Ethical Theories of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber

Author(s):  
Jonathan K. Crane
Images ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Asher Biemann

AbstractFocusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the essay argues that there existed a Jewish fascination with the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti that was representative not only of a larger German and Jewish Italophilia at the time but also indicative of Jewish aesthetic concerns. Lodged between popular culture and the intellectual quest for an aesthetics that would problematize the figurative image and the classical sense of the beautiful, the Jewish reception of Michelangelo was guided by the themes of terribilita, unfinishedness, and the destruction of form. What emerges is a consistent dialectic of image and anti-image particularly in the writings of Salomon Ludwig Steinheim, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Ernst Bloch. But what also emerges is that German Jewish intellectuals entertained a great, though often ambivalent, admiration for the Italian Renaissance and the culture of modern Italy.


Author(s):  
Emmanuel Taub

Latin American Jewish philosophy requires us to rethink the categories of Philosophy and Judaism. In order to articulate these two dimensions it is necessary to understand that Jewish philosophy must start from the attributes of the Jewish tradition. The matter of the education and Jewishness comes from the beginning of Judaism. Throughout the Twentieth Century, the Diaspora in Modern States acquired its peculiarities in relation to these two dimensions, education and Jewishness. Both aspects have been developed in the work of Franz Rosenzweig, one the most important Jewish philosophers of the century. The main goal of this paper is to rethink the core of Rosenzweig’s thought and his dialogues with Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen. Therefore, we will be able to explain the diaspora’s peculiarities in relation to Jewish identity and education in Latin America, especially in Argentina.


Author(s):  
William Plevan

This chapter explores the conception of holiness in three influential modern Jewish thinkers, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig, with particular attention to the problem of Jewish distinctiveness. Each thinker’s approach to holiness represents their attempt to define the meaning of Jewish distinctiveness in light of the social, political, and cultural challenges faced by the Jews of Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and by modern Jews more broadly. Consideration of these three thinkers’ conceptions of holiness also offers us the opportunity to examine the strengths and limitations of contemporary approaches to Jewish distinctiveness within North American Jewish spiritual life over the last several decades.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Willi Goetschel

This paper examines Rosenzweig?s philosophic project in the context of his time as a critical intervention in the discussion of the place of Jewish thought in the university and in society. If Hermann Cohen represented the first generation of Jewish philosophers claiming that participation in the university is constitutive for the institution?s claim to universalism, the second generation-represented by Martin Buber - was more diffident about the university and its openness. For Buber, literary modernism offered what the university would refuse. Disappointed about the failure of the recognition of the efforts of the previous two generations, Rosenzweig represents the third generation. He turns the situation into a creative response anchoring philosophy as a project that calls for a resolute move outside the university.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-94
Author(s):  
I. Dvorkin

My aim is to prove that Hermann Cohen was not only a philosopher of dialogue but has played an exceedingly important role in the history of that current of thought. His books Ethics of Pure Will (1904) and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (1919) offer a detailed analysis of the relationships between I and Thou, I and It, I and We. In the first book these relationships are considered from the ethical-legal point of view and in the second from the viewpoint of religious anthropology. However, Cohen considers the problem of inter-personal relationships not in isolation, but as an important component of his entire philosophical system. Deduction of the concept of personality in Ethics of Pure Will is based on Cohen’s logic of the origin expounded in the first part of his system in The Logic of Pure Cognition. Cohen explains that the origin of the self-consciousness of I as a personality is not the external world, but another person, i.e. Thou. In turn, the partnership relationships between I and Thou create the community We which forms the basis of the law-governed state. The process of artistic creation in the framework of inter-personal relationship is explored in Aesthetics of Pure Feeling. Finally, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism formulates the conception of religion as the most complete realisation of inter-personal relationship. Thus, dialogism became an important dimension of Cohen’s entire philosophical system, a fact noted by Martin Buber. Franz Rosenzweig, in unfolding dialogical thinking, expressly appeals to all the elements of Cohen’s system. There are signs of his influence on Bakhtin’s doctrine. Thus, examining Cohen’s doctrine as part of the philosophy of dialogue gives insights into this entire trend as a coherent whole.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136-150
Author(s):  
Noam Pianko

This chapter explores the broad contours of concepts of diaspora in modern Jewish thought. Philosophers, intellectuals, religious thinkers, and non-Zionist nationalists who disagreed on the ideal political structure for Jewish collective life (including Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Simon Dubnow, Hannah Arendt, Mordecai Kaplan, and Horace Kallen) shared a commitment to diaspora as a value, rather than just a fact, of modern Jewish life. Yet the emergence of the terminology of diaspora in tandem with the rise of nationalism and Zionism shaped the theoretical evolution of diaspora as the binary opposite to homeland and statist visions of Jewish identity. As a result, seminal Zionist theorists deeply critical of diaspora life, such as Theodor Herzl, Achad Ha’am, and David Ben-Gurion, also had a key role in framing the significance of diaspora. Modern theories of diaspora internalized and contested the privileged position of territory and sovereignty demanded by the rise of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


2016 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-143
Author(s):  
Daniel Rynhold

In the twentieth century, historical circumstance in the form of the Holocaust led to theodicy's returning to the forefront of the philosophical agenda, particularly in Jewish thought. As a result, post-Holocaust theology is almost always an element of introductory courses on modern and contemporary Jewish philosophy, if not introductory courses on modern Judaism simpliciter. Many working in the field of Jewish philosophy, therefore, probably first encounter Emil Fackenheim (1916–2003), and the infamous turn of phrase that ensured his immortality in the realm of Jewish thought, early on in their studies. Fackenheim was one of the most influential post-Holocaust philosophical voices in what soon became a cacophony. This German-born philosopher's (and ordained Reform rabbi's) concept of the 614th commandment—not to grant Hitler a posthumous victory (in his own words “the only statement of mine that ever became famous”)—has captured the imagination of many a student and often made a lasting impression. Yet it seems that one of the concerns at the forefront of this new expansive monograph on Fackenheim's philosophy is that for the majority, this constitutes both their first and last exposure to his thought, leaving them with an extremely contracted view of his conceptual palate. The result, noted in the book's introduction, is that Fackenheim has never really been considered a Jewish philosopher worthy of mention in the same breath as Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, or even latterly Emmanuel Levinas and Joseph Soloveitchik. In this volume, a case is presented for including him on that list.


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