Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher's Response to the Holocaust (review)

In this book David Patterson offers a critical presentation of the post-Holocaust thought of Emil Fackenheim. Patterson met Fackenheim in the final decade of Fackenheim's life and developed a relationship with him as a student and a friend. Given the title of the work and the lack of footnotes, it would appear that Patterson intended the volume as an introduction to Fackenheim's work suitable for undergraduate courses. Closer scrutiny of the book reveals a more complex project. Patterson states that in addition to presenting Fackenheim's thought, he also seeks to extend it. He is specifically concerned with returning to the question of the Holocaust as a philosophical problem and thinking about how Fackenheim's and his responses to this issue can set an agenda for future Jewish thought. Assessing the contribution of the book requires that I address it as both an introduction to Fackenheim's work and as a constructive contribution to contemporary Jewish thought.

Patterson's project of presenting Fackenheim's thought is an important one. Expanding the canon of modern and contemporary Jewish thought is crucial if these fields are to find their way from underneath the towering figures of Mendelssohn, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. Patterson organizes the chapters of the book around themes in Fackenheim's work such as philosophy and the Holocaust, the uniqueness or singularity of the Holocaust, and tikkun 'olam—the mending of the world. Fackenheim's thought provides more than just the structure of the work, his words are on nearly every page. The persistent quoting of Fackenheim makes the book a more challenging read than it needs to be and somewhat diminishes its value as an introduction to Fackenheim's work. Particularly for readers unfamiliar with Fackenheim's writings, the series of decontextualized quotes will make it difficult to understand the original argument and the point which Patterson seeks to make about it. The excessive quotations are likely expressions of Patterson's profound respect for and intellectual debt to Fackenheim. While Patterson's admiration for his former teacher and friend is well deserved, it frequently produces sentences like "No one was more aware of or had a better understanding of the Kantian imperative than Emil Fackenheim" (p. 3) or "[J]ust as the Nazi assault on the Holy One belongs to the singularity of the Shoah, so Fackenheim's response is a singularity amidst the failed attempts at a 'philosophical' response to the Shoah" (p. 111). This effusive and at times nonsensical praise of Fackenheim is unnecessary given Fackenheim's contribution to post-Holocaust thought and is more of an impediment to the reader than an aid in understanding Fackenheim's thought.

As for Patterson's constructive project, the core of his argument is a screed against philosophy that surfaces throughout the work. For Patterson, Western philosophy up to and including Heidegger was engaged in the production of ontological theories that fueled the Holocaust. Patterson's assessment of postmodern philosophy is equally grim. In one instance he says, "[A]nti-intellectualism and arrogance are characteristic of the postmodernist philosophy that is currently all the rage. Judging from their fixed phrases, worn clichés, and ready answers, its representatives are often no more than sycophantic grandchildren of Nietzsche and Heidegger" (p. 83). This is a case where footnotes would be useful. Given the force of his criticism, the reader is eager to know at whom Patterson is directing his accusations and why. Patterson's rejection of philosophy is important because even Fackenheim does not escape criticism. Indeed, Patterson's fundamental critique of Fackenheim is that he failed to acknowledge the degree to which philosophy was implicated in the Holocaust (see pp. 45 and 60 for examples). Much of this discussion, of course, revolves around Heidegger. As an introduction to Fackenheim's thought, it is a shame that Patterson's critique of philosophy overshadows the compelling questions of what contribution Fackenheim believed Heidegger's...