Book contents
- The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim
- The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction The Unending Struggle with Revelation in the Thought of Emil Fackenheim
- 1 What Is Faith?
- 2 Individual versus Collective, Rational versus Mystical
- 3 Revelation as a Possibility
- 4 On Authority, Tradition, and History
- 5 Divine Power versus Human Freedom
- 6 From Presence to History
- 7 Confronting Radical Evil as Rupture
- 8 Diabolical Revelation and the Holocaust
- 9 Negative Absolute and Fragmentary Transcendence
- Conclusion Revelation of the Diabolical Truth in History
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - What Is Faith?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2020
- The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim
- The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction The Unending Struggle with Revelation in the Thought of Emil Fackenheim
- 1 What Is Faith?
- 2 Individual versus Collective, Rational versus Mystical
- 3 Revelation as a Possibility
- 4 On Authority, Tradition, and History
- 5 Divine Power versus Human Freedom
- 6 From Presence to History
- 7 Confronting Radical Evil as Rupture
- 8 Diabolical Revelation and the Holocaust
- 9 Negative Absolute and Fragmentary Transcendence
- Conclusion Revelation of the Diabolical Truth in History
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Fackenheim launched his career as a theologian by confronting the modern crisis of faith, which he regarded as the most urgent matter both for philosophy attuned to religion, and for committed religious thought. He believed that this is a crisis not only for Judaism, but for all modern religious thought, because modern philosophy has done as much as possible to make even the most basic religious faith questionable, if not untenable, to modern man, for it assaults the basic belief that God makes himself manifest through “personal” converse with human beings. For Fackenheim, this crisis of faith arises not so much over whether God exists, but over whether God can communicate with man directly. Fackenheim thinks that genuine faith in God’s existence, whether religious or secular, will endure through and beyond all critique.
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- The Philosophy of Emil FackenheimFrom Revelation to the Holocaust, pp. 13 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020