The title "The philosopher in the public sphere" captures the uniqueness of Professor Yirmiyahu Yovel – a distinguished public intellectual and recipient of the 2000 Israel Prize for philosophy – as a philosopher involved in the cultural and political field in Israel and abroad. Yovel’s oeuvre includes studies of Kant, Hegel, Spinoza and Nietzsche, alongside opinion pieces written and broadcast, on public issues. His teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the New School for Social Research is complemented by his founding and running the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute.

The articles assembled here, many of which are political in nature, treat major figures in the history of philosophy. Written by prominent philosophers in Israel and abroad, some of them Yovel’s students, these studies are attempts to assess the complex connections between thought and action in the public sphere.

Dr. Pini Ifergan teaches philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His book The Tragedy in Ethical Life was published by Bar-Ilan University Press.