Redemption in Early Twentieth Century Jewish Thought

Prof Michael Morgan (Indiana University)

The concept of redemption was a central feature of Jewish thinking in the early decades of the twentieth century – for figures in the German-Jewish tradition as diverse as Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, and Siegfried Kracauer.  Central themes include the relation between redemption and various other domains – history, politics, individual action, divine providence, messianism, and so forth.  In this workshop, we will discuss the role that redemption plays for Buber and Rosenzweig especially and for their intellectual development in the years just prior to and following World War I.