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Popper and Agassi diverged on nationalism. Popper was a trenchant critic whereas Agassi formed a theory of liberal nationalism. At the root of their disagreement was Popper’s refusal of Jewish identity and rejection of Zionism, in contrast with Agassi’s affirmation of progressive Jewishness and liberal Zionism. Both Agassi and Popper, however, rejected ethnonationalism. To hedge against it, they ignored the claims of ethnocultural communities. This essay will highlight Agassi’s liberal theory of the nation state but urge that we overcome Critical Rationalists’ instinctive aversion to ethnicity, and accommodate ethnocultural communities. We should also explore again both Popper’s democratic imperialism and cosmopolitan diasporas, to think a future beyond nationalism.

die 68er lieber Marcuse gelesen haben statt [Arthur] Koestler, Mans Sperber und Hannah Arendt,« said Daniel Cohn Bendit in 2005, »das war schlimm, genauso schlimm wie die RAF [Rote Armee Fraktion]!« 1 His comrade Joschka Fischer quietly agreed. Almost four decades after the generational conflict that pitted students against their teachers, the 68ers against leading ØmigrØs, the most thoughtful and successful among the rebels, chastened by political experience, revised their views of the elders, finding instruction in the political books they had previously ignored, or abhorred. Significantly, even as the 68ers' politics changed, the ØmigrØs remained their frame of reference. Cohn-Bendit and Fischer were merely taking a different side in the old fight: The former hero, Herbert Marcuse, now became a villain, and the former villains were now heroes. From beginning to end, the life of the 68ers was bound up with that of the ØmigrØs -whether reviled or admired.The ØmigrØs were the victims, symbolic and real, of the European past, against which the 68ers rebelled. »Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands« (we are all German Jews), chanted the Parisian students, defending Cohn-Bendit against French detractors. Wishing to set the past aright, the 68ers refocused social and academic attention on the ØmigrØs, sought their approval and developed a new * This was originally a Ringvorlesung in the series, »1968 als Ereignis und Symbol,« organized by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Vienna, and given on 24 May 2008 at the University of Vienna. Thanks to Friedrich Stadler and Christoph Limbeck for the organization and for comments and to

The paper focuses on the problematic relationship between Talmon's liberalism and Zionism. My argument is that Talmon's nationalism (Zionism included)-historicist, romantic, visionary-lived in permanent tension with his liberalism-empiricist, pluralist, pragmatic. His critique of totalitarian democracy, reflecting his British experience, emerged independently from his Zionism, grounded in Central European nationalism. The two represented different worlds. Talmon lived in both, serving as an ambassador in-between them, without ever bringing them together.The essay's first section describes the political education of the young Jacob Talmon (ne´e Flajszer) and the making of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. It demonstrates the independence of Talmon's Cold War liberal project from his Zionism. The second section places Talmon in the context of Cold War liberal discourse, showing how integral his critique of revolutionary politics was to contemporary liberalism. The third illustrates the tensions between Talmon's view of Jewish history and his liberalism, between his Zionism and his critique of revolutionary politics. Focusing on Talmon's analyses of nationalism, it highlights the ambiguity of his Zionism. r