Nineteenth-century European thought, especially in Germany, was
increasingly dominated by a new historicist impulse to situate every
event, person, or text in its particular context. At odds with the
transcendent claims of philosophy and--more significantly--theology,
historicism came to be attacked by its critics for reducing human
experience to a series of disconnected moments, each of which was the
product of decidedly mundane, rather than sacred, origins. By the late
nineteenth century and into the Weimar period, historicism was seen by
many as a grinding force that corroded social values and was
emblematic of modern society's gravest ills. Resisting History
examines the backlash against historicism, focusing on four major
Jewish thinkers. David Myers situates these thinkers in proximity to
leading Protestant thinkers of the time, but argues that German Jews
and Christians shared a complex cultural and discursive world best
understood in terms of exchange and adaptation rather than influence.
After examining the growing dominance of the new historicist thinking
in the nineteenth century, the book analyzes the critical responses of
Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Isaac Breuer. For
this fascinating and diverse quartet of thinkers, historicism posed a
stark challenge to the ongoing vitality of Judaism in the modern
world. And yet, as they set out to dilute or eliminate its destructive
tendencies, these thinkers often made recourse to the very tools and
methods of historicism. In doing so, they demonstrated the utter
inescapability of historicism in modern culture, whether approached
from a Christian or Jewish perspective.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400832569
Publisert
2021
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter