Benjamin Pollock
Biographic Data
| ID | 3864443 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Pollock |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Pollock |
| SIGNATURE | POLLOCK B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2617-9910 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Towards a Poetics of Spoken-Word Bible Translation: Colometry in the Buber-Rosenzweig Working Papers
One of the most peculiar features of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation is its so-called colometric division of the biblical text. This article offers a mapping of the range of considerations that guide Buber and Rosenzweig in determining each colometric unit. Drawing on the myriad exchanges in the Working Papers regarding the length and the rhythm of biblical cola, as well as the reading experience these cola elicit, I aim to show that colom…
“The Great Vindication of Our Translation of the Name”: Franz Rosenzweig on the Threefold Unity of Divine Pronouns
This paper reveals the original teaching from Sinai that Rosenzweig claims to have discovered while translating Exodus 3 with Martin Buber, and why he viewed this discovery as vindicating their decision to translate the Tetragrammaton in the way they did. A report of this discovery is to be found, I show, in the exchange between Buber and Rosenzweig during their translation of Exodus, as recorded in the Working Papers ( Arbeitspapiere ). The sign…
Not to Any Mortal: Freedom, Harmony, and Religious Imagination in Spinozan Theocracy
What does Spinoza mean when he uses the term “theocracy” in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus? Exactly what kind of political arrangement does Spinoza envision when he designates the original covenant between the Israelites and God at Sinai as theocratic, and what role is God imagined to play in it? Given the clear differences between the political arrangements of the Israelites prior to and following Mosaic rule, moreover, what leads Spinoza to…
Rethinking Redeemability: One Hundred Years of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption
The Star of Redemption, arguably the single most significant work of Jewish philosophy written in the twentieth century. Rosenzweig had "scribbled this book down in a six-month-long exstasis"1 between August 1918 and February 1919. Beginning shortly after he recovered from the respiratory flu that swept Europe that summer, Rosenzweig wrote through the last months of his service on the Balkan front of the German war effort and through the first mo…
Every State Becomes a Theocracy«: Hermann Cohen on the Israelites under Divine Rule
According to Hermann Cohen, the Jewish people serves the goal of a united humanity under the auspices of the one God, through its diasporic existence. If this is so, what meaning does he attach to the theocratic governance of ancient Israel, and what role does he assign to that particular case of theocracy, within his broader vision of the unification of humanity under monotheism? For Cohen theocracy is a linchpin, linking the Israelite state - a…
Theocracy and the Idea of God: Salomon Maimon on Judaism Between True Religion and Despotism
The Political Perfection of Original Judaism: Pedagogical Governance and Ecclesiastical Power in Mendelssohn's Jerusalem
Moses Mendelssohn famously penned his Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism in response to a public challenge. Mendelssohn had declared “ecclesiastical power” to be a contradiction in terms, and had thus come out strongly against the use of coercion in religious life, and against the ban of excommunication by rabbinic authorities, in particular. In the anonymously published The Search for Light and Right , August Cranz defies Mendelssohn …
On the Road to Marcionism: Franz Rosenzweig's Early Theology
On the night of July 7, 1913, a twenty-six year-old Franz Rosenzweig engaged in a life-changing conversation with two intimate friends, Eugen Rosenstock and Rudolf Ehrenberg, in Leipzig. This article challenges the conventional scholarly account of the "conversion" Rosenzweig underwent that night. It does so by introducing newly-discovered evidence that shows that the Rosenzweig who entered the Leipziger Nachtgespräch was an advocate not of acade…
"Franz Rosenzweig's "Oldest System-Program
When Franz Rosenzweig asserted that the two-page “system-program” in G. W. F. Hegel's handwriting that he had discovered in 1914 was in fact Hegel's copy of a text composed by F. W. J. Schelling, he sparked a scholarly controversy over the origins of German idealism that continues to this day. The present article claims that the overarching philosophical goal of Rosenzweig's essay is to revive the conception of philosophy's task that Hegel and Sc…
Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy
Benjamin Pollock argues that Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption is devoted to a singularly ambitious philosophical task: grasping 'the All' - the whole of what is - in the form of a system. In asserting Rosenzweig's abiding commitment to a systematic conception of philosophy, this book breaks rank with the assumptions about Rosenzweig's thought that have dominated recent scholarship. Indeed, the Star's importance is often claimed to lie pr…
Franz Rosenzweig and the systematic task of philosophy
Thought Going to School with Life? Fackenheim's Last Philosophical Testament
Emil Fackenheim's philosophical response to the Holocaust is permeated by the worry that Auschwitz marks a rupture so severe that it compels any attempt to philosophize in its wake either to ignore the magnitude of this rupture or to lose itself in radical nihilism. “Perhaps no thought can exist in the same space as the Holocaust,” Fackenheim writes in To Mend the World . “Perhaps all thought, to assure its own survival, must be elsewhere.”
