Dogmatism, Criticism, Divine Ideals: Rav A. I. Kook’s Concept of God in Light of H. Cohen
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Yehuda (Yady) Oren
Abstract
This paper examines the claim that the two final articles of Rav Kook’s book Ikvei Hatzon were written as a response to a lecture given by Hermann Cohen. It first reviews Cohen’s lecture showing that, regarding the concept of God, Cohen argues for the compatibility of Judaism and Kantianism in denying the dogmatic-mythological preoccupation with the existence of God in favor of understanding God as the basis of morality. Second, it analyzes Kook’s articles, demonstrating that he accepts the compatibility of Judaism and Kantianism together with the denial of the dogmatic relation to God as a substance. Nevertheless, Kook is not satisfied with the critical view that denies the dogmatic relation to the substance altogether, since it formulates a merely negative relationship with God. Instead, he develops his concept of the Divine Ideals, which synthesizes the dogmatic preoccupation with substantiality and the critical denial of it. The Divine Ideals are the moral progression of man, through which man gradually becomes identical to God. Within the Divine Ideals, dogmatism becomes an emotional striving to be identical with God as a substance, while criticism is the intellectual negation of the possibility of such identity, which ensures that the process will continue indefinitely.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Special Section: Bildung and Therapy: German-Jewish Self-formation
- Dogmatism, Criticism, Divine Ideals: Rav A. I. Kook’s Concept of God in Light of H. Cohen
- Selbst-Bildungen. The Tradition of Comedy and the Emancipation of German Jews in Carl Sternheim’s The Snob
- “To Love the Rest of His Thoughts as Myself” – Translating Mendelssohn’s Singular Bildung
- Simon Szántó, Nineteenth Century Viennese Writer and Educator: A Study on Integration, Particularism, and the Ideal of Bildung
- „Ein modernes Verdeutschungs-Unternehmen“. Über die historische Semantik der Buber-Rosenzweig-Bibel
- Other Contributions
- Marx and Rosenzweig on Community and Redemption
- When the “Ostjuden” Returned: Linguistic Continuities in German-Language Writing about Eastern European Jews
- The Unsung Buber-Leibowitz Coda to the German Jewish Swan Song
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Special Section: Bildung and Therapy: German-Jewish Self-formation
- Dogmatism, Criticism, Divine Ideals: Rav A. I. Kook’s Concept of God in Light of H. Cohen
- Selbst-Bildungen. The Tradition of Comedy and the Emancipation of German Jews in Carl Sternheim’s The Snob
- “To Love the Rest of His Thoughts as Myself” – Translating Mendelssohn’s Singular Bildung
- Simon Szántó, Nineteenth Century Viennese Writer and Educator: A Study on Integration, Particularism, and the Ideal of Bildung
- „Ein modernes Verdeutschungs-Unternehmen“. Über die historische Semantik der Buber-Rosenzweig-Bibel
- Other Contributions
- Marx and Rosenzweig on Community and Redemption
- When the “Ostjuden” Returned: Linguistic Continuities in German-Language Writing about Eastern European Jews
- The Unsung Buber-Leibowitz Coda to the German Jewish Swan Song
