Michael Walzer

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Michael Walzer
Walzer in 2002
Born
Michael Laban Walzer

(1935-03-03) March 3, 1935 (age 89)
New York City, New York, US
Spouse
Judith Borodovko Walzer
​
​
(m. 1956)​
Academic background
political studies
Sub-discipline
School or tradition
InstitutionsInstitute for Advanced Study
Main interests
Notable works
Notable ideas
Influenced
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Michael Laban Walzer

public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, he is editor emeritus of Dissent, an intellectual magazine that he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at Brandeis University. He has written books and essays on a wide range of topics—many in political ethics—including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, Zionism, economic justice, social criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation. He is also a contributing editor to The New Republic. To date, he has written 27 books and published over 300 articles, essays, and book reviews in Dissent, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harpers, and many philosophical and political science journals.[3]

Early life and education

Born to a

summa cum laude from Brandeis University in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. He then studied at the University of Cambridge on a Fulbright Fellowship (1956–1957) and completed his doctoral work at Harvard University, earning his Doctor of Philosophy degree in government under Samuel Beer in 1961.[3]

Work

Walzer is usually identified as one of the leading proponents of the

egalitarian justice demands that each good be distributed according to its social meaning, and that no good (like money or political power) be allowed to dominate or distort the distribution of goods in other spheres;[7][8]
and an argument that justice is primarily a moral standard within particular nations and societies, not one that can be developed in a universalized abstraction.

In On Toleration, he describes various examples of (and approaches to)

nation-states such as France; and immigrant societies such as the United States. He concludes by describing a "post-modern" view, in which cultures within an immigrant nation have blended and inter-married to the extent that toleration becomes an intra-familial affair.[9]

Employment

Walzer was first employed in 1962 in the politics department at Princeton University. He stayed there until 1966, when he moved to the government department at Harvard. He taught at Harvard until 1980, when he became a permanent faculty member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study.[3]

In 1971, Walzer taught a semester-long course at Harvard with Robert Nozick called "Capitalism and Socialism". The course was a debate between the two philosophers: Nozick's side is delineated in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), and Walzer's side is expressed in his Spheres of Justice (1983), in which he argues for "complex equality".[10]

Walzer is a member of the editorial board of the Jewish Review of Books and an Advisory Editor at Fathom.

Awards and honors

In April 2008, Walzer received the prestigious Spinoza Lens, a bi-annual prize for ethics in the Netherlands. He has also been honoured with an emeritus professorship at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study. He was elected to a Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1971,[11] a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1990,[12] and to a Corresponding Fellowship of the British Academy in 2016.[13]

Personal life

Walzer is married to Judith Borodovko Walzer. They are parents of two daughters: Sarah Esther Walzer (born 1961) and Rebecca Leah Walzer (born 1966). His grandchildren are Joseph and Katya Barrett and Jules and Stefan Walzer-Goldfeld.

Walzer is the older brother of historian Judith Walzer Leavitt.

Books

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Pronounced /ˈwɔːlzər/.[2]

References

  1. JSTOR 23556625
    .
  2. YouTube
  3. ^ a b c "Michael Laban Walzer". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  4. S2CID 144959296
    .
  5. ^ Communitarianism > Notes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  6. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  7. ISBN 978-1-4985-1651-8
    )
  8. ^ Mounk, Yascha (2019-03-14). "Why the College Scandal Touched a Nonpartisan Nerve". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  9. ISBN 978-0-300-07600-4
    .
  10. ^ Interview with E. J. Dionne
  11. ^ "Michael Laban Walzer". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-04-19.
  12. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-04-19.
  13. ^ "Laureates - Michael Walzer". www.spinozalens.nl. 24 November 2008. Retrieved 2021-11-29.

External links

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Academic offices
Preceded by
 Tanner Lecturer on Human Values
at Harvard University
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