Shlomo Avineri (Hebrew: שלמה אבינרי) (born in Bielsko
, Poland
1933) is an
Israeli
political
scientist. He is Professor of
Political Science at the Hebrew
University
of Jerusalem
. He also serves as Recurring Visiting
Professor at the Central European University
in Budapest
and Fellow
of the Centrum für
Angewandte Politikforschung in Munich
.
Ideas
Avineri has written extensively in the history of
political philosophy, especially on the
political thought of
Marx,
Hegel, and on the early
Zionist political theories of
Moses Hess and
Theodor
Herzl. He has also written numerous books and articles on
Middle Eastern affairs and international affairs.
Avineri contributed in revising Hegel's political thought, showing
Hegel's pluralism. He criticized
Karl
Popper's theories about Hegel, where Popper denounced Hegel as
an apologist of state power and precursor of 20th century
totalitarianism.
Avineri was also involved in the debate over the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
He argued
that it was the pre-capitalist structure of 1917 Russia
, as well as
the strong authoritarian traditions of the Russian state and its
weak civil society, which pushed the Soviet revolution towards its
repressive development.
His recent intellectual biography of Herzl shows how developments
in his native Austro-Hungarian Empire, rather than the Dreyfus
Affair in France, convinced Herzl of the failure of Jewish
emancipation in Europe and of the need to find a political solution
for the Jews, based on national self-determination, outside of
Europe.
Positions held
He served as Director of Eshkol Research Institute (1971-74); Dean
of Faculty of Social Sciences (1974-76); Director-General of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1976-77); and Director of the
Institute for European Studies at the Hebrew
University(1997-2002).
Avineri
has had numerous visiting appointments including Yale
University
, Wesleyan
University
, Australian National University
, Cornell University
, University of
California, Queen's College ,
Northwestern
University
, Cardozo School of Law, and Oxford
and, most recently, the University of
Toronto
. He has been a visiting scholar at the
Wilson
Center
, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
Brookings Institute in
Washington, DC and at the Institute of World Economics and
International Relations in Moscow. He is currently Recurring
Visiting Professor at the Central European University in
Budapest.
Avineri served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs from 1975-77.
He also headed the Israeli delegation to the
UNESCO
General Assembly and in 1979 he was a member of the
joint Egyptian-Israeli commission that negotiated the Cultural and
Scientific Agreement between the two countries.
Honors and awards
Avineri is the recipient of many honors and awards including:
- A British Council Scholarship (1961);
- The Rubin Prize in the Social Sciences (1968).
- The Naphtali Prize for the study of Hegel (1977).
- The Present Tense Award for the Study of Zionism (1982).
- The Israel Prize (1996), for
political science.
- In 2006, he received the Israel Political Science Association
Award for his contribution to the discipline in Israel and
abroad.
- He holds a Ph.D. Honoris Causa from the University of Cluj-Napoca
(Romania
).
- In 2009, he received the Italian Solidarity Order of Merit
(O.S.S.I), with the rank of "Commendatore", from Italian President
Giorgio Napolitano
Selected publications
- The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx
(1968)
- Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (1972)
- The Making of Modern Zionism (1981)
- Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism
(1985).
- Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization
- Israel and the Palestinians
- Marx' Socialism
- Varieties of Marxism
- Arlosoroff: A Political Biography
- Communitarianism and Individualism (co-editor with Avner de
Shalit)
- Europe's Century of Discontent (co-editor)
- Moses Hess: The Holy History of Mankind & Other
Writings
- "Herzl - An Intellectual Biography" (in Hebrew)
editor and translator
- Historical introduction to the Hebrew edition of Theodore
Herzl's Diaries
- Avineri also translated Karl Marx's Early Writings
into Hebrew.
References
External links
See also
Wikis
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