Samuel Moyn
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 293866 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Samuel Moyn |
| NOMBRES | Samuel |
| APELLIDO | Moyn |
| FIRMA | MOYN S |
| AFILIACIONES | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5152-956X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 91 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 170 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 89 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 4 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1957 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Cold War Liberalism
In the mid-twentieth century, Cold War liberalism exerted a profound influence on the US state, US foreign policy, and liberal thought across the North Atlantic world. The essays in this volume examine the history of this important ideology from a variety of perspectives. Whereas most prior works that analyze Cold War liberalism have focused on small groupings of canonical intellectuals, this book explores how the ideology transformed politics, s…
Globalizing Europe
Globalizing Europe explores modern Europe's myriad entanglements with the wider world, considering the continent not only as an engine but also as a product of global transformations. It looks at the ways in which the global movements of peoples and ideas, goods and raw materials, flora and fauna have impacted life on the continent over the centuries. Bringing together a group of leading historians, the book shows how the history of Europe can be…
After Courts
In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton argued for locating interpretive authority over law separately from those institutions tasked with formulating it. Hamilton’s vision, never accurate as a description of American practice, has not been credible for a long time. To the extent enormous power is still allocated to judges, our legal institutions have been out of step with our legal theory, which has long regarded them as political actors and po…
A Big Part of the Problem, Not the Solution
New perspectives on Judith Shklar
From One Crisis of Liberalism to Another
Are crises of liberalism always the same, or are they always different? Or, if it is a little of both, what is to be learned by stepping back to compare the contemporary prosecution of liberals, and their strategies of self-defense, with the configurations of prior rounds? To answer this question, this essay looks at our own time in comparison to the most recent era when political theorists clashed over whether to ditch liberalism-that of the lat…
From One Paradigm to Another
Rabiat Akande's article, “An Imperial History of Race-Religion in International Law,” draws attention to the gap in frameworks of protection from religious discrimination, on the compelling rationale that much contemporary discrimination continues to work through racialization. And she provides a genealogy to show that this gap is not there by accident—it presupposes a specific set of histories that excluded the racialization of religion from pro…
Intervention before interventionism
The Anarchist Inquisition
Nihilistic Times
Liberalism against Itself
Liberalism against Itself
The Cold War roots of liberalism’s present crisis By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totalitarianism, and permanent nuclear terror. They concluded that, far from offering a solution to these problems, the ideals of the Enlightenment, including emancipation and equality, had instead created them. The historian of political thought Samuel Mo…
Emancipation, Humanity, and Peace
This chapter responds to commentaries on the author’s recent book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War . The coverage includes whether the international laws of war were substantially humanized in principle or in practice before recently, how to revisit and rehabilitate the peace movements of the nineteenth century (and after), and what moral criterion furnishes the evaluative standard for the progress of the humanizat…
Critical theory's generational predicament
Hannah Arendt among the Cold War Liberals
Hannah Arendt wasn't a liberal, she repeatedly declared. Yet in a series of ways she was a fellow traveler of Cold War liberals. And caught up as she also was in neo-imperial and racist entanglements that go entirely unmentioned in promotional accounts of Cold War liberalism and have barely begun to be challenged even today, she helps cast their thought in relief. Yet there is a proviso. From another, exceptional, and unique perspective-that of t…
The Modernist Imagination
The Holocaust and Historical Methodology
In the last two decades our empirical knowledge of the Holocaust has been vastly expanded. Yet this empirical blossoming has not been accompanied by much theoretical reflection on the historiography. This volume argues that reflection on the historical process of (re)constructing the past is as important for understanding the Holocaust-and, by extension, any past event-as is archival research. It aims to go beyond the dominant paradigm of politic…
Eric Weitz
Had Eric been allowed to live the long life that he deserved, he might have looked back and recognized the retrospective logic of his scholarly work. By then, I am sure, he would have produced more pathbreaking and important books and essays. Indeed, following the publication of his magnum opus, A World Divided , Eric was already at work on a study of Ralph Bunche, featured in A World Divided and one of the most prominent African Americans in the…
Towards a History of the Decolonization of International Law. An Introduction to the Special Issue
