DOC Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies) by Abigail Jacobson; Moshe Naor in History

Description

“Everything that could blossom upon Earth has blossomed; each in its due season and its proper sphere; it has withered away and will blossom again when its time arrives.” So says Herder of civilizations; using one of his favorite metaphors. His pre-Darwin Hegelian teleology sounds quaint at times; but at the same time allows him to hold some amazingly modern sentiments. For example; he repudiates slavery and the mistreatment of different races; and makes an appeal to understand them without filtering them through our own conceptual schemes; he realizes the genetic source of all changes and speaks of our assuredly future abilities to genetically manipulate organisms. And yet; he can be shockingly dated: he constantly refers to Western Europeans as those having the “perfect form” as opposed to those in say; Africa; whose form is genetically “degenerate.” He; at times; writes as if he is on the verge of propounding a theory of evolution while still referring constantly to the “Creator;” being ambiguous as to whether this is god or nature; while seeming at times to accept and at others to reject a form of Lamarckism; and finally to disavow an organism's ability to change its form or “falsify its figure” (say; from dog to wolf); though admitting that in the past the species may not have been as separate as they are now. If we can forgive him his European-centric viewpoint we are left with a fascinating Enlightenment viewpoint of historical progress; together with some cogent rules and pithy axioms that attempt to understand the mysterious movements of history. This is a well-formatted version of T. Churchill's translation of Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschicte der Menschheit; first published in London in 1800.