History And Utopia Central European Jewish Thought In The Works Of Joseph Roth And Gyorgy Konrad

The present dissertation analyzes the fusion between utopia and history accomplished in the literary and essayistic works of two prominent 20 th century Central European writers: Joseph Roth and Gyorgy Konrad. It proceeds by way of examining the secular Judaic origins of their thinking and indicates their indebtedness to a generation of Jewish thinkers, such as Martin Buber, Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin, who first laid the foundation for a moral unification between the social conception of historical existence and the messianic idea of redemption. The conclusions of the present study indicate that Joseph Roth's fictionalization of the Eastern Jewish world and of imperial Austria, as well as Gyorgy Konrad's political theory and idealization of Central Europe are inseparable from the ethos of secular Jewish utopianism, to which they give a renewed expression. Their moral conception of the world and the notion of universal humanity convey in fictional terms the literary counterpart to a theory which appropriates the Judaic messianic doctrine in order to provide a utopian solution to the insoluble conflict between the persistence of history and the religious imperative of salvation. The investigation of this particular conceptual and thematic connection was carried out with the means of comparative intellectual history, which analyzed both the synchronic relatedness among similar theoretical problems and the diachronic influence and reciprocal impact of certain ideas on their own historical time and context. The primary sources cover an extensive portion of the work of the two main subjects of investigation, Joseph Roth and Gyorgy Konrad, while the secondary sources offer an ample review of the main literature dedicated to the two authors both in English and in German.

本书以神学乌托邦为线索，探究布洛赫对乌托邦精神的追寻，即在形式上呈现的表现主义风格、在内容上蕴含的希望维度与马克思主义品格，从而彰显其独具特色的文化批判思想。

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.

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.

In The Grace of Misery. Joseph Roth and the Politics of Exile 1919–1939 Ilse Josepha Lazaroms offers an account of the life and intellectual legacy of Joseph Roth, one of interwar Europe's most critical and modern writers.

Rosensweig (1886-1929), who collaborated with Martin Buber on a new German translation of the Bible, wrote "The New Thinking" as a supplementary guide to The Star of Redemption (1921). Udoff (philosophy, Baltimore Hebrew U.) and Galli (Judaic Studies, U. of Alabama) present for the first time in translation this essay, a letter and reviews treating the Star of Redemption, and situate Rosensweig's new Jewish thought and the renewed interest in it in the modern/postmodern philosophical spectra. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.

In The Beginning of the World in Renaissance Jewish Thought, Brian Ogren offers a deep analysis of late fifteenth century Italian Jewish thought concerning the creation of the world and the beginning of time. Ogren’s book is the very first to seriously juxtapose the thought of the great Jewish thinker Yohanan Alemanno, Alemanno’s famed Christian interlocutor, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the important Iberian exegete active in Italy, Isaac Abravanel, and Abravanel’s renowned philosopher son Judah, known as Leone Ebreo. By bringing these thinkers together, this book presents a new understanding of early modern uses of Jewish texts and hermeneutics. Ogren successfully demonstrates that the syntheses of philosophy and Kabbalah carried out by these four intellectuals in their quests to understand the beginning itself marked a new beginning in Western thought, characterized by simultaneous continuity and rupture.

"Fresh look at how Jewish intellectuals thought about Judaism within a German philosophical tradition"--