Search Results for: Nadia Urbinati
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    Why we must learn to be self-critical
    N. U. 19 December 2007
    Dear Michael, you suggest a sort of division of labor between those who pursue a confrontational strategy and those who pursue a politics of dialogue or between warriors and intellectuals - writes Nadia Urbinati - a distinction that recalls that between Hobbes and Kant as opposite models of politics that Robert Kegan identified with USA and Europe respectively. I am not sure that this division of labor is a good solution. J.S. Mill used to say that a critical thinker should complicate a reality that believers tend instead to see as simple and one-dimensional (Manichean view). The conservative intellectuals who gave voice to the U.S. Administration and stressed an ideological dualism between USA and Europe, confrontation and dialogue, have done a bad service to their country and the world.
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    Dialogue or tough campaign? Maybe we need a division of labor
    M. W. 19 December 2007
    It appears that the Cold War analogy - Michael Walzer writes - is centrally important in our discussion. Without the Truman Doctrine in Greece, without the Korean War, without Radio Free Europe, Stalinist communism would have been a flourishing and probably expanding system, and the Italian CP would never have changed at all. Maybe there is an argument to be made for a division of labor. Some of us should be involved in a politics of dialogue, and some of us should be waging a tough ideological campaign (not against Islam as a block but) against jihadi zealotry. But if that is right, why are the Reset people so hostile to the tough campaign? I will continue to be skeptical about the value of cross-cultural exchange – not hostile, just skeptical.
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    The real enemy? Dogmatism
    N. U. 19 December 2007
    In Italy Berman is not an author of the Left, to the contrary, his ideas are shared by the editors and the readers of Il foglio, a right wing newspaper. Norberto Bobbio was one of the most interesting anti-anti-communists (different in this from Aron). Bobbio’s culture and practice of dialogue - Nadia Urbinati writes - did not simply question communists’ dogmatism, but dogmatism. You ask whether the culture of dialogue is of some use in our time and with the problem before us. I think it is of some use. The Manichean spirit of contraposition would have the perverse effect of stopping the process of political secularization or simply advancing the “internal criticism” in the Muslim world besides making our society less free and open.
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    Berman? Muslim dissidents appreciate his views
    M. W. 19 December 2007
    I don't exclude Islam from my view of multiculturalism, nor do any of my friends - Michael Walzer writes - There may be block thinking on the far right; I just don't find it among Dissent leftists. So we are not so far apart. But perhaps we have a different view of the value of dialogue. I worry that the dialogues that you propose will turn out to be a substitute for the hard work that both sides, but most importantly right now the Muslim side, have to do in their own communities. It really doesn't help the dissidents to dialogue with people like you and me. That's just rest and recreation. And let's not pretend that the people we are talking to are the Miloszs or the Solzhenitsyns of the Muslim world. I would be willing to bet that those people, if they exist, secretly admire the work of Paul Berman.
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    Why the Left must avoid ‘block thinking’
    N. U. 19 December 2007
    The point of my argument - writes Nadia Urbinati - is precisely that not all Muslims are friendly to or supportive of terrorism, which means that some and perhaps many are. On the other hand, however, only if we drop a Manichean attitude or what Charles Taylor calls “block thinking” we can see or recognize our potential interlocutors within the Muslim world. The reference I made to the Cold War was to the climate of ideological contraposition it nurtured. Paul Berman says about Ramadan that he pretends to be an internal critic but avoids all opportunities to be critical. In our current debate, the anti-dialogue position is after all the most representative one, for sure in the right-wing people (who, in Italy, like very much Berman’s ideas, by the way) but also among leftist people.
  • Forget manichaeism: like Bobbio, I choose dialogue
    Nadia Urbinati 19 December 2007
    In the debate over the identity of the Left, two positions have emerged: there are those who embrace liberal multiculturalism, but with one exception, Islam; and there are those who reject this exception because believe that we should articulate our judgement on the Islamic culture and think it is a mistake to regard it as a whole, as if it were a homogenous world. After September 11, many of those who at the time of the Cold War theorized and embraced a politics of intolerance toward the Communists tended to apply it to Islam. The European open-to-compromise attitude that is not tremendously afraid of cultural pluralism seems to be more difficult to be practiced in the United States. Positions such as those endorsed by Paul Berman (which I would define as one of Manichean Occidentalism) in addition to being reductionist and somehow deceptive is also politically dangerous since that it may unwillingly help the cause of Osama bin Laden’s extremism.
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    Philosophy in Theater, 24th Nov, Presentation of our Website
    23 November 2006
    On November 24, 2006, our website will be officially inaugurated at the Teatro Eliseo in Rome. Two renowned Muslim philosophers - reformers and secularists - will discuss Islam, secularism, and humanism. Mohammed Arkoun, an Algerian living in France, will  consider the word “humanism,” and Abdulkarim Soroush of Iran will speak about “reason.” The other speakers include Giuliano Amato, Minister of the Interior of Italy, Giancarlo Bosetti, Renzo Guolo, and Nadia Urbinati.
  • What we think, what we want
    Reset Dialogues 16 November 2006
    What are the aims of Reset Doc? What do we want? We call for equal conditions within intercultural dialogue, and we refuse to consider the two sides (the West and the East) as compact bodies. We aim to go beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism, beyond respective prejudices, in order to start a real dialogue between the West and the East. The following is a report of our international conference held in Cairo, on the 4-6 March 2006.
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