Avishai Margalit is Schulman Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a former George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
On Betrayal seamlessly combines analytic rigor with personal
memoir: its illustrative arguments are drawn from political history
and Biblical commentary, from novels and biographies. It presents a
lifetime of reflection on philosophic methodology: it is the
culmination of Margalit’s attempts to analyze the meaning and
normative force of betrayal as an essentially contested
concept.
*Amélie Rorty, Tufts University*
This book is written in the analytic style, but in Margalit’s own
version of that style, which is wonderfully engaging. Margalit
possesses what Keats called ‘negative capability.’ His discussion
is provocative and illuminating, without reaching for any kind of
irritable certainty. This allows Margalit to connect all the forms
of betrayal and to explore their various versions, across many
centuries and many cultures.
*Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study*
On Betrayal is a continuous exercise in locating the subtleties
within our considered moral judgment…Witty and wise, precise and
profound, On Betrayal is an easy but deep read: it sees life as it
really is with all its turmoil.
*Christian Century*
The range of Margalit’s examples is astonishing…Margalit is a
connoisseur of thick relations. That doesn’t mean that he loves or
admires every community. He isn’t, in fact, a communitarian, but he
is much more knowledgeable about and comfortable with communities
(and in communities) than most philosophers are, and so he is very
good at recognizing when they go wrong.
*New York Review of Books*
In remaining loyal to the complexity of his terrain, Margalit ends
with the sanguine possibility that betrayal might be
unavoidable.
*Times Higher Education*
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