Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution

Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution PDF Author: Elena Namli
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401210780
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
In response to the grim realities of the present world Jewish thought has not tended to retreat into eschatological fantasy, but rather to project utopian visions precisely on to the present moment, envisioning redemptions that are concrete, immanent, and necessarily political in nature. In difficult times and through shifting historical contexts, the messianic hope in the Jewish tradition has functioned as a political vision: the dream of a peaceful kingdom, of a country to return to, or of a leader who will administer justice among the nations. Against this background, it is unsurprising that Jewish messianism in modern times has been transposed, and lives on in secular political movements and ideologies. The purpose of this book is to contribute to the deeper understanding of the relationship between Jewish thought, utopia, and revolution, by taking a fresh look at its historical and religious roots. We approach the issue from several perspectives, with differences of opinion presented both in regard to what Jewish tradition is, and how to regard utopia and revolution. These notions are multifaceted, comprising aspects such as political messianism, religious renewal, Zionism, and different forms of Marxist and Anarchistic movements.

Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution

Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution PDF Author: Elena Namli
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401210780
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
In response to the grim realities of the present world Jewish thought has not tended to retreat into eschatological fantasy, but rather to project utopian visions precisely on to the present moment, envisioning redemptions that are concrete, immanent, and necessarily political in nature. In difficult times and through shifting historical contexts, the messianic hope in the Jewish tradition has functioned as a political vision: the dream of a peaceful kingdom, of a country to return to, or of a leader who will administer justice among the nations. Against this background, it is unsurprising that Jewish messianism in modern times has been transposed, and lives on in secular political movements and ideologies. The purpose of this book is to contribute to the deeper understanding of the relationship between Jewish thought, utopia, and revolution, by taking a fresh look at its historical and religious roots. We approach the issue from several perspectives, with differences of opinion presented both in regard to what Jewish tradition is, and how to regard utopia and revolution. These notions are multifaceted, comprising aspects such as political messianism, religious renewal, Zionism, and different forms of Marxist and Anarchistic movements.

Divining History

Divining History PDF Author: Jayne Svenungsson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785331744
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
For millennia, messianic visions of redemption have inspired men and women to turn against unjust and oppressive orders. Yet these very same traditions are regularly decried as antecedents to the violent and authoritarian ideologies of modernity. Informed in equal parts by theology and historical theory, this book offers a provocative exploration of this double-edged legacy. Author Jayne Svenungsson rigorously pursues a middle path between utopian arrogance and an enervated postmodernism, assessing the impact of Jewish and Christian theologies of history on subsequent thinkers, and in the process identifying a web of spiritual and intellectual motifs extending from ancient Jewish prophets to contemporary radicals such as Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek.

Tradition Vs. Traditionalism

Tradition Vs. Traditionalism PDF Author: Abraham Sagi
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 904202478X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This book is a first attempt to examine the thought of key contemporary Jewish thinkers on the meaning of tradition in the context of two models. The classic model assumes that tradition reflects lack of dynamism and reflectiveness, and the present¿s unqualified submission to the past. This view, however, is an image that the modernist ethos has ascribed to the tradition so as to remove it from modern existence. In the alternative model, a living tradition emerges as open and dynamic, developing through an ongoing dialogue between present and past. The Jewish philosophers discussed in this work¿Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman, and Eliezer Goldman¿ascribe compelling canonic status to the tradition, and the analysis of their thought discloses the tension between these two models. The book carefully traces the course they have plotted along the various interpretations of tradition through their approach to Scripture and to Halakhah. Contents Editorial Foreword Introduction Returning to Tradition: Paradox or Challenge The Tense Encounter with Modernity Soloveitchik: Jewish Thought Confronts Modernity Compartmentalization: From Ernst Simon to Yeshayahu Leibowitz The Harmonic Encounter with Modernity Religious Commitment in a Secularized World: Eliezer Goldman David Hartman: Renewing the Covenant Between Old and New: Judaism as Interpretation Scripture in the Thought of Leibowitz and Soloveitchik Halakhah in the Thought of Leibowitz and Soloveitchik Eliezer Goldman: Judaism as Interpretation Epilogue ¿My Name¿s my Donors¿ Name¿ Notes Bibliography About the Author Index

Redemption and Utopia

Redemption and Utopia PDF Author: Michael Lowy
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786630850
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Classic study of Jewish libertarian thought, from Walter Benjamin to Franz Kafka Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to transform modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish messianism, their thought was organized around the cabalistic idea of the “tikkoun”: redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of “elective affinity” to explain the surprising community of spirit that existed between redemptive messianic religious thought and the wide variety of radical secular utopian beliefs held by this important group of intellectuals. The author outlines the circumstances that produced this unusual combination of religious and non-religious thought and illuminates the common assumptions that united such seemingly disparate figures as Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukács.

Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096-1996

Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096-1996 PDF Author: Sander L. Gilman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300068247
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 913

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Book Description
This work provides a history of Jewish writing and thought in the German-speaking world. Written by 118 scholars in the field, the book is arranged chronologically, moving from the 11th century to the present. Throughout, it depicts the contribution that Jewish writers have made to German culture and at the same time explores what it means to the other within that mainstream culture.

Sovereignty and Event

Sovereignty and Event PDF Author: Calvin D. Ullrich
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 3161592301
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In this study, Calvin D. Ullrich argues for the political significance of the philosopher-theologian John D. Caputo's radical theology. Against the backdrop of present debates, the author traces the notions of 'sovereignty and event' by drawing on the political theology of Carl Schmitt and Caputo's evolving engagement with postmodern thought; from its genesis in Martin Heidegger to its deeply involved association with Jacques Derrida. Calvin D. Ullrich shows that contrary to some misleading interpretations of his religious deconstruction, Caputo has always held nascent political concerns which culminate in his radical theology. Writing for scholars working in contemporary philosophy and theology, this book offers one of the first major in-depth analyses covering Caputo's writings of the last four decades, and seeks to defend their relevance for discussions responding to ongoing political-theological challenges.

Utopia

Utopia PDF Author: David Ayers
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110433001
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Utopian hope and dystopian despair are characteristic features of modernism and the avant-garde. Readings of the avant-garde have frequently sought to identify utopian moments coded in its works and activities as optimistic signs of a possible future social life, or as the attempt to preserve hope against the closure of an emergent dystopian present. The fourth volume of the EAM series, European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, casts light on the history, theory and actuality of the utopian and dystopian strands which run through European modernism and the avant-garde from the late 19th to the 21st century. The book’s varied and carefully selected contributions, written by experts from around 20 countries, seek to answer such questions as: · how have modernism and the avant-garde responded to historical circumstance in mapping the form of possible futures for humanity? · how have avant-garde and modernist works presented ideals of living as alternatives to the present? · how have avant-gardists acted with or against the state to remodel human life or to resist the instrumental reduction of life by administration and industrialisation?

Karl Marx

Karl Marx PDF Author: Shlomo Avineri
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300248776
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This new exploration of Marx as a Jewish thinker presents “a perceptive and fair-minded corrective to superficial treatments” of his life and work (Jonathan Rose, Wall Street Journal). A philosopher, historian, sociologist, economist, current affairs journalist, and editor, Karl Marx was one of the most influential and revolutionary thinkers of modern history. But he is rarely thought of as a Jewish thinker, and his Jewish background is either overlooked or misrepresented. Here, distinguished scholar Shlomo Avineri argues that Marx’s Jewish origins made a significant impression on his work. Marx was born in Trier, then part of Prussia, and his family had enjoyed full emancipation under earlier French control of the area. But then its annexation to Prussia deprived the Jewish population of its equal rights. These developments led to the reluctant conversion of Marx’s father, and similar tribulations radicalized many other Jewish intellectuals of that time. Avineri puts Marx’s Jewish background in its proper and balanced perspective, and traces Marx’s intellectual development in light of the historical, intellectual, and political contexts in which he lived.

Utopia of Understanding

Utopia of Understanding PDF Author: Donatella Ester Di Cesare
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438442548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language—even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrida's confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Di Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come.

Redemption and Utopia

Redemption and Utopia PDF Author: Michael Lowy
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786630877
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Classic study of Jewish libertarian thought, from Walter Benjamin to Franz Kafka Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to transform modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish messianism, their thought was organized around the cabalistic idea of the “tikkoun”: redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of “elective affinity” to explain the surprising community of spirit that existed between redemptive messianic religious thought and the wide variety of radical secular utopian beliefs held by this important group of intellectuals. The author outlines the circumstances that produced this unusual combination of religious and non-religious thought and illuminates the common assumptions that united such seemingly disparate figures as Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukács.