Modern Jewish Thinkers From Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig [Hardcover]

Historical conditions at the end of the eighteenth century opened an arena between the formerly autonomous Jewish community and the Christian world, which yielded new departure points for philosophy, including revelation and philosophical reason, dialectically considered; rationalism as intellection and advancing consciousness; heteronomous revelation; historicity; and universal morality. In Modern Jewish Thinkers, Greenberg restructures the history of modern Jewish thought comprehensively, providing English translations of Reggio, Krokhmal, Maimon, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher, Steinheim, Ascher, Einhorn, Samuel David Luzzatto, and Hermann Cohen, published here for the first time. The availability of these sources fills a gap in the field and stimulates new directions for teaching and scholarly research in modern Jewish thought, going beyond Spinoza and Mendelssohn at one end, and to popular twentieth-century figures on the other. Modern Jewish Thinkers is a quintessential anthology, literally a gathering of flowers from the garden of modern Jewish thought. Greenberg has selected and translated from German and Hebrew an array of the most seminal texts, hitherto largely unavailable in English, which exemplify various trajectories of Jewish theological encounter with the challenge of modern philosophical culture. This richly annotated source book will surely be indispensable for scholars and students alike. Gershon Greenberg (Ph.D Columbia University) works at American University in Washington, DC, in the fields of Holocaust religious thought, America-Holy Land, and 19th century German-Jewish thought, and has taught in the departments of Jewish thought at Israels major universities.Greenberg offers an exceptional anthology of carefully selected, well-organized, well-introduced German Jewish and Hebrew texts. Masterfully translated, concisely commented upon, and richly annotated, these texts effectively widen English readers cognitive horizon by providing clear tralÓ0