- Adi Ophir
Adi Ophir (born
22 September 1951 ) is anIsrael i philosopher.Professor Ophir teaches philosophy at the
Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas atTel Aviv University . He is also a fellow at theVan Leer Jerusalem Institute where he directs an interdisciplinary research project on "Humanitarian Action in Catastrophes: The Shaping of Contemporary Political Imagination and Moral Sensibilities."Ophir's recent book "The Order of Evils" offers a moral theory that emphasizes the socially structured
existential andpolitical nature of evil.cite web|title=The Order of Evils|publisher=MIT Press
accessdate=2007-12-15|url=http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10474] He argues that evils, like pain, suffering, loss, and humiliation, are "superfluous evils" that can often be prevented but are not.Analyzing seminal works by modern and
postmodern philosophers such asRousseau ,Kant ,Marx ,Sartre ,Arendt ,Foucault , andDerrida , Ophir submits that to be moral is to care for others, and to be committed to preventing their suffering and distress.Ophir's focus on understanding particular evils (rather than some transcendentalized
Evil ) keeps his thought determinedly secular. While a deeply theoretical work, "The Order of Evils" is informed by Ophir's preoccupation with two major events in recent Jewish history: the Holocaust and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He does not compare these two events but instead introduces a typology of disasters that locates them within the wide spectrum of calamities generated by humans to exhibit both the specificities and general patterns that subsequently emerge.Works
* "Plato's Invisible Cities: Discourse and Power in the "Republic" (1990). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-03596-1
* "The Identity of the Victims and the Victims of Identity: A Critique of Zionist Ideology for a Post-Zionist Age." (2000) In Laurence Jay Silberstein (ed.), "Mapping Jewish Identities" (pp. 174-200). NYU Press. ISBN 0814797695.
* ' [http://www.counterpunch.org/ophir01162004.html Genocide lies behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris] '. "Counter-Punch", 16 January 2004.
* "The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals" (2005). MIT Press. Translated by Rela Mezali and Havi Carel. ISBN 1-890951-51-XReferences
External links
* [http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/cohn/staff/adi-ophir.htm Ophir's Cohn Institute homepage]
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