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Preface
- University of Wisconsin Press
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Preface When I first came to the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in 1986, I participated in Shalom Rosenberg’s seminar, “Aristotle’s Ethics in Medieval Jewish Thought.” When the discussion turned to Hermann Cohen’s radically Platonic reading of Maimonides, Shalom Rosenberg told us of the philosophical importance of Cohen’s essay. He emphasized that the “Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis” holds the key to a deeper understanding of the contemporary philosophical significance of Maimonides, warning us, however, that this essay is “among the most difficult texts of twentieth-century Jewish thought,” and that it remains a riddle even for the initiated, despite the existence of a Hebrew translation.1 By then I had read and studied Cohen’s essay several times. Cohen’s language, after all, seemed familiar, and I admired the courageous teaching of humanism that spoke from every page of Cohen’s work. The literary Jewish sources, however, which obviously constitute the very basis of this particular essay, were barely accessible to me at the time. Finding myself in Jerusalem for extended periods of time, I missed the scholarly presence of my teacher, Norbert Samuelson, whose competence and whose love for the critical tradition of the medieval Jewish thinkers had guided my studies of Jewish philosophy in Philadelphia. In Jerusalem I began to owe most of what I learned in reading Jewish texts to having been introduced to an eminent Jewish scholar, Zev Gotthold, whose resources in classical Greek and rabbinic literature seem inexhaustible, and whose scholarly ethos reflects the cultural Bildungsideal so typical of the European Jewish intellectual elite before the Shoah. The privilege of having been able to learn with this master of Jewish sources for over fifteen years—sometimes hours a day—is too great to be measured even in terms of gratefulness. The very format of this book, the translation and commentary of Cohen’s essay on Maimonides, tangibly reflects the Sitz im Leben of this privileged situation of learning. Often I would translate Cohen’s text face-to-face with this teacher, and if there are traces of linguistic preface xviii resourcefulness and intellectual creativity in the English translation, these are his and not mine. As we explored the very depth of the conceptual and historical issues involved, the room would pile up with volumes upon volumes of classical Jewish literature, all opened up at places where the master—from the well of his impeccable, photographic memory —would point out and teach me the living sources of Cohen’s reading . Zettelach with numerous notes started to fill first my bags, later my desk, and finally my room, notes on subtexts and more subtexts, too numerous to be all remembered, with the result that only a small part of this flood of literary references found its way into my own commentary, which surrounds the work of translation. My commentary elicits the fruits of those precious daily sessions of labor. Within that commentary I strive to situate the meaning of the classical Jewish sources within the philosophical context of a contemporary Jewish humanism that is inspired by Hermann Cohen, reaches back to Saadya Gaon, and finds forceful contemporary expression in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. A different reading of Jewish philosophy thus emerges, a reading in which the classical issues of medieval Jewish philosophy are folded into the margins of commentary, following the gravity of Cohen’s essay, which I read as a canonical text in Jewish humanism. This reading of Jewish philosophy, inasmuch as it appears in the literary form of translation and commentary, makes itself deliberately subservient to a text whose critical humanism it aspires to transmit. A project like this, which is the result of a decade of life and learning, is nourished and inspired by friends, colleagues, and teachers in ways that are difficult to retrieve. The following therefore will naturally fall short of its proper expression. I am grateful to Yechiel Greenbaum, who lent me his superb editing skills over many years, and whose patience and graciousness is beyond what can be expressed on paper. My friends, colleagues, and teachers, Dieter Adelmann, Annette Aronowicz, Hillel Fürstenberg, Robert Gibbs, Helmut Holzhey, John Reumann, Yossef Schwartz, Hartwig Wiedebach, and Michael Zank, shared their time with me during many hours of discussion, whether in Jerusalem, Zürich, or Boston. My understanding of Cohen’s texts and philosophy would be nowhere near where it is now, if it were not for those countless hours of shared learning. Moreover, they all read the manuscript, either...