Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity

by Michael Löwy, Hope Heaney (Translator)

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to mark modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish Messianism, their thought was organized around the kabbalistic idea of redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of "elective affinity" to explain the surprising community of spirit that existed between redemptive messianic religious thought and the wide variety of radical secular utopian beliefs held by this important group of intellectuals. The author outlines the circumstances that produced this unusual combination of religious and non-religious thought and illuminates the common assumptions that united such seemingly disparate figures as Martin Buber, Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukacs.

Genres: History, Judaism, Politics, Religion, Philosophy, Theology, Jewish

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emerited research director in social sciences at the CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research) and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS; Paris, France). Author of books on Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Liberation Theology, György Lukács, Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, he received the Silver Medal of the CNRS in 1994.

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful, but not very deep, exploration of the confluence of libertarian socialism, messianic Judaism, and German Romanticism.

[Elías Casella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante libro para ver algo que suele pasarse por alto: las concepciones religiosas de un mundo mejor tienen potencial revolucionario, sobre todo si se las despoja de la falopa mágica y segregacionista.