Paperback

eBook

Add to GoodReads

Intolerance

Political Animals and Their Prey

Edited by Robert E. Tully and Bruce Chilton

Aristotle accurately characterized humans as political animals. Whether through birth or from choice, people naturally cluster into groups for protection, advancement, and the pursuit of well-being. But Aristotle’s description does not hint at the powerful binary tension within this human tendency. Leaders enhance a social group’s sense of identity by appealing to the members’ commitments and shared traditions, to their hopes, strengths, sacrifices, and fears. Often, however, they cultivate not only an awareness of difference but even a sense of superiority, since for every social group there are those outsider, the “them”. Maintaining a group’s solidarity can too easily lead to the righteousness of intolerance towards those who are excluded. The reinforcement of group-identity in this way runs so deep in human nature that holding up a mirror to ourselves inevitably reveals a split image: the people we want to see and the people we’re glad we’re not. Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey presents stark examples of how the “us” have treated the “them”. The papers in this volume hold up various unflattering mirrors of intolerance from the areas of History, Law, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion. The authors of these scholarly studies do not condemn. Rather, their research compels us to look at ourselves as the political animals we are.

Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey is the product of a year-long multi-disciplinary collaboration between faculty members of Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. The project involved parallel seminar courses at both institutions along with Joint Sessions, all focused on the central theme of intolerance, and culminated in a three-day academic Conference at Bard in the Spring of 2015. This volume inaugurates a new series being published by Hamilton Books under the general title, Dialogues on Social Issues: Bard College and West Point.

Hamilton Books

Pages: 328 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-0-7618-6915-3 • Paperback • July 2017 • $49.99 • (£38.00)

978-0-7618-6916-0 • eBook • July 2017 • $47.50 • (£37.00)

Series: Dialogues on Social Issues: Bard College and West Point

Subjects: Political Science / Civil Rights, Political Science / Commentary & Opinion, Religion / Comparative Religion, Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations

Intolerance

Political Animals and Their Prey

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Aristotle accurately characterized humans as political animals. Whether through birth or from choice, people naturally cluster into groups for protection, advancement, and the pursuit of well-being. But Aristotle’s description does not hint at the powerful binary tension within this human tendency. Leaders enhance a social group’s sense of identity by appealing to the members’ commitments and shared traditions, to their hopes, strengths, sacrifices, and fears. Often, however, they cultivate not only an awareness of difference but even a sense of superiority, since for every social group there are those outsider, the “them”. Maintaining a group’s solidarity can too easily lead to the righteousness of intolerance towards those who are excluded. The reinforcement of group-identity in this way runs so deep in human nature that holding up a mirror to ourselves inevitably reveals a split image: the people we want to see and the people we’re glad we’re not. Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey presents stark examples of how the “us” have treated the “them”. The papers in this volume hold up various unflattering mirrors of intolerance from the areas of History, Law, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion. The authors of these scholarly studies do not condemn. Rather, their research compels us to look at ourselves as the political animals we are.

Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey is the product of a year-long multi-disciplinary collaboration between faculty members of Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. The project involved parallel seminar courses at both institutions along with Joint Sessions, all focused on the central theme of intolerance, and culminated in a three-day academic Conference at Bard in the Spring of 2015. This volume inaugurates a new series being published by Hamilton Books under the general title, Dialogues on Social Issues: Bard College and West Point.

Details

Hamilton Books

Pages: 328 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-0-7618-6915-3 • Paperback • July 2017 • $49.99 • (£38.00)

978-0-7618-6916-0 • eBook • July 2017 • $47.50 • (£37.00)

Series: Dialogues on Social Issues: Bard College and West Point

Subjects: Political Science / Civil Rights, Political Science / Commentary & Opinion, Religion / Comparative Religion, Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations

Author

Bruce Chilton is Bernard Iddings Professor of Religion at Bard College. His books include Rabbi Jesus, A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible, The Temple of Jesus, Pure Kingdom, and Visions of the Apocalypse. He has written the first critical commentary on the Aramaic version of Isaiah (The Isaiah Targum).

Robert Tully is Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He co-authored with Frederic Portoraro a textbook on symbolic logic and has published many articles on Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein. With Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner he edited Just War in Religion and Politics, to which he also contributed an essay.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Bruce Chilton
Part I: Warfare
Barbarians at the Gates: the Complexities, Contradictions and Concerns about Modern Asymmetrical Warfare, David Wallace and Cynthia Marshall
Walzer Contra Walzer: Uncovering the Pluralist Roots of Walzer’s Just War Theory, Graham Parsons
The Hegemon’s Dilemma: Power Intolerance from Ancient Athens to the United States of America, Scott A. Silverstone
Means and Methods of Warfare: Towards an Objective Assessment for Selecting Military Targets—Beyond “Enemy Thinking”? Mirjam de Bruin
Part II: Internal divisions
From Slavery to Black Power: Racial Intolerance at West Point, 1778–2015, Ty Seidule
All Men Are Created Equal: Misogyny under Law, Maritza Ryan
Part III: Religious intolerance
On Religious (in)Tolerance, Nelly Lahoud
Theological Complicity in Religious Violence, Ellen T. Charry
“And who is my neighbor?” American Liberators in Transnational Context, Stephen F. Barker
Poisoned Virtue: Child Sacrifice in Abrahamic Scriptures and Interpretation, Bruce Chilton
Part IV: Political and philosophical considerations
Plagues and Politics: Epidemics and “Re-Framing” in Modern American History, Andrew J. Forney
Residue of Intolerance: Polluting Civil Rights, Robert J. Goldstein
Cynicism and Perennial Intolerance: Mendelssohn against the Decisionists, Dustin Atlas
Overcoming Modernity and Violence, Gennady Shkliarevsky
Contrariety in Philosophy, Robert E. Tully
Who Takes Whom to Tango: UN Neoliberal Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, Darya Pushkina and Philippe Ch.-A. Guillot with Susanna An
Epilogue: A Taxonomy of Intolerance, Robert E. Tully
List of contributors
Index

Intolerance

Political Animals and Their Prey

Edited by Robert E. Tully and Bruce Chilton

Intolerance

Political Animals and Their Prey

ALSO AVAILABLE