Personifying the Radical

This study examines relationships among individual dispositions, news framing of civil liberties restrictions, security concerns, and political tolerance. We theorize that news frames condition the effects of individual dispositions on security and tolerance attitudes. To explore these relationships, an online‐survey experiment was conducted with 650 respondents. This experiment presented alternative versions of news stories about domestic security policies following September 11, and the policies' implications for a fringe activist group. One factor was whether the activists targeted by the government advocated for a cause supported or opposed by the respondent; another factor was whether the story framed government actions against the activists at the individual or group level. Findings show that individual framing—as opposed to group framing—made participants less tolerant of radicals they opposed and more tolerant of radicals they supported. Similar effects were observed for political ideology. Implications of personification as a framing device are discussed.     

Halakhah as Torat Hayyim: the values-conscious visions of Eliezer Berkovits and Emanuel Rackman

In the third quarter of the twentieth century, Eliezer Berkovits and Emanuel Rackman were two of the most articulate spokesmen of an approach to the interpretation and application of Jewish law, in the United States, identified with modern Orthodoxy. Each viewed their understanding of the development of Halakhah as an organic expression of the millennia-old process that is torat hayyim, living Torah. Both Berkovits and Rackman moved to Israel in the 1970s; each was, increasingly, marginalized in the world of organized Orthodoxy.

The tropes sounded by Berkovits and Rackman were remarkably consistent over their careers. One particular area that both recognized as urgently calling for halakhic development was matters relating to women. In this connection, as with other issues they addressed, they maintained that Torah principles of the ethical have a significant role to play in Jewish legal development. This essay focuses on the visions of halakhic development articulated by Berkovits and Rackman during the third quarter of the twentieth century.     

Ego development in perspective: Structural stage,functional phase,and cultural age-period models

Ego development is emerging as one of the more important areas of research in developmental psychology. This paper presents a structural stage approach to ego development and distinguishes it from two other models of ego development, which are termed functional phases and cultural ages. Two subtypes are also delineated within the structural stage approach—a monodomain and a multisubdomain—and the latter is argued for. These concepts are then illustrated through an analysis of four prominent ego development theories—those of Robert Selman, Robert Kegan, Jane Loevinger, and Erik Erikson. The important similarities and critical differences of the theories are clarified, which enables the authors to present a summary integration.     

The technology trap and the new humanism

The presumption that critical theory needs reloading for the 21^st century suggests the school of thought has to be reimagined in a way that refines its theoretical focus. Arguably, this refining is necessitated by the fact that the technological culture that the first generation of critical theorists believed was ushering in a new kind of barbarism has evolved considerably over the intervening years, and in a manner that renders more problematic than ever the Enlightenment promise of human freedom and self-determination. This article explores one form that the “spirit” of critical theory may take in light of contemporary techno-cultural advances. Extrapolating from the original articulation of the challenge confronting humanity by the Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, it is argued that the intensification of the technological dynamic that sees human subjectivity subsumed under systems of control demands a reinvigorated critical response. The mutually sympathetic critiques of modern techno-culture offered by Jean Baudrillard and Byung-Chul Han are presented as embodying the spirit of critical theory for the 21^st century. Their focus on the hegemony of the ethos of technology opens up a way of reimagining the meaning of humanism in an age arguably more barbaric than the Frankfurt School theorists anticipated.