The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim: From Revelation to the Holocaust

Kenneth Hart Green

Oct 2020 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Fackenheim was one of the most philosophically serious, knowledgeable, and provocative contemporary Jewish thinkers. His original focus as a philosophical theologian was mainly on revelation, but in his later work he concerned himself primarily with the wide-ranging implications of the Holocaust. In this book, Kenneth Hart Green examines Fackenheim's intellectual trajectory and traces how and why he focused so intently on the Holocaust. He explores the deeper thought that Fackenheim developed about the Holocaust, which he construed as a cataclysmic event that ruptured history and one that also brought about a change in the very structure of being. As Green demonstrates, the Holocaust, according to Fackenheim's interpretation, changes how we view all things, from God to man to history. It also radically affects Judaism, Christianity, and philosophy, the major traditions that have shaped the Western world.

About the author

Kenneth Hart Green is Professor in the Department of the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. A scholar of Jewish Thought, he is the author of numerous journal articles and books, most recently Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides (2013).