Miss Shoham Shenhav

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Bio

Shoham Shenhav is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Glaser-Mudie Graduate Program (TELEM). Her dissertation, supervised by Wael Abu-ʿUksa, examines anti-authority, cosmopolitanism, and revolution in Shibli Shumayyil’s thought. Her research interests include modern Arab political thought, radicalism, the transnational circulation of leftist and anarchist ideas, and the intersections of psychiatry, civilization, and political power in the Arab Nahda. She holds the Hebrew University Presidential Fellowship and Yad Ora Fellowship.

"The Laws of Existence are His Laws" – Law, Authority, and Freedom in Shibli Shumayyil (1850-1917)

Abstract

This chapter argues that Shibli Shumayyil (1850–1917), a central Nahda thinker, is not merely a constitutional reformer. Beyond his reformist writings, which treat law as a repairable institution, lies a radical political philosophy, identified here for the first time: a Rousseauian genealogy of law as pathology, born of an ancient "tango" between despot and submissive populace, and even justifying crime as freedom. Shumayyil is thus an outlier, and recovering him reframes Nahda historiography through radicalism.