_The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber_ An authority on the twentieth‑century philosopher Martin Buber, Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. The book is organized around several key moments, such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three, a foundational trauma that, Mendes-Flohr shows, left an enduring (...) mark on Buber’s inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a “dialogical attentiveness.” Buber’s philosophical and theological writings, most famously _I and Thou,_ made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber’s life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Drawing upon Hebrew Scripture and post-biblical Jewish sources, this article adumbrates the possibility of a humanism that does not require a universal metanarrative sponsored by the Enlightenment. A humanistic ethic, it is argued, can be nurtured by the principle of neighborly love, which with aid of insights from modern Jewish thinkers - Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas - the author understands as an attitude of being attentive to the existential and material needs of the other. /// (...) Recorrendo às fontes da Escritura Hebraica e do Judaísmo pós-bíblico, o presente artigo pretende clarificar a possibilidade de um humanismo que não fique dependente de uma meta-narrativa universal enraizada no projecto do Iluminismo. O autor defende que uma ética humanística pode ser apoiada pelo princípio do amor ao próximo, o qual, mediante o recurso às intuições dos pensadores judaicos mais recentes - Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, e Emmanuel Levinas - o autor compreende como sendo uma atitude que consiste em permanecer atento às necessidades materiais e existenciais do outro. (shrink)

This volume of essays takes as its point of departure Martin Buber's principle of dialogue, which he applied as a comprehensive hermeneutic method for the study of various cultural phenomena. The volume critically evaluates the methodological purchase to be gained by the introduction of Buber's conception of dialogue in political theory, psychology and psychiatry, and religious studies.

The young Martin Buber was so much taken by the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche that at the age of 17 he undertook a translation of the work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" into Polish. Even though the project had to be abandoned, Buber's enthusiasm for Nietzsche did not wane and traces of his influence are to be found in the different stages of his thought. The article shows how Buber came to introduce a Nietzschean perspective into the nascent Zionist movement. In fact, (...) Martin Buber's sharing in the vision of a reawakening of the Jewish people to its long-slumbering life-force was very much marked by the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche. The influence of the author of the "Zarathustra" upon Buber was particularly attached to the renewed concept of culture that was operative in the early stages of the Zionistic movement. /// Ainda durante a vida de Nietzsche, o jovem Martin Buber sentiu-se de tal maneira atraído pelo pensamento do autor do livro "Assim Falava Zarathustra" que, quando apenas tinha 17 anos de idade, deu início a uma tradução desta obra para Polaco, da qual, contudo, apenas concluiria a primeira parte, pois logo se apercebeu de que idêntica tradução tinha sido já encomendada a outra pessoa. O entusiasmo de Buber por Nietzsche, contudo, não esmoreceu, de tal forma que se podem encontrar traços da sua influência em cada uma das diferentes fases de evolução do seu pensamento. O presente artigo mostra até que ponto foi graças a Buber que uma certa perspectiva nietzschiana acabou por se introduzir no movimento zionista nascente. Foi sob a influência de Nietzsche, com efeito, que se deu a adesão de Buber à ideia de que era necessário retirar o povo judeu do seu adormecimento histórico e do esquecimento da sua própria forçavital. Essa influência, contudo, encontra-se sobretudo impressa no conceito de cultura que haveria de marcar a fase inicial do movimento zionista. (shrink)

Die exponierten Vertreter des deutsch-jüdischen Denkens tragen Spannun-gen aus, die für die Moderne kenn-zeichnend sind. Die Erfahrung des Lebens innerhalb vielfältiger, oft miteinander konfligie-render Sinnzusammenhänge, wird in diesem Denken zum Ausdruck ge-bracht. Die Forschung Paul Mendes-Flohrs widmet sich der Philosophie, der Literatur und der Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Judentums unter die-sem Aspekt. In diesem Sammelband sind Beiträge enthalten, die das deutsch-jüdische Denken und damit verwandte Themen als Prisma der Moderne betrachten.

The article traces the evolution and crystallization of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue. It focuses on his consideration of the epistemological and ontological issues attendant to the principium individuationis, the subject of his doctoral dissertation of 1904. Culminating with the publication of Ich und Du in 1923, this process was punctuated by life experiences that led him to affirm rather than to seek to transcend the principium individuationis as the ontological ground of being manifest in the matrix of everyday life, which (...) we are beckoned to sanctify through I-Thou relations. (shrink)

Eleven essays on the life and thought of the Jewish philosopher and theologian Franz Rosenzweig.

