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THE LEGACY OF LIBERAL JUDAISM
Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt's Hidden Conversation
Ned Curthoys
ISBN 978-1-78238-007-8 Hb $90.00/£56.00 Not Yet Published (September 2013)
eISBN 978-1-78238-008-5
“This is an important fresh look at modern intellectual history at the interface of philosophy and Jewish thought. It has a persuasive line of argument and illuminating discussions of the subject. It adds a crucial strand to the weave of modern intellectual history and argues that, unless close attention is paid to the dimension of Jewish thought in this project, this history remains misunderstood.” · Willi Goetschel, University of Toronto
“This is a very sharp and insightful intellectual history of the relationship between Liberal Judaism, a world view that stressed Enlightenment rationalism and universalism, along with ethical monotheism, and two important twentieth century German thinkers, Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt.” · Richard H. King, Nottingham University
Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt’s indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured by her modernist posture and caustic critique of the assimilationism of her German-Jewish forebears. By reorienting our conception of Arendt as a profoundly secular thinker anchored in twentieth century political debates, we are led to rethink the philosophical, political, and ethical legacy of liberal Jewish discourse.
Ned Curthoys is a research fellow in English at the Australian National University. With Debjani Ganguly he is co-editor of Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public-Intellectual (Melbourne University Press, 2007).
LC: BM197 .C87 2013
BISAC: HIS022000 HISTORY/Jewish; POL042000 POLITICAL SCIENCE/Political Ideologies/General; PHI000000 PHILOSOPHY/GeneralBIC: JFSR1 Jewish studies; HP PhilosophyContents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. ‘This Man of Our Destiny’: Moses Mendelssohn, Nathan the Wise, and the emergence of a Liberal Jewish Ethos
Chapter 2. Diasporic Visions: the emergence of Liberal Judaism
Chapter 3. Abraham Geiger
Chapter 4. Hermann Cohen’s Prophetic Judaism
Chapter 5. Ernst Cassirer and the Ethical Legacy of Hermann Cohen
Chapter 6. Ernst Cassirer: The Enlightenment as Counter-History
Chapter 7. Hannah Arendt: The Task of the Historian
Chapter 8. Hannah Arendt: A Question of Character
Conclusion: The Legacies of Liberal Judaism
Bibliography
Index