Nature and Norm

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity and the Theopolitical Problem is a book about the encounter between Jewish and Christian thought and the fact-value divide that invites the unsettling recognition of the dramatic acosmism that shadows and undermines a considerable number of modern and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought systems. By exposing the forced option presented to Jewish and Christian thinkers by the continued appropriation of the fact-value divide, Nature and Norm motivates Jewish and Christian thinkers to perform an immanent critique of the failure of their thought systems to advance rational theopolitical claims and exercise the authority and freedom to assert their claims as reasonable hypotheses that hold the potential for enacting effective change in our current historical moment.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Theology and Subjectivism in Rosenzweig and Kant

I. Kant, Rosenzweig, and the Challenge of Skepticism

A. Kant and the Limits of Practical Reason
B. Rosenzweig and the Subjective Turn

II. Diagnosing the Problem: Kant, Rosenzweig, and the Fact-Value Divide

III. Symptoms of the Fact-Value Divide

Chapter Two: Acceptance and the Theopolitical Problem

I. Acceptance

II. Case Study: Spinoza and Hobbes

Chapter Three: From Redescription to External Critique

I. Redescription or the Turn to the “More”

II. Case Study: Martin Buber and Carl Schmitt

Chapter Four: From External Critique to the Crisis of Skepticism

I. External Critique

II. Case Study: Karl Barth and Leo Strauss

Chapter Five: Beyond the Fact-Value Divide

I. The Philosophical Demands of the Theopolitical Problem

II. Characteristics of a Post-Fact-Value Jewish and Christian Thinking

A. Intelligibility, Justification, and the Who, How, and When of Knowledge
B. Habituation, Disuse, and Rehabituation: The Social Determination of Warranted Assertability

III. Case Study: Peter Ochs and Nicholas Adams

Chapter Six: Science Apprehending Science

I. The Fact-Value Model: From Sense-Certainty to Self-Alienated Culture

A. Pre-Idealism: Epistemology, Self-Consciousness, and the Fact-Value Value Paradigm
B. Transcendental Idealism and Scientific Theory
C. Transcendental Idealism and Practical Freedom

II. External Critique: Pure Insight and the Enlightenment

III. Immanent Critique: From the Moral Law to Communal Justification

A. Immanent Critique: From Moral Consciousness to the Reconciliatory
B. Religious Representation and Philosophical Authority

IV. Conclusion

Bibliography