The concept of faith has remained inscrutable to thinkers for centuries. The late Nathan Rotenstreich believed that faith was such a difficult topic for so many because of its inextricable links to theology and religion. _On Faith_, Rotenstreich's last work which was edited and prepared for publication by Paul Mendes-Flohr, attempts to detach the concept from its religious underpinnings and consider it in its own right, as a human phenomenon and cognitive attitude. Faith, Rotenstreich contends, should not (...) be confused with its historical manifestations. By making faith a philosophical rather than a theological matter, he explores its essence as an awareness of how we relate within mundane reality to all that is beyond the human world. Arguing for the intentionality of faith, Rotenstreich shows how it structures a variety of relations that range from the experience of the holy to the nature of cults, traditional religion, and the idea of servitude to God. Rotenstreich's phenomenological study will be of great importance for religious scholars as well as for philosophers. Nathan Rotenstreich was professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and his works include _Jews and German Philosophy_ and _Reason and Its Manifestations: A Study of Kant and Hegel_. (shrink)

A critical evaluation of Martin Buber's work and its diverse aspects of modern thought and culture.

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) was a German‐Jewish philosopher who became the focus of a renaissance of Jewish religious life and thought in Weimar Germany. Born into a highly assimilated Jewish family in Cassel, Germany, Rosenzweig affirmed Jewish religious faith in the midst of a philosophical and existential crisis. As a student, he was initially drawn to the neo‐Hegelianism popular in German academic circles during the first decade of the twentieth century. Although he would write his doctoral dissertation on Hegel – later (...) published with the support of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, Hegel und der Staat (1920, 2 vols) – Rosenzweig slowly lost his conviction that the dialectical providence of history would assure the ultimate convergence of truth and existence. Already in the autumn of 1910, when he was completing his dissertation under the supervision of Friedrich Meinecke, he questioned Hegel's ascription of an ontological status to history. History is not the unfolding of Being, he wrote to a friend, rather it is but the discrete acts of men. “We see God in every ethical event, but not in one complete Whole, not in history.” Indeed, history, which takes shape in the phenomenal world, cannot serve as a vessel for divinity. “Every human act becomes sinful as it enters history”; although the actors may have intended otherwise, the morality of an act is neutralized by the material world of necessity. We are hence, Rosenzweig reasoned, left with only one possible conclusion: God redeems humanity not through history but – “es bleibt nicht anders übrig” – through religion (Briefe, vol. 1, pp. 111–13). (shrink)

I Books and Order In an autobiographical essay, Walter Benjamin tells of moving to a new apartment and unpacking his library from the crates that had transported them to their new abode. While reassembling his library, he reflects upon the random, often fortuitous manner in which the books were acquired. But once they are placed on the shelves of his library they gain an order, at least in his imagination. As constellated in his library, the tomes form a distinctive bibliophilic (...) and intellectual landscape, marking the byways of his spiritual biography. To be sure, the order the books attained on the shelves of Benjamin's library may not have been readily discerned by others who may even have had difficulty in grasping the inner logic of his collection. (shrink)

The article explores the conceptual antinomies of the liberal notion of tolerance as the superficial leveling of differences of faith and ethical commitments to affirm the inalienable human dignity of others. In arguing that cognitive and axiological commitments are existentially grounded and thus intractable, I argue that genuine tolerance is to acknowledge and honor difference. I further question whether we are to “tolerate” what we regard as “intolerable,” politically and otherwise?

O filósofo dinamarquês Søren A. Kierkegaard é frequentemente lido, dentro da própria tradição intérprete, como um crítico das Ciências Naturais (Naturvidenskaben). 1 Neste artigo, pretendo argumentar, ao contrário, que Kierkegaard: (i) foi crítico de uma determinada prática científica do seu tempo epistemicamente frágil e dos cientistas naturais que a adotavam construindo uma proposta judiciosa do papel da Ciência na interpretação do mundo; (ii) interessou-se pelas Ciências Naturais, inclusive pelos trabalhos do seu primo, o paleontólogo Peter Wilhelm Lund, e as pesquisas (...) de Hans Christian Ørsted, um expressivo cientista dinamarquês contemporâneo; (iii) ao criticar os pressupostos metodológicos de Carl Gustav Carus, o primeiro psicólogo a fazer referência à existência do inconsciente, Kierkegaard toma partido no vitalismus-materialismusstreit; (v) Por fim, e talvez mais importante, Kierkegaard propôs limites éticos e epistêmicos à Ciência e inspirou os pressupostos da filosofia da ciência de filósofos contemporâneos como Paul Feyerabend. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this article, we intend to address the role of memory and narrative in the constitution of personal identity, based on Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” and the theoretical concepts of Paul Ricoeur (especially in Oneself as Another). This movement will allow us to underscore the idea that, contrary to what part of the analytical literature on identity and narrative has held, it is not just what we might call self-narrative that plays a (...) role in maintaining personal identity. Instead, we recover the Ricoeurian idea of a network of narratives or tangled of stories, in which self- and hetero-narratives are entangled, thus providing support to the identities it captures. (shrink)

In this article, I claim that Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road is a recent version of the film genre that Stanley Cavell calls the “melodrama of the unknown woman”. Accordingly, my discussion focuses on two key elements of that identification: the film's overriding dramatic and thematic emphasis on conversation; and the central characters’ relation to the wider social and political concerns of America.

