Adi Ophir
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Adi Ophir (born 22 September 1951) is an Israeli philosopher.
Professor Ophir teaches philosophy at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University.
Ophir's recent book The Order of Evils is an ambitious attempt to recast moral philosophy as a response to concrete evils. Ophir argues that, under certain conditions, evils are systematically produced (rather as goods are systematically produced). Ontologically considered, such evils are simultaneously certain sorts of presences within the world (sufferings intensified by being either superfluous or inexpressible) and certain sorts of disappearances within the world (losses or damages intensified by being either superfluous or without possibility of restitution). Ophir's focus on understanding particular evils (rather than some transcendentalized Evil) keeps his thought determinedly secular. His focus on what he views as two crucial examples of the systematic production of evils - the Holocaust and the Israeli occupation of Palestine - keeps his thought rather sharply politically and existentially engaged.
[edit] Works
- Plato's Invisible Cities: Discourse and Power in the "Republic" (1990). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-03596-1
- '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-X
