Books by Roy Ben-Shai
Critique of Critique, 2023
What is critique? How is it used and abused? At a moment when popular discourse is saturated with... more What is critique? How is it used and abused? At a moment when popular discourse is saturated with voices confronting each other about not being critical enough, while academic discourses proclaim to have moved past critique, this book reawakens the foundational question of what 'critique' is in the first place. Roy Ben-Shai inspects critique as an orientation of critical thinking, probing its structures and assumptions, its limits and its risks, its history and its possibilities. The book is a journey through a landscape of ideas, images, and texts from diverse sources—theological, psychological, etymological, and artistic, but mainly across the history of philosophy, from Plato and Saint Augustine, through Kant and Hegel, Marx and Heidegger, up to contemporary critical theory. [Attached are the book's opening sections--Introduction and Overture].
"The Politics of Nihilism: From the Nineteenth Century to Contemporary Israel", Sep 25, 2014
Papers by Roy Ben-Shai
עיון: כתב עת לפילוסופיה, 2023
מאמר קצר על ספרו של אמרי על הזיקנה, לרגל תרגומו לעברית (לינק מצורף)
Jean Améry, 2019
This essay underscores distinguishing and consistent features of Amery’s original work, as reflec... more This essay underscores distinguishing and consistent features of Amery’s original work, as reflected in methodological passages from At the Mind’s Limits, On Aging, and On Suicide. The ensuing picture of Amery’s thought shows an intricate relation to the idea (or ideal) of philosophy as fabricated by its founders (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle). Philosophia means the Love of Wisdom, and philosophy was traditionally portrayed as the best and worthiest life. In his original work, as well as in his life, Amery presents a profoundly different image of the philosopher and of the contemplative life: the philosopher as not a particularly good thinker (or a particularly good person for that matter), and the contemplative life as not a good one at all. Instead of love, one finds in Amery a very nuanced conception of empathy and the effort to cultivate human relationships, precisely in those regions where affinity and fondness are lacking. Instead of wisdom, we find in him a devotion to honesty and the cultivation of thoughtfulness, especially in those “twilight” regions that seem most difficult and unrewarding to thought.
In his book about the Holocaust, At the Mind's Limits, Jean Améry proposes a novel answer to the ... more In his book about the Holocaust, At the Mind's Limits, Jean Améry proposes a novel answer to the question, what is enlightenment. He takes issue with Kant's reduction of the enlightenment and morality to freedom and agency, and instead promotes a thinking that centers on passivity and victimhood. I reconstruct Améry's argument in explicit confrontation with Kant's philosophy. This reconstruction suggests that we can read a "fifth antinomy" in Améry's essay on torture, which differs from the four antinomies in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, yet preserves their underlying antinomical structure. I call this "the antinomy of pathos," and show that it gives way to a kind of moral thinking that is neither theoretical nor practical but pathological. Unlike practical reasoning, which focuses on agency, and theoretical reasoning, which focuses on empirical facts, "moral pathology," as I name it, focuses on the victim existence. According to this interpretation, Améry's text shows us that true enlightenment requires pathological thinking.
"The politics of Nihilism: From the Nineteenth Century to Contemporary Israel", Sep 25, 2014
This essay shows that at the core of Friedrich Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is a differentiation,... more This essay shows that at the core of Friedrich Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is a differentiation, which I term "the more difference", between two dimensions of value, namely, between values themselves and the value of these values. Unless this difference is maintained, values stand to lose their value (nihilism). Although establishing the moral difference was quintessential to Nietzsche’s work, I argue that he contradicted it by reducing the value of values with the value of life. Against this, I present the work of philosopher Jean Améry, who, in polemic against Nietzsche, called the value of the value of life into question, thus affirming the moral difference in a way that is more consistent, perhaps even more “Nietzschean”, than Nietzsche himself.
"Europe in the Eyes of Survivors of the Holocaust", Jun 1, 2014
At the center of this dissertation is a study of Holocaust survivor and essayist Jean Améry as a ... more At the center of this dissertation is a study of Holocaust survivor and essayist Jean Améry as a philosopher. Alongside my reading of Améry, with and against Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Agamben, I offer an original interpretation of the meaning of 'pathos' and 'pathology'. Pathos is an experience that is imposed on one, incapacitating, and passively undergone. Looking more closely at what is entailed in such experience, I suggest that pathology -as the logic of pathos-is a contrarian and irreconcilable modality of relation, and by extension, a thinking and being in revolt. I argue that moral thinking is pathological in this sense and that Améry's philosophy, which I develop further, is a 'moral pathology'.
"Metacide: In the Pursuit of Excellence", May 1, 2010
Telos 147: "Carl Schmitt and the Event" (special issue), Jul 1, 2009
Book Reviews by Roy Ben-Shai
Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, 2020
Talks by Roy Ben-Shai
This talk, delivered (Nov. 2024) at the Philosophy Colloquium of the New School for Social Resear... more This talk, delivered (Nov. 2024) at the Philosophy Colloquium of the New School for Social Research in NY, presents the task of a critique of critique within the context of distinguishing between different orientations of critical thought.
A reading of the fourth volume of Heidegger's Nietzsche book (on nihilism), contrasting the two t... more A reading of the fourth volume of Heidegger's Nietzsche book (on nihilism), contrasting the two thinkers' conceptions of metaphysics and nihilism, and their antidotes to them.
Other by Roy Ben-Shai
The book is finally out : )
What is nature? What is the relationship between the natural and the human? Join us in discussing... more What is nature? What is the relationship between the natural and the human? Join us in discussing the work of three innovative scholars of different disciplines who rethink these philosophical questions in exciting new ways STEVEN SWARBRICK English NAISARGI N. DAVÉ Anthropology ANGIE WILLEY Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies
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Books by Roy Ben-Shai
Papers by Roy Ben-Shai
Book Reviews by Roy Ben-Shai
Talks by Roy Ben-Shai
Other by Roy Ben-Shai