The Weimar Moment
Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law
Contributions by Peter C. Caldwell, Christophe Chalamet University of Geneva, Rodrigo Chacón, Gary Dorrien Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, Robert Gibbs, Peter E. Gordon, Udi Greenberg, Jeffrey C. Herf, Michael Hollerich, Michael W. Jennings, Gregory Kaplan, John P. McCormick, Michael McGillen, Samuel Moyn, David Novak, Carl J. Rasmussen, Gabriel R. Ricci, Ulrich Rosenhagen, Klaus Tanner, Azzan Yadin-Israel Edited by Leonard V. Kaplan, Rudy Koshar
Publication date:
26 January 2012Length of book:
554 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
244x167mm7x10"
ISBN-13: 9780739140727
The Weimar Moment’s evocative assault on closure and political reaction, its offering of democracy against the politics of narrow self-interest cloaked in nationalist appeals to Volk and “community”—or, as would be the case in Nazi Germany, “race”—cannot but appeal to us today. This appeal—its historical grounding and content, its complexities and tensions, its variegated expressions across the networks of power and thought—is the essential context of the present volume, whose basic premise is unhappiness with Hegel’s remark that we learn no more from history than we cannot learn from it. The challenge of the papers in this volume is to provide the material to confront the present effectively drawing from what we can and do understand.
[T]he book, with its treasure trove of footnotes, is a fascinating and informative documentation of a period in European history whose relevance to the present should never have been missed. The editors are to be congratulated for producing this excellent critique.