German-Jewish Thought and Its Aftermath ─ A Tenuous Legacy

Drawing on Jewish dimensions in the works of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan, Vivian Liska reflects on the dialogues between these contemporaries and traces the changing role that Jewish tradition has played in the development of modern thought. She notes how these intellectuals and philosophers transmitted their particular visions of modernity but also viewed them in the light of the Jewish tradition’s legacies and challenges. Liska argues that these visions derive from a paradoxical dynamic, namely that the attempt to break with convention also calls for using deep-seated figures of thought.

Vivian Liska is Professor of German Literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is also Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of the Humanities at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is author of When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (IUP, 2009).