This book shows how institutional religion and the religiosity of political and cultural life provide a necessary dimension to Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.Lived religion surrounded Benjamin, whose upper-middle-class Jewish family celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah in Berlin as the turmoil of war, collapsing empires, and modern urban life gave rise to the Nazi regime that would destroy most of Europe’s Jews, including Benjamin himself. Documentin...

This book explores community dynamics within social media. Using Wikipedia as an example, the volume explores communities that rely upon commons-based peer production. Fundamental theoretical principles spanning such domains as organizational configurations, leadership roles, and social evolutionary theory are developed. In the context of Wikipedia, these theories explain how a functional elite of highly productive editors has emerged and why they are responsible for a majority of the cont...

These essays propose "a new and richly detailed engagement between Judaism and the political" ( Jewish Book World ).Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology provides the first broad encounter between modern Jewish thought and recent developments in political theology, arguing in opposition to impetuous associations of Judaism and liberalism and charges that Judaism cannot engender a universal political order. Th...

Rhetorical Traditions and Contemporary Law is a collection of twelve case studies that explore the often-overlooked intersections of law and rhetoric. Drawing from rhetorical traditions of the past and present, the multidisciplinary roster of contributors analyzes contemporary legal theory and practice, from judicial opinions to legal scholarship, using significant texts or concepts in a rhetorical tradition. Their essays demonstrate how legal texts function and to what end, while also con...

The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States had a significant impact on both America and the world at large. By voting an African American into the highest office, those who elected Obama did not necessarily look past race, but rather didn’t let race prevent them for casting their ballots in his favor. In addition to reflecting the changing political climate, Obama’s presidency also spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and film.In...

Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt’s indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured ...

A "very readable" history of Jewish conversions to Christianity over two centuries that "tracks the many fascinating twists and turns to this story" ( Library Journal).When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, they considered it an urgent priority to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in ...

Fifty years on from its original publication, HLA Hart's The Concept of Law is widely recognized as the most important work of legal philosophy published in the twentieth century, and remains the starting point for most students coming to the subject for the first time. In this third edition, Leslie Green provides a new introduction that sets the book in the context of subsequent developments in social and political philosophy, clarifying misunderstandings of Hart's project and hi...

For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous Letters and Papers from Prison has had a tremendous impact ...

From a profoundly influential social theorist comes a posthumously published analysis of the deepest level of crisis in our culture.“A compelling diagnosis of our condition.” —The Wall Street JournalAccording to Rieff, the contemporary notion of charisma—the personal magnetism of political leaders or movie stars—is a tragic misunderstanding of a profoundly important concept. Charisma originally meant religious grace and authority t...

A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases.

"An insightful analysis of the ways in which Protestant reformer Martin Luther's anti-Jewish writings were used by German Protestants during the Third Reich." — Contemporary Church History QuarterlyThe acquiescence of the German Protestant churches in Nazi oppression and murder of Jews is well documented. In this book, Christopher J. Probst demonstrates that a significant number of German theologians and clergy made use of the 16th-century writings by Mart...