Udi Greenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 953795 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Udi Greenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Udi |
| FAMILY NAME | Greenberg |
| SIGNATURE | GREENBERG U |
| AFFILIATIONS | Dartmouth College |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-5321-5028 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The End of the Schism
Expanding the Borders of Humanity
In The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century , historian Dagmar Herzog explores one of the most remarkable transformations in European approaches to human life: the rise and fall of eugenics. In particular, she explores how Germans debated the treatment of people with intellectual disabilities: in the late nineteenth century, doctors, psychiatrists, and Christian caretakers came to equate productivity with worth. The…
Catholicism and Rights
This chapter claims that the language of rights was central to Catholic thought in the long nineteenth century. Rather than rejecting the concept of human rights, Catholic social theorists, theologians, and church leaders embraced it, and utilized it in their effort to update the Church’s teachings to the era of upheavals. The chapter highlights three spheres in which rights proved especially important. First, in response to the French Revolution…
Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity
In the decades following the era of decolonization, global Christianity experienced a seismic shift. While Catholicism and Protestantism have declined in their historic European strongholds, they have sustained explosive growth in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This demographic change has established Christians from the Global South as an increasingly dominant presence in modern Christian thought, culture, and politics. Decolonization and the R…
The Remnants of Giorgio Agamben
This essay reviews Giorgio Agamben's Omnibus Homo Sacer, a monumental project of nine books that was recently completed after two decades. Alongside outlining the project's key claims, the essay reflects on its uneven reception: it seeks to explain why Agamben's claims on politics, law, and violence received enormous attention, while his writings on economics and religion were largely ignored. The essay in particular discusses the values and limi…
Intellectual History and the Fascism Debate
Over the last few years, scholars have intensely debated whether the contemporary radical right should be described as fascist. While some have insisted that its ideology, political strategy, and social basis strongly echo fascist precedents, others have insisted they substantially diverge from them. This essay explores the content and rhetoric of this dispute. It claims that the key fault line between proponents and opponents of the fascist labe…
Paul Betts. Ruin and Renewal
Journal Article Paul Betts. Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II. Get access Paul Betts. Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe after World War II. New York: Basic Books, 2020. Pp. 544. Cloth $35.00. Udi Greenberg Udi Greenberg Dartmouth College Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 127, Issue 1, March 2022, Pages 535–536, h…
The Rise of the Global South and the Protestant Peace with Socialism
This article explores a major shift in European Protestant thought about socialism during the mid-twentieth century, from intense hostility to acceptance. During the twentieth century's early decades it was common for European Protestant theologians, church leaders and thinkers to condemn socialism as a threat to Christianity. Socialist ideology, many believed, was inherently secular, and its triumph would spell anarchy and violence. In the decad…
Is Religious Freedom Protestant? On the History of a Critical Idea
Catholics, Protestants, and the Violent Birth of European Religious Pluralism
This article explores one of postwar Europe's most dramatic ideological transformations: the end of prolonged animosities between Protestants and Catholics. It charts how a series of political upheavals between the 1930s and the 1960s led Christian elites to develop new conceptions of religious pluralism and religious freedom, which called for political and legal equality between Christian denominations but simultaneously excluded religious minor…
What Nietzsche Does and Does Not Teach Us
Friedrich Nietzsche left many intellectual legacies, but few are as ambiguous as his thinking about politics. On the one hand, his calls for liberation all seem to revolve around the individual's p
Introduction
Introduction: Special Forum on Christianity and Human Rights Udi Greenberg and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins KEY WORDS Christianity, human rights, Catholicism, Protestantism, intellectual history The intellectual roots of human rights have been a source of much debate, but Christianity’s role in shaping the language of universal equality has been especially controversial. Historians agree that prominent Catholic philosophers, such as Jacques Maritain,…
Catholics, Protestants, and the Tortured Path to Religious Liberty
