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THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO
MODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy is a collection of original essays that examine the work of some of the most important Jewish thinkers of the modern era – the period extending from the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century.

   Editors Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon have brought together a group of world-renowned scholars to paint a broad and rich picture of the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy over a period of four hundred years. Beginning with the seventeenth century, modern Jewish philosophy developed among thinkers who responded to the new science and modern philosophy in the course of reflecting on the nature of Judaism and Jewish life.

   The essays address themes that are central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy – language and revelation, autonomy and authority, the problem of evil, Messianism, the influence of Kant, and feminism – and discuss in depth the work of major thinkers such as Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim, Soloveitchik, Strauss, Levinas, Maimon, Benjamin, Derrida, Scholem, and Arendt.

Michael L. Morgan is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Indiana University. In 2004, he was named a Chancellor’s Professor. He has published articles in a variety of journals and has written several books, including Interim Judaism (2001); Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America (2001); and Dilemmas in Modern Jewish Thought: The Dialectics of Revelation and History (1992).

Peter Eli Gordon is Professor of History at Harvard University. He has published widely on topics in modern European intellectual history, modern Continental philosophy, and modern Jewish thought. His book, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (2003), received several distinguished awards, including the Goldstein-Goren Prize for the best book in Jewish philosophy, the Salo W. Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish history, and the 2003 Forkosch Prize for the best book in intellectual history.

CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS TO RELIGION

This is a series of companions to major topics and key figures in
theology and religious studies. Each volume contains specially
commissioned chapters by international scholars that provide an
accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject for new readers
and nonspecialists.

Other titles in the series

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
edited by Colin Gunton (1997)
ISBN 978-0-521-47118-3 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-47695-9 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
edited by John Barton (1998)
ISBN 978-0-521-48144-1 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-48593-7 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
edited by John de Gruchy (1999)
ISBN 978-0-521-58258-2 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-58781-5 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO LIBERATION THEOLOGY
edited by Chris Rowland (1999)
ISBN 978-0-521-46144-3 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-46707-0 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO KARL BARTH
edited by John Webster (2000)
ISBN 978-0-521-58476-0 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-58560-6 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO CHRISTIAN ETHICS
edited by Robin Gill (2001)
ISBN 978-0-521-77070-5 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-77918-0 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO JESUS
edited by Markus Bockmuehl (2001)
ISBN 978-0-521-79261-5 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-79678-1 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO FEMINIST THEOLOGY
edited by Susan Frank Parsons (2002)
ISBN 978-0-521-66327-4 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-66380-9 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MARTIN LUTHER
edited by Donald K. McKim (2003)
ISBN 978-0-521-81648-9 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-01673-5 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO ST. PAUL
edited by James D. G. Dunn
ISBN 978-0-521-78155-8 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-78694-2 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman
ISBN 978-0-521-65207-0 hardback      ISBN 978-0-521-65574-3 paperback

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO REFORMATION THEOLOGY
edited by David Bagchi and David Steinmetz
ISBN 978-0-521-77224-2 hardback       ISBN 978-0-521-77662-2 paperback

Continued after the Index

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO

MODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Edited by Michael L. Morgan
Indiana University

Peter Eli Gordon
Harvard University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013–2473, USA

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521813129

© Cambridge University Press 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2007

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Morgan, Michael L., 1944–
The Cambridge companion to modern Jewish philosophy / Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon.
   p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-81312-9 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-01255-3 (pbk.)
1. Philosophy, Jewish. 2. Philosophy, Modern. 3. Jewish philosophers.
4. Judaism – History – Modern period, 1750–. I. Gordon, Peter Eli. II. Title.
B755.M67 2007
181′.06–dc22      2006031065

ISBN 978-0-521-81312-9 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-01255-3 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

      Contents

      Contributors

Allan Arkush is Professor of Judaic Studies and History at Binghamton University. He is the author of Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (1994) and numerous articles on modern Jewish history and thought.

Leora Batnitzky is Associate Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the author of Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation (2006) and Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (2000). She is also the editor of the forthcoming Martin Buber: Schriften zur Philosophie und Religion and, since 2004, the co-editor of Jewish Studies Quarterly.

Pierre Bouretz is Professor of Philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Among his recent publications are La tour de Babel, with Marc de Launay and Jean-Louis Scheffer (2003); Témoins du futur: Philosophie et messianisme (2003); and Qu’appelle-t-on philosopher? (2006).

