Political Messianism Research Articles

Elucidation of the sense of openness through deconstruction of the concept of totalitarianism

Aim of the article is to elucidate the very problem of openness through deconstruction of the concept of totalitarianism defined as a contrary to liberalism. In the first part author elaborates new concept of totalitarianism as defined with three main components of the phenomena: 1) Transcendental agreement (convenient) in relation to the eschatological truth given in four topos within the scope of modern ideas: god, nation social class, man; 2) Tautology of legitimization - in relation to the Other; 3) Scientization of charisma - in relation to the world; 4) Political Messianism and Manicheism - in relation to the self. Historical explanation provides the genesis of the concept of heavenly contract through the transformation of transcendence into the immanence of the world through three cases: 1) Puritanism of the 16th Century (Jean Calvin and John Knox) 2) Jacobinism of the 18th Century (Rousseau and Robespierre); 3) Marxism of the 19-20th Century (from Marx to Lenin). The second part of the paper presents the characterization of the totalitarian mind as specified with elimination of differences between the following levels: Identity-difference (in the dimension of discourse); Position-opposition (in the dimension of thinking); Friend- enemy (in the dimension of existence). Deconstruction of totalitarianism as its precondition of its possibility presupposes: a) experience of futility of political extremism; b) the fall of all available eschatological axes (whether the paramount topos topoon is god, Man, people or class). By means of deconstruction of the given concept author provides the basic prerequisites of liberalism: 1) Transcendental prerequisites of rational communication (co-understanding and argumentation); 2) Prospects of valid (non-thatulogical) procedures of legitimization; 3) Conditions for acquiring and preserving rational authority (in the realms of politics science, etc) Author thus shows full contrast between totalitarianism and liberalism. Given component of liberalism could only be safeguarded by institutional means. That amounts to the conclusion that deconstruction of totalitarianism as an actual occurrence includes the problem of the huge institutional reconstruction. Through juxtaposition of totalitarianism and liberalism, author elucidates the very problem of openness on the following way: only upon the downfall of all mentioned interchanings varieties of suprime good (summum bonum), the openness as primary distinction of political order became possible. This amount to: a) substitution of the idea of suprime good by the opposite idea of supreme evil (summum malum); b) transfer of all positive political programs and choices of values into the sphere of private matters of the citizen. Hereby the room is provided for synchrony of all ideas of good. But none of them could be made official without 'closing' society again. This means two things: firstly, that the state must be ideologically neutral; secondly, that every political program changes cardinally its rank: from constitutive into regulative on the basis of which is possible to maintain in the sphere of ethics without selfcontradictions. Thirdly, very possibility of openness is giving the clue of nowadays postmodern story on the 'end of all grand stories and metanarratives', for this is profound condition od the real 'open society'. Prospects of the openness are elucited by juxtaposing the two concept of liberalism: 1. In its initial meaning liberalism is one of modern universalistic doctrines, which, like any other, can be the way of 'closing society'; 2. In the second sense liberalism is not a doctrine, but exclusively pragmatic attitude or performance. Both concepts are based on the insight that mutual inferriability of proposition and performance, i.e. pragmatic and semantic, is not possible whatsoever. Liberalism could be the basis of openness and its maintenance only in the second sense, if and when it has institutional safeguards. In the perspective of this proposition all grand modern political programs (freedom, equality, fraternity) are: a) equal in their right to validity; b) they are in the relations of complementarity, with consequence that polemical conflicts among them are irrational and futile; c) hence, on the basis of openness their relation of communication and cooperation is only rational prospect. That is the function of the idea of openness. To be realistic, that means that one in its practice have to use the idea in regulative, not in constitutive sense.

Different Styles of Eschatology: Derrida's Take on Levinas' Political Messianism

Dossier de la revue «Research in phenomenology» (XXVIII, 1998, pp. 3-159) consacre a E. Levinas, comprenant les articles suivants: 1) Differents styles d'eschatologie: l'engagement de Derrida envers le messianisme politique de Levinas (R. Bernasconi); 2) Adieu a Emmanuel Levinas (J. Derrida); 3) Au nom de la philosophie (J. Llewelyn); 4) Des images fatidiques (A. lingis); 5) La chose: Lacan et Levinas (S. Critchley); 6) Levinas et l'impossible possibilite: penser l'ethique avec Rosenzweig et Heidegger apres la Shoah (T. Chanter); 7) La methode de Levinas (A. Peperzak); 8) La sincerite et la fin de la theodicee: remarques sur Levinas et Kant (P. Davies); 9) Levinas et l'elementaire (J. Sallis)

Political Messianism in Buber's Conception of Redemption

Political Messianism in Buber's Conception of Redemption

Caesaropopulism in Action: U.S. Military Intervention in Panama and the Persian Gulf

This article argues that American involvement, that is, intervention, in the Third World is predicated upon a distinctly discernible pattern and policy. The two recent cases of U.S. intervention — in Panama in December 1989 and in the Persian-Gulf in January 1991 — illustrate my point. In each instance, the U.S. invasion was Justified as a moral and patriotic mission in defense of freedom, justice, and national interests against villainous enemies, whereas actually, on both occasions, the superior American firepower helped the U.S. military-industrial interests take firmer hold on the targeted territories. These episodes repeat the earlier ones since World War II in confirming the fact that American political messianism supported by the American military harked back to the Western imperialism of the nineteenth century.

