The Antimonies of Jewish (Non-)Identity: On the Philosophical Interrelations and Letter Correspondence between Adorno and Scholem

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Abstract

This paper examines the relations between Critical Theory and Jewish thought according to the correspondence between Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom G. Scholem (which I am currently editing for publication in the series of Adorno’s “Collected Works/Letters and Correspondence” at Suhrkamp Verlag). A close reading of the writing of these seminal German-Jewish thinkers, along with the correspondence between them, sheds light on philosophical, theological, and historical issues in Jewish thought and history from a not yet illuminated perspective. Since their first encounter in 1938 New York, where Adorno lived and worked after his exile from Germany, during Scholem’s visit to the city to deliver his meanwhile eminent lectures on Jewish mysticism, Adorno and Scholem maintained a long-lasting intellectual friendship. From 1939, following Scholem’s return from New York to Jerusalem, until Adorno’s death in 1969, Adorno and Scholem held an extensive and intensive letter correspondence, in which they discussed each other’s thoughts, writings, and political engagements.
Adorno and Scholem’s collaboration on the edition and posthumous publication of Walter Benjamin’s work is widely known. However, as the letter correspondence shows, they shared much more with each other: Adorno, whose work concerns largely issues in social and culture criticism, proves to be largely interested in Jewish theology and thought, specifically in Lurianic Kabbalah and Sabbatianism. Scholem, on the other hand, demonstrates extensive knowledge of modern and contemporary German philosophy. Though working in different disciplines, Adorno and Scholem shared various epistemological, metaphysical, and historical concerns. By a closer look, Scholem’s interest in heretical mysticism and in the history of antinomian theology (a theology which opposes predominant rules and norms, such as Sabbatianiam and Frankism) resonates to a large extent with Adorno’s concepts of non-identity and negative dialectics. The paper attends to these divergences and convergences in Adorno’s and Scholem’s work and relates them to historical questions of enlightenment, secularization, and the task of philosophy and theology after the holocaust.

author

• Asaf Angermann, University of Toronto