Dilemmas in Modern Jewish Thought

MICHAEL L. MORGAN is Professor in the Philosophy and Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. He is the author of Platonic Piety: Philosophy and Ritual in Fourth Century Athens and editor of The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim and Classics of Moral and Political Theory.

"Michael Morgan has served up an intellectual treat. These subtle and carefully reasoned essays explore the dilemmas of the post-modern Jew who would take history seriously without losing the commanding presence Israel heard at Sinai... It is a pleasure to be nourished by a fresh mind exploring the tension between reason and revelation, history and faith."- Rabbi Samuel Karff "This is without doubt one of the most significant works in modern Jewish thought and a must for a thoughtful student of contemporary Jewish philosophy." - Rabbie Sheldon Zimmerman "This may well mark the next stage in the long history of Jewish self-understanding." - Ethics " ... rigorous history of modern Jewish thought ... " - Choice

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1 Overcoming the Remoteness of the Past: Memory and Historiography in Modern Jewish ThoughtChapter 2 History and Modern Jewish Thought: Spinoza and Mendelssohn on the Ritual LawChapter 3 Liberalism in Mendelssohn's JerusalemChapter 4 The Curse of Historicity: The Role of History in Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Jewish PhilosophyChapter 5 Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Jewish PhilosophyChapter 6 Judaism and Peter Berger's Heretical ImperativeChapter 7 Jewish Ethics after the HolocaustChapter 8 Historicism, Evil, and Post-Holocaust Moral ThoughtChapter 9 Philosophy, History, and the Jewish Thinker: Jewish Thought and Philosophy in Emil Fackenheim's To Mend the WorldChapter 10 Franz Rosenzweig, Objectivity, and the New ThinkingChapter 11 Jewish Philosophy and Historical Self-ConsciousnessChapter 12 Contemporary Jewish Thought in AmericaNotesIndex