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Hebrew Reminiscences: Global Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in the Rise of Hermeneutic Thinking

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Hebrew Reminiscences: Global Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in the Rise of Hermeneutic Thinking Hebrew Reminiscences: Global Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in the Rise of Hermeneutic Thinking by Yael Almog A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in German in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Winfried Kudszus, Chair Professor Niklaus Largier Professor Chenxi Tang Professor Jonathan Sheehan Fall 2014 1 Abstract Hebrew Reminiscences: Global Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in the Rise of Hermeneutic Thinking by Yael Almog Doctor of Philosophy in German University of California, Berkeley Professor Winfried Kudszus, Chair Hebrew Reminiscences: Global Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in the Rise of Hermeneutic Thinking examines emerging approaches to the Old Testament in the late eighteenth century as constitutive to the period’s egalitarian notions of textual interpretation and aesthetic sensibility. I argue that the universalization of the Hebrew Bible during this period was both instrumental and emblematic for the Enlightenment notion of a global community of interpreters. The dissertation evinces a parallel between the community of interpreters, established with the presumption that “hermeneutic thinking” is a universal human capacity, and the community of citizens in the modern nation state. Showing how interpretation was uprooted from its origins in specific religious cultures, the dissertation thus underscores the tensions pertaining to the symbolic communal form of the nation state in view of the separatist history of religious communities. The first and second chapters deal respectively with Johann Gottfried Herder’s historiography and aesthetics, which he develops in his writings on the Old Testament. These chapters demonstrate that the consideration of biblical texts as a global asset holds a reciprocal connection to the emerging notion of “humankind.” The third chapter examines Moses Mendelssohn’s lobbying for emancipatory politics, and proposes that the interreligious circulation of the Old Testament shows secular constructs to be porous to competing religious values. The fourth chapter describes how Schleiermacher’s psychological hermeneutics built on the replacement of the Old Testament with the New Testament as the model object for interpretation, and traces how literary realism evokes Jewish ritual to repond to the theological backdrop for this paradigm shift in hermeneutics. Considering the incessant identification of the Old Testament with Jews in twentieth-century German poetics and thought, I conclude that the persistence of the Bible’s standing as an unchanging, material object of worship has posed a continual challenge to models of modern interpretation that highlight restoration—a seminal aspect of Protestant biblical interpretation in Enlightenment theology—as the hegemonic perspective on reading. i Acknowledgements A dissertation can probably never have optimal conditions for its writing; yet this one came close to having them. The most invaluable resource for its completion was the trust of my advisers and peers that the project will progress toward productive ends. I greatly benefited from having a supportive, open, and intellectually challenging dissertation committee. I am extremely grateful to my dissertation chair Winfried Kudszus, who guided me with unfailing support and confidence in my work through the various stages of my time at the University of California, Berkeley, to the completion of the dissertation. His help extended far beyond finding time for our many conversations, providing extensive responses, and giving advice that encompasses academic support in its daily materialization. I hope his modesty, respectfulness and integrity remain my model. Niklaus Largier has taught me much about striving for academic excellence through reading and intellectual discussion. His demand for rigor combined with originality and creativity has been a guide for both my writing and my academic ambitions. Chenxi Tang contributed to this thesis so generously from his vast knowledge of German Romanticism, philosophy and thought, utterly shaping my interest in eighteenth-century German literature and in political theory. His comprehensive feedback and rigorous reading have been invaluable to this project and have greatly improved its quality. Jonathan Sheehan was a wonderful choice for an outside reader: it was a privilege to learn from his far-reaching thinking about the Enlightenment, from his challenging understanding of historiography, and from his stimulating engagement with contemporary secularism debates, to which he introduced me for the first time. I am in debt to UC Berkeley’s Department of German as a whole for the care and time put toward my training as a Germanistin. I am thankful to Karen Feldman for her much-appreciated guidance through the complexities of academic professionalization and writing. Anton Kaes has been an extremely resourceful, generous, and encouraging teacher and supporter. My early training has also benefitted much from Elaine Tennant’s demand for clarity and rigor. Outside the department, I learned a great deal from Victoria Kahn’s Introduction to Humanism seminar and from her guidance through Early Modern political thought. Michael Lucey has introduced me to textual circulation as a theoretical problem, provoking my inquiry into literature’s “reaction” to its distribution, anticipation and reception. Saba Mahmood’s intellectual integrity granted me the privilege of discussing with an author her own theories which have become eminent to my own intellectual endeavor. My conversations with Daniel Boyarin and Martin Jay have significantly enriched my theoretical conceptualization of the project. During the past five years, I spent roughly half of my time in Berkeley and the remaining half in Berlin. Both Berkeley and Berlin functioned as major academic “port cities” during this period; these cities’ vibrant intellectual spheres and the stimulating act of moving between them thus enabled me to attune my work to many voices occupied with the Enlightenment’s legacy. It is ii my hope that this polyphony is reflected in the dissertation, and that it manages to orchestrate it in a harmonic manner that is yet loyal to its variety. I was thus fortunate to enjoy not only Berkeley’s vibrant scholarly atmosphere, but also Berlin’s. The faculty at the Humboldt University has been welcoming and supportive, which enabled me to make Berlin my second academic home. I am especially grateful to Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Ethel Matala de Mazza, and Joseph Vogl for their engagement with my work. Colleagues who resided in Berlin during my stay there, particularly Andrew Patten, Tanvi Solanki, and Erica Weitzman, have been engaging interlocutors. Scholars from various universities—especially David Biale, Amir Eshel, Mark Gelber, Natasha Gordinsky, Na’ama Rokem, Yoav Rinon, and Sven-Erik Rose—discussed this work with me from its early stages, assuring me that it is worth being written. Daniel Weidner has been extremely generous in sharing his extensive knowledge of Herder and eighteenth-century biblical reception. Lastly, I am very grateful to Irit Dekel and Michael Weinman for asking me about this dissertation’s relevance to the lives of Berliner Israelis. I am still figuring out the answer. Through their invaluable support, my peers at Berkeley have made my frequent moves between Berkeley and Berlin not only tolerable, but also productive. Their great, enduring help—the generous reading of papers and drafts, attendance at talks and mock-talks, and the long conversations about this project—have made me into a much better scholar. I am grateful beyond words to Nicholas Baer, Erik Born, Kfir Cohen, Kevin Gordon, Tara Hottman, Jenna Ingalls, Courtney Johnson, Zachary Manfredi, Annika Orich, Suzanne Scala, Shaul Setter and Jeffrey Weiner for their amazing collegiality, and for their friendship. iii Introduction This dissertation demonstrates how writings on the Old Testament elicited the mutually- dependent paradigm shifts in theology and textual interpretation in the late German Enlightenment. Unfolding a non-monolithic account of Enlightenment philosophy, I argue that the Enlightenment debates on how to read the Old Testament were a platform for the negotiation of new subject positions in the emergence of the modern nation state. The view that all texts should be comprehended in the same way that the Bible is received encompasses an inherent problem eminent to this negotiation: religious polemics dictate that certain readers hold distinct presumptions that guide their approach to the Bible (there is no unified collective that reads the Bible in the same way). Yet the grounding of literary hermeneutics in Enlightenment experiments with human cognition renders comprehension universal. These diverging presumptions, and the discrepancy between them, were engrained in Enlightenment political philosophy, and in the notions of agency and autonomy it generated.1 The history of Protestant and Jewish exchange on the learning, interpretation and circulation of Hebrew, I argue, has made the comprehension of the Old Testament a constitutive part of “hermeneutic thinking.” This interpretive modality emerged with the universalization of premises on reading the Bible, which, in their turn, applied newly universalized religious presumptions—the most eminent of which is the assumption that textual meanings are not immediately apparent—to the reading of all texts. The dissertation’s
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