Michael Wyschogrod and Jewish Existentialism

This dissertation analyzes the theological writings of Michael Wyschogrod through the lens of existentialism. While acknowledging the importance of Wyschogrod as a disciple of Karl Barth and an exponent of Jewish-Christian dialogue, the dissertation largely brackets these aspects of Wyschogrod’s intellectual background in order to focus on the ways in which his thought deploys themes and tropes drawn especially from the work of Søren Kierkegaard, but also from that of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. The study examines four major topics in Wyschogrod’s philosophy of Judaism: his indictment of the inauthenticity Modern Orthodox community in the United States; his critique of halakhah (Jewish law) as a spiritual deadening agent which tends to rob the individual of her responsibility before God; his attempt to make Judaism harder by emphasizing the extreme challenges which Jewish revelation poses not only to theoretical reason, but also in light of the historical suffering of the Jewish people, to the sense of decency; and his attack on the role of universalizing ethics in modern Jewish thought. While the dominant source for Wyschogrod’s existentialist philosophy of Judaism is the work of Kierkegaard, the dissertation also makes continual reference to Wyschogrod’s most important influences in the world of modern Jewish thought itself — namely Joseph Soloveitchik and Martin Buber. Wyschogrod can be understood as torn between the conflicting influences of his former teacher Soloveitchik, whose thinking on halakhah Wyschogrod took to be a particularly baleful influence on American Orthodoxy, and the Biblicist, antinomian tendencies of Buber which were deeply attractive to him despite his unwillingness to abandon traditional Jewish practice or the Orthodox community.

Department dc:contributor.department

Religion, Study of

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Calabrese, Vincent Paul

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Novak, David

• Buber
• Existentialism
• Kierkegaard
• Modern Jewish Thought
• Soloveitchik
• Wyschogrod

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/126888

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/126888