Jacob Golomb

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Philosophy, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Public Views

Prof. emeritus of philosophy the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.His multifarious researches Focuses on Nietsche and Existentialism. Is also interested in study ofJewish and Israeli identity. His recent book appears in The Hebrew Magnes Press under the title: 'Identity and its discontents' . Author of hundreds of research articles and editor of many scientific volumes. Writer of various articles in the literary supplements of the many Israel newspapers.

less

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Jacob Golomb

The Inscrutable Riddle of Schopenhauer’s Relations to Jews and to Judaism

The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer, 2020

This chapter considers Schopenhauer’s relationship to Jews and Judaism through the concept of “me... more This chapter considers Schopenhauer’s relationship to Jews and Judaism through the concept of “metaphysical anti-Judaism”—a concept that distinguishes Schopenhauer’s more abstract and theoretical attitude about Jewish religion in his references to “Judaism” and “theism” from his more personal sentiments that he might have had for or against Jewish people as living individuals. Through a survey of his remarks on Jews and Judaism across his writings, the essay shows that Judaism—a religion that Schopenhauer conceives of as the monotheistic “father” religion from which Christianity and Islam were derived—has no proper place in his world-outlook, not necessarily because of any personal anti-Semitic under- or overtones but because it negates his most fundamental and metaphysical dogmas that had been developed by him virtually from the time that he had begun writing. In his later writings, however, Schopenhauer expresses negative sentiments against Jewish people in a number of passages. H...

In Search of Authenticity

Beauvoir and Sartre: the riddle of influence

Choice Reviews Online, 2009

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47... more

Nietzsche’s Phenomenology of Power

Nietzsche-Studien, 1986

Nietzsche and Zion

Choice Reviews Online, 2004

"Nietzsche's ideas were widely disseminated among and appropriated by the first Hebrew Z... more "Nietzsche's ideas were widely disseminated among and appropriated by the first Hebrew Zionist writers and leaders. It seems quite appropriate, then, that the first Zionist Congress was held in Basle, where Nietzsche spent several years as a professor of classical philology. This coincidence gains profound significance when we see Nietzsche's impact on the first Zionist leaders and writers in Europe as well as his presence in Palestine and, later, in the State of Israel."-from the IntroductionThe early Zionists were deeply concerned with the authenticity of the modern Jew qua person and with the content and direction of the reawakening Hebrew culture. Nietzsche too was propagating his highest ideal of a personal authenticity. Yet the affinities in their thought, and the formative impact of Nietzsche on the first leaders and writers of the Zionist movement, have attracted very little attention from intellectual historians. Indeed, the antisemitic uses to which Nietzsche's thought was turned after his death have led most commentators to assume the philosopher's antipathy to Jewish aspirations. Jacob Golomb proposes a Nietzsche whose sympathies overturn such preconceptions and details for the first time how Nietzsche's philosophy inspired Zionist leaders, ideologues, and writers to create a modern Hebrew culture. Golomb cites Ahad Ha'am, Micha Josef Berdichevski, Martin Buber, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Hillel Zeitlin as examples of Zionists who "dared to look into Nietzsche's abyss." This book tells us what they found.

‘And What Was Kierkegaard's Weapon? But a Pen!’

