Rosenzweig Redux: The Reception of German-Jewish Thought

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Eli Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Thought ◽  
German Jewish

Jewish Nietzscheanism

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 396-409
Author(s):  
Robert C. Holub
Keyword(s):  
Short Duration ◽  
Contemporary Jewry ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals ◽  
Jewish Religion ◽  
Jewish Writers

Abstract Jewish Nietzscheans have traditionally shied away from any detailed examination of Nietzsche’s comments on contemporary Jewry or the Jewish religion. Scholars who have examined Jewish Nietzscheans have therefore sought to connect Nietzsche with some dimension of Jewish thought through similarities in views between Nietzsche and the Jewish intellectuals who were purportedly influenced by him. The two books under consideration in this essay strain to find solid connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the writings of eminent Jewish writers. Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris examine how selected Nietzschean concepts can also be found in the work of the noted Jewish thinker Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. David Ohana, by contrast, examines a variety of Jewish writers who at some point exhibited an enthusiasm for Nietzsche, ranging from Hebrew scholars and translators to German-Jewish intellectuals. Both books suffer from many of the shortcomings of general Nietzschean influence studies: there is often no sound philological evidence of influence, or the “connection” is so general that it is difficult to see Nietzsche as the source of influence, or the alleged influence was of short duration, and it is difficult to understand what remains Nietzschean in the individual influenced.

CULTURE AND LAW IN WEIMAR JEWISH MEDIEVALISM: LEO STRAUSS'S CRITIQUE OF JULIUS GUTTMANN

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN ALDES WURGAFT
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Jewish Historian ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Hermann Cohen

The German Jewish historian of political philosophy Leo Strauss is best known for mature works in which he proposed the existence of an esoteric tradition in political philosophy, attacked the liberal tradition of political thought, and defended a classical approach to natural right against its modern counterparts. This essay demonstrates that in his youth, beginning during a scholarly apprenticeship at the Berlin Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, Strauss championed “medievals” (rather than ancients) against “moderns,” and did so through a sparring match with his postdoctoral supervisor Julius Guttmann, whom he cast in the role of representative “modern.” While for Guttmann the stakes were scholarly, for Strauss they were political. Strauss's Weimar Jewish “medievalism” was a deliberate rejection of the tradition of modern Jewish thought Strauss associated with Guttmann's teacher Hermann Cohen, whom Strauss accused of neglecting the political distinctiveness of Jewish thought. While the conflict between Strauss and Guttmann has been neglected in much of the literature on Strauss, it served as the crucible in which many of his mature views, including his famous exoteric (sometimes called “esoteric”) writing thesis, began to take shape.

GAUGING THE GERMAN JEWISH

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 579-588
Author(s):  
DANIEL B. SCHWARTZ
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
German Jewish

Few fields are as riddled with terminological indecision as “German Jewish thought.” One cannot invoke this sphere without immediately bumping up against essential questions of definition. Should membership within its bounds be reserved for those who wrote, primarily, as Jews for Jews, even if in a non-Jewish language? Or should its borders be expanded substantially to include Jewish contributions to secular German thought—or, perhaps more aptly put, secular thought in German, in order not to exclude the vast number of Central European Jewish innovators who wrote in the language? If one takes the latter route, the problems only proliferate, for the question then ensues, what makes any of these supposed Jewish contributionsJewish? How is the Jewishness of a particular work, school of thought, or sensibility to be gauged and assessed? How does one avoid the risk of reading too much in—or too little? How does one steer clear of reducing Jewishness to some stable core or essence, without relying on a notion so broad and diffuse as to be effectively meaningless? And always lurking is the question whether, in imputing Jewishness to a cultural product or outlook, one has betrayed its creator, who would have recoiled at being labeled a “Jewish” author or artist. These problems are not peculiar to German Jewish intellectual history. They arise wherever and whenever Jews have been disproportionately prominent in the shaping of secular culture—for instance, in the writing of the “New York intellectuals” in the postwar United States. But the role of authors and artists of German Jewish background proved especially pronounced even after many, like Hannah Arendt or Leo Strauss, emigrated to escape the Nazis. In their new environments, they remained active participants in intellectual life, and the question remains whether they were carrying on the tradition of German Jewish thought.

Hölderlin in Jerusalem: Buber and Strauss on Poetry and the Limits of Dialogue

Naharaim ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Barouch
Keyword(s):  
Martin Buber ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
German Jewish

AbstractThis paper discusses a series of commentaries and lyrical texts by Martin Buber and Ludwig Strauss, which dwell on Hölderlin’s poetry and the dialogical ideas implicit therein (e.g. the dialogical vocation of the poet). The paper distinguishes between the dialogical ideal and its concretization in language, as the selected texts all strive to develop a dialogical poetics, yet at the same time engage with textual junctures where the dialogical mode collapses. This collapse is also registered in the historical sphere: Buber’s engagement with Heidegger’s paradigmatic Hölderlin studies calls for a comparison with Strauss’s reception of Hölderlin, and therefore points to an absent dialogue between these two contemporary scholars. This historical lacuna, which Buber may have wished to bridge, thus resonates with ideas on the limits of dialogue in the poetic sphere. The paper draws on further Hölderlin scholars, such as Peter Szondi and Winfried Menninghaus, and their discussion of the lyrical results of failed dialogue, and on the ideas of Franz Rosenzweig and Rabbi Nahman, in the mapping of the dialogical ideas of both Buber and Strauss. Strauss himself thus emerges as a scholar and poet who draws both on Hölderlinian motifs and notions and on dialogical ideas in contemporaneous German-Jewish thought.

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