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JEWISH PHILOSOPHY |
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Select: Salomon Maimon -- Moses Hess -- Hermann Cohen -- Asher Ginzberg Martin Buber -- Franz Rosenzweig Salomon Maimon - (1753 - 1800) Immanuel Kant recognized Maimon as the most acute of all his critics. The famous author of the Critique of Pure Reason probably knew what hardships Maimon had endured before he could publish his Versuch ueber die Transcendentalphilosophie, in which he successfully dealt with problems not understandable to the great majority of German thinkers of that time. When Maimon, in 1778, left his native village of Nieszwicz, Lithuania, he had been trained in the Heder and Yeshiva, had studied the Talmud, the Cabala and Maimonides, but had had no opportunity to be taught a modern language. Without any teacher he had deciphered the German alphabet by means of adventurous combinations and immense labor; but he could not pronounce a German word correctly when he crossed the borders of Prussia. It took him a long time to learn German thoroughly. It took him even more time to adapt himself to the moderate mentality of his German contemporaries. For many years, his violent temper prevented him from concentrating upon the studies he had longed for. He provoked the indignation of his protector Moses Mendelssohn by his radical views and his licentiousness. He perplexed a Protestant minister who was to baptize him by his declaration that he regarded Judaism a religion superior to Christianity. After twelve years of wandering, Maimon anticipated many important views of post-Kantian philosophy, and influenced Fichte particularly. More than a century after Maimon's death, his thoughts became even more influential than during his lifetime. But great as his philosophical thinking had been, his most interesting work is his autobiography which, in 1792, the German psychologist Karl Philipp Moritz edited under the title Salomon Maimons Eigene Lebensgeschichte. This book contains a charming description of Jewish life in Lithuania and a courageous vindication of rabbinic Judaism. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Moses Hess (picture), who assumed the first name Moses instead of Moritz in order to show his adherence to Judaism, provoked the indignation of his relatives by marrying a prostitute in order to show his contempt of the existing moral standards. He lived with her in happiness until his death. He was, however, a man who willingly obeyed those ethical demands that his thinking recognized as right. He was an early apostle of socialism, and a precursor of Zionism. Because of his participation in the revolution of 1848, Hess was sentenced to death and on escaping had to wander through many countries of Europe before he found refuge in Paris. In his youth, Hess abounded in ideas. His influence with Karl Marx was considerable. For a time they were closely associated. Later Marx felt himself superior to Hess, and made him smart for his previous ascendancy. Although Hess recognized the importance of economic and social forces, he conceived socialism as a prevalently humanitarian ideal, dissenting from Marx who regarded it as the inevitable result of economic evolution. It was also for the sake of humanity that Hess agitated for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine by publishing his book Rome and Jerusalem (1862) and numerous essays in which he expresses Messianic hopes. According to Hess, Judaism has no other dogma but "the teaching of the unity." As already shown by his Holy Story of Humanity (1837), he deviated from the Jewish conception of God and called the history of humanity holy because, in his opinion, it is really the history of God, then conceived by him partly in accordance with Spinoza, partly with the Christian doctrine of Trinity. In European Triarchy (1841) he outlined a new order of Europe which he claimed was in accordance with "human nature." His socialism is not strictly egalitarian but an effort to satisfy the wants of "human nature," which remained his principal standard of judging human institutions. In his later years he came closer to the views developed in Jewish traditions, but he built his hopes for the settlement of the Jews in the Holy Land upon France, which he regarded as the champion of liberty. After France's defeat in the war of 1870, Hess admonished the nations of Europe to ally with one another against German militarism. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet
The basis of Cohen's philosophy was that God made truth possible. His system of critical idealism dealt with the logic of pure knowledge, the ethics of pure will, and the aesthetics of pure feeling. He emphasized that basically his ethical philosophy was connected with the teachings of Judaism. For many years Cohen was a professor at the University of Marburg. Upon his retirement at the age of seventy, he spent his last years as a teacher of Jewish philosophy at the Institute for the Science of Judaism in Berlin. In addition to educating rabbinical students, he directed discussions each Friday for the benefit of the general public. Many non-Jewish scholars attended these, eager to profit by Cohen's answers to questions concerning the whole range of science and philosophy. Cohen's method for teaching the rudiments of philosophy to beginners was greatly admired. He listened patiently to his students, helped them articulate their thoughts and express themselves methodically. He regarded his technique of discussion with beginners as a test of his doctrine wherein thought was "pure creation," not the result but the condition of experience. Cohen's interpretations of the critiques of Immanuel Kant, in his early years, gave new direction to the neo-Kantian movement. The idea of God occupies the central position in his philosophy of critical idealism. The idea contains the connotation of a basic harmony between the structure of the universe and the aspirations of mankind. His introduction of the idea of God into his philosophy is an attempt to satisfy the longing of men to believe that the ethical ideal is real in a more solid sense than that of an aesthetic ideal. God as an idea is neither alive nor a person. He can be discovered by the process of reason itself. Religion, properly so-called, arises with the emergence of the ethical consciousness. The "function" of God is not to provide prosperity, or even happiness, but to aid the efforts of men to discriminate between right and wrong. Religion alone is capable of producing the ideal of individuality. The conception of sin is in principle applicable to an individual only, not to a social group. The cultivation of intellectual faculties is a religious duty. The religious philosophy of Cohen had idealistic, positivistic, and humanistic elements derived from his intuition concerning the objective validity of ethical experience. In The Radical Academy
