Fackenheim in the fifties

Abstract

Through Emil Fackenheim's teaching, he had left a mark on all of us, a mark which had endured throughout the years. What was it about this man that his presence in the classroom made such an impression on his students? We shall find clues for answering this question in his own writing - in particular the articles and books he published on philosophy during the fifties. One chapter from this work grew like Topsy to become The Religious Dimension of Hegel's Thought . Great philosophers are not intellectual children. This was a fundamental conviction of Fackenheim's exegesis. Historicism says that thought reflects the particular constraints of the times in which it is being thought. For Fackenheim, however, philosophy is concerned with sterner stuff. The second theme also determines the whole structure of Fackenheim's study of Hegel. Keywords: Emil Fackenheim; Fackenheim's exegesis; historicism; philosophers