Joshua L Cherni
Biographic Data
| ID | 444354 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joshua L Cherni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joshua L |
| FAMILY NAME | Cherni |
| SIGNATURE | CHERNI J L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8399-6402 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
In Defense of Liberal Limits and a Limited Liberalism
There is much to praise in Freedom from Fear , including Kahan’s compelling case that liberalism must be studied in relation to the concrete conditions which shaped liberal fears and hopes; his fair-minded exploration of liberalism’s complex relationships with democracy, religion, imperialism, feminism, and economic transformation; and his recovery of important, oft-neglected figures. But, as Kahan reminds us, liberalism valorizes conflict. Accor…
Aestheticizing Heroism for an Aesthetic Liberalism: Isaiah Berlin on Heroes and Hero Worship
Among many conundrums in Isaiah Berlin's thought are the apparent tension between a strongly “personalist” approach to ideas and appreciation for Romanticism, and his warnings against the identification of freedom with human perfection and of politics with aesthetic projects, and aversion to any form of excessive “zeal,” as potentially oppressive, callous, and cruel. Berlin the moderate, skeptical liberal coexisted with Berlin the enthusiast and …
The Burden of Loneliness and the Virtue of Solitude: On Raymond Aron and Albert Camus
Isaiah Berlin and the Aesthetics of Liberalism Introduction: An Aesthetic Approach to Intellectual History? Isaiah Berlin and the Ethos of Liberalism
As a collection of methods oriented toward the artefacts of human expression and the minds that shaped those expressions, intellectual history seems well placed to mobilize the category of the aesthetic, yet the aesthetic is rarely a focus on methodological discussions. The special forum that this article introduces explores what an “aesthetic approach” to intellectual history might look like. It focuses on the work of leading twentieth-century l…
History, method and ethos: A response to the symposium on Liberalism in Dark Times
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Seymour B. Sarason, The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972). This citation reflects a patrimony from one of my first, dearest teachers; see Cary Cherniss, ‘Seymour Sarason and the Creation of Settings’, Journal of Community Psychology 40, no. 2 (2012): 209–14.2 Liberalism in Dark Times, 205 (italics added).3 …
Six Variations on Michael Rosen's The Shadow of God
Michael Rosen’s The Shadow of God illustrates a distinctive way of understanding the relationship between ideas and history, while posing several connected questions. Among these are how the human condition of alienation may be overcome in a way that is ethically and intellectually defensible; how the search for reconciliation may generate, paradoxically, further alienation, and inspire terrible inhumanity; and whether a meaningful and good human…
Heroes, Critics, and Teachers: Thinking with Stanley Hoffmann and Albert Camus
Unusually for a scholar of international affairs working within the confines of academic social science, Stanley Hoffmann resisted tendencies to divorce descriptive and analytical work from ethical considerations, to study politics in isolation from culture and personal experience, and to focus on institutions and systems rather than individuals. All of these elements of intellectual non-conformity found expression in—and also reflected the influ…
Isaiah Berlin: Russo-Jewish Roots, Liberal Commitments, and the Ethos of Pluralism
A Tempered Liberalism: Political Ethics and Ethos in Reinhold Niebuhr's Thought
This article examines Reinhold Niebuhr's contributions both to twentieth-century liberalism and to reflection on liberalism's relationship to political ethics. These contributions are, I argue, twofold. First, Niebuhr's account of moral psychology chastens liberal ambitions and assumptions, offering a more “realistic” liberalism (while avoiding certain weaknesses of “realist” theories). Second, Niebuhr's thought points to the importance of ethos—…
An Ethos of Politics between Realism and Idealism: Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics
Recent scholarship has stressed the centrality of ethical concerns to Weber's thought, while leaving the nature and implications of his ethical stance, and the relationship between his ethical views and political positions, disputed. This article shows how Weber sought to analyze the influence of different types of personal character or spirit—or "ethos"—on politics; and to inculcate an ethos that might save politicians from the dangers of moral …
B erlin, I saiah (1909–97)
A leading liberal political theorist of the mid‐twentieth century and influential historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin contributed significantly to the study of nationalist thought by historians and political theorists. As a historian of ideas with a particular interest in the troubled legacy of the Enlightenment and its critics in the nineteenth century, Berlin traced the emergence—for good and ill—of nationalism as a political ideology. As a polit…
A Mind and its Time: The Development of Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought
This book offers a detailed account of the genesis and development of Isaiah Berlin’s political thought, philosophical views, and historical understanding, locating his evolving intellectual interests and political positions in the context of the events and trends of inter-war and post-war intellectual and political life. Special emphasis is placed on the roots of Berlin’s later pluralism in philosophical and cultural debates of the inter-war per…
Isaiah Berlin’s thought and its legacy: Critical reflections on a symposium
The papers published in this issue of the EJPT discuss facets of the work of Isaiah Berlin from different perspectives and making use of varying intellectual approaches. At the same time, they focus attention on a few, central themes of Berlin's work: his complex relationship to liberalism and nationalism, his theories of liberty and value pluralism, and his perception and uses of the history of ideas. Consideration of the differences and overlap…
An Ethos of Politics between Realism and Idealism: Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics
Recent scholarship has stressed the centrality of ethical concerns to Weber's thought, while leaving the nature and implications of his ethical stance, and the relationship between his ethical views and political positions, disputed. This article shows how Weber sought to analyze the influence of different types of personal character or spirit—or "ethos"—on politics; and to inculcate an ethos that might save politicians from the dangers of moral …
A Tempered Liberalism: Political Ethics and Ethos in Reinhold Niebuhr's Thought