Asher Ginzberg - (1856 - 1927) Best known under his pseudonym, Achad Haam (one of the people), Ginzberg became noted as a philosopher and contributor to the revival of the Hebrew language and Hebrew literature. He also played a significant role in the modern Jewish nationalist movement. Ginzberg was born in the Ukraine and adopted the name Achad Haam with his first published article, "Lo Zeh ha-Derech" (This is Not the Way, 1889). In that article, he disagreed with those advocating mass settlement in Palestine. Although his writings deal principally with Jewish affairs, his fundamental ideas are of general interest. Dissatisfied with material evolution, he emphasized the importance of spiritual evolution. He concentrated upon the moral aspects of all problems, rejecting that relationship between ethics and religion where the role of ethics is limited only to the confines of a sociological frame of reference. He regarded ethics as the most important determinant in national character and, for that reason, insisted that the national development of ethical views precedes all political activity. His aim was to harmonize nationalistic sentiments with the necessary sense of responsibility for the future of human civilization. The success of that aim will depend on one's devotion to the ideals of justice enunciated by the prophets of the Old Testament. His concept of Zionism established him as a genuine philosopher. It is founded upon an original explanation of reality and ideals. For many years he was opposed to political Zionism, advocating instead the establishment of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine. This, he hoped, would become a "center of emulation" for Jews dispersed all over the world, effectively raising their cultural standards, and inspiring them to produce a genuine Jewish culture. Like his compatriots Sholem Aleichem and Hayyim Bialik and others in the pacifist Choveve Zion movement, Ginzberg saw the need for a cultural and spiritual revival of Jews. After World War I, Ginzberg emigrated to Palestine, where he worked to achieve the cultural hub he thought so essential to the rebirth of the Jewish people, without impinging on the rights of the Arabs. In The Radical Academy
Main Ideas:
The eternal "Thou" is never known objectively, but certitude comes through the domain of action. Important Works:
Martin Buber (picture) is one of the leading exponents of Hasidic philosophy. His grandfather, Solomon Buber, was the Hasidic scholar who provided impetus to the mystical movement, and the revival of some of the early tenets and practices of Judaism that resulted in a cultural renaissance among the 18th-century Jews of Eastern Europe. Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher, educated at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich, and Berlin. He was an active Zionist. In 1901 he became the editor of Die Welt (The World), a Zionist journal, and in 1916 he founded Der Jude (The Jew), an important journal for German-speaking Jewry. Buber became professor of Jewish theology at the University of Frankfurt in 1923. After Adolf Hitler came to power, Buber devoted most of his attention to strengthening German Jewry in the face of Nazi anti-Semitism. Finally forced to leave Germany in 1938, he settled in Palestine, where he became professor of social philosophy at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He advocated creation of a binational state of Israel comprising both Jews and Arabs. During the 1950s he traveled and lectured widely, particularly in the United States. Buber's philosophy, which was strongly influenced by Hasidism, is sometimes referred to as Jewish existentialism. It is best set forth in Ich und Du (1923; I and Thou, 1937). The main points are:
In his later years Buber tried to apply the I-Thou principle to biblical interpretation, psychotherapy, and political philosophy. In The Radical Academy
Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Franz Rosenzweig (picture), a young German scholar of Jewish origin, who had become renowned because of his epoch-making discovery of the earliest outline of German idealism and his acute investigation of the relations between Schelling and Hegel, intended to embrace Christianity. But before making the decisive step he thought it would be appropriate to know what he intended to abandon. He therefore began to study Judaism, and subsequently became resolved not only to remain a Jew, but also to devote his life to the elaboration of a new conception of Judaism, based upon historical, linguistic, and philosophical research, and aimed at a moral and spiritual rejuvenation of his fellow Jews. The first fruit of these efforts was the book Der Stern der Erloesung (Star of Salvation), written during the war in the trenches and edited posthumously in 1930. Rosenzweig's vindication of Judaism is anything but polemical toward Christianity. He is opposed to atheism and irreligion, but his historical consciousness prevents him from attacking, even from disputing, any religious tradition or any living faith. On the contrary, he has encouraged his closest friend and first cousin to embrace Christianity rather than to live apart from any religious community. Although opposed to Jewish nationalism, Rosenzweig thinks that Jewish religion concerns only born Jews, and, without any concession to racialism, founds his philosophy of history upon the fact that the Jews form a cultural unit with a common history and certain relatively constant characteristics. He even maintains that only the Jews, by virtue of being such a unit, can have a genuine philosophy of history in which their fate, regarded as a unit, is the decisive factor. The historical aspect is also of primary importance to Rosenzweig's philosophy of religion which, notwithstanding the tensions between religion and civilization, is at the same time a philosophy of culture. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
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