Franz Rosenzweig is widely regarded today as one of the most original and intellectually challenging figures within the so-called renaissance of German-Jewish thought in the Weimar period. The architect of a unique kind of existential theology, and an important influence upon such philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, Leo Strauss, and Emmanuel Levinas, Rosenzweig is remembered chiefly as a "Jewish thinker," often to the neglect of his broader philosophical concerns. Cutting across the artificial divide that the traumatic memory of National (...) Socialism has drawn between German and Jewish philosophy, this book seeks to restore Rosenzweig's thought to the German philosophical horizon in which it first took shape. It is the first English-language study to explore Rosenzweig's enduring debt to Hegel's political theory, neo-Kantianism, and life-philosophy; the book also provides a new, systematic reading of Rosenzweig's major work, _The Star of Redemption._ Most of all, the book sets out to explore a surprising but deep affinity between Rosenzweig’s thought and that of his contemporary, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Resisting both apologetics and condemnation, Gordon suggests that Heidegger’s engagement with Nazism should not obscure the profound and intellectually compelling bond in the once-shared tradition of modern German and Jewish thought. A remarkably lucid discussion of two notably difficult thinkers, this book represents an eloquent attempt to bridge the forced distinction between modern Jewish thought and the history of modern German philosophy—and to show that such a distinction cannot be sustained without doing violence to both. (shrink)

This essay investigates the tradition of interwar German-Jewish political theology associated most of all with Leo Strauss and Franz Rosenzweig. It is suggested here that the Straussian notion of an eternal conflict between politics and religions may be derived, in part, from Rosenzweig's image of the depoliticized Jewish community. Furthermore, this "concept of the apolitical" represents something like a modernist reprisal of Stoic ideals, most especially the ancient ideal of ataraxia, or "freedom from disturbance." This apoliticism is distinguished most of (...) all by two interlocking principles; first, that politics is mere disorder if not a return to the state of unredeemed nature; and second, that religious peace must accordingly be found elsewhere than politics. This argument for the near-incommensurability of politics and religion represents the special if not altogether unique contribution of Weimar German-Jewish intellectuals to the enduring tradition of political theology. It is therefore worth posing the following question: Why does Hannah Arendt's political theory appear to bear almost no trace whatsoever of this political-theological tradition? By what logic did Arendt dissent from the political-theological principles that so captivated her German-Jewish contemporaries? And which tradition should command our allegiance today? (shrink)

This essay investigates the tradition of interwar German-Jewish political theology associated most of all with Leo Strauss and Franz Rosenzweig. It is suggested here that the Straussian notion of an eternal conflict between politics and religions may be derived, in part, from Rosenzweig's image of the depoliticized Jewish community. Furthermore, this "concept of the apolitical" represents something like a modernist reprisal of Stoic ideals, most especially the ancient ideal of ataraxia, or "freedom from disturbance." This apoliticism is distinguished most of (...) all by two interlocking principles; first, that politics is mere disorder if not a return to the state of unredeemed nature; and second, that religious peace must accordingly be found elsewhere than politics. This argument for the near-incommensurability of politics and religion represents the special if not altogether unique contribution of Weimar German-Jewish intellectuals to the enduring tradition of political theology. It is therefore worth posing the following question: Why does Hannah Arendt's political theory appear to bear almost no trace whatsoever of this political-theological tradition? By what logic did Arendt dissent from the political-theological principles that so captivated her German-Jewish contemporaries? And which tradition should command our allegiance today? (shrink)

We explore the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) personality traits and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Upper echelons theory indicates that the values, experiences, and personalities of top organizational managers influence their organization's strategic decisions and effectiveness. We utilize IBM Watson Personality Insights software to infer CEOs’ personality traits based on their responses to questions raised by analysts during year‐end conference calls; we obtain CEOs’ Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—from which we compute a measure of (...) their risk tolerance. Using a longitudinal dataset of Standard and Poor's 500 firms for 2008–2015, we document that high CEO risk tolerance is related to lower CSR report readability and smaller CSR disclosure volume. This finding indicates that executives who are comfortable with greater risk are more willing to supply stakeholders with reports that are shorter and require greater effort to understand. Exploration of the association between CEO Big Five personality traits and CSR report readability and disclosure volume allows key stakeholders to better comprehend CSR disclosures and connotations thereof. Overall, our results contribute to the debate on how CEO personality traits affect organizations’ CSR disclosure reporting strategies, and support upper echelons theory in the CSR setting. (shrink)

For T any completion of Peano Arithmetic and for n any positive integer, there is a model of T of size $\beth_n$ with no (n + 1)-length sequence of indiscernibles. Hence the Hanf number for omitting types over T, H(T), is at least $\beth_\omega$ . (Now, using an upper bound previously obtained by Julia Knight H (true arithmetic) is exactly $\beth_\omega$ ). If T ≠ true arithmetic, then $H(T) = \beth_{\omega1}$ . If $\delta \not\rightarrow (\rho)^{ , then any completion of (...) Peano Arithmetic has a model of size δ with no set of indiscernibles of size ρ. There are similar results for theories strongly resembling Peano Arithmetic, e.g., ZF + V = L. (shrink)

Anhand eines bisher unveröffentlichten Briefentwurfs wird erläutert, warum Karl Kraus schließlich nicht auf einen Vorschlag Upton Sinclairs einging, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit ins Englische übersetzen und in einer sozialistischen Sammlung von “Volksklassikern” erscheinen zu lassen. Der Aufsatz berücksichtigt sowohl die Bestände des Kraus-Archivs als auch den Upton-Sinclair-Nachlaß der Indiana University.