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The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion, ethics, and politics. In this brief book, philosopher Moshe Halbertal explores the meaning and implications of sacrifice, developing a theory of sacrifice as an offering and examining the relationship between sacrifice, ritual, violence, and love. On Sacrifice also looks at the place of self-sacrifice within ethical life and at the complex role of sacrifice as both a noble and destructive political ideal. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of both ritual and violence. An offering is also an ambiguous gesture torn between a genuine expression of gratitude and love and an instrument of exchange, a tension that haunts the practice of sacrifice. In the moral and political domains, sacrifice is tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values and commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can also be used to justify the most brutal acts. Halbertal attempts to unravel the relationship between self-sacrifice and violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far more problematic than exaggerated self-love. In his exploration of the positive and negative dimensions of self-sacrifice, Halbertal also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.

Self-sacrifice. --- Sacrifice. --- Altruism --- Sacrifice --- Burnt offering --- Worship --- Christianity. --- God. --- Jewish life. --- Judaism. --- Paul Kahn. --- Western religious life. --- agent-relative actions. --- attentiveness. --- categorical imperative. --- charity. --- civilians. --- competition. --- cooperation. --- dependency. --- ethical life. --- ethics. --- evolutionary biology. --- exchange. --- general will. --- golden rule. --- heroic sacrifices. --- humans. --- individuals. --- instrumental relationship. --- laws of war. --- love. --- loyalty. --- martyr. --- modern state. --- moral sphere. --- original position. --- other. --- past sacrifice. --- political bond. --- political life. --- political order. --- political violence. --- politics. --- prayer. --- psychoanalysis. --- religion. --- religious life. --- reliigous communities. --- retroactive desecration. --- ritual. --- sacrifice. --- sacrificial community. --- sacrificial system. --- sacrificing for. --- self-interest. --- self-sacrifice. --- self-transcendence. --- self. --- social contract. --- soldiers. --- sovereign. --- state. --- suffering. --- temple worship. --- utilitarianism. --- violence. --- war.

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The description for this book, The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times, will be forthcoming.

Political science. --- Liberalism --- Democracy. --- Democracy --- Political science --- Administration --- Civil government --- Commonwealth, The --- Government --- Political theory --- Political thought --- Politics --- Science, Political --- Social sciences --- State, The --- Liberal egalitarianism --- Liberty --- Self-government --- Equality --- Representative government and representation --- Republics --- Liberalism. --- Liberalisme. --- Politieke filosofie. --- 89.12 liberalism. --- A Theory of Justice. --- Abstraction. --- Agnosticism. --- Ambiguity. --- Bertrand Russell. --- Brian Barry. --- Bruce Ackerman. --- Calculation. --- Citizenship. --- Civility. --- Concept. --- Consciousness. --- Consideration. --- Contingency (philosophy). --- Contradiction. --- Criticism. --- Critique. --- Cynicism (philosophy). --- Deconstruction. --- Deliberation. --- Deontological ethics. --- Dialectic. --- Dichotomy. --- Disposition. --- Dissent. --- Empiricism. --- Epistemology. --- Foundationalism. --- Government and Opposition. --- Government. --- Hannah Arendt. --- Idealism. --- Ideology. --- Individualism. --- Inference. --- Institution. --- Intelligibility (philosophy). --- Interdependence. --- Jean-Jacques Rousseau. --- John Rawls. --- John Stuart Mill. --- Justice as Fairness. --- Kantianism. --- Legitimacy (political). --- Leo Strauss. --- Martin Heidegger. --- Mein Kampf. --- Michael Oakeshott. --- Morality. --- Nihilism. --- Objectivity (philosophy). --- Obligation. --- Original position. --- Philosopher. --- Philosophical anarchism. --- Philosophy. --- Platonism. --- Political Man. --- Political economy. --- Political philosophy. --- Politician. --- Politics. --- Positivism. --- Potentiality and actuality. --- Practical reason. --- Pragmatism. --- Prejudice. --- Primary goods. --- Princeton University Press. --- Principle. --- Rationalism. --- Rationality. --- Reason. --- Reductionism. --- Relativism. --- Rhetoric. --- Robert Nozick. --- Robert Paul Wolff. --- Ronald Dworkin. --- Self-interest. --- Self-ownership. --- Skepticism. --- Slavery. --- Social contract. --- Social science. --- Solipsism. --- State of nature. --- Subject (philosophy). --- The Philosopher. --- Theory of Forms. --- Theory. --- Thomas Hobbes. --- Thought. --- Uncertainty. --- Utilitarianism. --- Wealth. --- Writing.

