Kant-Jahr 2024

Omri Boehm is a Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York.

 

His work focuses on Kant and Early Modern Philosophy, especially Spinoza and Descartes, as well as on the philosophy of religion. He has also written on political theory, focusing on memory, citizenship and self-determination in Israel. His books include The Binding of Isaac: a Political Model of Disobedience (Bloomsbury, 2007); Kant's Critique of Spinoza (Oxford, 2014); Haifa Republic (New York Review Books, 2021) [Israel--Eine Utopie, Propylaen, 2020] and, most recently, Radikaler Universalismus (Propylaen, 2022), which was shortlisted for the German Sachbuchpreis.

 

Side by side with his academic work, Boehm regularly contributes political-philosophical essays to such outlets as Die Zeit, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Haaretz, among others. 

 

Leading up to the Kant-year that will start in January 2024, Boehm will give a series of workshops in Heidelberg on Kant and the fate of his enlightenment legacy: starting with the Pantheismusstreit and the controversy whether enlightenment rationalism leads to "Spinozist nihilism" that haunted intellectual circles from the mid-Seventeenth Eighties, and up to current debates about Kant's attempt to ground universalist norms as colonialist or racist.

The workshops will follow generally but not exactly the argument in Radikaler Universalismus. 

 

A native of Israel, Boehm has studied at Tel Aviv University (2000-2003), Yale (2003-2009) and Heidelberg (2005-6) before completing his PhD at Yale. He was a postdoctoral fellow at LMU-Munich in 2010-11.