Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem are regarded as two of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Together they produced a dynamic body of ideas that has had a lasting impact on the study of religion, philosophy, and literary criticism.
Drawing from Benjamin's and Scholem's ideas on messianism, language, and divine justice, this book traces the intellectual exchange through the early decades of the twentieth century—from Berlin, Bern, and Munich in the throws of war and revolution to Scholem's departure for Palestine in 1923. It begins with a close reading of Benjamin's early writings and a study of Scholem's theological politics, followed by an examination of Benjamin's proposals on language and the influence these ideas had on Scholem's scholarship on Jewish mysticism. From there the book turns to their ideas on divine justice—from Benjamin's critique of original sin and violence to Scholem's application of the categories to the prophets and Bolshevism. Metaphysics of the Profane is the first book to make this early period available to a wider audience, revealing the intricate structure of this early intellectual partnership on politics and theology.
Eric Jacobson is Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies and chair of Theology and Religious Studies at Roehampton University London.
Table of Contents
I. Messianism 1. The Messianic Idea in Walter Benjamin's Early Writings 2. Gershom Scholem's Theological Politics II. On the Origins of Language and the True Names of Things 3. On the Origins of Language 4. Gershom Scholem and the Name of God III. Justice and Redemption 5. Prophetic Justice 6. Judgment, Violence, and Redemption
What People are Saying About This
Joseph Dan Gershom Scholem
The textual basis of this work is comprehensive, including several important texts that are discussed in this study for the first time. Jacobson´s carefully selected examples and thorough analysis provide us from now on with a firm basis of discussion for this fundamental aspect of Scholem´s and Benjamin´s contributions to twentieth-century thought. This work has to be seen as a major achievement in the understanding of the early writings of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, demonstrating the complex interrelationship between their ideas, reliance on one another, and their conflicts. Jacobson introduces several new subjects and problems, in addition to hitherto neglected texts, into the academic discourse. His erudition and exhaustive analysis, as well as his profound insights, are remarkable. —Professor of Kabbalah The, Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Joseph Dan
The textual basis of this work is comprehensive, including several important texts that are discussed in this study for the first time. Jacobson's carefully selected examples and thorough analysis provide us from now on with a firm basis of discussion for this fundamental aspect of Scholem's and Benjamin's contributions to twentieth-century thought. This work has to be seen as a major achievement in the understanding of the early writings of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, demonstrating the complex interrelationship between their ideas, reliance on one another, and their conflicts. Jacobson introduces several new subjects and problems, in addition to hitherto neglected texts, into the academic discourse. His erudition and exhaustive analysis, as well as his profound insights, are remarkable.
— Joseph Dan, Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Giulio Busi
Eric Jacobson's work, Metaphysics of the Profane, offers a new analysis of one of the central problems in the work of Benjamin and Scholem. The concept of political theology represents neither an oxymoron for the utopian Benjamin nor the philologist Scholem but rather the only possibility to confront the crisis of political theory in the 20th century.... Due to the careful use of the sources and the ability to render Benjamin's and Scholem's thinking in the context of German culture, Jacobson's [study] gives a detailed portrayal of philosophical hope and rapid disappointment of these two Jewish thinkers who were to embody a radical moment of political utopia in our time. —Department of Jewish Studies, Free University of Berlin
