Academic Studies Press Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theopolitical Problem (New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism)

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. Review “Nature and Norm calls all modern and postmodern Jewish and Christian philosophers and religious thinkers to attention, as if to declare: ‘Hear this! Despite your perpetual intellection and reams of writings, you have collectively failed to overcome modernity’s effort to disaggregate sciences of fact from public practices of value.’ Peering deeply into the modern religious writings many of us love to read and teach, Randi Rashkover demonstrates that the problem is not merely epistemological (the foundationalism, nominalism, or binarism many of us already decry). It is also theopolitical: a persistent tendency to segregate spheres of religious thought from socio-political vision and practice.  Peering even more deeply, she rediscovers antecedent sources of integration, and then―the crowning achievement of this landmark study―she reintroduces us to the disciplines of transcendental inquiry that have already, for the past century, been showing us how to retrieve those sources as guides to re-integration.” ―Peter Ochs, Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, University of Virginia About the Author Randi Rashkover holds the Nathan and Sofia Gumenick Chair in Judaic Studies at William & Mary. She is the author of Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics (Fordham University Press, 2011) and Revelation and Theopolitics: Barth, Rosenzweig and the Politics of Praise (T&T Clark, 2005).