Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: From Athens to Jerusalem
- 1 The Meontological Conundrum: Emmanuel Levinas and Emil Fackenheim on the Athens–Jerusalem Conflict
- 2 Beyond “Beyond Being”: Nonbeing in Plato and Husserl
- 3 Nonbeing as Not-Yet-Being: Meontology in Maimonides and Hermann Cohen
- 4 Nonbeing Ensouled, Nonbeing Embodied: Levinas versus Rosenzweig on the Role of the Other in Messianic Anticipation
- Conclusion: Deepening the Roots of the Jewish Meontological Tradition, or contra the Derridean “Messianic”
- Works Cited
- Index
Conclusion: Deepening the Roots of the Jewish Meontological Tradition, or contra the Derridean “Messianic”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: From Athens to Jerusalem
- 1 The Meontological Conundrum: Emmanuel Levinas and Emil Fackenheim on the Athens–Jerusalem Conflict
- 2 Beyond “Beyond Being”: Nonbeing in Plato and Husserl
- 3 Nonbeing as Not-Yet-Being: Meontology in Maimonides and Hermann Cohen
- 4 Nonbeing Ensouled, Nonbeing Embodied: Levinas versus Rosenzweig on the Role of the Other in Messianic Anticipation
- Conclusion: Deepening the Roots of the Jewish Meontological Tradition, or contra the Derridean “Messianic”
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Rabbi,
In the last chapter, I extended through to Levinas a historical tradition that one could now call the “Jewish meontological tradition,” in which the analysis of nonbeing serves to ensure that Jews have not been duped by the concept of messianic anticipation. Still, there is a question that is undoubtedly on your mind: how Jewish is this? There are several reasons for you to ask this question.
As I have shown in the last two chapters, for Maimonides, Cohen, and Levinas (and, to a lesser extent, Rosenzweig) the intellectually or ethically responsible individual is given redemptive power. Where is this in the texts of the tradition?
You will by now have noted that I argue that the accounts of nonbeing in those thinkers who have a rich sense of Jewish life and ritual (Maimonides and Rosenzweig) are not as defensible as the accounts in those thinkers for whom Jewish praxis is not an integral part of their philosophical system (Cohen and Levinas). Therefore, it appears that any identification of a “Jewish meontological tradition” might be better described as a tradition of philosophical accounts of nonbeing that flirt with Jewish concepts.
You have a right to be suspicious, especially of the modern thinkers I have treated. Cohen uses prophetic texts selectively insofar as they express Leibnizian or Kantian views, or adhere to his overarching narrative of historical progress. Rosenzweig uses scriptural and Kabbalistic motifs as a further application of Schelling's own earlier appropriations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy , pp. 193 - 221Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004