This article examines Reinhold Niebuhr's contributions both to twentieth-century liberalism and to reflection on liberalism's relationship to political ethics. These contributions are, I argue, twofold. First, Niebuhr's account of moral psychology chastens liberal ambitions and assumptions, offering a more “realistic” liberalism (while avoiding certain weaknesses of “realist” theories). Second, Niebuhr's thought points to the importance of ethos—…
Six Variations on Michael Rosen's The Shadow of God
Michael Rosen’s The Shadow of God illustrates a distinctive way of understanding the relationship between ideas and history, while posing several connected questions. Among these are how the human condition of alienation may be overcome in a way that is ethically and intellectually defensible; how the search for reconciliation may generate, paradoxically, further alienation, and inspire terrible inhumanity; and whether a meaningful and good human…
Isaiah Berlin: Russo-Jewish Roots, Liberal Commitments, and the Ethos of Pluralism
Isaiah Berlin’s thought and its legacy: Critical reflections on a symposium
The papers published in this issue of the EJPT discuss facets of the work of Isaiah Berlin from different perspectives and making use of varying intellectual approaches. At the same time, they focus attention on a few, central themes of Berlin's work: his complex relationship to liberalism and nationalism, his theories of liberty and value pluralism, and his perception and uses of the history of ideas. Consideration of the differences and overlap…
A Mind and its Time: The Development of Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought
This book offers a detailed account of the genesis and development of Isaiah Berlin’s political thought, philosophical views, and historical understanding, locating his evolving intellectual interests and political positions in the context of the events and trends of inter-war and post-war intellectual and political life. Special emphasis is placed on the roots of Berlin’s later pluralism in philosophical and cultural debates of the inter-war per…
B erlin, I saiah (1909–97)
A leading liberal political theorist of the mid‐twentieth century and influential historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin contributed significantly to the study of nationalist thought by historians and political theorists. As a historian of ideas with a particular interest in the troubled legacy of the Enlightenment and its critics in the nineteenth century, Berlin traced the emergence—for good and ill—of nationalism as a political ideology. As a polit…
A Tempered Liberalism: Political Ethics and Ethos in Reinhold Niebuhr's Thought
This article examines Reinhold Niebuhr's contributions both to twentieth-century liberalism and to reflection on liberalism's relationship to political ethics. These contributions are, I argue, twofold. First, Niebuhr's account of moral psychology chastens liberal ambitions and assumptions, offering a more “realistic” liberalism (while avoiding certain weaknesses of “realist” theories). Second, Niebuhr's thought points to the importance of ethos—…
An Ethos of Politics between Realism and Idealism: Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics
Recent scholarship has stressed the centrality of ethical concerns to Weber's thought, while leaving the nature and implications of his ethical stance, and the relationship between his ethical views and political positions, disputed. This article shows how Weber sought to analyze the influence of different types of personal character or spirit—or "ethos"—on politics; and to inculcate an ethos that might save politicians from the dangers of moral …
Isaiah Berlin: Russo-Jewish Roots, Liberal Commitments, and the Ethos of Pluralism
Heroes, Critics, and Teachers: Thinking with Stanley Hoffmann and Albert Camus
Unusually for a scholar of international affairs working within the confines of academic social science, Stanley Hoffmann resisted tendencies to divorce descriptive and analytical work from ethical considerations, to study politics in isolation from culture and personal experience, and to focus on institutions and systems rather than individuals. All of these elements of intellectual non-conformity found expression in—and also reflected the influ…
History, method and ethos: A response to the symposium on Liberalism in Dark Times
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Seymour B. Sarason, The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972). This citation reflects a patrimony from one of my first, dearest teachers; see Cary Cherniss, ‘Seymour Sarason and the Creation of Settings’, Journal of Community Psychology 40, no. 2 (2012): 209–14.2 Liberalism in Dark Times, 205 (italics added).3 …
Six Variations on Michael Rosen's The Shadow of God
Michael Rosen’s The Shadow of God illustrates a distinctive way of understanding the relationship between ideas and history, while posing several connected questions. Among these are how the human condition of alienation may be overcome in a way that is ethically and intellectually defensible; how the search for reconciliation may generate, paradoxically, further alienation, and inspire terrible inhumanity; and whether a meaningful and good human…
Isaiah Berlin and the Aesthetics of Liberalism Introduction: An Aesthetic Approach to Intellectual History? Isaiah Berlin and the Ethos of Liberalism
As a collection of methods oriented toward the artefacts of human expression and the minds that shaped those expressions, intellectual history seems well placed to mobilize the category of the aesthetic, yet the aesthetic is rarely a focus on methodological discussions. The special forum that this article introduces explores what an “aesthetic approach” to intellectual history might look like. It focuses on the work of leading twentieth-century l…
In Defense of Liberal Limits and a Limited Liberalism
There is much to praise in Freedom from Fear , including Kahan’s compelling case that liberalism must be studied in relation to the concrete conditions which shaped liberal fears and hopes; his fair-minded exploration of liberalism’s complex relationships with democracy, religion, imperialism, feminism, and economic transformation; and his recovery of important, oft-neglected figures. But, as Kahan reminds us, liberalism valorizes conflict. Accor…
Aestheticizing Heroism for an Aesthetic Liberalism: Isaiah Berlin on Heroes and Hero Worship
Among many conundrums in Isaiah Berlin's thought are the apparent tension between a strongly “personalist” approach to ideas and appreciation for Romanticism, and his warnings against the identification of freedom with human perfection and of politics with aesthetic projects, and aversion to any form of excessive “zeal,” as potentially oppressive, callous, and cruel. Berlin the moderate, skeptical liberal coexisted with Berlin the enthusiast and …
The Burden of Loneliness and the Virtue of Solitude: On Raymond Aron and Albert Camus
Law (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Environmental ethics (7 works)