Just like Thomas Paine’s political thought, Edmund Burke’s sees liberty as a core aim of a good society. But “liberty” means something very different for Burke. While Paine defines liberty as the freedom to do whatever you want so long as you are not harming another, Burke speaks of “ordered liberty.” In this clip from […]

Possibly Leo Strauss’s greatest essay, “Progress or Return?” is crucial to understanding Strauss’s political thought, especially his famed reason/revelation distinction. In this clip, Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution summarizes the entire argument of the essay in four short propositions.

During Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews,” Eric Cohen, Yuval Levin, and Meir Soloveichik tried to sort through the deep dilemma facing the modern, post-Enlightenment Jew who also holds a Burkean respect for old ways. Eric Cohen began by pointing out how peculiar the claims of historical revelation are, so peculiar as to strain […]

What is the proper relationship between Jews and political power? To what extent should Jews eschew worldly power for the sake of piety? How Machiavellian can Jews allow themselves to be? Two of the Jewish world’s most esteemed intellectuals, Ruth Wisse and Moshe Halbertal, examined these questions for participants in the Tikvah Fund’s Summer Fellowship […]

Yuval Levin of National Affairs and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik explore in this clip the tensions between the social aim of liberty and the need for child-rearing. Bringing in Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and John Locke, Levin and Soloveichik show how this tension comes down to the foundational question of the nature of man. How much […]

While Rabbinic Judaism—the Judaism of everyday laws—has declined in the modern era, Prophetic Judaism—the Judaism of profound, universalist ethical proclamations—has risen to the forefront of Jewish self-understanding. Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution explains in this clip why Prophetic Judaism flourished after the Haskalah: Judaism as an ethical code was most compatible with the Jews’ […]

Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, takes on the relationship between theory and practice. We tend to think that political theories are dreamed up absent society and then played out in a society. But, drawing on Burke and Tocqueville, Levin postulates that “the ways in which we understand ourselves become the ways in which we live.” […]

Is there an authentically Jewish view of economics? Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution argued during Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews” that there is and there isn’t. As with medical care, there are technical dilemmas in economics that do not have an authentically Jewish solution, like the granular questions of monetary policy […]

As part of Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews”, Tikvah’s executive director Eric Cohen offered two philosophical dilemmas for conservatives. The first is how to reconcile the tension between an economics that praises creative destruction and a preference for cultural, political, and religious continuity. The second is the dilemma of conservatism’s metaphysical roots: […]

In a discussion of the political thought of the Haggadah, Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution notices a recognition of the importance of the separate person—the individual—in the Passover teaching. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik concurs and offers a beautiful homily on the biblical preference for building with unique stones rather than uniform bricks. The best communities, […]