Amos Morris-Reich
Biographic Data
| ID | 282847 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amos Morris-Reich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amos |
| FAMILY NAME | Morris-Reich |
| SIGNATURE | MORRIS-REICH A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tel Aviv University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Antisemitismus als semiotisches Problem: Die Vorgeschichte der Definitionen von Antisemitismus
In dem Versuch, die Wurzeln der merkwürdigen Vorstellung zu ergründen, dass die Definition von Antisemitismus ein Mittel zu seiner Bekämpfung sein könne, beleuchtet dieser Artikel den Prozess nach 1945, durch den Antisemitismus zu einem semiotischen Problem geworden ist. Historisch verortet er die Vorgeschichte solcher Definitionen in einem weitreichenden, aber etwas schwer fassbaren Wandel in der europäischen Kultur nach 1945 sowie dem Aufkommen…
Scare Quote Jews
La photographie comme instrument de mesure: Rudolf Martin et la photographie anthropométrique
C’est peut-être à cause de l’orientation pratique de son travail, du fait que la photographie ne fut pour lui qu’un outil et de son peu d’intérêt pour les aspects visuels du médium que l’anthropologue germano-suisse Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) fait l’objet de beaucoup moins d’études que ses prédécesseurs, Francis Galton et Alphonse Bertillon, deux autres pionniers de la photographie scientifique. Dans les pays germanophones, de 1914 aux années 1970…
The Stranger as a Threshold Figure
The Stranger as a Threshold Figure Amos Morris-Reich Given its subject and Georg Simmel's background, one would think that Simmel's excursus "The Stranger" (1908) and Jewish history could easily be brought into sustained conversation. Widely thought to be the most original social thinker of the turn of the twentieth century in Germany, Simmel was of Jewish descent. In "The Stranger," he refers to European Jews as the "classic example" of this soc…
Georg Simmel's Logic of the Future: The Stranger', Zionism, and 'Bounded Contingency
For reasons that have more to do with the historiographical traditions of modern Jewish history and the history of critical thought than history itself, Georg Simmel - of Jewish descent - is rarely discussed within the frame of modern Jewish history. Bringing the two together as a theoretical contribution to Simmel studies and modern Jewish history alike, this article explores Simmel's logic of contingency in the context of modern Jewish history.…
Ideas of 'Race' in the History of the Humanities
The Israeli Paradigm of Territory
Against the governing tendency of analyzing the production of space in Israel in purely political terms, the article demonstrates that the cultural dimension is critical for understanding the Israeli paradigm of territory. Extensive and intensive analysis of the key Israeli expression for concreteness and the term designating the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 (which both stem from the same root), thereby bringing together cultural, li…
Anthropology, standardization and measurement: Rudolf Martin and anthropometric photography
Recent scholarship on the history of German anthropology has tended to describe its trajectory between 1900 and the Nazi period as characterized by a paradigmatic shift from the liberal to the anti-humanistic. This article reconstructs key moments in the history of anthropometric photography between 1900 and 1925, paying particular attention to the role of the influential liberal anthropologist Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) in the standardization of …
Argumentative Patterns and Epistemic Considerations: Responses to Anti-Semitism in the Conceptual History of Social Science
Employing elements taken from the typology of polemical exchanges developed by Marcelo Dascal, this essay attaempts to show the relevance of pragmatics for the history of modern anti-Semitism. Focusing on Georg Simmel, one of the founders of sociology, Franz Boas, the founder of cultural anthropology, and Arthur Ruppin, the founder of sociology and demography of the Jews, I point at the close correlations between argumentative patterns and episte…
Circumventions and confrontations: Georg Simmel, Franz Boas and Arthur Ruppin and their responses to antisemitism
Focusing on Georg Simmel, Franz Boas and Arthur Ruppin, three prominent sociologists or anthropologists of German Jewish descent, Morris-Reich analyses their professional responses to antisemitism. He argues that there is a close relationship between their respective epistemic definitions of society and their suggested methods for the study of social phenomena, and the respective forms and registers of their responses to antisemitism. The three c…
