Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
What does it mean to wonder in awe about the world? How do you philosophically understand Judaism? In How to Measure a World?: A Philosophy of Judaism, Martin Shuster seeks to answer these questions and more.
Emmanuel Levinas suggested that Judaism is best understood as an anachronism. Shuster attempts to provide an answer to this problem by considering questions of Jewish difference, the relationship of Jews to the world, and Jewish entanglement with phenomenology. Shuster offers new readings of some of the classic figures of Jewish philosophy--Maimonides, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Stanley Cavell.
How to Measure a World? examines the vastness of the Jewish philosophical record and the full intellectual scope and range of Levinas's claim. Shuster's view of anachronism also provokes an assessment of the world and whether it is measured positively or negatively. A particular understanding of Jewish philosophy emerges, not only through the traditions it encompasses, but also through Shuster's understanding of the human relationship to the world we live in. In the end, Levinas's claim may be best interpreted as a way of living rather than implicitly granted.
Synopsis
Kervegan, Jean-Francois and Martin Shuster, The Actual and the Rational: Hegel and Objective Spirit, University of Chicago Press, 2018, 9780226023809 Rudavsky, T.M., Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Science, Rationalism, and Religion, Oxford University Press, 2018, 9780199580903 Coe, Cynthia D, Levinas & The Trauma of Responsibility, Indiana University Press, 2018, 9780253031976