The European Legacy, 2008

So much has been written about the life of Søren Kierkegaard and how it is reflected in his writi... more So much has been written about the life of Søren Kierkegaard and how it is reflected in his writings that one wonders what yet another extensive biography can contribute to our understanding of this enigmatic figure. Yet this refreshing, sensitive and thoughtful account of Kierkegaard’s life sheds a focused, unexpected, and sometimes even entertaining light (if this is the right word given his gloomy life) on this exciting thinker. A poet-philosopher who revolutionized Western thought and theology by fostering the existentialist turn, Kierkegaard is frequently described as the religious father of Existentialism, the one who started the torturous yet stimulating search for personal authenticity. The present volume is an intellectual biography at its best, or rather, a vivid, sympathetic biography of the eccentric intellect who was Søren Kierkegaard. Professor Joakim Garff is well aware that if one restricts oneself to external events of Kierkegaard’s life, very little can be said about it. He was born on 1813, became a student at the university in 1830; he took his degree in theology in 1840 and submitted his doctoral thesis in 1841; he was engaged for around one year to a Danish girl, Regine Olsen, and broke his engagement with her in a much publicized (by him in his writing) manner. He became the object of satirical articles in The Corsair. And, yes, he was also engaged in a fierce ideological-theological battle with the Danish religious establishment in Copenhagen and with its chief representative, the Bishop Martensen. He died in 1855. That is all. So why such a bulky biography? Is it because Kierkegaard ‘‘thought—and wrote—himself into his [voluminous] work’’ (xx), namely, that, as was to be expected of the first modern existentialist, he lived his thought and thought his life? The reasons for such a lengthy biography of such a short life are rooted in the fact that Garff actually presents here not merely a biography of an isolated thinker but rather a monumental bio-bibliography that offers the reader a social and cultural history of Copenhagen of Kierkegaard’s times; the history of ideas and genealogy of Kierkegaard’s thought and detailed analyses of the major events of his life and their intimate relations to his philosophy. Garff delineates in detail the intensity of Kierkegaard’s life and is less concerned with its sheer extent. In other words, he focuses superbly on what Kierkegaard used to call one’s ‘‘inwardness’’:

Psychology from the Phenomenological Standpoint of Husserl

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1976

Nietzsche and Jewish Culture

The Modern Language Review, 1999

... inheritance and its humanist offshoots had slowly percolated through and successfully gripped... more

Nietzsche's dance Georg Stauth and Bryan S. Turner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 254 pp., £25.00

History of European Ideas, 1990

Download

Kierkegaard in Zion

Kierkegaardiana, 1998

Download

Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche's Psychology

The Review of Metaphysics, 1996

Life would then be a matter of creatively ordering the multiple &quot;image,persons&quot;... more Life would then be a matter of creatively ordering the multiple &quot;image,persons&quot; with-in the individual,composing the soul, Featuring all new translations of quota, dons from Nietzsche&#x27;s writings, Composing the Soul reveals the profundity of Nietzsche&#x27;s lifelong personal and ...

Nietzsche’s Politics, Fascism and the Jews

Nietzsche-Studien, 2001

Thus Spoke Herzl: Nietzsche's Presence in Herzl's Life and Work

The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1999

Nietzsche on Jews and Judaism

Archiv Fur Geschichte Der Philosophie Berlin, 1985

Nietzsche's Übermensch is not über Alles

Phaenex, Nov 5, 2006

One of the most detailed portraits of "the free spirit par excellence" is provided in section 347... more One of the most detailed portraits of "the free spirit par excellence" is provided in section 347 of The Gay Science. Nietzsche speaks there in categorical terms and emphasizes the total "freedom of the will" which allows "the spirit … [to] take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty." He stresses the capacity of this spirit for "dancing even near abysses," namely for being able to be genuinely creative even in times of cultural and intellectual crisis, when no rational criteria are valid anymore, and when there is no metaphysical or transcendental guarantee for any truth or world-view. In the same section, another essential characteristic of the free spirit par excellence is depicted: its "power of self-determination," which successfully resists any external foci for its personal identity. In Nietzsche's words, it manifests complete freedom from "a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience." Such spirits spontaneously create their own personal authenticity by employing the aesthetic model for self-creation-spontaneous creation of their own selves as the artists create their unique masterpieces. One's heritage or the ethos into which one was born should not determine one's identity and authenticity. 1 Now let us introduce Nietzsche's important distinction between the "free spirit par excellence," and the more human, and hence more attainable, figure of "we free spirits."

Download

Review essays-Nietzsche & Jewish Culture

Sartre’s Early Phenomenology of Authenticity in Relation to Husserl

Phenomenology World-Wide, 2002

Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power

Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, 1986

Stefan Zweig’s Tragedy as a Nietzschean Grenzjude

Jüdische Aspekte Jung-Wiens im Kulturkontext des »Fin de Siècle«, 2005

Will to Power

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013

Jacob Golomb

Uploads

Papers by Jacob Golomb

Log In