Interpreting Freud: The Yiddish Philosophical Journal Davke Investigates a Jewish Icon

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-316
Author(s):  
Shlomo Berger
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Abstract Thinking ◽  
Topical Issue ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Jewish Philosophy

ArgumentThe Argentine-based Yiddish philosophical journal Davke functioned as a mediator between general European philosophy and Jewish philosophy. Its editor Shlomo Suskovich wished to introduce readers of Yiddish to the western tradition of philosophy and, at the same time, to show how Jewish thought contributed to abstract thinking. Through topical issues dedicated to central ideas or to giants among Jewish philosophers, particular knowledge could be successfully transmitted to the reading public. Sigmund Freud was honored with such a topical issue. In it the editor wished to show this Jew's contribution to basic philosophical contemplation rather than limit the discussion to his contributions in the field of psychology. In the central article of the issue on Freud, the editor emphasizes that all the articles in the issue, including those which deal with psychoanalysis, focus on Freud's importance to the world of ideas rather than just the world of medicine.

scholarly journals Jewish philosophy as a Direction of the World philosophy of Modern and Contemporary Times

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-442
Author(s):  
I Dvorkin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Marginal Part ◽  
The World ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Jewish Philosophy

This article represents an analysis of the Jewish philosophy of the Modern and Contemporary as the holistic phenomenon. In contrast to antiquity and the Middle Ages, when philosophy was a rather marginal part of Jewish thought, in Modern Times Jewish philosophy is formed as a distinct part of the World philosophy. Despite the fact that representatives of Jewish philosophy wrote in different languages and actively participated in the different national schools of philosophy, their work has internal continuity and integrity. The article formulates the following five criteria for belonging to Jewish philosophy: belonging to philosophy itself; reliance on Jewish sources; the addressee of Jewish philosophy is an educated European; intellectual continuity (representatives of the Jewish philosophy of Modern and Contemporary Periods support each other, argue with each other and protect each other from possible attacks from other schools); working with a set of specific topics, such as monism, ethics and ontology, the significance of behavior and practical life, politics, the problem of man, intelligence, language and hermeneutics of the text, Athens and Jerusalem, dialogism. The article provides a list of the main authors who satisfy these criteria. The central ones can be considered Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, Moshe Mendelssohn, Shlomo Maimon, German Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Josef Dov Soloveichik, Leo Strauss, Abraham Yehoshua Heshel, Eliezer Berkovich, Emil Fackenheim, Mordechai Kaplan, Emmanuel Levinas. The main conclusion of the article is that by the end of the 20th century Jewish philosophy, continuing both the traditions of classical European philosophy and Judaism, has become an important integral part of Western thought.

Jewish philosophy, contemporary

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry S. Levinson ◽  
Jonathan W. Malino
Keyword(s):  
Historical Change ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Moses Maimonides ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
Medieval Jewish Philosophy ◽  
Universal Reason

Jewish philosophy is pursued by committed Jews seeking to understand Judaism and the world in one another’s light. In this broad sense, contemporary Jewish philosophy maintains the central focus of classical, medieval and Enlightenment Jewish philosophy. But a certain kind of traditionalism distinguishes many contemporary Jewish philosophers from their predecessors: an effort to show how Judaism maintains continuity and coherence despite historical change. Jewish thinkers who are traditionalists in this sense are no longer preoccupied with showing non-Jewish philosophers how Judaism fares when evaluated by universal reason, as their classical, medieval and modern predecessors were. Nor is their chief concern with exhibiting the good reasons for remaining Jewish and not converting to Christianity or Islam, as was that of many earlier Jewish thinkers. One work that sets an agenda for many of these traditionalists is Franz Rosenzweig’s Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption) (1921). Like Rosenzweig, (1) they often reject the Enlightenment demand for a transcendental propaedeutic as a prelude to asking substantive questions. Instead, they address Jewish thought, ethics and experience head on. (2) None among this group thinks of his work as beholden primarily and inevitably to standards of thought articulated first and foremost outside distinctively Jewish experience. (3) The six points of Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption) – Creation, Revelation, Redemption, God, Israel, and the World – mark the large themes they aim to define or the categories through which they propose, explore and defend their claims. Besides traditionalism thus understood, contemporary Jewish philosophy, particularly among philosophers with analytic training, is marked by efforts philosophically to reanimate the classic texts of medieval Jewish philosophy, especially the work of Moses Maimonides.

Does Literature Matter Today? Thoughts of the Outside

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Shaobo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World

The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, and the role aesthetic education should and can play at a time when the humanities are considered ‘a lost cause’.

