Arnold Davidson

Arnold Davidson
Born	1955 (age 69–70)
Philosophical work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
Main interests	Michel Foucault, Continental philosophy

Arnold Ira Davidson (born 1955) is a philosopher who has taught in many different academic departments, and in many different countries. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He teaches in the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities as well as in several departments, principally in the Department of Jewish Thought and the Department of Romance Studies. ^[1]

He is also the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, the Divinity School, and the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. He has served as European Editor of Critical Inquiry, and he has also been a director of the France-Chicago Center. His major fields of research and teaching are the philosophy of Judaism, the history of contemporary European philosophy, the history of moral and political philosophy, the history of the human sciences, the history and philosophy of religion, and literature as a form of philosophical expression.

In 2021, the French government promoted Davidson to the rank of Commandeur--the highest rank--in the order of knighthood of which he is a member, the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. This honor was conferred for his exceptional contribution to the teaching and promotion of French thought and culture.

He has been a visiting professor at many French institutions (including the Collège de France, the École Normale Supérieure, the University of Paris I and the University of Paris VII) and has also been Professor of the History of Political Philosophy at the University of Pisa and Professor of the Philosophy of Cultures at the University Ca'Foscari Venice, where he has been named an honorary member of the faculty.  In addition, he has been the jazz critic for the Sunday cultural supplement, "Domenica," of the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

His current projects revolve around figures as diverse as Pierre Hadot, Joseph Soloveitchik, Michel Foucault, and Primo Levi, and around themes that range from the history of spiritual exercises and practices of self-transformation to the relation between Talmudic and philosophical argumentation, and the aesthetics, ethics and politics of improvisation. Most recently, he has co-edited a critical edition of the manuscripts of Zalmen Gradowski, "The Last Consolation Vanished" (Gradowski, Zalmen. The Last Consolation Vanished: The Testimony of a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. Edited by Arnold I. Davidson and Philippe Mesnard. Translated by Rubye Monet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022). ^[2] Gradowski was assigned to the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz---he managed to write one of the most singular and powerful accounts of the Shoah, from both an historical and a literary point of view, composed during the time of the events themselves. His manuscripts were buried under the ashes of Birkenau and discovered after the war. This edition is the first complete critical edition in English. Davidson's main publications are in French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as in English. ^[3]

Education and career

Davidson holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University, where he wrote a dissertation under the supervision of John Rawls and Stanley Cavell. He taught at Stanford University from 1981 to 1985, apart from a year as a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University in 1984–85. He joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1986, and is currently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Davidson, who often speaks and teaches at French and Italian universities, has been a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin as well as visiting professor, chaire d'Etat, at the Collège de France. He was the executive editor of the journal Critical Inquiry . Davidson was also a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient in 2003.

Bibliography

• Co-editor of The Last Consolation Vanished: The Testimony of a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. Edited by Arnold I. Davidson and Philippe Mesnard. Translated by Rubye Monet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.
• Gli esercizi spirituali della musica. Improvvisazione e creazione. Mimesis Edizioni, 2020.
• Series editor of the English translation of the courses of Michel Foucault at the Collège de France. Palgrave Macmillan, UK/USA. (This series has resulted in thirteen volumes.)
• Co-author of Reflexões sobre o nacional-socialismo. Editora Âyiné, 2017.
• Editor of Pierre Hadot, Studi di filosofia antica. Edizioni ETS, 2014.
• Religión, razón y espiritualidad. Ediciones Alpha Decay, Barcelona, 2014.
• Editor of Primo Levi, Vivir para contar. Escribir tras Auschwitz. Ediciones Alpha Decay, Barcelona, 2010.
• Editor of La vacanza morale del fascismo. Intorno a Primo Levi. Edizioni ETS, 2009.
• Co-editor of Michel Foucault. Philosophie. Gallimard, 2004 (an anthology of the writings of Michel Foucault).
• The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts. Harvard University Press, 2001. (Translation into Portugese, Italian, Spanish and French with a new preface).
• Editor of Pierre Hadot. Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique.Albin Michel, 2002. (Translation into approximately ten languages, with a new preface in the Italian Edition.)
• Editor of Foucault and His Interlocutors. The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
• La philosophie comme manière de vivre (Co-authored with Pierre Hadot and Jeannie Carlier). Albin Michel, 2001. (Translated into approximately ten languages) - English translation: The Present Alone is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannier Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson (translated by Marc Djaballah), Stanford University Press, 2009.
• Editor of Pierre Hadot. Philosophy As a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Basil Blackwell Press, 1995.

External links

• Quotations related to Arnold Davidson at Wikiquote

1. "Hebrew University".
2. Gradowski, Zalmen; Davidson, Arnold I.; Mesnard, Philippe; Monet, Rubye (2022). The Last Consolation Vanished. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0-226-63678-8.
3. "Arnold Davidson | Department of Philosophy". philosophy.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2025-12-22.