Solidarity in a Secular Age From Political Theology to Jewish Philosophy

Liberal democracies need solidarity. They need citizens who sacrifice for their country, rally for justice, and help their neighbors. Yet according to critics of liberalism like Carl Schmitt, the solidarity liberal democracies need comes from sources they cannot themselves produce, like religion. Thus in a time of declining religiosity and rising nationalism, how can we form strong social bonds without racism, demagoguery, and xenophobia? Can we have not only solidarity, but liberal solidarity, in a secular age?

In Solidarity in a Secular Age, Charles H. T. Lesch responds to Schmitt's challenge, proposing a new liberal-democratic solidarity rooted in personal sacrifice, shared fate, and moral destiny. Through readings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and Jürgen Habermas, he uncovers religion's underlying role in Western thinking about solidarity since the Enlightenment. Turning next to Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, and George Eliot, he shows how Jewish ideas can contribute to reimagining our social bond for the twenty-first century.

Lesch provides a new language for restoring our fractured unity while staying true to core liberal values. He shows how theological ideas influence even outwardly secular philosophical and political theories. Radically revising political theory's relationship to religion, he challenges us to rethink and rebuild our social bond.

Charles H. T. Lesch is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research grapples with questions in contemporary political theory and practice by drawing from the history of European political thought, modern and classical Jewish thought, religious studies,
social theory, and literature. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, and The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society. He has won awards including Harvard's Bowdoin
Prize and Vanderbilt's Robert Birkby Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and has been a Golda Meir Fellow, Mellon/ACLS Fellow, Harvard Presidential Scholar, Fulbright Fellow, and Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellow in Ethics.

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Solidarity, Liberalism, and Schmitt's Challenge

Part One: Solidarity through Secularization

1. When Metaphor Becomes Myth: Rousseau, the General Will, and Democratic Solidarity
2. The Kernel of Unreason at the Heart of Enlightenment: Kant, Spontaneity, and Ethical Solidarity
3. The Ethics of the Aura: Habermas, the Linguistification of the Sacred, and Discursive Solidarity

Part Two: Solidarity through Imitation

4. The "Other" and the "I": Levinas, Negative Theology, and Solidarity as Sacrifice
5. The "Essential We": Buber, Theopolitics, and Solidarity as Fate and Destiny
6. Solidarity in a Secular Age: The Case of Daniel Deronda

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Index