New perspectives on Pierre Duhem’s The aim and structure of physical theory Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9467-3 Authors Anastasios Brenner, Department of Philosophy, Paul Valéry University-Montpellier III, Route De Mende, 34199 Montpellier cedex 5, France Paul Needham, Department of Philosophy, University of Stockholm, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden David J. Stump, Department of Philosophy, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, USA Robert Deltete, Department of Philosophy, Seattle University, 901 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122-1090, USA (...) Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1. (shrink)

Early in the year 2000, Paul Mendes-Flohr suggested to me that we invite Paul Ricœur to Jerusalem to engage in discussions with the researchers of the Rosenzweig Centre. At the time, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Maria Diemling, and I were participating in a Sonderforschungsbereich on Jewish and Christian thought, in collaboration with Bonn University. We considered that Ricœur's work on hermeneutics and his studies of history and memory coupled with his interest in the philosophy of (...) religion had much in common with our research. After corresponding with Ricœur, I traveled to Paris, to Ricœur's residence in the community of the Murs Blancs in order to prepare the symposium. Ricœur had just finished his book La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli and he suggested that we base our work in the planned meeting in Jerusalem on the second section of the book. He said that he was exhausted and felt empty, after completing the manuscript. Nonetheless, his conversation was animated, touching on geo-political aspects of the war in what was formerly Yugoslavia and speculating on the reasons why armed conflict often originated and spread from the Balkans. Ricœur had given a paper to the research group of the Rosenzweig Centre, at the invitation of Stéphane Mosès, in December 1994. He was excited about coming to Jerusalem. I returned to Jerusalem with a typescript of the section of the book we were to discuss, and we prepared for the meeting in regular sessions of the research group. (shrink)

Martin Buber is considered one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, contributing to the fields of philosophy, theology and education. After Buber’s death the appreciation of his considerable legacy became rather muted, but was never completely forgotten. Recently, interest in Buber’s thought has increased and a number of journal articles and books dealing with both general and specific aspects of his philosophy have appeared. However, the number of commentaries on the importance of his socio-political thought are still small in number, (...) and it is arguable that only Mendes-Flohr and Avnon have provided significant discussions on this aspect of Buber’s philosophy. This article adds to the debate in this area by referring to Buber’s concept of the ‘living-centre’, and assesses the Mendes-Florian and Avnonian [my terminology] interpretations of this fundamental idea so as to establish which provides a more sustainable reading of Buber’s ideas. (shrink)

Salomo Friedlaender was a prolific German-Jewish philosopher, poet, and satirist. His Kant for Children is intended to help young people learn about Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Friedlaender writes, “Morality is inherent in us organically. But its abstract formula should be imprinted on schoolchildren.” Published in 1924, 200 years after Kant’s birth, the book sparked interest in some quarters, attracting the attention of the first Newbery Award winner, Hendrik Willem van Loon, who corresponded with Friedlaender in 1933 requesting an English translation. That (...) didn’t happen. This is the first English translation of the book. During the National Socialist period, Kant for Children troubled the Nazis. They banned Friedlaender’s work. Rebecca Hanf, friend of Ernst Marcus, the philosopher who claimed to have resurrected Kant, recognized that Friedlaender’s Kant for Children could counter the Nazi appropriation of Kant and realign Kant with egalitarianism and anti-fascist politics, meaning the book has contemporary relevance in light of an international resurgence of fascism. A lifelong student of Kant’s works, Friedlaender deserves a wider audience among Kant scholars and students. This first English translation includes an introduction to Friedlaender as well as essays by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Sarah Holtman, Robert Louden, Kate Moran, Krista Thomason, and Jens Timmermann. For translating and editing Kant for Children, Bruce Krajewski received The 2023 Silvers Grant for Work in Progress from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. The Robert B. Silvers Foundation is a charitable trust established by a bequest of the late Robert B. Silvers, a founding editor of the New York Review of Books, with the aim of supporting writers in the fields of long-form literary and arts criticism, the intellectual essay, political analysis, and social reportage. (shrink)

In recent decades, scholars have come to see 1 Corinthians as a rhetorically unified response to the problem of divisions among Corinthian believers. This essay explores the ways in which Paul presents the cross as the organizing principle that can bind together three different forms of community division: the cult of the personality ; the freedom to eat idol meat ; and economic disparities when gathered for a meal. In each case, Paul appeals implicitly or explicitly to the (...) cross as a remedy for the all-too-familiar strains on the fractured community. In the end, Paul’s countercultural message about the cross offers a word of exhortation for the American church today, as it navigates a society that shares much in common with first-century Corinth. (shrink)

As neuroscience methods begin to dominate emotion research it is critical for researchers to remember that peripheral embodiments are critical to understanding emotional experience and emotion—behavior links. Much of modern emotion research assumes reliable mind—body connections that suggest that changes in emotional states influence bodily responses and, vice versa, that somatovisceral information shapes emotional experiences. However, there may be important qualifications to the link between the mind and the (peripheral) body. For example, the ability to sense internal and external bodily (...) states declines in older age as does activation of physiological systems, all of which may contribute to an impairment in emotional experiences and how emotions influence behavior. I describe this phenomenon as maturational dualism and suggest implications of this for emotion in older adults. (shrink)

Neste artigo, pretendo analisar alguns pontos centrais que culminam no amadurecimento da reflexão de Arendt em relação ao pensamento de Marx e ao marxismo. Para tanto, será analisado a leitura de Arendt a partir dos excertos presentes em Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought, escrito no início da década de 1950, texto que é uma espécie de complementação do The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) e fazia parte de um projeto pensado por Arendt de escrever um livro sobre (...) os “elementos totalitários do marxismo”. Visto que esse escrito nunca foi finalizado e o esse projeto foi abandonado, considero que a análise desse texto além de esclarecer muitos pontos importantes da crítica de Arendt a Marx e ao marxismo, pode nos servir também de ponte para o seu Magnum Opus The Human Condition (1958). A minha hipótese é de que, na visão de Arendt, a ruptura presente no pensamento de Marx em relação a tradição da filosofia política acontece com base em um tipo de linguagem que é resultado da própria tradição. Portanto, os resultados práticos do pensamento marxiano e dos marxismos seriam consequência da tradição do pensamento político ocidental quando convertido numa práxis radical. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como propósito reconstituir o sentido conferido por D. Luciano Mendes de Almeida (1930-2006), bispo-auxiliar de São Paulo e arcebispo de Mariana, secretário e presidente da CNBB além de vice-presidente do CELAM, à sua própria trajetória biográfica. Verifica-se que, se cotejada com balizas culturais contemporâneas, tal configuração de si porta contornos aparentemente paradoxais: ao invés de fortalecer uma identidade pessoal, ela pressupõe uma dinâmica antropológico-religiosa de autoesvaziamento, concomitante a uma atuação mediadora em prol de relações ternárias entre (...) Deus, os sujeitos e si mesmo, processo denominado por D. Luciano como “interiorização da figura Jesus Cristo”. Com o suporte teórico provindo da semiótica e da história religiosa, tal interiorização é aqui compreendida como um programa narrativo específico, que adquiriu formas singulares ao longo dos séculos, com destaque à espiritualidade inaciana, mas preservando sua concepção como um agir, pela fé, em nome da competência atribuída a um Outro. Sugere-se ainda que, na atualidade, a interiorização possa ser aproximada do relato de testemunho, face ao engajamento ético por ela suscitado, que reconfigura o sujeito no compartilhar de experiências vividas e postas em discurso. Palavras-chave: D. Luciano Mendes de Almeida. Biografia. Interiorização. Testemunho.: This article aims at reconstructing the meaning given by D. Luciano Mendes de Almeida (1930-2006), to his own biographical trajectory. D. Luciano was auxiliary bishop of Saint-Paul and Archbishop of Mariana, secretary and president of the CNBB, and also vice president of CELAM. The configuration he made of himself appears to be paradoxical: instead of strengthening a personal identity, it assumes a dynamic anthropological and religious self-emptiness and a mediating performance in favor of ternary relations between God and the subject itself, a process called by the Archbishop as the "internalization of the figure Jesus Christ." With a theoretical support coming from semiotics and religious history, this process of internalization is understood in this article as a specific narrative program which has acquired unique forms over the centuries, with emphasis on Ignatians spirituality, while preserving its conception as an act of faith on behalf of the competency given to an Other. The article also suggests that ,nowadays, that internalization of the figure of Jesus Christ approaches the reported testimony, given the ethical engagement raised by it, which reconfigures the subject in the sharing of experiences of life that are brought into discourse. Keywords : D. Luciano Mendes de Almeida. Biography. Internalization. Testimony. (shrink)