The Political Perfection of Original Judaism: Pedagogical Governance and Ecclesiastical Power in Mendelssohn's Jerusalem
Moses Mendelssohn famously penned his Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism in response to a public challenge. Mendelssohn had declared “ecclesiastical power” to be a contradiction in terms, and had thus come out strongly against the use of coercion in religious life, and against the ban of excommunication by rabbinic authorities, in particular. In the anonymously published The Search for Light and Right, August Cranz defies Mendelssohn to explain how he could reconcile this liberal view of religion with his continued commitment to—and his insistence that Jews were still obligated to observe—Jewish law. “As reasonable as all you say [about religious power] may be, to just that degree it contradicts the faith of your fathers . . . and the principles of its church . . . expressly set down in the books of Moses,” Cranz argues. “The theocratic ruling staff drove the whole people . . . with force and punishment.” True, Cranz concedes, exile reduced the capacity of Jewish authorities to enforce Jewish law, “but these ecclesiastical laws are there even if their exercise is no longer a must.” Cranz challenges Mendelssohn to explain his apparently irreconcilable commitments: “How can you persist in the faith of your fathers and shake the whole structure by clearing away its cornerstones, dear Mr. Mendelssohn, when you contest the ecclesiastical law given as divine revelation through Moses?”
Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine
"Spinoza's Modernity" is a major, original work of intellectual history that reassesses the philosophical project of Baruch Spinoza, uncovers his influence on later thinkers, and demonstrates how that crucial influence on Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, and Heinrich Heine shaped the development of modern critical thought. Excommunicated by his Jewish community, Spinoza was a controversial figure in his lifetime and for centuries afterward. Willi Goetschel shows how Spinoza's philosophy was a direct challenge to the theological and metaphysical assumptions of modern European thought. He locates the driving force of this challenge in Spinoza's Jewishness, which is deeply inscribed in his philosophy and defines the radical nature of his modernity.
The Colours and Dresses of Racism in America
The monograph argues that American racism has two colours (white and black), not one; and that each racism dresses itself not in one clothing, but in four: (1) “Minimal” negative, when one race considers another race inferior to itself in degree, but not in nature; (2) “Maximal” negative, when one race regards another as inherently inferior; (3) “Minimal” positive, when one race elevates another race to a superior status in degree, but not in nature; and (4) “Maximal” positive, when one race believes that the other race is genetically superior. The monograph maintains that the needs of capitalism created black slavery; that black slavery produced white racism as a justification for black slavery; and that black racism is a backlash of white racism. The monograph concludes that the abolition of black slavery and the civil rights movement destroyed the social and political ground for white and black racism, while the modern development of capitalism is demolishing their economic and intellectual ground.