Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

by Sven-Erik Rose

Overview

Winner of the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, philosophy and thought category

In this book Rose illuminates the extraordinary creativity of Jewish intellectuals as they reevaluated Judaism with the tools of a German philosophical tradition fast emerging as central to modern intellectual life. While previous work emphasizes the “subversive” dimensions of German-Jewish thought or the “inner antisemitism” of the German philosophical tradition, Rose shows convincingly the tremendous resources German philosophy offered contemporary Jews for thinking about the place of Jews in the wider polity. Offering a fundamental reevaluation of seminal figures and key texts, Rose emphasizes the productive encounter between Jewish intellectuals and German philosophy. He brings to light both the complexity and the ambivalence of reflecting on Jewish identity and politics from within a German tradition that invested tremendous faith in the political efficacy of philosophical thought itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611685787
Publisher:	Brandeis University Press
Publication date:	08/05/2014
Series:	Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry Series
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

SVEN-ERIK ROSE is associate professor of German, University of California, Davis.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Off with Their Heads? Lazarus Bendavid’s Vision of Kantian Subjects at the End of Jewish History
Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State, or the Politics of Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1820s Germany
Locating Themselves in History: Hegel in Key Texts of the Verein
Marx’s “Real Jews” between Volk and Proletariat: Productivizing Social Abjection and Grounding Radical Social Critique
Patriotic Pantheism: Spinoza in Berthold Auerbach’s Early Career
Moses Hess: Beyond the Politics of Self-Possession
Concluding Remarks
Abbreviations
Notes
Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan Hess

“Rose offers a fundamental reevaluation of seminal figures and key texts, and he does so by blending careful and rigorous close reading with an equally conscientious attention to historical and philosophical context. Indeed, in terms of the rigor of its arguments and the ease and elegance with which Rose moves between interpretations of texts by Jewish intellectuals and equally trenchant analysis of texts by their interlocutors in the German philosophical tradition, this book is truly without peers.”

Editorial Reviews

Rose’s rethinking of the intellectual origins and legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums and his sympathetic and incisive elucidation of early nineteenth-century German Jewish Kantianism, Hegelianism and Spinozism deserve only praise.”   —AJS Review

“Rose has written an excellent study—deeply engaged, knowledgeable, and provocative—a study that goes some way to redefining the terms by which one might comprehend the relationship between Jews and German idealist and post-idealist philosophy.”—Monatshefte

From the Publisher