Skip to main content
Skip to main menu Skip to spotlight region Skip to secondary region Skip to UGA region Skip to Tertiary region Skip to Quaternary region Skip to unit footer

Slideshow

PHIL 3500 Jewish Philosophy: Religion, Reason, & Ethics

Fall 2016 Peabody Hall 12:20-1:10 MWF

Professor Edward Halper - ehalper@uga.edu

Is religion rational? Do religious observances make one a better person? Do they make one more ethical or less ethical? Is it not more rational and better simply to be ethical without religious observance? Does religion add anything to ethics?

These questions are especially difficult to answer when the religion in question is Judaism because Jewish religious observance requires following some commandments that cannot be understood rationally. Further, ethics is universal: what should anyone do in some set of circumstances? Some philosophers speak about universal ethical laws. But the Torah commands a set of practices that are binding only on a particular people, the Jewish people. How can Judaism be ethical if ethics is universal and Judaism is intrinsically particular?

The course will explore treatments of these issues by two philosophers who wrote in the early twentieth century. Both philosophers tried to understand what Judaism and, by extension, religion is.

In his Religion of Reason (a book that has been called the most influential work of Jewish thought in the past two centuries), Hermann Cohen draws on Biblical sources to argue that, contrary to appearances, Judaism is both fully rational and, in some important sense, universal. He thinks that religion and, especially, Judaism add something fundamental to human moral experience, something that would be missing from morality without Judaism. Hence, a proper understanding of ethics becomes the key to understanding Judaism. A central idea is that Judaism commands individual Jews to act to eliminate the suffering of other people as a way to come closer to God.

Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption is deeply influenced by Cohen’s thought, but he aims to explore (again, from Biblical sources) not only the relation between man and God (Cohen’s theme), but the relation between man, God, and the world. In the process, he comes up with three additional points of relation: creation, revelation, and redemption. Together these six “points” constitute the (six pointed) “star” that Rosenzweig understands to be emblematic of Judaism. Like Cohen, Rosenzweig gives an account of Judaism that makes it a type of universal ethics. However, this ethics depends heavily on concrete human actions in the world to “reveal” what is, as it were, hidden there.

Each of these works is challenging in itself, but because they share so much in common, they can be fruitfully read together. Each book advances a new and interesting way to understand what religion contributes to ethics.

 

Support Philosophy at UGA

The Department of Philosophy appreciates your financial support. Your gift is important to us and helps support critical opportunities for students and faculty alike, including lectures, travel support, and any number of educational events that augment the classroom experience. Click here to learn more.

EVERY DOLLAR CONTRIBUTED TO THE DEPARTMENT HAS A DIRECT IMPACT ON OUR STUDENTS AND FACULTY.