Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered [Kindle Edition]

Leora Batnitzky (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is not only a thorough and innovative study of Franz Rosenzweig's often dazzlingly complex philosophy but also a pathbreaking analysis of Rosenzweig's contribution to contemporary Jewish as well as Christian theologies. This will set the standard for future scholarship on both Rosenzweig and Christian-Jewish dialogue.
(Michael Mack Journal of Religion )

This is not only a thorough and innovative study of Franz Rosenzweig's often dazzlingly complex philosophy but also a pathbreaking analysis of Rosenzweig's contribution to contemporary Jewish as well as Christian theologies. . . . This book will set the standard for future scholarship on both Rosenzweig and Christian-Jewish dialogue.
(Michael Mack Journal of Religion )

Review

In Idolatry and Representation, Rosenzweig has found a commentator who has fully absorbed the implications of his fundamental insight, that ethics cannot be separated from logic and aesthetics, that our capacities to stand in for our neighbor, to be there for him or her, are deeply connected to our theories of representation, however explicit they may be. This book, written with philosophical lucidity and moral intensity, will orient discussions of German-Jewish thought for years to come.
(Eric Santner, University of Chicago )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 3882 KB
• Print Length: 299 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0691048509
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 6, 2000)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001VEIXGC
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #437,509 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent., July 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Idolatry and Representation (Hardcover)

Of course, I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested--even remotely--in Rosenzweig. But this book will also satisfy those who seek a fresh view of Judaism, religious thought, and, indeed, all the social sciences and humanities in general. In short, this book will change lives.

As a student of religion, I have been waiting for a book like this for quite some time. Bursting at the seams with relevance, Batnitzky's work manages both to resolve questions that have been tormenting me for years and to raise new ones I had not even considered.

You will not view religion in the same way after reading this book. In fact, if you are at all like me and my colleagues and peers, you will be seized by an uncontrollable urge to go back, to reread everything else you have ever read about religion, and to rethink it all utilizing these new Batnitzkian approaches.

The more I think about it the more I believe that this is the sort of book college courses could--and should--be designed around. There is so much here that students would do well to spend weeks, maybe months, analyzing its pages, delving into its explosive issues, and ultimately, weighing in their beliefs. Indeed, I have recently found myself asking (actually lamenting), "Where was a book like this when I was in college?"

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "As we risk idolatry, we also risk non-idolatry", July 13, 2007

By 

R. J. Stroik (Stevens Point, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Idolatry and Representation (Hardcover)

More than half century ago I turned to the history of ideas as a way of probing the presuppositions of the ideas that are most near and dear to us. After reading this volume, I realize that when we fail to plummet the depths of these presuppositions, we "risk idolatry."

If we are to become consciously aware of the presuppositions of all that which our ideas "represent," we are dependent upon our being open to the otherness of others. We meet one another not to "otherize" this otherness into the sameness of our own categories of thought -- perhaps categories we may have spend a life time cultivating -- but rather, for our own categories to be critiqued and enhanced by those of others.

But which otherness? In making the Jesus of history into the Christ of faith, Christianity has thought and taught that Hebraic presuppositions could be readily and easily refitted within the categories of Hellenistic philosophy, in so doing, supressing the Jewishness of Jesus. Although Christian biblical scholars now engage themselves in a third quest for the historical Jesus, with help from Leora Banitsky's IDOLATRY ANE RERESENTATION, I now find myself sharing a Jewish quest for the Jesus of history.

Perhaps a distant outcome of this quest will be a reference in the preamble to the Constitution of the European Union recognizing and acknowledging the Jewish origins of a religious faith that is less and less that of Christianity and more and more that of Islam.

How might Jews, Christians and Moslems one-another one another as they pray to the same God?