After an age of excitement of historians and lawyers with renewed interest in the imperial origins and settings of international law, recent scholarship has begun to turn to the history of the field’s decolonization. The Third World Approaches to International Law movement, of course, arose out of and continues to call for a decolonization of international law. But the fact is that, as of today, we know very little in historical terms about how t…
Historiography, Ideology, and Law
This is an introduction to a forum on historiography, ideology, and law. The basic question weaving this forum together concerns the meaning of the term “critical” in the domain of critical legal history, a question that is deeply familiar to historians of all stripes. Ultimately, whether you are a lawyer doing historical work, a historian interested in law, or a historian of a different sort altogether, there is no hiding from the question of co…
Hermann Cohen
On the Domestication of Critical Legal History
Among many of today's legal historians, there is a relatively new and generally unreflective understanding of the relationship between history and method. The landscape is everywhere marked by a tendency to eschew big thinking, grand theory, and programmatic approaches to historical explanation and social transformation. In the place of the grand theory approach to law and history, there is a preference for the minimalist, the pragmatic, the part…
History and Morality and Why History? A History
Thomas Paine and the idea of human rights
What’s wrong with rights
Nigel Biggar's latest book on human rights is really two sets of essays, in some tension with each other—and one of them far more credible, with some modifications that undermine the project on whi
French Democracy between Totalitarianism and Solidarity
Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History
This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities. Collectively, they seek to assess the state of modern European inte…
Empathy in History, Empathizing With Humanity
The Fragility of Empathy After the Holocaust. By Carolyn J. Dean.History in Transit: Experience, Identity, and Critical Theory. By Dominick LaCapra
Savage and Modern Liberty
This article is a study of the trajectory of the contemporary French liberal philosopher Marcel Gauchet from his early, 'anarchist' commitments through the 1970s to his discovery and defense of liberalism, notably as expressed in his 1980 revival and interpretation of his 19th-century countryman Benjamin Constant's post-revolutionary liberalism. Discussed in the article are Gauchet's devotion to and revision of the portrait of primitive society h…
Hannah Arendt on the Secular
This essay shows that Hannah Arendt was a theorist both of secularization as a process and of the secular as a goal of modern politics. It reconstructs these arguments in her corpus, especially On Revolution, and argues that this dimension of her work may have been a response to Carl Schmitt (and is in any event now usefully read in such a way). The essay ends by examining how Arendt might reply to currently influential challengers of a secular p…
Of Savagery and Civil Society
This essay examines the thought of the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres (1938-1977). It situates his once-famous depiction of savage politics as a premonitory rejection of the state at the crossroads of several traditions, long- and short-term. First, Clastres's thought resonates with the primitivistic appeal by French "moralists" since the early modern period to the lifestyle of prehistoric societies; second, it casts light on the history o…
Claude Lefort, Political Anthropology, and Symbolic Division
Judith Shklar on the Philosophy of International Criminal Law
This article revives Judith N. Shklar's Legalism (Harvard University Press, 1964) with an eye to its relevance to international criminal law today. It examines her general jurisprudential outlook, and critique of various prominent mid-century positions, before turning to her account of the Nuremberg Trials. Showing that her defense of those trials may fail, the article concludes by suggesting that the book's failure may make it more relevant to t…
Drones and Imagination
In responding to Paul Kahn’s article, ‘Imagining Warfare’, in this issue, this article points out that features of contemporary drone warfare antedate the contemporary moment, especially in colonial warfare. For this reason, it is more a matter of the novel combination of these features than a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare that drones bring about
From Communist to Muslim
This essay contends that contemporary headscarf and related cases in the European Court of Human Rights draw not solely upon the exclusionary legacy of Western secularism but also upon the exclusionary legacy of Western hostility to secularism. One of the avatars of the contemporary Muslim, whose practices are viewed as inimical by the court to democracy’s essentials, is the communist. This argument is pursued through an examination of the histor…
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 in the History of Cosmopolitanism
The Assumption by Man of His Original Fracturing
This essay reconstructs conceptually and situates historically contemporary French philosopher Marcel Gauchet's theory of the origins and development of modern selfhood. It argues that his history of the self as the interiorization of constitutive alienation, and of the history of self-consciousness as the progressive recognition of this alienation, originated out of a unique combination of historical factors—the radical politics of May 1968, the…
On the Intellectual Origins of Francois Furet's Masterpiece
Between 1971, when François Furet published the first parts of what would become Interpreting the Forench Revolution, and 1977, when he wrote the rest, his identity as a historian and intellectual underwent a radical shift. Surprisingly, however, no one has registered the importance of the simple fact that the text of the finished book is not a unity, either compositionally or conceptually - that, given the lapse of time and the depth of Furet's …
