Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt

Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt
ISBN-10
0197546528
ISBN-13
9780197546529
Series
Living Law
Category
Law
Pages
361
Language
English
Published
2021-01-08
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
Miguel Vatter

Description

It is often assumed that modern democratic government has a special link with Christianity or was made possible due to Christianity. As a challenge to this belief and echoing a long-held assumption in the republican tradition, Hannah Arendt once remarked that "Washington's and Napoleon's heroes were named Moses and David." In this book, Miguel Vatter reconstructs the political theology of German Jewish philosophers during the twentieth century and their attempts to bring together the Biblical teachings on politics with the Greek and Roman traditions of political philosophy. Developed alongside modern experiences with anti-Semitism, the rise of Zionism, and the return of charismatic authority in mass societies, Jewish political theology in the twentieth century advances the radical hypothesis that the messianic idea of God's Kingdom correlates with a post-sovereignty, anarchist political condition of non-domination. Importantly, Jewish philosophers combined this messianic form of democracy with the ideal of cosmopolitan constitutionalism, which is itself based on the identity of divine law and natural law. This book examines the paradoxical unity of anarchy and rule of law in the democratic political theology developed by Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt. Critical of the Christian theological underpinnings of modern representative political institutions, this group of highly original thinkers took up the banner of Philo's project to unify Greek philosophy with Judaism, and rejected the separation between faith and reason, as well as the division between Biblical revelation and pagan philosophy. The Jewish political theology they developed stands for the idea that human redemption is inseparable from the redemption of nature. Living Law offers an alternative genealogy of political theology that challenges the widespread belief that modern republican political thought is derived from Christian sources.

Other editions

Similar books

  • Property Law: Rules, Policies, and Practices
    By Joseph William Singer, Bethany R. Berger, Nestor M. Davidson

    See also Country Community Timberlake Village v. HMW Special Utility District of Harris, 438 S.W.3d 661 (Tex. Ct. App. 2014) (holding that a neighboring ...

  • Entertainment Law and Business
    By William D. Henslee, Elizabeth Henslee

    After Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's pierced nipple on national television for 9/16ths of a second, the FCC received over 540,000 complaints.

  • The Common Law in Colonial America: Volume III: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750
    By William E. Nelson

    Volume III: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750 William E. Nelson ... Decision of Law, Surry County Ct. 1673/74, in Eliza Timberlake Davis ed., ...

  • The Indiana State Constitution
    By William P. McLauchlan

    E. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941), 66 Edwards v. Housing Authority of City of ... Timberlake, 148 Ind. 38,46 N.E.339 (1897), 69,70 Graves v.

  • Child Support Guidelines: Interpretation and Application
    By Laura W. Morgan

    Fitzgerald, 4.08[B][2], 5.05[D] Fitzgerald v. ... Mastrapa-Font, 7.03[A][3] Fontaine, In re, 5.05[D] Fontenette v. ... Frost, 5.05[A] Formato v.

  • Maritime Fraud and Piracy
    By Paul Todd

    The sole remedy is avoidance, however; damages cannot be claimed under s. ... 17, it places a great deal of power in the hands of insurance companies to ...

  • Principles of the Carriage of Goods by Sea
    By Paul Todd

    Normally, a mate«s receipt would later be given up for a bill of lading, ... they necessarily prejudice the rights of those who deal in the goods ...

  • Maryland Employment Law
    By Stanley Mazaroff, Todd Horn

    27 257 U.S. 184, 42 S. Ct. 72, 66 L. Ed. 189 (1921). ... 38 Argensinger, “Right to Strike”: Labor Organization and the New Deal in Baltimore, 78 MD . HIST .

  • Contract Law in New Zealand
    By Stephen Todd, Jeremy Finn

    704 Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017, s. 80. 705 Leith v. Gould [1986] 1 NZLR 760. It is not clear how a New Zealand court would deal with a case such ...

  • Tort Law in New Zealand
    By Stephen Todd

    ... to meet the reasonable expectations of claimants about how the corporation should deal with them, by, inter alia, ... 7 Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, s.