Surface, Depth and Teleology in Israeli Culture: The Case of the Hebrew Expression ‘tachles bashetach’
Employing elements from the sociological and philosophical frameworks of Louis Dumont and Mary Douglas and from pragmatics philosophy, this article attempts to show the relevance of language for the construction of Israeli cultural ideology. The article focuses on the Hebrew expression 'tachles bashetach' which means 'in reality', 'in practice' and 'here'. By analysing this expression in various linguistic, cultural and social situations and cont…
Ruppin and the peculiarities of race: A response to Etan Bloom
Keywords: RuppinRaceZionismSocial science history
The "Negative Jew" and Individuality
The "Negative Jew" and Individuality Amos Morris-Reich (bio) Toward the end of and under the direct impact of World War II and the unprecedented persecution of the Jews, different writers, Jewish and non-Jewish, in both the United States and in Western Europe, began to represent the Jew in negative terms. Texts that appeared in different social, geographical, and intellectual contexts represented the Jews as lacking any common essence, as individ…
End on Surface: Teleology and Ground in Israeli Culture
This essay traces the history of the Hebrew expression tachles bashetach, interpreting it as a "counter-image" to the concept of the Jew-as-Luftmensch and showing how it can be viewed as a guiding principle in Israeli culture
Arthur Ruppin's Concept of Race
Focusing on Arthur Ruppin's conception of race, I show that race was a stable category in his work—from his first published work in 1903 to his last one in 1940. While Ruppin's overall understanding of race did not undergo major changes throughout his career, I argue that under the influence of German racial science, the volume of Ruppin's writing on race in the 1920s and the 1930s increased. What makes Ruppin an especially interesting case is th…
Race, ideas, and ideals: A comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F.K. Günther
This article compares two radically opposed views concerning “race” in the first half of the 20th century: the one of Franz Boas (1858–1942), the founder of American cultural anthropology, and the other of Hans F.K. Günther (1889–1968), the most widely read theoretician of race in Nazi Germany. Opposite as their views were, both derived from a similar non-evolutionist German anthropological matrix. The article reconstructs their definitions of ra…
Project, Method, and the Racial Characteristics of Jews: A Comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F. K. G nther
This article compares the respective projects, methods, and racial characterization of Jews in the work of Franz Boas (the German Jewish founder of American cultural anthropology), and Hans F. K. Günther (the most prominent theoretician of race in Nazi Germany). Though diametrically opposed in many respects, these men shared the view that Jews were not a race but a people composed of different racial types. Employing the terms "fixation of belief…
From autonomous subject to free individual in Simmel and Lacan
This article reads Simmel's and Lacan's respective theories of subject and object with regard to their understandings of alienation as a constant human feature. It demonstrates a gradual shift in their work from a conception of humans as autonomous subjects to humans as free individuals. It argues that this shift is best understood with regard to their respective contentions with alienation and in relation of transgression
"Three Paradigms of "The Negative Jew: Identity from Simmel to Zizek
Much historical study in recent years has been devoted to positive conceptions of Jewishness, especially those centered on "race." Positive conceptions ascribe to the Jews particular attributes. Somewhat surprisingly, given their significance for modern Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences, negative conceptions of the Jews and Jewishness—conceptions that decline to assign the Jews inherent specific attributes—received much les…
Three Paradigms of ?The Negative Jew: Identity from Simmel to ?i?ek
Much historical study in recent years has been devoted to positive conceptions of Jewishness, especially those centered on "race." Positive conceptions ascribe to the Jews particular attributes. Somewhat surprisingly, given their significance for modern Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences, negative conceptions of the Jews and Jewishness—conceptions that decline to assign the Jews inherent specific attributes—received much les…
The Beautiful Jew is a Moneylender: Money and Individuality in Simmel's Rehabilitation of the 'Jew