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"Robert Bellah (1927-2013) was a hugely-influential twentieth-century American social scientist. During an intellectual career that spanned six decades, his work became central in many fields: the sociology of Japanese religion, the relationships between sociology and the humanities, the relationship between American religion and politics, the cultures of modern individualism, and evolution and society. His seminal 1967 essay "Civil Religion in America" created a huge debate across disciplines which continues to this day; his co-authored book Habits of the Heart (1985) was a bestseller (it sold close to 500,000 copies) and became the object of sustained public discussion about the temptations and dangers of radical individualism. His last magnum opus, an interpretation of 15,000 years of human history many years in the making entitled Religion in Human Evolution and published by HUP when Bellah was 84, was a capstone to an extraordinary scholarly and intellectual career. It has been reprinted numerous times and continues to sell. In this book Matteo Bortolini recounts not just the arc of this extraordinary scholarly career, but also an eventful and tempestuous life, including a youthful student affiliation with the Communist Party USA and a resulting McCarthy era exile to Canada, crushing personal tragedies (with the death of two of his four daughters in the 1970s), and, at the age of 50, a coming out as a gay man, which did not however sever his close ties with his wife of many decades, Melanie Hyman Bellah. The author has worked on this book for thirteen years, and during this time has conducted research at university archives around the world, including archives at Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley, and McGill. Bortolini also interviewed some three dozen of Bellah's colleagues, former students, friends and relatives, including his two daughters, who have given this project their full support (without attempting to influence it in any way). They have also given the author full access to Bellah's personal papers. (Bellah's wife of many years predeceased him.) It is also noteworthy that when the obits appeared after Bellah's death, Bortolini was quoted in them as Bellah's biographer. So he is already widely recognized as the guy from whom we can expect a definitive biography of this man"--

Sociologists --- Bellah, Robert N. --- United States. --- Academic freedom. --- Admiration. --- After Virtue. --- Allan Bloom. --- Ambivalence. --- Appeasement. --- Average Joe. --- Axial Age. --- Barrington Moore, Jr. --- Charismatic authority. --- Christian right. --- Civil religion. --- Clifford Geertz. --- Communitarianism. --- Consciousness. --- Conservative Judaism. --- Courtesy. --- Culture hero. --- Discipline. --- Enthusiasm. --- Erudition. --- Formality. --- Gananath Obeyesekere. --- Glorification. --- Good Omens. --- Good faith. --- Grandiosity. --- Gratitude. --- Great books. --- Great power. --- H. Richard Niebuhr. --- Hedonism. --- Herbert J. Gans. --- High modernism. --- Hippie. --- His Favorite. --- Impartiality. --- Impossibility. --- In Plain Sight. --- Individualism. --- J. Anthony Lukas. --- Jack Miles. --- Jerome Bruner. --- Loyalty. --- Manliness (book). --- Max Weber. --- Meaningful life. --- Modernity. --- Moral Majority. --- Morale. --- Morality. --- Morton White. --- Mr. --- On Religion. --- On the Right Track. --- Open marriage. --- Open-mindedness. --- Optimism. --- Original position. --- Originality. --- Patriotism. --- Peacemaking. --- Peacetime. --- Political Man. --- Positive feedback. --- Post-war consensus. --- Pragmatism. --- Pro bono. --- Rational analysis. --- Rationality. --- Religion. --- Romanticism. --- Rugged individualism. --- Sam Keen. --- Secular humanism. --- Secular movement. --- Secularism. --- Self-confidence. --- Self-fulfillment. --- Self-righteousness. --- Seriousness. --- Social science. --- Sociology. --- Sola fide. --- Solidarity. --- Sophism. --- Spirituality. --- Subjectivism. --- Talcott Parsons. --- The Best and the Brightest. --- The Love-Ins. --- The Other Hand. --- Triumphalism. --- Truth claim. --- Unconditional love. --- Utilitarianism. --- Utopia. --- Wilfred Cantwell Smith. --- Young Man Luther. --- Émile Durkheim.