Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence

ISBN-13: 9781009221658 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Daniel (University of Cambridge) Weiss

Opis

Uncovers connections between modern Jewish philosophers and classical rabbinic thought, arguing for rethinking of Judaism, politics, and violence.

Recenzje

'With refreshingly careful treatment of Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin, Weiss shows how their Jewish theopolitical thought is informed by rabbinic Judaism. Along the way he demonstrates that they have been poorly understood by their Christian and other mainstream critics, who in turn have subjected their thought to the terms of dominant discourses and imaginaries. Weiss thus walks the reader through a rich and inspiring landscape of these Jewish critical engagements with the structures of the modern state and its corresponding violence. Christian political theologians and others will find in Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence a badly needed window for understanding early Christian theopolitics, which, considered without such Jewish sensibilities, have been systematically domesticated to authorize and fuel the violence of the modern state. I expect that the book will be for others what it has been for me, a gift for the imagination of a messianic politics.' Tommy Givens, Fuller Theological Seminary

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Moses Mendelssohn and the rabbinic suspending of coercive punishment; 2. Who can command violence, and who should obey? Mendelssohn on divine sovereignty and the limits of modern Jewish integration; 3. Jewishness and the prophetic anarchism of Hermann Cohen; 4. Franz Rosenzweig and the Jewish alternative to militarism; 5. Walter Benjamin and the antinomianism of classical rabbinic Judaism; Conclusion: no other gods, no other masters.