Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe

Classic study of Jewish libertarian thought, from Walter Benjamin to Franz Kafka

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to transform modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish messianism, their thought was organized around the cabalistic idea of the “tikkoun”: redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of “elective affinity” to explain the surprising commun...