The High Tide of Anticolonial Legalism
For a time in the 1960s it seemed as if one domain in which the global south’s enthusiastic struggle to arrogate the mantle of universalism as an exercise in “worldmaking” was the transformation of international law. Though this struggle was ultimately circumvented by great power politics and newer forms of international law and organization, it was a crucial moment. The introductory prosopographical survey that follows seeks to recapture the con…
Critical theory's generational predicament
Hannah Arendt among the Cold War Liberals
Hannah Arendt wasn't a liberal, she repeatedly declared. Yet in a series of ways she was a fellow traveler of Cold War liberals. And caught up as she also was in neo-imperial and racist entanglements that go entirely unmentioned in promotional accounts of Cold War liberalism and have barely begun to be challenged even today, she helps cast their thought in relief. Yet there is a proviso. From another, exceptional, and unique perspective-that of t…
Die neue Historiographie der Menschenrechte
This essay evaluates the current state of the historiography of human rights, which originated as a field a mere decade ago. It proposes that the substantive contents of norms, doctrines, and law still attract the interest of most historians interested in human rights, but are merely a small part of a necessarily broader domain of inquiry. Promisingly, recent entries in the field focus on the extension of the geographical scale of application of …
Reflections on 'The Last Utopia
Samuel Moyn's The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History challenges the conventions of human rights historiography and offers a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the origins of the global human rights movement. Journal of Human Rights Practice Co-Editor Brian Phillips spoke with Samuel Moyn about The Last Utopia and its reception – and about the future of the global human rights movement – in his office in New York in February 2011
From experience to law
This paper is a study of the origins of Leo Strauss's thought, arguing that its early development must be understood in the context of the philosophy of religion of late Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. More specifically, it shows that Strauss's early works were written against the background of Kantian philosophy and post-Kantian accounts of religious experience, and that his turn towards medieval law as a topic and ideal was precipitated by the c…
Thomas Paine and the idea of human rights
The End of Human Rights History
The sociology of intellectual argument, for all of its strides forward in the intervening century, has not come far since Arthur Schopenhauer’s glum observation that truth most often enjoys ‘only a short victory celebration between the two long periods of time when it is condemned as paradoxical or disparaged as trivial’.1 Discovered since is that the truth is hostage not just to banalization but also to specialization: the hectic journey from pa…
Is Revelation in the World
Is Revelation in the World? Moyn Samuel (bio) One of the most pivotal moments of Peter Eli Gordon's masterful Rosenzweig and Heidegger occurs when, late in its pages and at long last, he turns to the fact that its titular protagonists were not just Jew and German, artificially divided from one another by the vagaries of later history. They were also theist and atheist: one believed in God and the other did not. And each staked out his commitment …
Amos Funkenstein on the Theological Origins of Historicism
This paper is a study of the account offered by Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) of the origins of modern historical thought. It investigates the German origins of his project, offers an overview of the developments he found in historical thinking from the Hebrew Bible to the twentieth century, compares his project to existing tendencies in scholarship, and offers a critical analysis of its uses and limits. The main thesis of the paper is that Funken…
After Utopia
A political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century After Utopia was Judith Shklar’s first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. In After Utopia , Shklar explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultu…
German Jewry and the Question of Identity
German Jewry and the Question of Identity: Historiography and Theory Get access Samuel Moyn Samuel Moyn Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Volume 41, Issue 1, January 1996, Pages 291–308, https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/41.1.291 Published: 01 January 1996
Metaphorically Speaking
Research Article| June 01 2000 Metaphorically Speaking: Hans Blumenberg, Giambattista Vico, and the Problem of Origins Samuel Moyn Samuel Moyn Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Qui Parle (2000) 12 (1): 55–76. https://doi.org/10.1215/quiparle.12.1.55 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Samuel Moyn; Metaphorically Speaking: Hans Blumenberg, Giambattista Vico, and the Problem of Origins. …
The Politics of Economy
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Amos Funkenstein on the Theological Origins of Historicism
This paper is a study of the account offered by Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) of the origins of modern historical thought. It investigates the German origins of his project, offers an overview of the developments he found in historical thinking from the Hebrew Bible to the twentieth century, compares his project to existing tendencies in scholarship, and offers a critical analysis of its uses and limits. The main thesis of the paper is that Funken…
