Adi Ophir
Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University

Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University. This paper was originally presented at the conference "Critical Modernities: Politics and Law beyond the Liberal Imagination," at Tel Aviv
University, December 2005. The present version has benefited from the critical comments of many: the conference participants, my friends and colleagues at the
Van Leer group for continental political philosophy, my attentive audience at the Colloquium for Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, where part of the paper was later presented, and my patient and speediest readers, Michal Givoni and Yehuda Shenhav. I am thankful to all my critics. Special thanks are due to Galit Greenberg for her efficient technical and editorial assistance.