This article contends that Georg Simmel attempted a rehabilitation of the Jewish stereotype in a singular way: via his theory of modernity and the quintessential place held therein by money. The first part of the article, based almost entirely on Simmel's The Philosophy of Money, seeks to demonstrate that Simmel intended to overturn the negative Aristotelian and Marxist assessments of money and of those who deal with it. The second part of the ar…
Anthropology, standardization and measurement: Rudolf Martin and anthropometric photography
Recent scholarship on the history of German anthropology has tended to describe its trajectory between 1900 and the Nazi period as characterized by a paradigmatic shift from the liberal to the anti-humanistic. This article reconstructs key moments in the history of anthropometric photography between 1900 and 1925, paying particular attention to the role of the influential liberal anthropologist Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) in the standardization of …
Arthur Ruppin's Concept of Race
Focusing on Arthur Ruppin's conception of race, I show that race was a stable category in his work—from his first published work in 1903 to his last one in 1940. While Ruppin's overall understanding of race did not undergo major changes throughout his career, I argue that under the influence of German racial science, the volume of Ruppin's writing on race in the 1920s and the 1930s increased. What makes Ruppin an especially interesting case is th…
Race, ideas, and ideals: A comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F.K. Günther
This article compares two radically opposed views concerning “race” in the first half of the 20th century: the one of Franz Boas (1858–1942), the founder of American cultural anthropology, and the other of Hans F.K. Günther (1889–1968), the most widely read theoretician of race in Nazi Germany. Opposite as their views were, both derived from a similar non-evolutionist German anthropological matrix. The article reconstructs their definitions of ra…
The Beautiful Jew is a Moneylender: Money and Individuality in Simmel's Rehabilitation of the 'Jew
This article contends that Georg Simmel attempted a rehabilitation of the Jewish stereotype in a singular way: via his theory of modernity and the quintessential place held therein by money. The first part of the article, based almost entirely on Simmel's The Philosophy of Money, seeks to demonstrate that Simmel intended to overturn the negative Aristotelian and Marxist assessments of money and of those who deal with it. The second part of the ar…
Three Paradigms of ?The Negative Jew: Identity from Simmel to ?i?ek
Much historical study in recent years has been devoted to positive conceptions of Jewishness, especially those centered on "race." Positive conceptions ascribe to the Jews particular attributes. Somewhat surprisingly, given their significance for modern Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences, negative conceptions of the Jews and Jewishness—conceptions that decline to assign the Jews inherent specific attributes—received much les…
The Israeli Paradigm of Territory
Against the governing tendency of analyzing the production of space in Israel in purely political terms, the article demonstrates that the cultural dimension is critical for understanding the Israeli paradigm of territory. Extensive and intensive analysis of the key Israeli expression for concreteness and the term designating the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 (which both stem from the same root), thereby bringing together cultural, li…
Ruppin and the peculiarities of race: A response to Etan Bloom
Keywords: RuppinRaceZionismSocial science history
From autonomous subject to free individual in Simmel and Lacan
This article reads Simmel's and Lacan's respective theories of subject and object with regard to their understandings of alienation as a constant human feature. It demonstrates a gradual shift in their work from a conception of humans as autonomous subjects to humans as free individuals. It argues that this shift is best understood with regard to their respective contentions with alienation and in relation of transgression
"Three Paradigms of "The Negative Jew: Identity from Simmel to Zizek
Much historical study in recent years has been devoted to positive conceptions of Jewishness, especially those centered on "race." Positive conceptions ascribe to the Jews particular attributes. Somewhat surprisingly, given their significance for modern Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences, negative conceptions of the Jews and Jewishness—conceptions that decline to assign the Jews inherent specific attributes—received much les…
The Beautiful Jew is a Moneylender: Money and Individuality in Simmel's Rehabilitation of the 'Jew