This essay explores the transformation of Catholic thinking about the right to religious freedom. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Catholics vehemently opposed this right (Pope Gregory XVI called it "absurd and erroneous"). Church leaders claimed that in order to protect Catholic Church teachings on marriage, education, and worship, states had to enshrine them in law, even if that meant severely limiting the rights of Protestan…
Protestants, Decolonization, and European Integration, 1885–1961
Sean A. Forner. German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal
Scholars have long portrayed Germany’s reconstruction after World War II as a tale of ambivalent democratization. The American occupation, so the story goes, successfully imposed parliaments and elections, but miserably failed to inspire respect for core democratic tenets, such as pluralism, formal equality, and engaged citizenry. Countless Germans continued to adhere to Nazi statism and racism, unmoved by the prominence of former Nazis in public…
Response to My Critics
The Origins of Christian Democracy
The animosity between Protestants and Catholics was one of the central and organizing features of German politics and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each group framed
Militant Democracy and Human Rights
This article examines the writings of the political theorist Karl Loewenstein to uncover the relationship between “militant democracy” and “human rights,” and their simultaneous rise to international prominence during the early Cold War. Through “militant democracy,” Loewenstein claimed that democratic states had to aggressively curb the rights of their enemies and preemptively invade and destroy nondemocratic regimes. Surprisingly, and unrecogni…
Introduction
Ernst Cassirer's Moment
The emergence of the German Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) as the object of scholarly attention has been both surprising and rapid. In the decades since his early death while in exile in the United States, Cassirer never fell into complete oblivion. His works remained known to specialists in German intellectual history; his participation in a famous 1929 debate with Martin Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland, one of the most iconic mom…
The City of Man, European Émigrés, and the Genesis of Postwar Conservative Thought
This article explores the forgotten manifesto The City of Man: A Declaration on World Democracy, which was composed in 1940 by a group of prominent American and European anti-isolationist intellectuals, including Thomas Mann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hermann Broch. Written in response to the victories of Nazi Germany, the manifesto declared that the United States had a new global responsibility not only to lead the war against fascism and Marxism, b…
Germany’s Postwar Re-education and Its Weimar Intellectual Roots
During its occupation by the United States and throughout the 1950s, Germany experienced one of the most dramatic intellectual, cultural, and educational transformations in history. Historians have often observed the intrusion by the USA into German intellectual and institutional life as part of the USA’s overall plan to ‘re-educate’ Germany and to tie it to its own political traditions and Cold War goals. Through examination of the political the…
Criminalization
The two most celebrated intellectuals of the Weimar period — Carl Schmitt on the right and Walter Benjamin on the left — were fascinated by the role of crime in modern politics. In order to shed light on this neglected element of their work, this article explains how crime became a central category in their political theory and a crucial component in their narratives of modern history. Furthermore, it elucidates how both men simultaneously came t…
Orthodox violence
This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far mo…
The Politics of the Walter Benjamin Industry
One of the most peculiar phenomena of the recent culture industry is the appearance of Walter Benjamin, for decades a forgotten thinker, as the object of iconization and mass consumption. Over the last 20 years, this eccentric critic has not only stood at the centre of intense academic scrutiny but has also become the protagonist of comic books, popular novels, films, monuments and musical projects, in a cascade of images that shows no sign of ex…
The Politics of the Walter Benjamin Industry
One of the most peculiar phenomena of the recent culture industry is the appearance of Walter Benjamin, for decades a forgotten thinker, as the object of iconization and mass consumption. Over the last 20 years, this eccentric critic has not only stood at the centre of intense academic scrutiny but has also become the protagonist of comic books, popular novels, films, monuments and musical projects, in a cascade of images that shows no sign of ex…
The Rise of the Global South and the Protestant Peace with Socialism
This article explores a major shift in European Protestant thought about socialism during the mid-twentieth century, from intense hostility to acceptance. During the twentieth century's early decades it was common for European Protestant theologians, church leaders and thinkers to condemn socialism as a threat to Christianity. Socialist ideology, many believed, was inherently secular, and its triumph would spell anarchy and violence. In the decad…
Protestants, Decolonization, and European Integration, 1885–1961
