Get Hold Of The Paradox Of Liberation: Secular Revolutions And Religious Counterrevolutions Conceptualized By Michael Walzer Accessible In Readable Copy

thoughtprovoking reflection on why secular national liberation movements are so often challenged by militant religious revivals

Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals.
Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness, Michael Walzer, one of Americas foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultraOrthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals.
In his provocative, wellreasoned discussion, Walzer asks, Why have these secular democratic movements been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republicthereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.
Habermas coined the term postsecularism in response to the global rise of religious fundamentalism, Pluralism, equality and liberty have increasingly become the target of zealotry religious politics, Walzer's Paradox of Liberation makes a great addition on the literature revolving nationalism, liberation and its relation to religion, Through a profound casestudy Walzer analyses three national liberation revolutions FLN in Algeria, Labour Zionism in Israel amp the Indian National Congress in India and observes that the liberators approach renders a religious counterrevolution.


The liberators Fanon, Herzl and Nehru had a chance to emancipate a nation or people by liberating them from colonial oppression.
While doing this they failed to embrace the cultural and religious heritage of the people, but used it merely as a means of instrumentalization to remain a unity during the process of liberalization.
Walzer argues that if the liberationist would indeed have embraced rather than subdued the traditions, the accomplishments attained by the liberators might have not been reversed.


In my opinion Walzer should not have overdrawn the comparison and should have sticked to the analysis of the individual cases.
The diagnosis is very articulate and clear, but the further consequences and solutions proposed are rather parsimonious, Later in the book he proposes a strategy of negotiation that is a dialectical cocktail of religious bottomdown traditions and bottomup liberalising reforms.
A “Gramscian equilibrium” must be reached, This can be attained by still remaining critical of religion, while taking into account the religious tradition, This is a rather vague solution to a very articulate description of a problem,

Despite the critique I can wholeheartedly recommend reading this book, Its not long and the insights are well worth reading, sitelink by Bob Goldfarb for the Jewish Book Council, Basically, Walzer speaks from the standpoint that the secular and militant revolutionaries are the pioneers of their time, who is also morally superior than their countrymen who are religious and massive in numbers.
Meh. It's more just a short historical survey of a few instances of instances of national liberation movements than it is anything substantive.
És un bon llibre "La paradoxa de l'alliberament, Revolucions seculars i contrarevolucions religioses", del filòsof polític estatunidenc Michael Walzer edició en valencià, Institució Alfons el Magnànim,.
A partir dels casos d'Israel, l'Índia i Algèria, mostra com revolucions anticolonialistes secularistes han acabat, dècades després, amb moviments fonamentalistes religiosos molt forts, en el poder o contestant de manera important el poder establert.
Al capdavall, s'ha produït "una guerra cultural entre els llibertadors i els que podríem anomenar tradicionalistes", ja que "tant el fonamentalisme com la ultraortodòxia són reaccions modernistes a les temptatives de transformació modernista".


És interessant el que descriu Walzer: "La cultura de l'alliberament sembla que era massa prima per a fornir una base sòlida a aquest tipus de gent i permetre'ls una reproducció escaient.
El rebuig radical del passat va deixar, per dirho així, massa poc material per a la construcció cultural, " De fet, afig que "Marx potser tenia raó quant a la importància dels interessos de classe, però no hi ha dubte que s'equivocava pel que fa a la capacitat d'atracció relativa de la política basada en la classe i la basada en la nació"

Walzer proposa l'alliberament com un procés permanent: "Qui estiga a favor d'aquest tipus d'alliberament de pobles, nacions o grupos religiosos haurà de ser favorable a la seua replicació.
Seria moralment incoherent, a més de bastant demencial, imaginar que el procés s'atura amb mi, o amb tu i a mi, o amb nosaltres".

Potser el punt més polèmic és quan afirma que "la tradició ha de ser reconeguda i les seues diferents parts incorporades, com reclamava el poeta Bialik: recollida, traduïda, incorporada a la cultura de nou".
Però, en tot cas, haurà de ser traduïda de tal manera que no impedisca els drets de les dones ni de qualsevol minoria, no, senyor Walzer

"La paradoxa de l'alliberament" és una proposta suggeridora per a pensar les societats actuals i què fer davant de la resposta a la secularització, una amenaça en molts casos a les llibertats públiques i als drets humans.


El llibre pertany a la collecció "Pensament i Societat", que dirigeix Gustau Muñoz, Gràcies per acostarnos aquest assaig escrit originàriament en anglés i gràcies també als companys del Magnànim per la producció, l'administració i la difusió del llibre.


