The many shades of light: Isaiah Berlin, the Counter-Enlightenment, and the Haskalah

Lenhard, Philipp (2022): The many shades of light: Isaiah Berlin, the Counter-Enlightenment, and the Haskalah. In: Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Bd. 21, Nr. 4: S. 406-424

Abstract

Intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin saw a totalitarian and dogmatic tendency within the Enlightenment tradition which he called optimistic monism, that is, the idea that personal freedom and cultural differences have to be sacrificed for universal goals and the progress of human perfection. Thus, he turned to the proponents of the Counter-Enlightenment in order to render the negative traits of enlightened universalism visible. Although the Haskalah would have served well as an example of a pluralistic critique of enlightened monism, it is quite surprising that Berlin hardly wrote anything about the Jewish Enlightenment or its contemporary critics. This paper argues that this is due to a misinterpretation of Moses Mendelssohn as well as to a specific Jewish version of Berlin's own Counter-Enlightenment, which connects to his Zionism as an answer to the failure of assimilation.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Geschichts- und Kunstwissenschaften > Historisches Seminar
• Themengebiete: 900 Geschichte und Geografie > 900 Geschichte
• ISSN: 1472-5886
• Sprache: Englisch