To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought

"This subtle and nuanced study is clearly Fackenheim's most important book." --Paul Mendes-Flohr

"... magnificent in sweep and in execution of detail." --Franklin H. Littell

In To Mend the World Emil L. Fackenheim points the way to Judaism's renewal in a world and an age in which all of our notions--about God, humanity, and revelation--have been severely challenged. He tests the resources within Judaism for healing the breach between secularism and revelation after the Holocaust. Spinoza, Rosenzweig, Hegel, Heidegger, and Buber figure prominently in his account.

Tikkun--the mending of the world and the faith of the contemporary Jew after the Holocaust--is the theme that Emil Fackenheim addresses in his most important book. Fackenheim looks to the great philosophers of Western thought--Spinoza, Rosenzweig, Hegel, and Husserl--seeking answers to the moral debasement this century has witnessed.

Includes biliographical references (p. 335-344) and index.

EMIL L. FACKENHEIM is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and Fellow of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Acknowledgments

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the Midland Edition

Auschwitz as Challenge to Philosophy and Theology

I. Introduction

1. Introductions

2. Systems

3. Revelation

4. The Holocaust

5. "Foundations of Future Jewis Thought": Genesis of a Plan

6. "Foundations": From Plan to Execution

7. Napoleonic and Related Strategies

8. Language

9. Toward Future Jewish Thought

II. The Problematics of Contemporary Jewish Thought: From Spinoza Beyond Rosenzweig

1. Introducting Spinoza and Rosenzweig

2. Baruch Spinoza

3. Franz Rosenzweig

4. Spinoza and Rosenzweig Today

5. Conclusion

III. The Shibboleth of Revelation: From Spinoza Beyond Hegel

1. Rosenzweig on Hegel

2. Hegel on Judaism and Spinoza

3. Revelation as Shibboleth

4. The Basis of Hegel's Mediating Thought-Activity

5. Spinoza dn Hegel on Revelation

6. The Core of the Hegelian Mediation

7. Hegel's Mediation between Spinoza and Judaism

8. The Failure of Hegel's Mediation and Its Dialectical Results

9. The Move toward the Extremes

10. The End of the Constantinianism and the Turn to Dialogical Openness

11. Catastrophe

12. The Shibboleth of Revelation in Jewish Modernity

IV. Historicity, Rupture, and Tikkun Olam ("Mending the World"): From Rosenzweig Beyond Heidegger

1. Spinoza, Rosenzweig, and Heidegger on Death

2. Historicity

3. Historicity and Transcendence

4. The Ontic-Ontological Circle

5. 1933: Year of Decision

6. The Age of Technology and the Age of Auschwitz

7. Unauthentic Thought after the Holocaust

8. The Spectrum of Resistance during the Holocaust: An Essay in Description and Definition

9. Resistance as an Ontological Categary: An Essay in Critical Analysis

10. Rupture, Teshuva, and Tikkun Olam

11. Historicity, Hermeneutics, and Tikkun Olam after the Holocaust

12. On Philosophy after the Holocaust

13. Concerning Post-Holocaust Christianity

14. Jewish Existence after the Holocaust

15. Epilogue

V. Conclusion: Teshuva Today: Concerning Judaism After the Holocaust

1. The Problematics of Teshuva in Our Time

2. Rosenzweig after Heidegger

3. Yom Kippur after the Holocaust

4. The Message of Beit Ha-Tefutsot

5. The Sharing of Teshuva after the Holocaust

Abbreviations

Notes

Index