Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence

Daniel H. Weiss

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009221641
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Is commitment to God compatible with modern citizenship? In this book, Daniel H. Weiss provides new readings of four modern Jewish philosophers – Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin – in light of classical rabbinic accounts of God's sovereignty, divine and human violence, and the embodied human being as the image of God. He demonstrates how classical rabbinic literature is relevant to contemporary political and philosophical debates. Weiss brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, he shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Transliteration and Translation
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Moses Mendelssohn and the Rabbinic Suspending of Coercive Punishment
• Chapter 2 Who Can Command Violence, and Who Should Obey?: Mendelssohn on Divine Sovereignty and the Limits of Modern Jewish Integration
• Chapter 3 Jewishness and the Prophetic Anarchism of Hermann Cohen
• Chapter 4 Franz Rosenzweig and the Jewish Alternative to Militarism
• Chapter 5 Walter Benjamin and the Antinomianism of Classical Rabbinic Judaism
• Conclusion: No Other Gods, No Other Masters
• Bibliography
• Index of Sources
• Index of Subjects