Introduction

Summary

The contributors in this volume have set out to present the current state of affairs in an intellectual discipline, that of modern Jewish philosophy, and to offer programmatic lines for future inquiry on the part of its practitioners. Like its companion The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy, Volume 1: From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, this volume is organized thematically. The guiding thread that connects the chapters in this volume is the recognition that the field of modern Jewish philosophy is a dynamic territory built up around concepts, not around a history of “great thinkers” arranged chronologically. To navigate a philosophical territory is not to master a history, in the sense of knowing what a chain of figures have stated about these or those philosophical/theological topoi. Rather, it is about tracing, critically assessing, and justifying theoretical and practical instances of concept-use across diverse bodies of thought in the modern period and in our contemporary age. The authoritative role played by primary figures is secondary to this other kind of mastery, premised on the consciousness of the field's analytical dynamism.

It is perhaps easier to describe modern Jewish philosophy along these lines than premodern Jewish philosophy because the field, both as an active practice and as a scholarly discipline, of modern Jewish philosophy is a young and emergent one; it is also because, frankly, its nature and purpose have been unclear and contested.