The Discipline of Philosophy and the Invention of Modern Jewish Thought

4. Inside/Outside the University: Philosophy as Way and Problem in Cohen, Buber, and Rosenzweig

This chapter examines the role of Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig as exponents of the development of Jewish philosophers from the period of the Wilhelminian Empire to the end of Weimar Germany. It suggests that these three philosophers represent the changing opportunities and prospects of three generations of German Jewish thinkers. This chapter also argues that their works articulated a philosophic critique of the hegemonic discourse of philosophy and the conflicted way in which Jewish tradition has been (dis)figured by a cultural politics of assimilation.