Anna Blijdenstein is working as a PhD researcher at the faculty of philosophy of the University of Amsterdam. She studied Political Science and graduated Cum Laude from the Master Political Theory and Behavior and Master Philosophy of Science. Before her current position she acquired both academic and teaching experience working as a junior lecturer in the political science department.

Her current research is part of the NWO-funded project Critique of religion and the framing of Jews and Muslims in the Netherlands today. The project is supervised by Prof. Dr. H.Y.M. (Yolande) Jansen. Other PhD candidate: Matthea Westerduin (VUA).

PhD Project: Islam and Judaism, Muslims and Jews in the contemporary ‘Dutch Enlightenment’, in light of their genealogies in modern political philosophy

The project provides a conceptual-historical analysis of the dynamic between religious critique and the framing of Jews and Muslims in secular modern political theory and subsequently examines the contributions of contemporary Dutch public intellectuals to the debate in light of that conceptual history.

It first traces the genealogy of the notions of Jews and Muslims, Islam and Judaism, in modern political thought, especially within the liberal and secular tradition of critique of religion. The available literature on how the tradition of religious critique is related to modern concepts of religion, and Islam and Judaism in particular, is systematically examined, with one critical focus point: the project asks whether religious critique itself, as a modern, Enlightenment tradition, depended upon distorted or at least problematic concepts and images of religion, and of Judaism and Islam, and Jews and Muslims, in particular.

Secondly, it reads contemporary Dutch critique of religion by public intellectuals as context-specific articulations of these earlier traditions of modern political thought. The project homes in on a select number of contributions to the debates which are salient in the Netherlands today, especially on Paul Cliteur,  Jonathan Israel, Dick Pels and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This part of the project asks whether we can trace those forms of framing, of both secular and religious Jews and Muslims, that are familiar from modern political philosophy, in contemporary Dutch contributions.

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