Richard A. Cohen is the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Ethics, Exegesis, and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas (2001) and Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas (1994); the translator of four books by Levinas; the editor of several books in contemporary thought; and the author of numerous articles in contemporary Continental philosophy.

Paul W. Franks is Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Jewish Studies Program Faculty at the University of Toronto. He is the author of All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (2005) and articles on post-Kantian and Jewish philosophy; co-editor and co-translator (with Michael L. Morgan) of Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings (2000); and associate editor of The International Yearbook of German Idealism.

Peter Eli Gordon is Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author of Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (2003) and Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (forthcoming).

Lawrence J. Kaplan is Professor of Rabbinics and Jewish Philosophy at McGill University. He is the author of numerous articles on medieval and modern Jewish thought; has co-edited, with David Shatz, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality (1995); and has translated Rabbi Soloveitchik’s monograph Halakhic Man from the Hebrew (1983).

Berel Lang is Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Letters at Wesleyan University. He is the author of, among other books, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (1990, 2003); The Anatomy of Philosophical Style (1990); Heidegger’s Silence (1996); and Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History (2005).

Michael L. Morgan is Chancellor’s Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of several books, including Platonic Piety (1990) and Beyond Auschwitz (2001). Together with Paul Franks, he translated and edited Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings (2000). He edited Emil Fackenheim: Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy (1996) and Spinoza: Complete Works (2002). His book, Discovering Levinas, will be published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press.

Steven Nadler is Professor of Philosophy and Max and Frieda Weinstein/Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Spinoza: A Life (1999); Spinoza’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (2002); and the forthcoming Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge) and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century. He also co-edits Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy.

Andrea Poma is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Turin. He is the author of The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (1997) and Yearning for Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen’s Thought (2006).

Tamar Rudavsky is Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University. She is the editor of two books: Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives (1984) and Gender and Judaism: Tradition and Transformation (1995). Her book, Time Matters: Time and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, appeared in 2000. With Steven Nadler, she is co-editor of the forthcoming The Cambridge History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy.

Kenneth Seeskin is a member of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University, where he has served as Chair for more than 15 years. His publications in Jewish philosophy include Jewish Philosophy in a Secular Age (1990); Maimonides: A Guide for Today’s Perplexed (1991); No Other Gods: The Modern Struggle Against Idolatry (1995); Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (2000); Autonomy in Jewish Philosophy (2001); Maimonides on the Origin of the World (2005), and more than thirty scholarly articles and book chapters. In 2001, he won the Koret Jewish Book Award for Searching for a Distant God, and in 2005, he edited The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides.

Steven B. Smith is Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science and the Master of Branford College at Yale University. Among his recent publications are Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (1997); Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics (2003); and most recently, Reading Leo Strauss: Philosophy, Politics, Judaism (2006).

Tamra Wright is Director of Academic Studies at the London School of Jewish Studies and a visiting lecturer in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of The Twilight of Jewish Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethical Hermeneutics (1999).

      Acknowledgments

It was nearly seven years ago that Andy Beck at Cambridge University Press first proposed the idea of a Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy. We are very happy indeed that his foresight and patience have been rewarded with the publication of this volume, and we are especially grateful to him for all he has contributed to it.

   The book has been conceived as a work in the history of philosophy, but one that appreciates the contribution that an encounter with significant historical works and themes makes to contemporary philosophical thinking. And since the philosophy in question is modern Jewish philosophy, the figures and themes explored are taken to be ones that contribute to contemporary Jewish philosophical thought.

   Modern Jewish philosophy, as we understand it, is a phenomenon of the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. It incorporates many more figures and works than could be easily discussed in a single collection of essays, and it addresses a vast array of concepts and issues. Hence, in designing the book, we have had to be selective. It has nonetheless always been our hope that the various essays, some devoted to major figures and others to central themes, cover sufficient terrain to acquaint the reader with the major features of the field.

