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Faith and Freedom - Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought (Hardcover)
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Faith and Freedom - Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought (Hardcover)
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Two major interpretations of Mendelssohn's achievements have
attained prominence in recent works. One interpretation, defended
most recently by David Sorkin and Edward Breuer, casts Mendelssohn
as a Jewish traditionalist who uses the language of enlightened
German philosophy to bolster his pre-modern religious beliefs. The
other interpretation, defended by Allan Arkush, casts Mendelssohn
as a radical Deist who defends Judaism exoterically in order to
avoid arousing opposition from his co-religionists while
facilitating their social integration into enlightened European
society. In Faith and Freedom, Michah Gottlieb stakes out a middle
position. He argues that Mendelssohn defends pre-modern Jewish
religious concepts sincerely, but in so doing, unconsciously gives
them a humanistic valence appropriate to life in a diverse,
enlightened society. Gottlieb sees the Pantheism Controversy as
part of a broader assessment of Mendelssohn's theological-political
philosophy, framed in terms of Mendelssohn's relation to his two
greatest Jewish philosophical predecessors, Moses Maimonides
(1138-1204) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). While Mendelssohn's
relation to Maimonides and Spinoza has been discussed sporadically,
Faith and Freedom is the first book-length treatment of this
subject. The connection is particularly instructive as both
Maimonides and Spinoza wrote major theological-political treatises
and exercised profound influences on Mendelssohn. Not surprisingly,
Mendelssohn is deeply ambivalent about both of these figures. He
reveres Maimonides for what he sees as his synthesis of Judaism
with secular knowledge, while seeming deeply disturbed by
Maimonides's elitism, his equivocation regarding many of the tenets
of theism, his espousing religious coercion, and his intolerant
view of Gentiles. As for Spinoza, Mendelssohn respects him as a
model for how a Jew can fruitfully contribute to science and
philosophy and be a model of ethical rectitude. But Mendelssohn
objects to Spinoza's atheism, advocacy of state religion, debunking
of Jewish chosenness, and rejection of Jewish law. For Mendelssohn,
reason best preserves human dignity and freedom by upholding the
individual's right to arrive at truth on their own and determine
their own beliefs independently of all authority. As such, reason
demands that the state respect diversity of thought and religious
expression. Mendelssohn interprets faith in the Jewish sense as
trust in God's providential goodness, arguing that reason affirms
this as well. But he recognizes the difficulty of establishing
metaphysical truth rationally and so in his final works adumbrates
a form of religious pragmatism. The faith-reason debate rages again
today. Gottlieb explores Mendelssohn's theological-political
thought with an eye to axiological and political dimensions of the
debate.
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