Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Rorty and the Prophetic: Jewish Engagements with a Secular Philosopher

Rorty and the Prophetic: Jewish Engagements with a Secular Philosopher

Lerner, Akiba
Goodson, Jacob L.
Stone, Brad Elliott

Hardcover

Religion General Judaism

ISBN10: 1498523005
ISBN13: 9781498523004
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: Feb 11 2021
Pages: 246
Weight: 1.17
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Rorty and the Prophetic interrogates and provides a constructive assessment to the American neo-pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty's critiques of Jewish ethics. Rorty dismisses the public applicability of Jewish moral reasoning, because it is based on the will of God through divine revelation. As a self-described secular philosopher, it comes as no surprise that Rorty does not find public applicability within a divinely-ordered Jewish ethic. Rorty also rejects the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's ethics, which is based upon the notion of infinite responsibility to the Face of the Other. In Rorty's judgment, Levinas's ethics is gawky, awkward, and unenlightening. From a Rortyan perspective, it seems that Jewish ethics simply can't win: either it is either too dependent on the will of God or over-emphasizes the human Other. The volume responds to Rorty's criticisms of Jewish ethics in three different ways: first, demonstrating agreements between Rorty and Jewish thinkers; second, offering reflective responses to Rorty's critiques of Judaism on the questions of Messianism, prophecy, and the relationship between politics and theology; third, taking on Rorty's seemingly unfair judgment that Levinas's ethics is gawky, awkward, and unenlightening. While Rorty does not engage the prophetic tradition of Jewish thought in his essay, Glorious Hopes, Failed Prophecies, he dismisses the possibility for prophetic reasoning because of its other-worldliness and its emphasis on predicting the future. Rorty fails to attend to and recognize the complexity of prophetic reasoning, and this book presents the complexity of the prophetic within Judaism. Toward these ends and more, Brad Elliott Stone and Jacob L. Goodson offer this book to scholars who contribute to the Jewish academy, those within American Philosophy, and those who think Richard Rorty's voice ought to remain in conversations about religion and conversations among the religious.

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