scholarly journals Jacob Gordin: The Religious Crisis in Jewish Thought

Religions ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Ori Werdiger
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Crisis ◽  
Hermann Cohen

This article offers an English translation of an essay published in 1946 by Jacob Gordin (1896–1947), a Russian-Jewish philosopher of religion, who is considered the founding figure of the postwar Paris School of Jewish Thought (École de pensée juive de Paris). In “The Religious Crisis in Jewish Thought”, Gordin presented a sweeping meta-narrative of the history of Jewish thought, formulated as a history of repeated “religious crises”, both existential and intellectual. In Gordin’s condensed narrative, these crises could be detected in the life and philosophy of the most canonical Jewish thinkers inside and outside the tradition: from Abraham the biblical patriarch to Hermann Cohen, through a diverse list including the rabbinical sage Elisha Ben-Abuyah, Philo, Halevi, Maimonides, and Spinoza. In an introduction to Gordin’s text, I provide a brief biography, locate Gordin in existentialist discourse of the early postwar years, and discuss the affinities between Gordin’s “The Religious Crisis” and Levinas’s and Sartre’s early reflections on the Jewish question.

Jacob Gordin and the Anti-Spinozist Legacy of Hermann Cohen in France

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Ori Werdiger
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Intelligentsia ◽  
Hermann Cohen ◽  
Point Of Departure

Hermann Cohen is often described as the last in a line of German idealist, or Jewish rationalist, thinkers. This article, instead, takes Cohen as a point of departure, tracing his distinct form of anti-Spinozism which was transmitted to France by the Russian émigré philosopher of religion Jacob Gordin. It considers the engagements by Cohen, Leo Strauss, and Gordin with Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise, and examines the role an essay by Gordin played in bringing Cohen's view to francophone Jewish audiences and in defending Cohen's reading of Spinoza against Strauss's critique. The article then treats the postwar redeployments of Gordin's essay by Emmanuel Levinas and the historian of anti-Semitism Léon Poliakov against the Zionist and Spinozist views promoted by David Ben-Gurion. Attention to the overlooked centrality of Gordin demonstrates the importance of Russian intelligentsia as carriers of Cohen's legacy, highlights the presence of Cohen's anti-Spinozist views in postwar French and French Jewish thought, and introduces another site within the reception history of Spinoza in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Samuel Hirsch, Hegel, and the Legacy of Ethical Monotheism

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Erlewine
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Developmental History ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Basic Strategy ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Genesis 3 ◽  
Hermann Cohen

AbstractThis essay examines Samuel Hirsch’s Religious Philosophy of the Jews as a forerunner of twentieth-century works of ethical monotheism in modern Jewish thought. In particular, it explores Hirsch’s use of the dichotomy between monotheism and idolatry as a way to resist Hegel’s attempts to incorporate Judaism into his developmental history of religion. Hirsch frames his opposition to the Hegelian account of religion by means of providing a rival interpretation of Genesis 3 to that offered by Hegel in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. After juxtaposing Hegel’s and Hirsch’s respective interpretations of Genesis 3, I explore Hirsch’s account of religion, which, unlike Hegel’s, is presented in terms of the dichotomy of true and false religion. Finally, I will briefly highlight how Hirsch’s basic strategy for understanding Judaism vis-à-vis other religions—namely, casting the dichotomy between monotheism and idolatry in starkly ethical terms—is taken up and utilized by Hermann Cohen and Emmanuel Levinas in the twentieth century.

Orientalism, Jewish Studies and Israeli Society: A Few Comments

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 237-269
Author(s):  
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Religious Group ◽  
Israeli Society ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of

One of the claims that was voiced in the debate over Edward Said’s book Orientalism was that the author ignored German Orientalist research. This essay does not discuss this claim itself, but rather uses this debate as a starting point for investigating different aspects of Israeli consciousness. Indeed, German Orientalism was not directly connected to colonialist activity, but it encompassed the discourse regarding the relation between Germany and Judaism and “the Jewish Question.” The question was whether Jews were Oriental and therefore foreign to European culture, or rather a religious group that could be integrated into that culture. The modern national definition of the Jewish collective was based on adopting this worldview and on accepting the Orientalist paradigm. The tendency was to define the Jews as a European nation, emphasizing the difference between the new entity and the Orient. This tendency was manifested both in the attitude towards Arabs and towards the history of “the land” [Palestine/“Land of Israel”], and in the attitude to Oriental Jews [Mizraḥim]. Nonetheless, other directions for the definition of Jewish thought and identity can also be found in the Orientalist literature.

