Detailed
Description |
|
Systematic attempt to present a theoretical basis for the aims of the emancipation and Reform movements in Judaism by Solomon Formstecher(1808–1889), a German philosopher and rabbi. Formstecher was born in Offenbach. He studied philosophy, philology, and theology at the University of Giessen, and served as the rabbi of the Offenbach community from 1842 until his death. He took an active part in the Reform movement and edited the periodicals Der Freitagabend and Die Israelitische Wochenschrift. In ) Die Religion des Geistes Judaism is presented primarily as an idea whose full value is revealed through the gradual, progressive development of mankind. Formstecher used the philosophical categories of the German idealists Schelling and Hegel in developing this concept. The three central concepts of Formstecher's system are revelation, spirit, and nature. By revelation, which is the source of the ethical monotheism of Judaism, he means the divine communication concerning the true nature of good and evil. It is not the knowledge of God's existence that represents the true ideal, but the identification of God as a pure moral being. The God of Israel, unlike the God of the philosophers, is not a supreme concept reached through philosophic understanding, but a supreme being transcending both spiritual and earthly nature. Therefore, Judaism as an idea is not a philosophic religion, but the manifestation of the true absolute revelation. The classical representatives of this idea were the prophets of Israel, because they understood the truth of the original revelation through knowledge of the objective source of the absolute values, which was revealed to them by an immediate feeling. Like Hegel, Formstecher meant by “spirit” the concretization of the absolute in the historic-conscious level of mankind. If, as he believed, religion in general is man's aspiration for a universe of values, then the religion of the spirit is the aspiration for the embodiment of an absolute moral ideal, whose source is divine revelation. Judaism as a phenomenon, i.e., historical Judaism, although subject to historical circumstances, clings to the aspiration of embodying the moral ideal on earth.
This aspiration distinguished Judaism from all other religions, which are fundamentally religions of nature, or physical monotheisms. Following Schelling, Formstecher defined the religion of nature (paganism) as the aspiration for universal life, in which the spirit is manifested as the “soul of the world.” The philosophic pantheistic concepts, as well as speculative metaphysical thought, are, therefore, the refined form of the pagan view of life. In proposing his argument Formstecher foreshadowed some of the anti-metaphysical trends in modern Jewish theology, the views of Rosenzweig and Buber, for example.
Judaism and paganism are polar phenomena, which by their very nature cannot coexist. Therefore, Formstecher rejected the concept of the mission of the Jews (see Chosen People) as the fundamental and direct heritage of Judaism. Within the framework of the dominant paganism, the isolation of Judaism among the nations is a direct result of its metaphysical nature. Nevertheless, Judaism does fulfill its mission among the nations, although not directly: it fulfills its mission through Christianity and Islam. These historical religions, in which pagan and spiritual elements are mingled, fulfill the requirement that paganism be overcome by the embodiment of the absolute moral value of the divine spirit. As the growth of the spirit and culture in modern times seemed to indicate, insofar as the human consciousness is aware of the moral source of all being, the universal human spirit will develop, and it will of itself bring about the removal of the barriers between the nations. Formstecher sincerely believed that the Emancipation was the social-political manifestation of this internal, spiritual process in the history of mankind. |
