Ian Buruma

Avishai Margalit

Looks at the stereotypes and misunderstandings about the Western world that ignite anti-Western political movements, tracing the roots and evolution and examining why they have found a ready host in the Islamic world.

The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies

Occidentalism

La societat decent

Betrayal seems to have lost its grip on the public consciousness in liberal societies, yet it is all around us, dissolving the thick glue of trust that holds friends, families, and communities together. By focusing on the ethics of betrayal, Avishai Margalit offers a philosophical account of what we owe those who give us our sense of belonging.

On Betrayal

Avishai Margalit builds his social philosophy on this foundation: a decent society, or a civilized society, is one whose institutions do not humiliate the people under their authority, and whose citizens do not humiliate one another. What political philosophy needs urgently is a way that will permit us to live together without humiliation and with dignity. Most of the philosophical attention nowadays is drawn to the ideal of the just society based on the right balance between freedom and equality. The ideal of the just society is a sublime one but hard to realize. The decent society is an ideal which can be realized even in our children's lifetime. We should get rid of cruelty first, advocated Judith Shklar. Humiliation is a close second. There is more urgency in bringing about a decent society than in bringing about a just one. Margalit begins concretely where we live, with all the infuriating acts of humiliation that make living in the world so difficult. He argues in a concrete way in the spirit of Judith Shklar and Isaiah Berlin. This is a social philosophy that resists all those menacing labels that promote moral laziness, just as it urges us to get beyond the behavior that labels other human beings. Margalit can't be earmarked as liberal or conservative. If a label is necessary, then the most suitable is George Orwell's humane socialism, a far cry from Animal Farm socialism with its many tools of oppression. How to be decent, how to build a decent society, emerges out of Margalit's analysis of the corrosive functioning of humiliation in its many forms. This is a thoroughly argued and, what is much more, a deeply felt book that springs from Margalit's experience at the borderlands of conflicts between Eastern Europeans and Westerners, between Palestinians and Israelis.

The Decent Society

'Occidentalism' is an investigation into the hostile stereotypes of the Western world that fuels the hatred at the heart of movements such as Al Qaeda. A work of extraordinary range and erudition, it enlarges significantly our understanding of the world in which we live.

A Short History of Anti-Westernism

Hace un cuarto de siglo, Orientalismo, el libro de Edward Said, identific con nitidez las fantasas denigrantes de Oriente que existan en la mentalidad colonial, con lo cual prendi la chispa de un debate que an prosigue. Ahora bien: Y qu hay de los muchos modos en que Occidente es visto a ojos de quienes se proclaman sus enemigos? Esas percepciones no han tenido un examen detenido hasta la fecha. Occidentalismo es una investigacin pionera sobre los estereotipos hostiles del mundo occidental que alimentan el odio situado en el fondo de movimientos tales como Al Qaeda. Buruma y Margalit sostienen que aun cuando el virus anti-occidental ha encontrado un husped bien dispuesto en determinadas partes del mundo islmico, y que tiene en realidad sus orgenes en el propio Occidente. Occidentalismo demuestra que los jvenes yihaides persiguen los mismos ideales (revolucin heroica, ilustracin espiritual, autenticidad moral) que han caracterizado la rebelin en el mundo entero a lo largo de los siglos. Al recorrer la historia del pensamiento revolucionario, desde la Contrarreforma en Europa y las diversas variedades del fascismo en Oriente y Occidente, pasando por el actual extremismo anti-capitalista y religioso, este libro viene a demostrar que los terroristas suicidas de hoy y los partidarios de la guerra santa no padecen una patologa nica, sino que hallan su combustible y su motor en ideas que tienen una historia propia.

Avishai Margalit

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