A philosopher, rabbi, religious historian, and Gnostic, Jacob Taubes was for many years a correspondent and interlocutor of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, law professor—and self-professed Nazi. Despite their unlikely association, Taubes and Schmitt shared an abiding interest in the fundamental problems of political theology, believing the great challenges of modern political theory were ancient in pedigree and, in many cases, anticipated the wor...

For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous Letters and Papers from Prison has had a tremendous impact ...

“A skilled exploration” of why 6 notable 20th-century philosophers—from Martin Heidegger to Michel Foucault—succumbed to “a narcissistic embrace of totalitarian politics” (The Washington Post).European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and scholars who supported or excused the worst tyrannies of the age. How was this possible? How could intellectuals whose work depends on freedom defend those who would deny it? Here,...

"No one looking for a well-informed introduction to . . the key views of history adopted by professional historians . . could find a better one than this." ―Richard J. Evans, author of In Defence of HistoryA broad perspective on historical thought and writing, with a new epilogue.In this book, now published in ten languages, a preeminent intellectual historian examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of history and historiography. Geor...

How do we know the stories told by historians are true? To what extent can we rely on their interpretations of the past?Histories and Fallacies is a primer on the conceptual and methodological problems in the discipline of history. Historian Carl Trueman presents a series of classic historical problems as a way to examine what history is, what it means, and how it can be told and understood. Each chapter in Histories and Fallacies gives an account of a particular ...

“The generation of 1930 in French intellectual life was unique in the gravity of the challenges they faced.” Simone Weil — the brilliant social and political theorist, activist, and spiritual writer — was one of an eminent company in the France of the 1930s who responded to these challenges. In her brief, remarkable life she wrote a host of essays and letters and filled several notebooks with reflections. Hellman’s volume sets out the single world view — with its paradoxes and its logics —...

At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as...

Romanticism is a worldview that finds expression over a whole range of cultural fields—not only in literature and art but in philosophy, theology, political theory, and social movements. In Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre formulate a theory that defines romanticism as a cultural protest against modern bourgeois industrial civilization and work to reveal the unity that underlies the extraordinary diversity of romanticism from the eighteenth t...

An insightful look at alienation in the modern world from the New York Times –bestselling author of The Art of Loving and Escape from Freedom .Social psychologist Erich Fromm observed the spread of alienation in the 1960s, arguing that humans who were once dynamic, creative beings were reduced to fixating on TV screens, emotionally pa...

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spino...

This Companion serves as a guide for readers wanting to explore the thought and legacy of the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45). The book shows why Bonhoeffer remains such an attractive figure to so many people of diverse backgrounds. Its chapters, written by authors from differing national, theological and church contexts, provide a helpful introduction to, and commentary on, Bonhoeffer's life, work and writing and so guide the reader along the complex paths of his tho...

Ernst Bloch is perhaps best known for his subtle and imaginative investigation of utopias and utopianism, but his work also provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of western culture, politics and society. Yet, because he has not been one of easiest of writers to read his full contribution has not been widely acknowledged. Block developed a complex conceptual framework, and presented this in a prose style which many have found to verge on the impenetrable. In this critical and acc...