Més informació a sitelink alfonselmagnanim. net/libr

elsmeusllibres llibresenvalencià llibresencatalà Here Walzer asks why such a gap exists between the liberator and the liberated, in the cases of the revolutions of Israel, Algeria, and India in particular, while avoiding the pitfalls of offering some unhelpful romantic notions king to “let the people rule.
” Walzer admits of a contradiction on the part of the liberatorsthat their vision is a contradiction between deep sympathy for their capture in a submissive and particularly stagnant traditionalist outlook in which people are never seen to be masters of their own affairs and deep hostility towards these same peoples sometimes full throated acceptance of their subordinate positions for those they wish to liberate.


In addition to analyzing this problem, Walzer is also careful not to throw out nationalist movements towards liberation entirely, shying away from while expressing an understanding of the conclusion that the reason why nationalist movements collapse into parochialism is because of the very fact that nationalism itself is parochial a Marxist critique.
Walzer treads carefully here, since he at no point gives up on the

idea of universalist principlesyet, he is able to recognize that “national” or “religious” or whatever customary proclivities specific to cultures can serve as useful vehicles to delivering a message of liberation that might otherwise strike people as distasteful or merely provocative.
Walzer insists and how could we not give some credence to his point of view that even if Marx was correct in his emphasis on the importance of class interests, he was wrong about the appeal of class and nation based politics.


Included in this short book are insights in the specificities of failures within the three states to either deliver on or live up to their own liberationist rhetoric, and how this resulted in the flourishing of reactionary movements which chipped away at gains made in establishing more egalitarian societiesthat, in being tenaciously insistent on the purity of their rhetoric, they lost sight of the need to deliver it through a compelling aesthetic program that would make such things palpable for people ingeneral.
Overall, The Paradox of Liberation was a very clear and simple exploration of the need to consider the relationship of theory and practice in liberation movements.
Michael Walzer has been around for a while: as an undergraduate, I read a book of his when I was studyingth Century English history, which I recall enjoying.
I've read a couple of media pieces since, so coming across this book in what are the usual circumstances these days, i.
e. new and for not much when on my travels, made it an instant purchase, to say nothing of the title.


Walzer examines what he identifies assecular revolutions: in Algeria, Israel and India and comments in each case on what might be called a backlash by relevant religious groups.
In each case, the groups leading the creation of an independent nation, are described as a minority, not religiously inclined and somewhat dismissive of those who are.


The presumptions among the leaders of these groups is what might be described as a Western Enlightenment view of inevitable progress, that a nonreligious approach is essential for the development of a modern nation and that the benefits of the kind of equality aimed at by these new states, are obvious and that everyone will eventually go along with them.
A key example is the rights of women, and also equality before the law,

Walzer explains how this didn't come about and provides a number of reasons for each country, a key one being the lack of consultation with the various religious groups as well as dismissing their beliefs anyway as ideas that will disappear over time.
He presents a specific time period, aroundyears, for all of these nation states, as the gap between secular revolution as defined and religious counterrevolution.


The book is taken from a series of Lectures given by Walzer and are clearly written, His propositions are put forward and the agreements and disagreements of others are put without rancour, So it isn't a polemic or similar text: he presents his view and invites you to consider it,

In a postscript, he deals with what were queries from students presenting the United States as a similar case, given the Second Great Awakening, and expertly shows why his framework doesn't apply, giving historical and relgious reasons and quoting from contemporaries.


I found this book informative on a number of levels, including a general experience of a revival of religious sentiment, for want of a better term, over the past few decades, notably in the United States, as well as, in the general sense, a decline in listening to people of expertise.
There are a number of factors as well, but recent times have seen a rejection of what might be called liberal democratic ideas of earlier decades,.


To be honest this term isn't one I like, but it seems to have current recognition and a key component is a challenge to the idea of democracy, which in a practical sense is fairly recent and a label all to liberally applied.
Antidemocratic actions and beliefs appear to be coming from everywhere, particularly the corporate world, which in a way isn't surprising, from my knowledge and experience anyway.


While none of this is discussed in Walzer's book, these thought came to mind, and so his propositions are woth examining and adapting, particularly for those who, consciously or not, have a view of the world they consider superior to other people's and so act both in a patronising way and don't listen to relevant concerns.
Insightful booklet.

Here arequotes:
"Giving up negation doesnt mean acceptance it means, again, intellectual and political engagement, "
"The best moral and political arguments are ones that derive from or connect with the inherited culture of the people who need to be convinced.
"

Intrigued me to read more onth century America from the religious perspective! Michael Walzer is a Jewish American political philosopher and public intellectual.
A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he is editor of the political intellectual quarterly Dissent.
He has written books and essays on a wide range of topics, including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, economic justice, social criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation and is a contributing editor to The New Republic.
To date, he has writtenbooks and published overarticles, essays, and book reviews in Dissent, The New Republic, The New York Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many scholarly journals.