   Anthologies are by nature the product of compromise and collective effort. The essays collected in this volume were written by some of the most accomplished scholars from around the world – from Europe, Israel, and North America – whose work has helped to transform our understanding of modern Jewish philosophy. And they are a diverse group, distinguished one from the other not only by their interests and choices of emphasis but also by their very style of thought and their conception of what Jewish philosophy signifies. Bringing so wide a range of scholars under a single roof has been an exhilarating but by no means simple task. As editors, we have tried to be ecumenical even while the very selection of essays and themes inevitably imposes a certain perspective. Yet we have tried most often to let the essays speak for themselves, and in every case, the results have been far better than had we striven for greater uniformity in vision. It is therefore fitting we begin these acknowledgments by expressing our sincere gratitude to the contributors themselves.

   An editorial partnership is itself an act of compromise. The two of us came to this project with different training and our own, unique visions of what a companion to modern Jewish philosophy should look like. No doubt there may have been points about which we disagreed. But from the very start, we found the process of editorial responsibility an enjoyable one. The burdens thereof were lightened considerably by the fact that they were shared. In effect, the two of us became a reading group devoted to the study of modern Jewish philosophy via a scrupulous joint examination of the texts that make up this book; we became conversation partners and indeed friends, a benefit of our collaboration that means a great deal to us both.

   Each of us must acknowledge his debts to those who have helped to see this book to completion. What follows are individual statements.

   Michael Morgan: For thirty-two years, I have taught modern Jewish philosophy, among my teaching responsibilities, at Indiana University in Bloomington. This volume is a testimony to the hundreds of students who have studied with me and from whom I have learned. It is also a testimony to my wonderful colleagues throughout the university and to the friends of a lifetime that have made my years in Bloomington so rewarding. My thanks to my colleagues, my friends, and to the university are certainly beyond measure.

   My life in Jewish philosophy began when I was an undergraduate, but my love for it really first flourished when I was in rabbinical school and then in graduate school. There are teachers and friends who meant a great deal to me then and continue to do so to this day – Sheldon Zimmerman, Michael Cook, Eugene Borowitz, Arnold Wolf, Norbert Samuelson, Michael Stroh, and Kenneth Seeskin. Most of all, as this volume is brought to a conclusion, I think of two people – scholars, friends, and teachers – who have passed away: Emil Fackenheim was my teacher, my friend, and my mentor for nearly forty years; Sam Westfall was my colleague and friend at Indiana for three decades. Both Emil and Sam have always represented for me the ideal combination of scholarship and humanity to which those of us who live both in the university and in the world ought to aspire. Finally, there is no modern Jewish philosophy without modern Jewish life, and mine is so intertwined with my wife Audrey’s that they are virtually one.

   Peter E. Gordon: For me, the most fascinating features of Jewish philosophy are those that emerge at its many points of contact with the broader tradition of philosophy as such. In matters intellectual, as in so much of life, creativity and human flourishing come about more readily through symbiosis than purification. This may explain why my first published essay (originally written in a seminar for the late Amos Funkenstein) explored some questions in the epistemology of Maimonides, that paragon of intellectual fusion whose thinking represents a potent combination of Judaism, Islam, and the Hellenistic tradition. The crossing of intellectual and disciplinary boundaries has remained a watchword of my own scholarship ever since.

   I would like to thank Harvard University for granting me the year’s leave during which I could devote myself without interruption to this project. I must also thank my many friends and colleagues at Harvard for making an otherwise forbidding institution into a permanent home. For their ongoing guidance and conversation relevant to this project, I owe a special thanks to the following: Martin Jay, Hilary Putnam, Leora Batnitzky, Warren Breckman, David Biale, Nina Caputo, Hubert Dreyfus, Mitchell Hart, Mark Lilla, Samuel Moyn, Jerrold Seigel, Tommie Shelby, Eugene Sheppard, Dana Villa, and Steven Wasserstrom. Most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Ludmila, for her unsparing support and equally unsparing intellectual criticism.

   Finally I would like to recall the memory of my father, whose death after a long and difficult illness coincided with the beginning phase of my academic leave. The year of editing was also a year of mourning. Yet the combination seems somehow apt: My father, a scientist, who as a young man had abandoned orthodoxy for the study of nature, was a scholar of the most humane temperament. It was from him that I learned to appreciate the virtue of dedication to one’s profession. He remains a powerful presence in my memory.

   We also thank Faith Black at Cambridge University Press, for her consummate dedication and assistance with numerous logistical tasks at the Press; research assistant Nick Alford, for his skillful work on the index; and Ronald Cohen, who edited the manuscript most professionally and with respect for our contributors’ work.

      Chronology

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO
MODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY