Abstract

This dissertation suggests a philosophical, ethical, and cultural critique based on an understanding of idolatry. By way of the philosophical and theological implications of the ban on idolatry, I explore problems of representation in art, language, ethics, and group identity. Conceptions of representation in ethics have serious consequences for art and language, and idolatry is a powerful way to grasp this linkage. The dissertation shows the implicit interconnection between views of ethics, language, art, and group identity. Idolatry in ethics translates into idolatry in art and self-perception. ;A central task of the dissertation is the description of idolatry in its most basic manifestations. Idolatry is something that takes on particular forms. As Emil Fackenheim has rightly pointed out, the prohibition against idolatry adequately understood is not today's secularized cliche of generic iconoclasm. So too, theologically, every sin and every folly is not idolatry. Using Moses Mendelssohn's thought as a point of departure, the dissertation focuses primarily on the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig in conversation with Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber. Rosenzweig develops his notion of idolatry in his views of ethics, language, and art, and discriminates between forms of ethics, language, art, and group identity that may be idolatrous. ;Rosenzweig's attempt at developing a new conception of philosophical ethics, discussed in chapter one, is perhaps the central contribution of Jewish thought to contemporary western philosophy. This effort involves a re-definition of self, community, and responsibility. Rosenzweig's philosophy of language, coupled with the translation effort of Buber and Rosenzweig, discussed in chapter two, makes a major contribution, which has not yet been fully recognized, to the problem of translation, one of the most difficult issues in the philosophy of language still today. Rosenzweig's view of art, discussed in chapter three, provides not only a new means for recognizing the ethical and theological aspects of art, but also a means for evaluating fascist art. Chapter four turns to Rosenzweig's Jewish philosophical suggestion that Christianity is at once potentially universally redemptive and lethally idolatrous. Finally, chapter five discusses Rosenzweig's views of Jewish nationhood and nationalism in the contexts of his critique of Zionism's idolatrous potentialities