Kahn ( Putting Liberalism in Its Place ) again, a wonderful passage on martyrological politics: “Hegel writes of the master-slave relationship as the origin of political history. The slave is not willing to die; he is a failed martyr. He grants others the power to script the meaning of his life.” Hegel missed the real structure of Western politics: “The Western state actually exists . . . under the very real threat of Christian martyrdom: a threat to expose the... Read more
Kahn ( Putting Liberalism in Its Place ) again, a wonderful passage on martyrological politics: “Hegel writes of the master-slave relationship as the origin of political history. The slave is not willing to die; he is a failed martyr. He grants others the power to script the meaning of his life.” Hegel missed the real structure of Western politics: “The Western state actually exists . . . under the very real threat of Christian martyrdom: a threat to expose the... Read more
World, tebel , is used four times in Isaiah’s little apocalypse. The four uses tell the story of this section of the prophecy. In 24:4, the world is fading and languishes. Isaiah hopes that through the Lord’s judgment the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness (26:9), but at the end of chapter 28 the world is still writhing to give birth to its inhabitants, to the shades buried in the earth (26:18). But Yahweh promises to make the barren... Read more
In the dream of Pharaoh’s cup-bearer, he sees branches of a vine bud, blossom, and bring forth their clusters (Genesis 40:10). The budding vine was a sign of the cup-bearer’s restoration to his position in Pharaoh’s court. It signified his resurrection from prison and his ascension into the throne room of his king. That is the same message Aaron receives when his rod buds (Numbers 17). The budding rod is a sign that he will be a fruitful tree in... Read more
Isaiah 27:2-6 promises that the Lord will restore the vineyard that he had earlier abandoned (Isaiah 5:1-7). He raises the vines up, restores the hedge that had protected it, turns it into a vineyard of wine. A song of praise and love replaces the lament of chapter 5. The section is a chiasm of chiasms. Overall the verses are chiastic: A. Song of the vineyard, v 2 B. Yahweh guards and waters vineyard, v 3 C. Yahweh stamps down briers... Read more
So. The word “visit” ( paqad ) is also used seven times in the “little apocalypse” of Isaiah (24:21, 22; 26:14, 16, 21; 27:1, 3). Again, if nothing else, we have a numerical link with the days of creation, appropriate to a passage concerning the destruction and reconstruction of a world. The correlation with specific days is even less clear than with the phrase “in that day,” but there are some general links. The first use (24:21) speaks of the... Read more
Isaiah uses the phrase “in that day” far more than any other writer of the Bible. In the NASB, the phrase appears 40x, 39 of them in the first 31 chapters. Isaiah 1-31 is infused with expectation for the “day of the Lord.” The phrase occurs in clusters of 3 and 4 in the first 20 chapters of the book, but Isaiah’s “little apocalypse” (chapters 24-27) uses the phrase seven times (24:21; 25:9; 26:1; 27:1; 27:2; 27:12; 27:13). That immediately... Read more
In a fascinating passage, Kahn draws links between early Christian martyrdom and the operation state power in the Western world. Start with martyrs: “The martyr [like Jesus] denies the state power, while yielding to its violence . . . . This is not a kind of quietism in the face of the state, but a faith imbued with an idea of resistance from the very beginning.” Kahn says that “Resistace to the state is built into the fundamental tenets of... Read more
Kahn again: “My most fundamental claim is that liberalism lacks an adequate conception of the will.” This is not because liberalism fails to talk about will. It does constantly, pointing to the will exercised in the formation of social contract and the will manifest in political and economic interests. But this liberal will is a very thin one: “The liberal will is fundamentally without content.” The content of the social contract arises from reason, contracts derive their content from interest:... Read more
In his provocative 2005 study, Putting Liberalism in Its Place , Yale’s Paul W. Kahn argues that “we will never understand the character of the American rule of law without first understanding the way in which it is embedded in a conception of popular sovereignty. More importantly, we will not understand the way in which the nation-state presents itself to the citizen as an ultimate value, that is, one for which the citizen may be asked to sacrifice his or... Read more
Leithart
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