This article contends that Georg Simmel attempted a rehabilitation of the Jewish stereotype in a singular way: via his theory of modernity and the quintessential place held therein by money. The first part of the article, based almost entirely on Simmel's The Philosophy of Money, seeks to demonstrate that Simmel intended to overturn the negative Aristotelian and Marxist assessments of money and of those who deal with it. The second part of the ar…
"Three Paradigms of "The Negative Jew: Identity from Simmel to Zizek
Much historical study in recent years has been devoted to positive conceptions of Jewishness, especially those centered on "race." Positive conceptions ascribe to the Jews particular attributes. Somewhat surprisingly, given their significance for modern Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences, negative conceptions of the Jews and Jewishness—conceptions that decline to assign the Jews inherent specific attributes—received much les…
Three Paradigms of ?The Negative Jew: Identity from Simmel to ?i?ek
Much historical study in recent years has been devoted to positive conceptions of Jewishness, especially those centered on "race." Positive conceptions ascribe to the Jews particular attributes. Somewhat surprisingly, given their significance for modern Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences, negative conceptions of the Jews and Jewishness—conceptions that decline to assign the Jews inherent specific attributes—received much les…
From autonomous subject to free individual in Simmel and Lacan
This article reads Simmel's and Lacan's respective theories of subject and object with regard to their understandings of alienation as a constant human feature. It demonstrates a gradual shift in their work from a conception of humans as autonomous subjects to humans as free individuals. It argues that this shift is best understood with regard to their respective contentions with alienation and in relation of transgression
Arthur Ruppin's Concept of Race
Focusing on Arthur Ruppin's conception of race, I show that race was a stable category in his work—from his first published work in 1903 to his last one in 1940. While Ruppin's overall understanding of race did not undergo major changes throughout his career, I argue that under the influence of German racial science, the volume of Ruppin's writing on race in the 1920s and the 1930s increased. What makes Ruppin an especially interesting case is th…
Race, ideas, and ideals: A comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F.K. Günther
This article compares two radically opposed views concerning “race” in the first half of the 20th century: the one of Franz Boas (1858–1942), the founder of American cultural anthropology, and the other of Hans F.K. Günther (1889–1968), the most widely read theoretician of race in Nazi Germany. Opposite as their views were, both derived from a similar non-evolutionist German anthropological matrix. The article reconstructs their definitions of ra…
Project, Method, and the Racial Characteristics of Jews: A Comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F. K. G nther
This article compares the respective projects, methods, and racial characterization of Jews in the work of Franz Boas (the German Jewish founder of American cultural anthropology), and Hans F. K. Günther (the most prominent theoretician of race in Nazi Germany). Though diametrically opposed in many respects, these men shared the view that Jews were not a race but a people composed of different racial types. Employing the terms "fixation of belief…
Ruppin and the peculiarities of race: A response to Etan Bloom
Keywords: RuppinRaceZionismSocial science history
The "Negative Jew" and Individuality
The "Negative Jew" and Individuality Amos Morris-Reich (bio) Toward the end of and under the direct impact of World War II and the unprecedented persecution of the Jews, different writers, Jewish and non-Jewish, in both the United States and in Western Europe, began to represent the Jew in negative terms. Texts that appeared in different social, geographical, and intellectual contexts represented the Jews as lacking any common essence, as individ…
End on Surface: Teleology and Ground in Israeli Culture
This essay traces the history of the Hebrew expression tachles bashetach, interpreting it as a "counter-image" to the concept of the Jew-as-Luftmensch and showing how it can be viewed as a guiding principle in Israeli culture
Surface, Depth and Teleology in Israeli Culture: The Case of the Hebrew Expression ‘tachles bashetach’
