REL 204 Judaism and the Political (Not offered 1999-2000)*
What is the relation between Judaism and politics? Is there a Jewish political theory, a body of such theories? Answering this question historically and/or responsibly requires a definition of the terms involved, the usefulness of which may well elude us precisely because such definition would have to be historically specific. Yet the question itself is a modern one. Indeed, if, as some have argued, modernity "returned" Judaism to history-understood as political history-how and where do the reflections on this return take place? How did they change previous conceptions of Judaism? And what is the role, place, or function allocated to literature in these reflections? We will read Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Gershom Scholem while asking about the significance of their works' relation to that of the German political theorist Carl Schmitt. Does a reading of Schmitt affect-and how-our posing the following questions: How and where do these thinkers, who have questioned the modern understanding of politics, theorize what qualifies as political, and how does this theorization relate-if it relates-to their views on Judaism, Zionism, and literature? Issues that will engage us: the rethinking of the state and of sovereignty, the critique of violence, and of totalitarianism, and the place of history, theology, and religion. Toward the end of the class, we will attend to the current, and related, discussion of "the political" (and the figures of "Judaism") in the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy. The first and main goal of the class will be to read-to familiarize ourselves with the early and important body of texts that emerged in or from Germany; and, second, to consider how central their reflections have been for a specific, and perhaps marginal, moment in modern political theory. As the focus of our discussion, we will ask the following questions: How is the space of the political constituted? How does it differ from ethics and how does it relate to art ("The political renders the ethical invisible" writes John Llewelyn)? How does each of these thinkers' "path" to Judaism lengthen or shorten the distance to politics and to political actions? What are the figures of Judaism that emerge from their reflections? Class format: lecture and discussion. Requirements: full attendance and participation, written comments on weekly readings, leading of class discussion (twice over the course of the semester), final paper. Open to all classes without prerequisite. (This course is part of the Jewish Studies cluster.)