Astrid von Busekist

The book deals with three specific encounters between the law and religious commandments: “separationism”, “composition”, and “cooperation” (homeschooling, circumcision, the “Get-laws”), and how legal practitioners handle hard cases on a pragmatic basis. Its distinctiveness might me summarized as follows: The book is based on 3 empirical real-life scenarios (see Introduction) involving confrontations between religious commandments and secular law; conflicts between fundamental principles of different normative orders. Instead of asking how the liberal constitutionalism should normatively handle these cases (as the books and articles of my competitors listed below do), I suggest that the threshold between permissible / compatible religious practices is moving and should be treated contextually and pragmatically. My main claim is that there is not one single version of “secularism” (or “laïcité” in the French context), but a multiplicity of possible dialogues between representatives of faith communities and representatives of the legal / political community. My scenarios show that decisions are guided by a context-specific balance between democratic values, foremost equality and freedom. Sometimes these cardinal values conflict and judges must rank them. The articulation between religion and politics is not stable, not written in advance, not subsumable under a clear rule; legal principles are not hierarchically ordered a priori as all my cases show, even first-order principles (freedom/equality) must sometimes be weighed against each other. I try to theorize each of these pragmatic interactions under the umbrella-concept of “deliberalism” and show that my scenarios display three different types of interaction between orders that range from a strong separation to outright cooperation. The counterintuitive dimension of my book is to say that even in a very well-documented field, (Church and state-relations), secularism is not a thick concept, not a theory, but a practice.

Michael Walzer is one of the pre-eminent political theorists in the world today and also a prominent public intellectual. His conception of social justice and his work on just and unjust wars have been hugely influential in political theory and, at the same time, he has taken a public stand on many of the great issues of our time, from the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War to 9/11, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq War. He stands out among political theorists and philosophers by virtue of his attention to historical reality and his sensitivity to social and political context. Convinced that philosophical debate is only useful if it is rooted in the concrete practices and morality of societies, he develops a form of social critique that is opposed to a disembodied philosophy which does not respond to concerns of ordinary people. For Walzer, it is useless to try to write a theory of justice: the challenge is to think through issues of justice in relation to the particular contexts in which people live out their lives. The core strength of his work is his practical instinct: if individuals are contextualized, critique must be too. This book takes the form of an extended conversation between Walzer and Astrid von Busekist, ranging from Walzer’s biography and political activism to his work on war, justice and Judaism. Weaving together his theoretical work and his political activism, it provides an outstanding introduction to the life and work of one of the most influential political theorists of our time.

Michael Walzer is one of the pre-eminent political theorists in the world today and also a prominent public intellectual. His conception of social justice and his work on just and unjust wars have been hugely influential in political theory and, at the same time, he has taken a public stand on many of the great issues of our time, from the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War to 9/11, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq War. He stands out among political theorists and philosophers by virtue of his attention to historical reality and his sensitivity to social and political context. Convinced that philosophical debate is only useful if it is rooted in the concrete practices and morality of societies, he develops a form of social critique that is opposed to a disembodied philosophy which does not respond to concerns of ordinary people. For Walzer, it is useless to try to write a theory of justice: the challenge is to think through issues of justice in relation to the particular contexts in which people live out their lives. The core strength of his work is his practical instinct: if individuals are contextualized, critique must be too. This book takes the form of an extended conversation between Walzer and Astrid von Busekist, ranging from Walzer’s biography and political activism to his work on war, justice and Judaism. Weaving together his theoretical work and his political activism, it provides an outstanding introduction to the life and work of one of the most influential political theorists of our time.