Theodicy of Culture and the Jewish Ethos: David Koigen’s Contribution to the Sociology of Religion

280 Pages·2012·0.92 MB·English

by  Martina Urban

Martina Urban
Theodicy of Culture and the Jewish Ethos
Studia Judaica
Forschungen zur Wissenschaft des Judentums
Begründet von
Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich
Herausgegeben von
Günter Stemberger
Band 63
De Gruyter
Martina Urban
Theodicy of Culture
and the Jewish Ethos
David Koigen’s Contribution
to the Sociology of Religion
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-024772-5
e-ISBN 978-3-11-024773-2
ISSN 0585-5306
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the following foundations for their generous support of this
project:
The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York, and the Leo
Baeck Institute New York for the Career Development Grant which pro-
vided me with the means to pursue the research on Koigen in Germany and
Israel. At an early stage of this project, Vanderbilt University awarded me
with the University Research Grant which allowed me to take a full sab-
batical and to sift through archival material in Jerusalem.
Among the individuals who were supportive of this project and helpful in
many ways are Mira Zakai, the granddaughter of David Koigen, and her
husband, Jacob. The wonderful personal contact that emerged over the
years and led to several meetings in Berlin and Givatayim, Israel, provided
me with a living and warm context that compensated for the effort of ren-
dering Koigen’s thought into a contemporary idiom. I wish to thank the
staff of the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP)
in Jerusalem, the Martin Buber Archive at the National and University
Library Jerusalem, and the Albert Einstein Archive for their patience and
assistance. I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Albrecht
Döhnert of the Walter de Gruyter Verlag in Berlin and Professor Günter
Stemberger for their endorsement of this project. An important intellectual
interlocutor was Verena Dohrn who shares my interest in David Koigen.
Conventional forms of expressing gratitude do not suffice when it comes to
the guidance from Paul Mendes-Flohr. In the last years I benefited immensely
from many stimulating conversations, and his willingness to review drafts of
single chapters. Throughout the last years, colleagues and friends com-
mented on the work in progress, on chapters or conference presentations
that touched upon aspects of Koigen’s thought and helped me to reorganize
the material and to sharpen the focus. I gained inspiration on the meaning
of religion in a variety of modern contexts from students and discussions in
my Jewish Theories of Religion class at Vanderbilt.
The book could not have been completed without the support of some
of my colleagues at Vanderbilt, who, unknowingly, gave my work on this
topic an uncanny existential relevance. I wish to extend my sincere and
deepest gratitude to Lenn E. Goodman, David Wasserstein, Idit Dobbs-
Weinstein, and Lewis Baldwin. I would like to take this opportunity to
thank the administration of Vanderbilt University for its trust. I thank Rich-
VI Acknowledgments
ard B. for helping me out along the way. For their friendship and many
moments of happiness I wish to thank my dear and unforgotten friend
Angela Lin and my friend and colleague Annalisa Azzoni. In Berlin, I wish
to thank my friends Monti and Dietrich for their support, many good con-
versations, and above all their amazing commitment to creating a neigh-
borly community. I wish to thank Klaus for his scientific optimism. I owe
an immeasurable amount of gratitude to my parents and thank them for
their patience, support, and resourcefulness. And then there is love for the
one who proved conventional storytelling wrong: Steve.
Berlin, January 2012
Contents
Acknowledgments IX
Abbreviations XI
Introduction 1
Chapter One
Theodicy of Culture and the Theory of the Cultural Act 33
Chapter Two
Beyond the a priori: Toward a Religion of Intimacy 68
Chapter Three
Resituating Judaism: On Pragmatism and Phenomenology 94
Chapter Four
Ethos: A non-Essentialist Perspective on Religion and Ethnicity 126
Epilogue: Towards a Sociology of Jewish Religious Knowledge 175
Bibliography of Koigen’s Works 182
Appendix 185
Das Ethos im Judentum 187
Index 261

Abbreviations
Abbreviation key to works by Koigen1
AR – Apokalyptische Reiter/Apocalyptic Horsemen (1925)
ASW – Der Aufbau der sozialen Welt im Zeitalter der Wissenschaft/The
Construction of the Social World in the Age of Science (1929)
EJ – Das Ethos im Judentum/The Ethos in Judaism (1923)
HI – Das Haus Israel/The House of Israel (1934)
IPK – Ideen zur Philosophie der Kultur/Ideas on a Philosophy of Culture
(1910)
KD – Die Kultur der Demokratie/The Culture of Democracy (1912)
KS – Die Kulturanschauung des Sozialismus/The Cultural Conception
of Socialism (1903)
MG – Der moralische Gott/The Moral God (1922)
Prot. – Protocols of the Philosophische Arbeitsgemeinschaft, 1930 – 1932
(unpublished)
ZVS – Zur Vorgeschichte des modernen philosophischen Socialismus in
Deutschland/On the Prehistory of Modern Philosophical Social-
ism in Germany (1900)
1 For abbreviations of article titles see the bibliography of Koigen’s writings in this book