-
9. To Create Messianic Time: A Jewish Critique of Political Utopia
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
9 To Create Messianic Time A Jewish Critique of Political Utopia on Prophecy In this chapter Cohen provides a politically important distinction between messianic times and the world-to-come, two often conflated eschatological concepts in Maimonides’ thought. In contradistinction to the historicity of messianic times, the futurity of the world-to-come represents a metahistorical dimension. Cohen correlates the metahistorical futurity of the world-to-come with the purity of the ethical ideal. His rejection of all totalitarian political movements is anchored in this separation of messianism as a political utopia from the messianism of the prophets, grounded in the futurity of the ideal as represented by Maimonides ’ concept of the world-to-come. Maimonides’ introduction to the tenth chapter of the Mishna tractate Sanhedrin provides the textual basis for Cohen’s discussion in this section. 157. Maimonides’ universal intellectual independence, with which he counters all dogmas through his emphasis on ethics, is perhaps nowhere as distinctly and cogently demonstrated as by the inferences drawn from his denial of eudaemonia . He replaces eudaemonia with self-perfection; and self-perfection he equates with “drawing close to God” (twbrqth). Thus he presents us with the most sublime reading of immortality. Now it only remains for him to expose the sham argument of social advantages promised by eudaemonia. Here Maimonides was able to take (See 157.) Maimonides’ dialogical interpretation of the prophet. Maimonides suggests reading prophetic messages as metaphorical images that demand interpretation and translation.1 Especially in instances where prophetic visions invoke bodily images of God, these images are to be translated into an epistemology of Knowing God, and into social and political engagement. The prophets, according to Cohen, become the founders of Jewish messianism, in proclaiming the relationship between God and human beings to be foundational Psychology of Prophecy: “Face to Face” ethics of maimonides 170 advantage of his conception of prophecy, and in particular of his psychological interpretation of the prophet. [Guide, introduction and 2:46, 581–82.] Thus he arrives at a fundamental distinction invalidating the two main motives of eudaemonia. [Namely the bliss of pure contemplation, on the one hand, and of the pursuit of material well-being, on the other.] He distinguishes between Life Eternal (abh μlw[) [hereafter referred to as olam ha-ba] and the messianic era (awbl dyt[). [RoR 310–11; RdV 361; and Maimonides 1984–1996, Hilkhoth Teshuvah 9:2.] for God’s very own Being. This stands in contrast to the ontological tradition inspired by Aristotle in which the self-sufficiency of the divine is proposed. From the perspective of this reading, a theory of intersubjectivity that is distinctly dialogical emerges. God’s speaking face-toface with Moses provides Jewish tradition with the pedagogical and ethical mode of human discourse in which openness, receptivity, and listening creates a way of thinking different from mere selfsufficient rationality. Thus writes Alphonso Lingis: The locus where this imperative is articulated is the other who faces—the face of the other. Facing . . . is the move by which alterity breaks into the sphere of phenomena . . . responsibility is the response to the imperative addressed in the concrete act of facing.2 Jewish oral tradition embodies the reenactment of an original pedagogical moment. It is through Cohen’s messianic epistemology and through Rosenzweig’s concept of Sprachdenken—a way of thinking in which time figures centrally in taking “its cues from others”— that the pedagogy of Torah translates into the philosophical language of the West. In keeping alive the economy of an absolute passivity of thought with respect to that which precedes thought in the free gift of speech, contemporary philosophy and hermeneutics, in fact, do reenact an ancient gesture. A Radical Critique of Political Utopia Maimonides uses the terms the future to come (atid lavo) and messianic days (yemoth hamashiach ) interchangeably when referring to the messianic era to be expected in the course of history .3 It seems that neither the Talmud nor Midrash, nor Maimonides himself, are consistent in their terminological usage of the expression atid lavo.4 Yet, Maimonides clearly distinguishes be- [3.95.233.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:14 GMT) to create messianic time 171 tween atid lavo and yemoth hamashiach .5 The messianic era has been interpreted by Steven Schwarzschild as a future that is always in the coming, always to come—a future that is never to be fully realized.6 Schwarzschild thereby intends to preserve the transcendental function of messianism in its radical opposition to and critique of the...