe's
worldview and self-perception. The East-West parameter both predates and
postdates the historical stages of Orientalism. The article offers two
typologies of Orientalism: a historical typology that distinguishes between
religious, philosophical, imperialist, and artistic forms of Orientalism; and,
an intercultural communication typology of the Oriental Other based on two
scales ranging from foreign to familiar and from threatening to interesting.
Both typologies demonstrate that Orientalism is a complex phenomenon that cannot
be reduced to a single form. Moreover, when applied to current definitions and
expressions of antisemitism the second typology shows how these definitions and
expressions vary considerably depending on different forms of interaction
between the Self and the Other. Neither Orientalism nor antisemitism are
monolithic.
Journal Article
The Love of David and Jonathan
Were David and Jonathan 'gay' lovers? This very modern question lies behind the recent explosion of studies of the David and Jonathan narrative. Interpreters differ in their assessment of whether 1 and 2 Samuel offer a positive portrayal of a homosexual relationship. Beneath the conflict of interpretations lies an ambiguous biblical text which has drawn generations of readers - from the redactors of the Hebrew text and the early translators to modern biblical scholars - to the task of resolving its possible meanings. What has not yet been fully explored is the place of David and Jonathan in the evolution of modern, Western understandings of same-sex relationships, in particular how the story of their relationship was read alongside classical narratives, such as those of Achilles and Patroclus, or Orestes and Pylades. The Love of David and Jonathan explores this context in detail to argue that the story of David and Jonathan was part of the process by which the modern idea of homosexuality itself emerged.
eBook