Michael S. Kochin


Senior Lecturer
Department of Political Science
Tel Aviv University
kochin@post.tau.ac.il

CV and list of papers

Things I work on: Political Rhetoric, Religion and Public Life, National Conflicts and the Future of the Nation-State, Politics, Literature, and Film, Political Ontology, Philosophical Rhetoric

Things I worry about: The Winograd Report

Political Rhetoric

Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art is built around five fundamental concepts that clarify the possibilities and limitations of persuasive communication. Five Chapters illuminates our path to things through our judgments of character and action. It shows how speech and writing are used to defend the fabric of social life from things or facts. Finally, it shows how the art of rhetoric aids us in clarifying things when we speak to communicate, and helps protect us from their terrible clarity when we speak in order to maintain our existing connections to others. Penn State University Press, 2009.

"From Argument to Assertion." Argumentation 2009.

"Ethosblog: Trust and Evidence on the Internet." Rhętorikę: Revista Digital de Retórica 0 (March 2008).

"Individual Narrative and Political Character." The Review of Metaphysics 55(June 2002):691-709.

"Time and Judgment in Demosthenes' De Corona." Philosophy and Rhetoric 35(2002):77-89.

Religion and Public Life

"The American Religion and the Christian Religion: Theological Reflections on the 2008 Campaign." Presented at a conference entitled "In God We Trust": The American Model of Religion and State and the Israeli Case, Jerusalem, October 19, 2008.

"The Chosen and the Almost-Chosen." Claremont Institute, August 21, 2008.

"Messianism and Security in the 1996 Israeli Election Campaign." Public lecture to Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, Seattle, Washington, September 3, 1996.

National Conflicts and the Future of the Nation-State

"The Constitution of Nations." The Good Society 14, No 3 (Fall 2005):68-76.

"Where Rawls was Right." Review of Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others. Azure 24 (Spring 2006).

"Punishment, not Vengeance." Jerusalem Post, October 23, 2001.

"Fighting About Rights," Harvard Magazine, November/December 2000.

Political Ontology

1. Democratic Leadership between Inside and Outside. The challenge to democracy posed by public ignorance of foreign affairs, and the modes in which this challenge is met or mitigated.

A. "Democratic Leadership between Inside and Outside: Meditations on Herodotus and Thucydides." Delivered to the Jerusalem Seminar in the History of Political Thought, Hebrew University, June 20, 2007.

2. Other Work in Political Ontology

"Friendship Beyond Reason."

"Political Virtue and the Choice of a Public Life."

Review of Charles Blattberg, From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First. The Review of Metaphysics 55, No. 3, September 2001.

Review of Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, and Warren Montag, Body, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. The Review of Politics 63 No. 1, Winter 2001.

"When is Buying Votes Wrong?" (with Levis A. Kochin). Public Choice 97(December 1998):645-662. Abstract

"Decollectivization of Agriculture and the Planned Economy." American Journal of Political Science 40(August 1996):717-739. Abstract

"Counting to 61." Jerusalem Post, June 12, 2000.

Review of Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. The Review of Politics 60(Summer 1998):582-584.

Review of M. Lane, Method and Politics in Plato's "Statesman". Bryn Mawr Classical Review, July 17, 1998.

"The Likud's Proper Place." Jerusalem Post, May 25, 1999.

"Her Majesty is Queen of Canada by Grace of God." The Toronto Star, July 20, 1998.

"Truant Senator." The Globe and Mail, December 27, 1997.

"West Tired of Losing at Confederation Poker." The Toronto Star, May 28, 1997.

"Dead-end for Democracy." Jerusalem Post, July 17, 1996.

Politics, Literature, and Film

1. "Prudence, Resistance, and Charity in Rossellini's Rome Open City." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, August 2007.

2. "'Life as Literature': Wright Morris's Love Among the Cannibals."

3. "Literature and Salvation in Elizabeth Costello, or How to Refuse to be an Author in Eight or Nine Lessons." English in Africa 34 no. 1 (May 2007):79-95.

4. For Whom Nobel Tolls: A deserved prize for J.M. Coetzee. The Weekly Standard, December 8, 2003.

5. "The Management of Appearances and the Possibility of Republican Government: The Myth of Lucretia from Rome to Richardson."

i. A preliminary study from this project, "The Death of Tragedy: Genre, Politics, and the Myth of Lucretia."

ii. "The Richardsonian Republic" (with Katherine Philippakis) was given at a panel on "Civil Society and the Politics of the Novel" (Panel 41-7) at the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C., in August 2000, and received the award for Best Paper in Politics and Literature.

iii. "Living with the Bible: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reads Judges 19-21." Hebraic Political Studies 2, No. 3 (Summer 2007):301-325.

iv. "Postmetaphysical Literature: Reflections on J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace." Perspectives on Politics 33 (2004):4-10.

Philosophical Rhetoric

Gender and Rhetoric in Plato's Political Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Sample chapter here

"Academic Politics between Democracy and Aristocracy.".

"The Class Struggle, Gorgias, and his Art of Rhetoric."

"How Joseph de Maistre Read Plato's Laws." Polis 19(2002):29-43.

"Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing." The Review of Politics 64(Spring 2002):261-83.

"The Philosopher and the King: On the Plan of Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing." Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 50(October 2001):373-386 (Hebrew version of "Morality, Nature, and Esotericism").

"War, Class, and Justice in Plato's Republic." The Review of Metaphysics 53(December 1999):403-423. Abstract

"Weeds." The Journal of the History of Ideas 60(July 1999):399-416. Abstract

"Plato's Eleatic and Athenian Sciences of Politics." The Review of Politics 61(Winter 1999):1-28. Abstract

"The Unity of Virtue and the Limitations of Magnesia." History of Political Thought 19(Summer 1998): 125-141. Abstract

Review of Randall Baldwin Clark, The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical Argument and Magical Rhetoric in Plato's Laws, and Albert Keith Whitaker, Journey Into Platonic Politics: Plato's Laws. Perspectives on Politics 3 (June 2005):350-352.

Review of John von Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, September, 2002.

Review of John R. Wallach, The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, August, 2001.

Review of Robert Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and their Successors. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, July 4, 1997.