Wednesday, October 30th: Lecture by Leora Batnizky of Princeton University: "Perplexed by What? Guides to Modern Jewish Life from Krochmal to Leibowitz"

Wednesday, October 30 | 4:30 pm | Swift Common Room (1st floor)

Abstract: Scholars continue to debate the meaning of perplexity in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, but what cannot be doubted is that the Guide assumes perplexity, however simple or complex this perplexity may be. In contrast, the modern Jewish thinkers considered in this talk—Nachman Krochmal, Hermann Cohen, Emmanuel Levinas, Leo Strauss, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz—turn to Maimonides not to respond to or to meditate upon the nature of perplexity but rather to stimulate perplexity in the first place. More specifically, and despite their significant differences, Krochmal, Cohen, Levinas, Strauss and Leibowitz all use Maimonides in contending that the primary problem for modern Jews, and indeed for modern people, is not the need to resolve metaphysical perplexity but instead the need to awaken political perplexity. The conclusion of the talk considers the implications of the uses of Maimonides by these 19th and 20th century Jewish thinkers for thinking about both the modern Jewish condition and the condition of modern philosophy in the 21st century.

Bio: Leora Batnitzky is Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University, where she has been on the faculty since 1997. Her teaching and research interests include modern Jewish thought and intellectual history, philosophy of religion, hermeneutics, and contemporary legal and political theory. She is the author of Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered; Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation; and How Judaism Became a Religion. She is also co-editor of The Book of Job: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Hermeneutics; Instituting Rights and Religion; and Jewish Legal Theories, as well as of the journal Jewish Studies Quarterly. She is currently working on two book projects—the first on conversion controversies in Israel and India as they relate to global debates about religious freedom and the second on the Jewish apostate and Catholic saint Edith Stein.