Samuel Hirsch, Hegel, and the Legacy of Ethical Monotheism

Abstract

AbstractThis essay examines Samuel Hirsch’s Religious Philosophy of the Jews as a forerunner of twentieth-century works of ethical monotheism in modern Jewish thought. In particular, it explores Hirsch’s use of the dichotomy between monotheism and idolatry as a way to resist Hegel’s attempts to incorporate Judaism into his developmental history of religion. Hirsch frames his opposition to the Hegelian account of religion by means of providing a rival interpretation of Genesis 3 to that offered by Hegel in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. After juxtaposing Hegel’s and Hirsch’s respective interpretations of Genesis 3, I explore Hirsch’s account of religion, which, unlike Hegel’s, is presented in terms of the dichotomy of true and false religion. Finally, I will briefly highlight how Hirsch’s basic strategy for understanding Judaism vis-à-vis other religions—namely, casting the dichotomy between monotheism and idolatry in starkly ethical terms—is taken up and utilized by Hermann Cohen and Emmanuel Levinas in the twentieth century.