Randi Rashkover Delivers Grossman Lecture in Jewish Thought at Arizona State University

Judaism and the New Reason: Reconciling Jewish Learning and the Science of Knowing

Randi Rashkover, George Mason University

For centuries, Jewish philosophers have sought to negotiate between a science of knowing and the study of Jewish texts.  Still, it can be argued that the much 20th and 21st century Jewish thought has reveled in a rejection of the effort to reconcile Jewish and non-Jewish learning, influenced as it has been by post-war doubts about the value of human reason.  A new engagement between Judaism, Jewish text study and recent trends in philosophy is called for. Such an engagement begins where the work of Hermann Cohen left off by providing a renewed account of transcendental logic and reflection in the context however of a post-Kantian analysis of language, cognition and the negotiation between theoretical and practical knowing.

Randi Rashkover is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Judaic Studies at George Mason University. She is the author of two monographs and three edited volumes including Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian ApologeticsRevelation and Theopolitics: Rosenzweig, Barth and the Politics of Praise; and Judaism, Liberalism and Political Theology