What Is Jewish Philosophy?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Rudavsky
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
Medieval Jewish Philosophy ◽  
The Relationship

Medieval Jewish philosophy, like Islamic and Christian philosophy, is fundamentally focused on the relationship between “faith and reason.” Arising as an effort toward harmonizing the tenets of Judaism with current philosophic teachings, medieval Jewish philosophy deals with problems in which there appears to be a conflict between philosophical speculation and acceptance of dogmas of the Judaic faith. This chapter reviews the nature of Jewish philosophy as well as the tension between Judaism and Science. It positions Jewish philosophy within the broader context of Western thought, and distinguishes philosophy from the world of the Rabbis. It then provides an overview of the major themes of the work, which include issues of omniscience, providence, reason, and moral theory.

scholarly journals The origins of modern cross-cultural European interpretations of Chinese philosophy. New thoughts on China in the work of G. W. Leibniz

Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Břetislav Horyna
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Chinese Philosophy ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Institutional Economic ◽  
The World ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Contribution ◽  
Mutual Agreement

AbstractLeibniz was not the one to discover China, as far as Western culture was concerned. His historical contribution lies in the fact he presented Europe and China as two distinct ways of contemplating the world, as fully comparable and resulting in types of societies at the same high institutional, economic, technological, political and moral level. In this sense he saw China as the “Europe of the Orient” and as such susceptible to investigation by the same tools of natural philosophy which Leibniz knew from the environs of European scholarship. He was the first representative of the classical school of European philosophy to knowingly reject Eurocentrism. Leibniz followed the intentions of learned missionaries in his understanding of the Christian mission as a cultural and civilisational task, a search for mutual agreement and connections, in favour of a reciprocal understanding.

Takesi Sibata, Sociolinguistics in Japanese contexts. Ed. by Tetsuya Kunihiro, Fumio Inoue, & Daniel Long. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999. Pp. xvi, 489. Hb DM 248.00.

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 602-606
Author(s):  
Sachiko Ide
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Academic Publications ◽  
Universal Applicability ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Over Time

The assumptions made by readers of Language in Society and other English-language academic publications, when they begin to read, are so widely shared that they are seldom reflected on or made explicit. These assumptions have to do with European traditions of scholarship; and over time, they have made their way around the world because of the unquestioned belief in their universal applicability. But other approaches do exist, although most are never featured in publications in Western languages. I commented on this situation long ago, but it persists to this day: “The work done by Japanese sociolinguists is virtually unknown to non-Japanese readers. The reason is probably that this work has developed independently of the Western disciplines. The fact that Japanese researchers have worked independently of the Western tradition has inevitably resulted in unique assumptions, orientations or approaches when viewed from an international perspective”.

Sex in the City that Peter Built: The Demimonde and Sociability in Mid-Eighteenth Century St. Petersburg

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”

What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classic European Philosophy of Technology?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Mitcham
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Alan Turing ◽  
The World ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Jacques Ellul ◽  
Philosophical Project

Classic European philosophy of technology is the original effort to think critically rather than promotionally about the historically unique mutation that is anchored in the Industrial Revolution and has since progressively transformed the world and itself. Three representative contributions to this pivotal philosophical project can be found in texts by Alan Turing, Jacques Ellul, and Martin Heidegger. Despite having initiated analytic, sociological, and phenomenological approaches to philosophy of technology, respectively, all three are often treated today in a somewhat patronizing manner. The present chapter seeks to revisit and reconsider their contributions, arguing that, especially in the case of Ellul and Heidegger, what is commonly dismissed as their overgeneralizations about modern technology as a whole might reasonably be of continuing relevance to contemporary students in the philosophy of technology.

Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-74
Author(s):  
Marc Crépon ◽  
James Martel
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Stefan Zweig ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Good For

This chapter discusses not only how the fabric of relations binds people to all others, but also how its fissures are a part of the “nature” or the “essence of life,” at least “human life.” If it is true that all life, however it defines its belonging, is protected by the ideals and the institutions that constitute a common good for humanity, and if it is true, more importantly, that no one can elude murderous consent, then the paradox of murderous consent is that humanity's common good turns against life itself. Rather than merely accept, encourage, and promote the destruction of life, the fabric of relations that should prevent such annihilation assists it. All wars, all acts of violence, whether civil or between states, trample on the ideals of humanity, even as those who are responsible for the abuse proclaim these same ideals as their own. Nothing that safeguards life is immune from being invoked and exploited so as to effect this kind of reversal. This was the bitter conclusion—as expressed in his Reflections on War and Death—that Sigmund Freud reached in 1915 after the first of four long years of mutual devastation by Europe's nations. Stefan Zweig—in The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European, a retrospective on the war—came to this same conclusion regarding literature, though twenty-five years later.

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