Critiques of Theology: German-Jewish Intellectuals and the Religious Sources of Secular Thought (SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Thought)

By: Yotam Hotam

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: It seems hard to imagine a concept more significant to modern thought than critique. Critique involved distancing oneself from religious explanations and theological argumentation and came to represent the essence of secular consciousness's potential to deliver modernity's promise of human progress through rational inquiry and scientific development. Critiques of Theology debunks this common understanding. Based on a novel reading of previously less-discussed writings by Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Hannah Arendt, the book shows how the practice of critique emerged out of religious traditions and can, in many ways, be traced back to them. This study points to a persistent misreading of critique and demonstrates that it does not come from outside of religion to build a new world of ideas; on the contrary, it redeploys those already present within its theological constellations.