Employing elements from the sociological and philosophical frameworks of Louis Dumont and Mary Douglas and from pragmatics philosophy, this article attempts to show the relevance of language for the construction of Israeli cultural ideology. The article focuses on the Hebrew expression 'tachles bashetach' which means 'in reality', 'in practice' and 'here'. By analysing this expression in various linguistic, cultural and social situations and cont…
Argumentative Patterns and Epistemic Considerations: Responses to Anti-Semitism in the Conceptual History of Social Science
Employing elements taken from the typology of polemical exchanges developed by Marcelo Dascal, this essay attaempts to show the relevance of pragmatics for the history of modern anti-Semitism. Focusing on Georg Simmel, one of the founders of sociology, Franz Boas, the founder of cultural anthropology, and Arthur Ruppin, the founder of sociology and demography of the Jews, I point at the close correlations between argumentative patterns and episte…
Circumventions and confrontations: Georg Simmel, Franz Boas and Arthur Ruppin and their responses to antisemitism
Focusing on Georg Simmel, Franz Boas and Arthur Ruppin, three prominent sociologists or anthropologists of German Jewish descent, Morris-Reich analyses their professional responses to antisemitism. He argues that there is a close relationship between their respective epistemic definitions of society and their suggested methods for the study of social phenomena, and the respective forms and registers of their responses to antisemitism. The three c…
Anthropology, standardization and measurement: Rudolf Martin and anthropometric photography
Recent scholarship on the history of German anthropology has tended to describe its trajectory between 1900 and the Nazi period as characterized by a paradigmatic shift from the liberal to the anti-humanistic. This article reconstructs key moments in the history of anthropometric photography between 1900 and 1925, paying particular attention to the role of the influential liberal anthropologist Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) in the standardization of …
The Israeli Paradigm of Territory
Against the governing tendency of analyzing the production of space in Israel in purely political terms, the article demonstrates that the cultural dimension is critical for understanding the Israeli paradigm of territory. Extensive and intensive analysis of the key Israeli expression for concreteness and the term designating the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 (which both stem from the same root), thereby bringing together cultural, li…
Ideas of 'Race' in the History of the Humanities
Georg Simmel's Logic of the Future: The Stranger', Zionism, and 'Bounded Contingency
For reasons that have more to do with the historiographical traditions of modern Jewish history and the history of critical thought than history itself, Georg Simmel - of Jewish descent - is rarely discussed within the frame of modern Jewish history. Bringing the two together as a theoretical contribution to Simmel studies and modern Jewish history alike, this article explores Simmel's logic of contingency in the context of modern Jewish history.…
The Stranger as a Threshold Figure
The Stranger as a Threshold Figure Amos Morris-Reich Given its subject and Georg Simmel's background, one would think that Simmel's excursus "The Stranger" (1908) and Jewish history could easily be brought into sustained conversation. Widely thought to be the most original social thinker of the turn of the twentieth century in Germany, Simmel was of Jewish descent. In "The Stranger," he refers to European Jews as the "classic example" of this soc…
La photographie comme instrument de mesure: Rudolf Martin et la photographie anthropométrique
C’est peut-être à cause de l’orientation pratique de son travail, du fait que la photographie ne fut pour lui qu’un outil et de son peu d’intérêt pour les aspects visuels du médium que l’anthropologue germano-suisse Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) fait l’objet de beaucoup moins d’études que ses prédécesseurs, Francis Galton et Alphonse Bertillon, deux autres pionniers de la photographie scientifique. Dans les pays germanophones, de 1914 aux années 1970…
Scare Quote Jews
Antisemitismus als semiotisches Problem: Die Vorgeschichte der Definitionen von Antisemitismus
In dem Versuch, die Wurzeln der merkwürdigen Vorstellung zu ergründen, dass die Definition von Antisemitismus ein Mittel zu seiner Bekämpfung sein könne, beleuchtet dieser Artikel den Prozess nach 1945, durch den Antisemitismus zu einem semiotischen Problem geworden ist. Historisch verortet er die Vorgeschichte solcher Definitionen in einem weitreichenden, aber etwas schwer fassbaren Wandel in der europäischen Kultur nach 1945 sowie dem Aufkommen…
Sociology (17 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Judaism (6 works) · Psychoanalysis (6 works)