From Nation State to World Empire: Franz Rosenzweig's Redemptive Imperialism
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
On the Road to Marcionism: Franz Rosenzweig's Early Theology
On the night of July 7, 1913, a twenty-six year-old Franz Rosenzweig engaged in a life-changing conversation with two intimate friends, Eugen Rosenstock and Rudolf Ehrenberg, in Leipzig. This article challenges the conventional scholarly account of the "conversion" Rosenzweig underwent that night. It does so by introducing newly-discovered evidence that shows that the Rosenzweig who entered the Leipziger Nachtgespräch was an advocate not of acade…
From Nation State to World Empire: Franz Rosenzweig's Redemptive Imperialism
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Thought Going to School with Life? Fackenheim's Last Philosophical Testament
Emil Fackenheim's philosophical response to the Holocaust is permeated by the worry that Auschwitz marks a rupture so severe that it compels any attempt to philosophize in its wake either to ignore the magnitude of this rupture or to lose itself in radical nihilism. “Perhaps no thought can exist in the same space as the Holocaust,” Fackenheim writes in To Mend the World . “Perhaps all thought, to assure its own survival, must be elsewhere.”
Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy
Benjamin Pollock argues that Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption is devoted to a singularly ambitious philosophical task: grasping 'the All' - the whole of what is - in the form of a system. In asserting Rosenzweig's abiding commitment to a systematic conception of philosophy, this book breaks rank with the assumptions about Rosenzweig's thought that have dominated recent scholarship. Indeed, the Star's importance is often claimed to lie pr…
Franz Rosenzweig and the systematic task of philosophy
"Franz Rosenzweig's "Oldest System-Program
When Franz Rosenzweig asserted that the two-page “system-program” in G. W. F. Hegel's handwriting that he had discovered in 1914 was in fact Hegel's copy of a text composed by F. W. J. Schelling, he sparked a scholarly controversy over the origins of German idealism that continues to this day. The present article claims that the overarching philosophical goal of Rosenzweig's essay is to revive the conception of philosophy's task that Hegel and Sc…
On the Road to Marcionism: Franz Rosenzweig's Early Theology
On the night of July 7, 1913, a twenty-six year-old Franz Rosenzweig engaged in a life-changing conversation with two intimate friends, Eugen Rosenstock and Rudolf Ehrenberg, in Leipzig. This article challenges the conventional scholarly account of the "conversion" Rosenzweig underwent that night. It does so by introducing newly-discovered evidence that shows that the Rosenzweig who entered the Leipziger Nachtgespräch was an advocate not of acade…
The Political Perfection of Original Judaism: Pedagogical Governance and Ecclesiastical Power in Mendelssohn's Jerusalem
Moses Mendelssohn famously penned his Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism in response to a public challenge. Mendelssohn had declared “ecclesiastical power” to be a contradiction in terms, and had thus come out strongly against the use of coercion in religious life, and against the ban of excommunication by rabbinic authorities, in particular. In the anonymously published The Search for Light and Right , August Cranz defies Mendelssohn …
Theocracy and the Idea of God: Salomon Maimon on Judaism Between True Religion and Despotism
Every State Becomes a Theocracy«: Hermann Cohen on the Israelites under Divine Rule
According to Hermann Cohen, the Jewish people serves the goal of a united humanity under the auspices of the one God, through its diasporic existence. If this is so, what meaning does he attach to the theocratic governance of ancient Israel, and what role does he assign to that particular case of theocracy, within his broader vision of the unification of humanity under monotheism? For Cohen theocracy is a linchpin, linking the Israelite state - a…
Rethinking Redeemability: One Hundred Years of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption
The Star of Redemption, arguably the single most significant work of Jewish philosophy written in the twentieth century. Rosenzweig had "scribbled this book down in a six-month-long exstasis"1 between August 1918 and February 1919. Beginning shortly after he recovered from the respiratory flu that swept Europe that summer, Rosenzweig wrote through the last months of his service on the Balkan front of the German war effort and through the first mo…
Not to Any Mortal: Freedom, Harmony, and Religious Imagination in Spinozan Theocracy
What does Spinoza mean when he uses the term “theocracy” in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus? Exactly what kind of political arrangement does Spinoza envision when he designates the original covenant between the Israelites and God at Sinai as theocratic, and what role is God imagined to play in it? Given the clear differences between the political arrangements of the Israelites prior to and following Mosaic rule, moreover, what leads Spinoza to…
“The Great Vindication of Our Translation of the Name”: Franz Rosenzweig on the Threefold Unity of Divine Pronouns
This paper reveals the original teaching from Sinai that Rosenzweig claims to have discovered while translating Exodus 3 with Martin Buber, and why he viewed this discovery as vindicating their decision to translate the Tetragrammaton in the way they did. A report of this discovery is to be found, I show, in the exchange between Buber and Rosenzweig during their translation of Exodus, as recorded in the Working Papers ( Arbeitspapiere ). The sign…
Towards a Poetics of Spoken-Word Bible Translation: Colometry in the Buber-Rosenzweig Working Papers
One of the most peculiar features of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation is its so-called colometric division of the biblical text. This article offers a mapping of the range of considerations that guide Buber and Rosenzweig in determining each colometric unit. Drawing on the myriad exchanges in the Working Papers regarding the length and the rhythm of biblical cola, as well as the reading experience these cola elicit, I aim to show that colom…
Philosophy (9 works) · Theology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (4 works) · Judaism (4 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (4 works) · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity (4 works) · Theocracy (4 works)