COMMUNAL DEMOCRACY, MODERNITY, AND THE JEWISH POLITICAL TRADITION

This essay connects the theme of communal democracy and the Jewish political tradition with the twin themes of nationalism and modernity. The modern idea of communal democracy, it is argued, is best understood within the context of the modern phenomenon of nationalism. In Part I, the emergence and m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Jewish political studies review 1993-04, Vol.5 (1/2), p.95-127
Main Author: Licht, Robert A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aristocracy
Christianity
Democracy
French Revolution
High culture
Jewish nationalism
Jewish politics
Liberalism
Nationalism
Natural rights
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Summary:This essay connects the theme of communal democracy and the Jewish political tradition with the twin themes of nationalism and modernity. The modern idea of communal democracy, it is argued, is best understood within the context of the modern phenomenon of nationalism. In Part I, the emergence and meaning of the modern nation and nationalism is explored in Alexis de Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the French Revolution and Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism. Part II revises Gellner's understanding of modernity to include a non-historicist appreciation of the founding ideas of modernity, and the new sciences of nature and of politics from which they issue. The new conventions based on the new sciences make inevitable the "crisis of identity" that is characteristic of modernity, and the idea of a "primordial community" is vitiated. This crisis is not only one of the roots of ideological nationalism, but also the modern idea of non-political "freedom," or the will to self-liberation. Part III discusses the fate of the Jewish political tradition within modernity. It is argued that the Jewish political tradition contains an intrinsic natural principle of political liberty, t'shuvah, that addresses the decay, under the impact of modernity, of the other two principles of political liberty, virtue and self-interest.
ISSN:0792-335X
2226-9967