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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8266 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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With the same attention that Christians allot to Christ, Judaism allots to the practice of ritual rule-following.

I have always found certain aspects of Judaism to be rather appealing, including the rule-following. It tickles my autism.

"And when, baffled by the inadequacy of his human standards, your philosopher refers justice to the "categoric imperative," he betrays the triviality of your world . What is that "categoric imperative," that helpless compromise and confession? What man recognizes it, will bow to it? That phrase itself is its own denial, for he that refers mankind to a "categoric imperative" is himself neither categoric nor imperative . But even the deaf will hear and tremble when the Prophet thunders: "Thus saith the Lord." There is the categoric imperative!

(- Maurice Samuel, You Gentiles)

In some ways, Judaism is the Kant to Christianity's Hegel. God and his Law as absolute Other, the thing-in-itself imposed from the outside, an inscrutable and uncognizable limit to pure reason, vs. contradiction introduced into the heart of the logos, the thing-in-itself shattered: a God who can be mortal, a God who can die.

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