Messianic Footsteps in the Third Solitude: Canadian Jewish Mysticism in Tosher Hasidism

Critics have suggested that in Canadian literature there are “two solitudes” of Anglophone and Francophone linguistic and ethnic clusters, which give way to the unique “third solitude” of Montreal Jewry. I argue there are uniquely mystical currents of the messianic footsteps within the “third solitude” as embodied in one such Jewish community in Boisbriand, Quebec. To explore this claim, I turn to this Jewish community’s mysticism as manifest in a specific ritual during Passover. While a passion for Passover retains its pull on diaspora Jewry, the question remains why this homebound ritual retains such strong influence on North American Jewry, and in particular on the highly insular Tosher Hasidism. By analyzing the Passover seder, I suggest that Passover reflects a deeper concern with the eschaton of messianic footsteps in the “third solitude” of Canadian Jewish mysticism. I build on the case already made for Canadian Jewish mysticism in this journal, claiming that such a mysticism enables the aspirant to be exceptionally well-equipped to transform their exile into homecoming, all the while succumbing to the transformation of their soul within a “third solitude” of the host culture. This experience of homecoming, felt especially by Quebec Jews during the Passover season, calls the mystic to interpret and unify living and eating during the family reunion of the seder, through a cultural preoccupation of exile, dislocation, and memories of an abandoned homeland. I am concerned with how the messianic archetype of Elijah is rendered in the ‘Avodat haLevi haggadah' of the Tosher Rebbe, Rabbi Meshulam Feish Segal-Loewy. I argue that the post-messianic messianism of Tosher Hasidism appears paradoxical in its strong resistance to cultural assimilation, though it is nurtured by the cultural context of political messianism in Quebec. This essay compares the ‘Avodat haLevi haggadah with Rabbi Yitzhak Yehudah Yehiel Safrin’s Megillat Setarim, to set into relief the need for a greater awareness of the variegated spiritual landscape of Canadian Jewish mysticism. Only once these revisionary currents are articulated can there be an appreciation for the messianic impulse within the Komarno-Zidichov Hasidic lineage as manifest in Tosher Hasidism, which transcends and includes markers of a uniquely Canadian Jewish mysticism.

The Exiled Revolutionaries and the French Political Police in the 1850's

THE defeat of the French ultrarevolutionary movements of I848-I849 created group of activists who were deracines. Socialists, Communists, Jacobins, and Red Republicans were reduced to the status of journalists without newspapers, speakers without rostrums, politicians without parties, and patriots without country. Unable to accept revolutionary defeat, many of the most brilliant and most dedicated of these men were forced into exile. Embittered and frustrated, they lived abroad as outcasts and professional revolutionaries, pledged to the destruction of old France and the creation of new society built upon its ruins. These radicals were influenced by nineteenth-century revolutionary ideologies recently characterized by J. L. Talmon as political messianism. Never united and differing in ideology and in tactics, the leaders and members of various revolutionary sects expressed common faith in a universal gospel, based on vision of the oneness of history and the unity of mankind. They expected to realize this vision by vast proletarian act of social regeneration that would transcend national boundaries and fulfill the purposes of history. The result would be the fusion of individual liberty and collectivist social harmony symbolized by the battle cry la republique democratique et sociale!' The inconsistencies, vagueness, and organizational weakness of messianism now seem obvious. But in the years immediately following the I848 Revolution, two opposing groups kept alive the red specter. By far the larger of these groups, believing itself and the traditional arrangements of French society menaced by the revolutionary doctrines, supported the repressive policies of the Second Republic and, during the first decade of the Second Empire, the Bonapartist dictatorship. A smaller group, the defeated, continued to fight for the revolutionary ideas. Most of them had fled; some carried on within France. Each group believed in the red specter, the one

Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase

Journal Article Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase Get access Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase. By J. L. Talmon. London, Seeker & Warburg, 1960. xiii+607 pp. Index. 50s. Martin Wight Martin Wight Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 38, Issue 2, April 1962, Page 224, https://doi.org/10.2307/2610384 Published: 01 April 1962

Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase. By <italic>J. L. Talmon</italic>. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1960. Pp. xiii, 15–607. $8.75.)

Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase. By J. L. Talmon. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1960. Pp. xiii, 15–607. $8.75.) Get access Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase. By Talmon J. L.. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1960. Pp. xiii, 15–607. $8.75.) J. Salwyn Schapiro J. Salwyn Schapiro New York, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 66, Issue 4, July 1961, Pages 1014–1016, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/66.4.1014 Published: 01 July 1961

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:POLITICAL MESSIANISM, The Romantic Phase, by J. L. TalmonNATIONS AND EMPIRES, by Reinhold NiebuhrINDIA AND THE WEST, by Barbara WardTHE PSYCHOGENESIS OF MENTAL DISEASE, by C. G. JungEMOTION, by James HillmanMAMBU, by Kenelm BurridgeTHE MASKS OF GOD, by Joseph CampbellTHE GODS AS WE SHAPE THEM, by F. SierksmaLITURGY AND THE MISSIONS, the Nijmegen Papers. Edited by J. Hofinger, S.J.

REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES