by

Dana Drucker / Wolfgang Weimer

 

"Since the Jew […] was never in possession of a culture of his own, the foundations of his intellectual work were always provided by others."

 

(Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 330)

 

We followed up on this prejudice by examining the contribution made by persons of the Jewish faith and/or of Jewish descent to the history of philosophy. The results make it possible to visualize the extent of the multifaceted and original contribution made by Jewish people to this part of our spiritual tradition.

 

I. Philosophers of the Jewish faith

 

1. Bahya Ibn Pakuda, born 1040, died 1110; Spanish

 

Author of works including a popular religious-philosophical manuscript entitled "The Duties of the Heart".

 

2. Judah Ha-Levi (Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Levi), born ca. 1080 in Toledo, died 1145 on a journey

 

Poet and author of a religious-philosophical dialog written in Arabic ("The Kuzari"), containing a portrayal of Judaism by a scholar in conversation with a king.

 

3. Abraham Ibn Ezra, born 1092, died 1167; lived in Spain and Italy

 

Commentator on the Pentateuch; grammarian, philosopher, astrologer, secular and religious poet.

 

4. Moses Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon), born March 30, 1135 in Cordoba, died December 13, 1204 in Fostat near Cairo (buried in Tiberias)

 

Jewish religious philosopher, doctor, scholar of the law and Jewish sage of the Middle Ages; he was instructed by his father in Jewish doctrine; he introduced a clear conceptual system into what had been the obscure, complex teaching of the Talmud.

 

5. Moses Mendelssohn (Moses Ben Mendel Heymann), born September 6, 1729 in Dessau, died January 4, 1786 in Berlin

 

Jewish philosopher, humanist, writer of the Enlightenment, friend of the famous (not Jewish, but pro-Jewish) philosopher Immanuel Kant, harbinger of Jewish emancipation; he sought to interpret the Jewish religion by means of concepts from the world of philosophy.

 

6. Salomon Maimon, born 1753 in Nieszewicz (Lithuania), died November 22, 1800 in Nieder-Siegersdorf (Silesia)

 

Student of Moses Mendelssohn, studied the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and influenced Hermann Cohen's later Neokantianism.

 

7. Hermann Cohen, born July 4, 1842 in Coswig (Anhalt), died April 4, 1918 in Berlin

 

Founder and head of the Marburg school of Neokantianism, researcher in cognitive science and mathematics; endeavored to prove that Judaism was the religion of reason.

 

8. Martin Buber, born February 8, 1878 in Vienna, died June 13, 1965 Jerusalem

 

Jewish religious philosopher and author, professor of sociology in Jerusalem; translated (with Franz Rosenzweig) the Pentateuch into German, conducted research on Hassidism (a mystical stream of Judaism) and on mysticism in general (editor of the writings of Chuang Tzu). He was active in the cause of Jewish-Arab understanding; and 1953, he received the Peace Prize of the German book trade.

 

9. Franz Rosenzweig, born December 25, 1886 in Kassel, died December 10, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main

 

One of the most significant thinkers of modern Judaism, he forged an unusual combination of occidental philosophy and Jewish-biblical thought; translated (with Martin Buber) the Pentateuch into German.

 

10. Leo Baeck, born May 23, 1873 in Lissa (Poland), died November 2, 1956 in London, served as a rabbi in Dusseldorf (1907) and other places

 

Jewish theologian, leading personality of German Judaism, intermediary between the Jewish faith and the German culture.

 

11. Hugo Samuel (Shmuel) Bergmann, born December 25, 1883 in Prague, died June 18, 1975 in Jerusalem

 

Philosopher and librarian, adherent of idealism and Zionism; translated the works of Immanuel Kant into Hebrew; a close colleague of Franz Rosenzweig.

 

12. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, born January 28, 1903 in Riga (Latvia), died August 18, 1994 in Jerusalem

 

Professor of biochemistry and neurobiology; after his retirement, turned to philosophy, especially the relationship between the spirit and the brain; fought against the connection between state and religion in Israel's politics.

 

13. Emmanuel Lévinas, born December 30, 1905 in Kaunas (Lithuania), died December 27, 1995 in Paris

 

A student of Husserl and Heidegger, occasionally active in the Jewish community of France; strove – like Hermann Cohen – toward a "religion of reason" based on the sources of Judaism, in order to understand the world "from the perspective of the Other".

 

14. Shalom Ben-Chorin (until 1931: Fritz Rosenthal), born July 20, 1913 in Munich, died May 7, 1999 in Jerusalem

 

The son of an assimilated Jewish family, he turned to Orthodox Judaism in his youth; author of theological studies, stories, poems and feuilletons; dedicated to the goal of establishing a third stream of Judaism, alongside orthodoxy and liberalism: Reform Judaism.

 

II. Philosophers of Jewish descent

 

1. Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch Bento Despiñoza), born November 24, 1632 in Amsterdam, died February 21, 1677 in The Hague

 

Founder of modern pantheism – that is, the idea that everything (the entire world) is God, a belief which Spinoza sought to prove through the use of mathematical-rational methods; was excommunicated from the Jewish community in 1656 due to his "frightful heresy".

 

2. Heinrich Heine, born December 13, 1797 in Dusseldorf, died February 17, 1856 in Paris

 

Famous writer (Late Romanticism), but also the author of philosophical works ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany").

 

3. Karl Marx, born May 5, 1818 in Trier, died March 19, 1883 in London

 

Studied philosophy at the University of Berlin; student of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; he founded modern Communism or Marxism (philosophical, economic, historical and political theory); lived as an editor in Rhineland, and subsequently in exile in London as an author; a politician and private scholar, he sharply criticized any and all religion ("religion is the opium of the people").

 

4. Fritz Mauthner, born November 22, 1849 in Horschitz (Bohemia), died June 28, 1923 in Meersburg (Lake Constance)

 

Renowned philosopher of language with a tendency toward Buddhism, author of a dictionary of philosophy and a history of atheism.

 

5. Theodor Lessing, born February 8, 1872 in Hanover, died August 30, 1933 in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia (murdered by Nazi agents)

 

Author and philosopher; supported Socialism and historical-philosophical pessimism; strove toward equality for women and peaceful understanding among nations; developed the hypothesis of "Jewish self-hatred" – that is, the idea that (some) Jews internalize racist clichés (see Otto Weininger and Ludwig Wittgenstein).

 

6. Otto Weininger, born April 3, 1880 in Vienna, died October 4, 1903 in Vienna (suicide)

 

Cultural philosopher, briefly but impressively influential, inter alia on Ludwig Wittgenstein (main work: "Sex and Character"), driven by his Jewish origin and his homosexuality to self-hatred, culminating in self-destruction.

 

7. Ludwig Wittgenstein, born April 26, 1889 in Vienna, died April 29, 1951 in Cambridge, Great Britain

 

The son of an impressively rich family of industrialists in Austria who had converted to Christianity, he became the most important philosopher of the 20th century (and was also extremely gifted in numerous other areas: architecture, engineering, mathematics, music); influenced by Otto Weininger and Arthur Schopenhauer; one of the founders of the modern philosophy of language, with far-ranging consequences for other areas of philosophy; due to his Jewish origin, and probably to his homosexuality as well, believed himself, at least from time to time, to be incapable of real creativity and tended toward suicidal thoughts.

 

8. Edmund Husserl, born April 8, 1859 in Prossnitz (Prostejow, Moravia), died April 27, 1938 in Freiburg

 

A logician and philosopher, founder of phenomenology, a methodically independent stream of modern philosophy; teacher of the famous philosopher Martin Heidegger.

 

9. Leo Strauss, born September 20, 1899 in Kirchhain (Hessen), died October 18, 1973 in Annapolis, Maryland (USA)

 

Famous professor of the history of philosophy (worked on Spinoza) and philosopher (on the theme of natural law); commentator of classical texts; the son of an Orthodox Jewish family, he became a scientist at the age of 17.

 

10. Karl Raimund Popper, born July 28, 1902 in Vienna, died September 17, 1994 near London

 

Prominent theoretician of scientific rationalism; developed a theory of scientific method used to this day by many natural scientists; in addition, was a proponent of political liberalism.

 

11. Karl Löwith, born January 9, 1897 in Munich, died May 24, 1973 in Heidelberg

 

A student of Martin Heidegger, he became a professor of philosophy in Heidelberg; during the time of the Nazis, he lived in exile in Japan. He criticized the historical thought of Jewish-Christian tradition and strove for the readoption of a school of thought oriented toward the natural order, which he believed had been realized in ancient Greece.

 

12. Hans Jonas, born May 10, 1903 in Mönchengladbach, died February 5, 1993 in New York

 

Ecological philosopher from a liberal Jewish family; a Zionist, he also adhered to the Brit Shalom [Covenant of Peace] movement, which supported peaceful coexistence with the Arab population in Palestine; belonged to the Haganah self-defense militia and fought in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, which was assigned to the occupation of Germany; use the term "Creation" in an effort to combine Judaism and ecological thought.

 

13. Hannah Arendt, born October 14, 1906 in Hanover, died December 4, 1975 in New York

 

From an atheistic household, she first identified with Judaism as a result of the Nazi persecution. She was a student of Martin Heidegger, and was also his lover for a while[1]; a professor of political science (famous for her comparison between Nazism and Stalinism – theory of totalitarianism), she also will philosophical books, as well as a confrontation with the trial against Adolf Eichmann, persecutor of the Jews, in Jerusalem.

 

14. Theodor W. (Wiesengrund) Adorno, born September 11, 1903 in Frankfurt am Main, died August 6, 1969 in Wallis (Switzerland)

 

He was a multiply gifted philosopher, sociologist, music theoretician and composer (a student of Arnold Schoenberg, also of Jewish origin); together with Max Horkheimer, he founded the "Critical Theory / Frankfurt School"; a neo-Marxist, he was extremely influential in the student movement of 1968.

 

15. Max Horkheimer, born February 14, 1895 in Stuttgart, died July 7, 1973 in Nuremberg

 

He studied psychology and philosophy and was a professor of social philosophy; together with his friend Theodor W. Adorno, he founded the "Critical Theory / Frankfurt School"; in exile, he became Director of the American Jewish Committee and leader of a comprehensive research project on anti-Semitism; originally a neo-Marxist, he tended in his old age to adopt the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

 

16. Herbert Marcuse, born July 19, 1895 in Berlin, died July 29, 1979 in Starnberg

 

Professor in the United States since 1954; together with Adorno and Horkheimer, founded the "Critical Theory"; as a neo-Marxist, the combined the teachings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud (also of Jewish descent); extremely influential in the student movement of 1968, in the United States and in Germany.

 

17. Jean-François Lyotard, born August 10, 1924 in Versailles, died April 21, 1998 in Paris

 

Originally shaped by Husserl's phenomenology, he later turned to non-dogmatic Marxism and Freud's psychoanalysis; he subsequently became one of the most famous philosophers of post-Modernism, whereby, in his search for traces of the absolute in the world, he adopted Jewish themes – at first unobtrusively, but later significantly.

 

18. Jacques Derrida, born July 15, 1930 in El Biar (Algeria)

 

Although his parents were Jewish, he has always considered Jewish culture to be "an all-determining blind spot" – but nonetheless, though at a distance, has associated himself with it; developed the method of deconstruction as a concept of "non-identical subjectivity"; the determining process in that method, identification through differentiation, is of exemplary significance in its relationship to Judaism.

 

19. Noam Avram Chomsky, born December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia (USA)

 

Extremely significant modern philosopher of language (founder of generative transformational grammar) and leftist-liberal critic of United States policy.

 

20. Michael Walzer, born 1935 in the United States

 

Social philosopher and professor of political science (specializing in the research of war), like Chomsky, he is a critic of United States policy.

 

Literature for further reading:

 

*        John F. Oppenheimer et al. (ed.): Lexikon des Judentums. Gütersloh / Berlin / Munich / Vienna, 1971.

*        Andreas B. Kilcher / Ottfried Fraisse (ed.): Lexikon jüdischer Philosophien. Stuttgart 2003

 

We have not always adopted the lines drawn by Kilcher & Fraisse with regard to non-Jewish philosophers and non-philosophers. Rather, for example, we included Ludwig Wittgenstein in our list (although his parents were baptized), considered Michael Walzer as a philosopher, and so forth.