The Ghosts of Totalitarianism
Tzvetan Todorov's book, originally published in 2000 in French and now available in a superb translation, paused at the end of a violent century to attempt to assess-as the title and subtitle suggest-how to remember it and what lessons to learn. A contemporary figure in the long tradition of French-speaking moralists, Todorov writes beautifully and with ethical passion about some of the darkest crimes in humanity's recent history. For Todorov, th…
Transcendence, Morality, and History
Of Savagery and Civil Society
This essay examines the thought of the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres (1938-1977). It situates his once-famous depiction of savage politics as a premonitory rejection of the state at the crossroads of several traditions, long- and short-term. First, Clastres's thought resonates with the primitivistic appeal by French "moralists" since the early modern period to the lifestyle of prehistoric societies; second, it casts light on the history o…
French Democracy between Totalitarianism and Solidarity
Divine and Human Love
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
A Holocaust Controversy
Origins of the other
Savage and Modern Liberty
This article is a study of the trajectory of the contemporary French liberal philosopher Marcel Gauchet from his early, 'anarchist' commitments through the 1970s to his discovery and defense of liberalism, notably as expressed in his 1980 revival and interpretation of his 19th-century countryman Benjamin Constant's post-revolutionary liberalism. Discussed in the article are Gauchet's devotion to and revision of the portrait of primitive society h…
Is Revelation in the World
Is Revelation in the World? Moyn Samuel (bio) One of the most pivotal moments of Peter Eli Gordon's masterful Rosenzweig and Heidegger occurs when, late in its pages and at long last, he turns to the fact that its titular protagonists were not just Jew and German, artificially divided from one another by the vagaries of later history. They were also theist and atheist: one believed in God and the other did not. And each staked out his commitment …
Empathy in History, Empathizing With Humanity
The Fragility of Empathy After the Holocaust. By Carolyn J. Dean.History in Transit: Experience, Identity, and Critical Theory. By Dominick LaCapra
From experience to law
This paper is a study of the origins of Leo Strauss's thought, arguing that its early development must be understood in the context of the philosophy of religion of late Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. More specifically, it shows that Strauss's early works were written against the background of Kantian philosophy and post-Kantian accounts of religious experience, and that his turn towards medieval law as a topic and ideal was precipitated by the c…
Exclusion and Hierarchy
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Intellectual History and Democracy
Brief introduction to an interview with Pierre Rosanvallon, conducted by Javier Fernández Sebastián, in Madrid, September 28, 2006
Amos Funkenstein on the Theological Origins of Historicism
When I look at this age with the eye of a distant future, I find nothing so remarkable in the man of the present day as his peculiar virtue and sickness called "the historical sense."-Friedrich NietzscheThe meaning of history (as a whole) and the meaning in history (of its facts) underwent a revolution of no less significance than the revolution in the natural sciences.Again we wonder: how radical was this break, what precisely was new in this "N…
Modernist Imagination
The Europeanization of the World
On the Intellectual Origins of Francois Furet's Masterpiece
Between 1971, when François Furet published the first parts of what would become Interpreting the Forench Revolution, and 1977, when he wrote the rest, his identity as a historian and intellectual underwent a radical shift. Surprisingly, however, no one has registered the importance of the simple fact that the text of the finished book is not a unity, either compositionally or conceptually - that, given the lapse of time and the depth of Furet's …
Hannah Arendt on the Secular
This essay shows that Hannah Arendt was a theorist both of secularization as a process and of the secular as a goal of modern politics. It reconstructs these arguments in her corpus, especially On Revolution, and argues that this dimension of her work may have been a response to Carl Schmitt (and is in any event now usefully read in such a way). The essay ends by examining how Arendt might reply to currently influential challengers of a secular p…
The Assumption by Man of His Original Fracturing
This essay reconstructs conceptually and situates historically contemporary French philosopher Marcel Gauchet's theory of the origins and development of modern selfhood. It argues that his history of the self as the interiorization of constitutive alienation, and of the history of self-consciousness as the progressive recognition of this alienation, originated out of a unique combination of historical factors—the radical politics of May 1968, the…
Antisemitism, philosemitism and the rise of Holocaust memory
Moyn's article is primarily a theoretical consideration of whether philosemitism can and should be studied as a ‘cultural code’ in precise historical contexts, just as antisemitism has been. To illustrate, it takes up controversies around works by Roger Peyrefitte and Jean-François Steiner in France in the mid-1960s, arguing that their books, including their reception, mobilized a temporary cultural code based on flirting with antisemitism in the…
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