Člověk není sám – Heschel Abraham Joshua (2024)

This Czech-language book presents the thought of A. J. Heschel, one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the 20th century. He was renowned as a rabbinical scholar, an advocate of Hasidism, an existentially oriented philosopher and a proponent of interreligious dialogue. Heschel’s lifelong intellectual effort sought to mediate between lived religious experience and philosophical reflection on that experience. He followed the tradition of medieval Jewish philosophers, especially Maimonides, but unlike Maimonides’ strictly rationalist approach, Heschel was shaped by his Hasidic upbringing and education and by his knowledge of Lurianic Kabbalah. He was therefore sensitive to the irrational elements of authentic religion, for which Judaism served as a particular example. In his view, every religious experience begins with radical wonder and a sense of the ineffable, a distinctive way of knowing God, and leads to a corresponding way of life characteristic of a devout person. Heschel originally intended to embody this concept in a single text, but ultimately divided it into two parts: the first, subtitled Philosophy of Religion, and the second, published several years later, subtitled Philosophy of Judaism.