274 chapter ten

CHAPTER TEN , , AND

MICHAEL L. MORGAN

The encounter between and is complex. Within Judaism, the encounter occurred when Jewish and thinkers, seeking to articulate the meaning of Jewish , either employed philosophical resources for their own purposes or sought to demonstrate what Judaism could contribute to philosophy itself.1 Within modern philosophy, the encounter occurred when Judaism and Jewish thought were addressed by philosophy directly or when they were shown to be deficient because they failed to do so.2 In short, for both parties, the engagement has been vital and intriguing, even if it has not been widely appreciated by either Jewish thinkers or by philosophers in general. The problem of Judaism and modern philosophy is one dimen- sion of the more general problem of Athens and , of Hellenism and . Figures such as , , and Emil Fackenheim took this relationship to be deep and important, not only for Judaism but indeed as well for all of Western civilization and culture.3 For Levinas, Judaism and Jewish thought

1 For the former, one might think of , Ludwig Steinheim, and ; for both, I am thinking of . 2 Hegel is rare in how seriously he takes Judaism; Jean Paul Sartre, in later life, admitted how inadequate was his appreciation of Judaism in Anti-Semite and . Hei- degger’s failures are too well known to do more than call to mind. 3 See especially Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Leo Strauss, Jewish Phi- losophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 377–405. And for Emmanuel Levinas, see various essays in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); and Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). In addition to Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1973), a notable exam- ple of Emil Fackenheim’s examination of the shortcomings of modern philosophy and of what Judaism can contribute to it occurs in his book The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967). See also his essay “Hermann

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contained a core of teaching, an understanding of the fundamen- tally ethical character of social existence, that was hidden from Greek and Western civilization and that needed to be recovered or disclosed. Hence, to him, philosophy and were not different enterprises, in a sense. Rather, traditional philosophy was part of a world that needed to recall its roots, so to speak, and in this regard and Jewish philosophy did not differ. All philosophy needed to be refashioned to see its way to a new understanding of human existence and its ethical foundations; all philosophy needed a new first philosophy.

1. Philosophy and the Holocaust

In the twentieth century, an especially important barometer of this complex relationship has been the way philosophy in general and Jewish philosophy in particular have dealt with and responded to the Nazi genocide, the Holocaust, and the death camps. Here we see some large problems come into focus regarding philosophy and , philosophy and politics, and philosophy and history itself. Mo- reover, here, in the case of a genocide in which anti-Semitism and the ideological commitment to annihilate and Judaism were arguably so central, we can see what Judaism thus might have to contribute to philosophy and at what cost philosophy itself igno- res or rejects Jewish particularity. These are issues that pervade all modern engagements between Judaism and philosophy; they arise with powerful effect in this case. At the Eastern Meetings of the American Philosophical Associ- ation, held in December of 1984 in Washington, D.C., there was a symposium on the theme “Philosophy and the Holocaust.” The featured speaker was Emil Fackenheim, and the respondent was Berel Lang.4 At that time Fackenheim was the most important living North American to have dealt with the Holocaust; his work was then viewed—and still is now—as primarily theological,

Cohen: After 50 Years,” originally a Institute lecture in 1970, reprinted in Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 41–56. 4 See Emil L. Fackenheim, “The Holocaust and Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985), 505–514.

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