INTRODUCTION

This chapter is a constructive study of the term “redemption” as a Jewish conception in modern Jewish philosophy. The modifier “Jewish” refers both to the Jewish people and to Judaism. The two are closely related but not identical. With respect to premodern Judaism, the difference is not important, but in terms of modernity, the difference is significant as the term “redemption” is used by both religious and secular Jews. The difference is most apparent in how the term functions for both secular Zionists and social utopians, on the one hand, and liberal and traditional neo-rabbinic Jews, on the other hand.

The term “modern” is used in two related but significantly different senses. From the perspective of political history, “modern” refers to the life and thought of the Jewish people once it becomes possible for Jews to become citizens of European national states. From this historical perspective, nothing can be called “modern” until the period between the French Revolution (1789) and the first so-called emancipation of the Jews in a western European state (in France in 1791). However, from the perspective of intellectual history, “modern” has a different meaning and date line. In this sense it refers to the thought of Jews who freed themselves (for good or for evil) from the conceptual synthesis of so-called Aristotelian orientation toward all intellectual subjects (astronomy, physics, biology, bedicine, psychology, etc.) and adopted the so-called new philosophy. This modern science was accused of being “mechanist” and “atomist.”