Hans Lassen Martensen’s “The Present Religious Crisis”

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Stewart
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
Explicit Reference ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Crisis

AbstractThis article provides an English translation of Hans Lassen Martensen’s “The Present Religious Crisis” from 1842. In this work Martensen outlines two important trends that were much discussed at the time. The first part of his article is dedicated to the Anabaptist movement in Denmark, which was in open conflict with the Danish State Church about the question of infant baptism. In the second part, Martensen treats the work of the left Hegelian David Friedrich Strauss and his followers, who regarded the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus as, by and large, myths. Although polar opposites, these two movements are, for Martensen, symptoms of the religious confusion of the day. Martensen attempts to defend the Danish State Church in the face of these criticisms. Kierkegaard seems to refer to Martensen’s article in his “Public Confession,” where he refers to the rise of sects in Denmark and makes explicit reference to both the Anabaptists and the Straussians. Like Martensen, he is at pains to distance himself from Strauss and his followers. Martensen’s article also represents a landmark in the history of the Danish Hegel reception since it signals the alarm about the new Straussian trend.

Adam Zalužanský’s “De sexu plantarum” (1592): an early pioneering chapter on plant sexuality

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
History Of Botany ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Botanical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.

Holiness in Jewish Thought

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Life

Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. “Holiness” seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature. It offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development of the Jewish tradition. They think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

A DEFENSE OF THE CAROLINGIAN “DEFENSE OF MEDICINE”: INTRODUCTION, TRANSLATION, AND NOTES

Traditio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 87-125
Author(s):  
JOEL L. GAMBLE
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
History Of ◽  
As If

The “Defense of Medicine” prefaces the Codex Bambergensis Medicinalis 1, a Carolingian collection of medical texts. Some scholars have dismissed the Defense as an incoherent patchwork of quotations. Yet, missing from the literature is an adequate assessment of the Defense's arguments. This present study includes the first English translation accompanied by a complete source commentary, a prerequisite for valid content analysis. When read systematically and with attention to the author's use of sources, the Defense is limpid and cogent. Its first purpose is to defend the compatibility of Christian faith and secular medicine. Key propositions include the following: God made nature good, so the natural sciences are reconcilable with divine learning; scripture respects medicine; God expects the sick to avail of physicians and deserves honor for healings done through physicians. Counter-arguments used by the Defense's opponents, who rejected medicine on principle, can also be reconstructed from the text. Two further purposes of the Defense have hitherto been explored insufficiently. After justifying medicine, the Defense addresses sick patients. It encourages them that illness can be spiritually healthful, an instrument for curing their souls. The Defense then addresses caregivers. It tells them why they should succor the sick, even the poor: not for gain or fame, but in imitation of Christ and as if treating Christ himself, whose image the sick bear. The Defense thus contributes to the history of ideas on medicine, health, sickness, and the ethics of altruistic care.

scholarly journals The Ermakov equation: A commentary

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.G.L. Leach ◽  
S.K. Andriopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Nonlinear Systems ◽  
Differential Equations ◽  
Ordinary Differential Equations ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Singularity Theory ◽  
Discrete Math ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
Short History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Context

We present a short history of the Ermakov equation with an emphasis on its discovery by thewest and the subsequent boost to research into invariants for nonlinear systems although recognizing some of the significant developments in the east. We present the modern context of the Ermakov equation in the algebraic and singularity theory of ordinary differential equations and applications to more divers fields. The reader is referred to the previous article (Appl. Anal. Discrete math., 2 (2008), 123-145) for an english translation of Ermakov's original paper.

Joseph Soloveitchik and Immanuel Kant's Mitzvah-Aesthetic

AJS Review ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Braiterman
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Critique Of Judgment ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Personal Morality ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Ideal

In the following pages, I will address the relationship between Jewish thought and aesthetics by bringing Joseph Soloveitchik into conversation with Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Judgment remains an imposing monument in the history of philosophical aesthetics. While Buber and Rosenzweig may have been more accomplished aesthetes, Soloveitchik's aesthetic proves closer to Kant's own. In particular, I draw upon the latter's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime and the notion of a form of indeterminate purposiveness without determinate purpose. I will relate these three figures to Soloveitcchik's understanding of halakhah and to the ideal of performing commandments for their own sake (li-shemah). The model of mitzvah advanced by this comparison is quintessentially modern: an autonomous, self-contained, formal system that does not (immediately) point to extraneous goods, such as spiritual enlightenment, personal morality, or social ethics. The good presupposed by this system proves first and foremost “aesthetic.” That is, immanent to the system. Supererogatory goods enter into the picture only afterward as second-order effects.

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