Emil Fackenheim

Emil Ludwig Fackenheim ( born June 22, 1916 in Halle, † 18 September 2003 in Jerusalem ) was a German philosopher and rabbi. He wrote widely-regarded studies Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling.

Fackenheim had studied in Halle and at the Berlin Academy for Jewish Studies at Leo Baeck and in 1938 was ordained as a rabbi. During the pogroms of November 1938 he was arrested and imprisoned until the beginning of 1939 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Then he fled to England, where he was arrested as a German spy shortly after the beginning of World War II and placed in an internment camp to Canada, where he among other things, met the two later classicists Thomas G. Rose Meyer and Martin Ostwald.

After his release from prison in 1943 Fackenheim began his doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Toronto. At the same time, he served as rabbi of Anshei Shalom Temple in Hamilton, Ontario. From 1948 he taught at the University of Toronto philosophy, from 1960 as a full professor. In 1984 he was appointed professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1997 he took the Franz Rosenzweig visiting professor at the University of Kassel true. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Duisburg and Hall.

Works (selection)

  • Paths To Jewish Belief: A Systematic Introduction ( 1960)
  • Metaphysics and Historicity (1961 )
  • The Religious Dimension in Hegel 's Thought ( 1967)
  • Quest for Past and Future; Essays in Jewish Theology (1968 )
  • God's Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections ( 1970)
  • The Human Condition After Auschwitz: a Jewish Testimony a Generation After ( 1971)
  • Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought ( 1973)
  • From Bergen- Belsen to Jerusalem: contemporary implications of the Holocaust (1975 )
  • The Jewish return into history: reflections in the age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem ( 1978)
  • To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought ( 1982)
  • The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A Reader ( 1987)
  • What is Judaism? An Interpretation for the Present Age (1988 )
  • What is Judaism? An interpretation for the present, Berlin 1999
  • The Jewish Bible After the Holocaust (1991 )
  • Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy (1996 )
  • The God Within: Kant, Schelling, and Historicity (1996 )
  • " Inaugural lecture of 24 April 1997 ", in: Wolf Dietrich - Smith Kowarzik (ed.): re-presentations of the destroyed Jewish heritage. Franz Rosenzweig guest lectures 1987-1998 Kassel, Kassel 1997, pp. 289-297
  • An Epitaph for German Judaism: From Halle to Jerusalem ( Fackenheim 's Autobiography ) (2007 )
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