Gleichheit und Differenz

Are cosmopolitan ideals just wishful thinking today? Seyla Benhabib takes a historical and conceptual perspective in her approach to the paradoxes of equality and difference in the philosophy of the modern Western world. Proceeding from autobiographical reflections, she presents episodes in the cultural and political experiences of German-speaking Jews and their answers to the dilemmas of equality and difference, self-determination and assimilation. Reflections by Leopold Lucas, Moritz Goldstein, Hans Kelsen, Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt help her to examine the paradoxical political experience in the modern nation state in view of the hybridity of cultural identities and achievements. Benhabib's central concepts here are »hospitality« as a reference to our own foreignness and problematic diversity, the jurisgenerative power of cosmopolitan norms and the idea of democratic iterations as processes of shaping politics through the law.