Rediscovering Heschel: Theocentrism, Secularism, and Porous Thinking

"[F]ailure to sense the profound tension of philosophical and religious categories has been the cause of much confusion." Abraham Joshua Heschel¹

While Abraham Joshua Heschel remains a celebrated figure in modern Judaism, one cannot help but notice beneath the veneer of approbation is a consistent lack of appreciation for his thought. In this essay, I argue that Heschel's rigor and ingenuity has been largely overlooked because interpreters apply categories to his thought which are not only heterogeneous to it, but also whose foundation Heschel's thought actively tries to subvert. Rather than elucidating a particular dimension of Heschel's thought which I then critique—an endeavor I believe that scholars have been too eager to undertake—I attempt to clear away some of the ground of past Heschel scholarship which I believe has obscured his work more than elucidated it. In short, this piece is more exegetical than critical. Of course critical assessment is important, but before we can critique it is essential that we properly grasp our subject matter.

I argue that certain basic assumptions about the nature of what it means to philosophize about religion have obscured or obstructed access to Heschel's work. Heschel's thought proceeds from a standpoint which is not only foreign to the sensibilities of modernity, namely skepticism and detachment, but he also actively seeks to convert them into awe and wonder. However, Heschel's critics, as I will show, are unwilling or unable to accept the terms in which Heschel presents his thought, and instead apply categories that are not only heterogeneous to his thought but also and more pointedly, antithetical to it. To begin to correct this situation, I will offer an account of Heschel's theocentric philososphical theology in order to demonstrate a prominent strategy in Heschel interpretation, namely, viewing his thought as evidence of religiously committed thinking as opposed to disinterested philosophical thought. Next, drawing upon Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, I uncover the assumptions underlying this traditional reading of Heschel as well as offer a new lens for viewing the philosophical and theological task that Heschel sets for himself. Finally, I will conclude by considering a few related objections which I believe are instructive and illustrative of the disconnect between Heschel's endeavor and the criticisms of it. This essay is not an attempt to assess the accuracy or validity of Heschel's position or to diagnose potential problems that may face it. Rather, it is an attempt to find the coherence of the work itself, which I argue, scholarship on Heschel has distorted but that contemporary scholarship regarding secularism helps clarify. Indeed, Taylor's work helps illuminate the problematic nature of much of the criticism leveled at Heschel's work over the years, offering us a chance to view his work in a fresh and less distorted manner.

Part I: Heschel and His Critics

While Heschel's most important and influential books were written for popular audiences rather than academics, it would be a mistake to overlook their methodological sophistication. Heschel begins God in Search of Man by blaming religion for its own "eclipse" in modernity rather than blaming "science [or] . . . anti-religious philosophy." He writes, "[r]eligion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid." It has become more of an "heirloom . . . than a living fountain."² While Heschel is an incisive critic of the state of religion—particularly Judaism—in the US, this statement should not be read as a critique but rather viewed in terms of its methodological significance.³ Heschel is establishing the autonomy of 'religion,' such that it cannot be subject to foreign categories which might refute or invalidate it; if it is floundering, it must be the source of its own undoing.⁴ As autonomous, the category of religion is by no means straightforwardly and easily accessed. For example, Heschel makes it clear that both fundamentalism, which claims to have all the answers, and logical positivism, which evades or dissolves all of the questions, are inadequate frameworks for understanding the complexity of religion. Both stances avoid lived...