Is Jewish Philosophy Redundant?
Levinas and Strauss on Religious Thought
Last week I asked if “the intellectual project is spiritual.” Another, adjacent question is whether Jewish philosophy or religious philosophy is redundant? Why not just Judaism? Or just philosophy? What is gained by yoking the two terms together? (And is this a different sort of question than whether it is meaningful to speak of “Jewish art” vs. simply “art”?)
This is the line of questioning raised by Emmanuel Levinas. Since both philosophy and religion are fundamentally about discovering the Other, one path suffices just fine. Judaism is already a kind of philosophy, philosophy already a kind of Judaism. If you aren’t Jewish, you might swap in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism (provided you read these traditions in a Levinasian way). [On the doctrine of Jewish chosenness, Levinas writes that the Jews are chosen, but not in a way that excludes the possibility of others being chosen. Rather, the existential point of saying “I am chosen,” is that nobody can substitute for me and my responsibility.]
Levinas’s conclusion seems odd, given the difference in feeling and expression between religious life and philosophical life. Yet, as Leora Batnitzky argues in her study comparing Levinas and Strauss, both thinkers argue that Jewish (and religious) philosophy is impossible. For Strauss, the reason is that Athens and Jerusalem are fundamentally incompatible; for Levinas, the reason is that they are fundamentally the same. Both argue, therefore, against the possibility of synthesis. For Levinas, the religious thinker and the secular thinker may arrive at the same place; which is to say, the great secular thinkers remain fundamentally religious in their respect for transcendence. And the great religious thinkers remain fundamentally secular in their realization that transcendence is given through an ethical encounter.
Even if you disagree with Levinas, it’s worth considering whether theology and philosophy are two divergent roads, or pieces of a roundabout that lead to one another.
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