“The Utopian Hope for the Affirmative” (trans. P. Mikulska)

Ronny MIRON

The Program for Hermeneutics and Culture Studies, Bar-Ilan University, P.O.B. 52900 Ramat Gan, Izrael , Israel

Patrycja MIKULSKA

John Paul II Institute, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

The author discusses Gershom Scholem’s specific understanding of religious anarchy (the concept inspired by Martin Buber’s thought), and the role the anarchic position plays in the history of the Jewish nation and in its interpretation. She shows Scholem’s religious anarchism as dialectically uniting two contrasting yet complementary contexts: the context of historical observation that views the overt reality without bias, and that of metaphysical observation that reveals the signals of transcendence present in reality. This allows Scholem, in the author’s view, to understand the past as an arena in which transcendent forces are active, and simultaneously to perceive the Jewish tradition as a reservoir of ‘materials’ from which the ‘affirmative’, i.e., the new utopian order, will be constructed.

Summarized by Patrycja Mikulska

The present article is a Polish translation of an excerpt from Ronny Miron’s book The Angel of Jewish History. The Image of the Jewish Past in the Twentieth Century, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014, pp. 172-180. By permission of Academic Studies Press.

Keywords:

Gershom Scholem, religious anarchism, utopia, historical observation, metaphysical observation