Orthodox violence
This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far mo…
Is Religious Freedom Protestant? On the History of a Critical Idea
Catholics, Protestants, and the Tortured Path to Religious Liberty
This essay explores the transformation of Catholic thinking about the right to religious freedom. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Catholics vehemently opposed this right (Pope Gregory XVI called it "absurd and erroneous"). Church leaders claimed that in order to protect Catholic Church teachings on marriage, education, and worship, states had to enshrine them in law, even if that meant severely limiting the rights of Protestan…
The Origins of Christian Democracy
The animosity between Protestants and Catholics was one of the central and organizing features of German politics and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each group framed
Germany’s Postwar Re-education and Its Weimar Intellectual Roots
During its occupation by the United States and throughout the 1950s, Germany experienced one of the most dramatic intellectual, cultural, and educational transformations in history. Historians have often observed the intrusion by the USA into German intellectual and institutional life as part of the USA’s overall plan to ‘re-educate’ Germany and to tie it to its own political traditions and Cold War goals. Through examination of the political the…
Remembering Walter Benjamin
Having long ago emerged from years of obscurity, Walter Benjamin functions today as an icon not only among an academic audience, but also in many products of popular culture. Through the examination of three key biographies, this study traces the different meanings given to Benjamin's life from the 1970s until today
Orthodox violence
This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far mo…
The Politics of the Walter Benjamin Industry
One of the most peculiar phenomena of the recent culture industry is the appearance of Walter Benjamin, for decades a forgotten thinker, as the object of iconization and mass consumption. Over the last 20 years, this eccentric critic has not only stood at the centre of intense academic scrutiny but has also become the protagonist of comic books, popular novels, films, monuments and musical projects, in a cascade of images that shows no sign of ex…
Criminalization
The two most celebrated intellectuals of the Weimar period — Carl Schmitt on the right and Walter Benjamin on the left — were fascinated by the role of crime in modern politics. In order to shed light on this neglected element of their work, this article explains how crime became a central category in their political theory and a crucial component in their narratives of modern history. Furthermore, it elucidates how both men simultaneously came t…
Germany’s Postwar Re-education and Its Weimar Intellectual Roots
During its occupation by the United States and throughout the 1950s, Germany experienced one of the most dramatic intellectual, cultural, and educational transformations in history. Historians have often observed the intrusion by the USA into German intellectual and institutional life as part of the USA’s overall plan to ‘re-educate’ Germany and to tie it to its own political traditions and Cold War goals. Through examination of the political the…
The City of Man, European Émigrés, and the Genesis of Postwar Conservative Thought
This article explores the forgotten manifesto The City of Man: A Declaration on World Democracy, which was composed in 1940 by a group of prominent American and European anti-isolationist intellectuals, including Thomas Mann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hermann Broch. Written in response to the victories of Nazi Germany, the manifesto declared that the United States had a new global responsibility not only to lead the war against fascism and Marxism, b…
Ernst Cassirer's Moment
The emergence of the German Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) as the object of scholarly attention has been both surprising and rapid. In the decades since his early death while in exile in the United States, Cassirer never fell into complete oblivion. His works remained known to specialists in German intellectual history; his participation in a famous 1929 debate with Martin Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland, one of the most iconic mom…
Response to My Critics
The Origins of Christian Democracy
The animosity between Protestants and Catholics was one of the central and organizing features of German politics and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each group framed
Militant Democracy and Human Rights
This article examines the writings of the political theorist Karl Loewenstein to uncover the relationship between “militant democracy” and “human rights,” and their simultaneous rise to international prominence during the early Cold War. Through “militant democracy,” Loewenstein claimed that democratic states had to aggressively curb the rights of their enemies and preemptively invade and destroy nondemocratic regimes. Surprisingly, and unrecogni…
Introduction
Sean A. Forner. German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal
Scholars have long portrayed Germany’s reconstruction after World War II as a tale of ambivalent democratization. The American occupation, so the story goes, successfully imposed parliaments and elections, but miserably failed to inspire respect for core democratic tenets, such as pluralism, formal equality, and engaged citizenry. Countless Germans continued to adhere to Nazi statism and racism, unmoved by the prominence of former Nazis in public…
Protestants, Decolonization, and European Integration, 1885–1961
What Nietzsche Does and Does Not Teach Us
Friedrich Nietzsche left many intellectual legacies, but few are as ambiguous as his thinking about politics. On the one hand, his calls for liberation all seem to revolve around the individual's p
Introduction
Introduction: Special Forum on Christianity and Human Rights Udi Greenberg and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins KEY WORDS Christianity, human rights, Catholicism, Protestantism, intellectual history The intellectual roots of human rights have been a source of much debate, but Christianity’s role in shaping the language of universal equality has been especially controversial. Historians agree that prominent Catholic philosophers, such as Jacques Maritain,…
Catholics, Protestants, and the Tortured Path to Religious Liberty
This essay explores the transformation of Catholic thinking about the right to religious freedom. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Catholics vehemently opposed this right (Pope Gregory XVI called it "absurd and erroneous"). Church leaders claimed that in order to protect Catholic Church teachings on marriage, education, and worship, states had to enshrine them in law, even if that meant severely limiting the rights of Protestan…
Catholics, Protestants, and the Violent Birth of European Religious Pluralism
This article explores one of postwar Europe's most dramatic ideological transformations: the end of prolonged animosities between Protestants and Catholics. It charts how a series of political upheavals between the 1930s and the 1960s led Christian elites to develop new conceptions of religious pluralism and religious freedom, which called for political and legal equality between Christian denominations but simultaneously excluded religious minor…
The Rise of the Global South and the Protestant Peace with Socialism
This article explores a major shift in European Protestant thought about socialism during the mid-twentieth century, from intense hostility to acceptance. During the twentieth century's early decades it was common for European Protestant theologians, church leaders and thinkers to condemn socialism as a threat to Christianity. Socialist ideology, many believed, was inherently secular, and its triumph would spell anarchy and violence. In the decad…
Is Religious Freedom Protestant? On the History of a Critical Idea
Intellectual History and the Fascism Debate
Over the last few years, scholars have intensely debated whether the contemporary radical right should be described as fascist. While some have insisted that its ideology, political strategy, and social basis strongly echo fascist precedents, others have insisted they substantially diverge from them. This essay explores the content and rhetoric of this dispute. It claims that the key fault line between proponents and opponents of the fascist labe…
Paul Betts. Ruin and Renewal
Journal Article Paul Betts. Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II. Get access Paul Betts. Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe after World War II. New York: Basic Books, 2020. Pp. 544. Cloth $35.00. Udi Greenberg Udi Greenberg Dartmouth College Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 127, Issue 1, March 2022, Pages 535–536, h…
Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity
In the decades following the era of decolonization, global Christianity experienced a seismic shift. While Catholicism and Protestantism have declined in their historic European strongholds, they have sustained explosive growth in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This demographic change has established Christians from the Global South as an increasingly dominant presence in modern Christian thought, culture, and politics. Decolonization and the R…
The Remnants of Giorgio Agamben
This essay reviews Giorgio Agamben's Omnibus Homo Sacer, a monumental project of nine books that was recently completed after two decades. Alongside outlining the project's key claims, the essay reflects on its uneven reception: it seeks to explain why Agamben's claims on politics, law, and violence received enormous attention, while his writings on economics and religion were largely ignored. The essay in particular discusses the values and limi…
Catholicism and Rights
This chapter claims that the language of rights was central to Catholic thought in the long nineteenth century. Rather than rejecting the concept of human rights, Catholic social theorists, theologians, and church leaders embraced it, and utilized it in their effort to update the Church’s teachings to the era of upheavals. The chapter highlights three spheres in which rights proved especially important. First, in response to the French Revolution…
The End of the Schism
Political science (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Sociology (14 works) · History (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Religious studies (9 works) · Art (7 works)