New futures, new pasts: Horace M. Kallen and the contribution of Jewishness to the future

Abstract

Early in the twentieth century, American philosopher and educator Horace M. Kallen (1882–1974) constructed a cultural philosophy under the headline Cultural Pluralism. This philosophy was intended to have cosmopolitan effects in the sense that it had global ecumenical concerns for the social hope for all. Nevertheless, Kallen avoided the concept of cosmopolitanism because of the deep controversy over Jews and Jewishness entangled in the history of cosmopolitan thought since the Enlightenment. As an alternative, Kallen re-invented a new Jewish past to suit a future when Jewishness could be a model attitude for living in cosmopolis. This article shows how and why cosmopolitanism has been a problematic idea for Jewish thinkers such as Kallen, and it demonstrates how Kallen’s early-twentieth-century ideas of Cultural Pluralism in many ways constitute a postcolonial cosmopolitanism avant la lettre.

Keywords:

• Horace M. Kallen
• cultural pluralism
• cosmopolitanism
• Jewishness
• Hebraism

Notes

1. Kallen, “Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot II,” 217–18.

2. Koselleck, “‘Erfahrungsraum’ und ‘Erwartungshorizont – zwei historische Kategorien,” 349–75.

3. See as an example Pollock’s essay on Sanskrit culture: Pollock, “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History,” 15–53.

4. As also remarked by Miller and Ury: “Cosmopolitanism: the End of Jewishness?,” 344.

5. Fine, Cosmopolitanism, 17–18.

6. I have used the collection of Kant’s texts by Kleingeld et al., Toward Perpetual Peace and other Writing on Politics, Peace, and History.

7. Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism; Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness; Fine, Cosmopolitanism; Miller and Ury, “Cosmopolitanism: the End of Jewishness.”

8. Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” in Kleingeld, Toward Perpetual Peace, 8.

9. Leonard, Socrates and the Jews, 56.

10. Kleingeld, Toward Perpetual Peace, 78.

11. Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective” in Kleingeld, Toward Perpetual Peace, 4.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., 4.

14. Munk, “Mendelssohn and Kant on Judaism,” 217–18.

15. Ibid., 219.

16. Leonard, Socrates and the Jews, 53.

17. Alexander, The Civil Sphere, 463.

18. See also Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity, and Mack, German Idealism and the Jew.

19. Slezkine, The Jewish Century.

20. See Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, 1–14.

21. Breckenridge et al., Cosmopolitanism, 6.

22. See Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, 78.

23. As advocated by Holton, Cosmopolitanisms, 1–25.

24. Breckenridge et al., Cosmopolitanism, 1.

25. Ibid., 10.

26. Ibid., 10. Obviously, the perspective in Breckenridge draws on well-established postcolonial and cultural-studies critiques of Western universalism.

27. Boyarin and Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity,” 712, 723.

28. Mack, German Idealism and the Jew. See also Boyarin and Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity.” In these perspectives, universalism is a camouflaged kind of racism.

29. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem; Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, 57. It is difficult to point to one specific place in Mendelssohn because Jerusalem is a long argument for an alternative universalism. But see for example his version of the plundering of the Temple on p. 114, which describes how universalists see the world with the eyes of barbarians.

30. Kallen, Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea, 54.

31. See Obenzinger, “Naturalizing Cultural Pluralism” and Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity.

32. Pianko, “The True Liberalism of Zionism,” 300. Pianko further unfolds the positions in the reception of Cultural Pluralism.

33. Ibid., 300.

34. Schmidt, “Horace M. Kallen and the ‘Americanization’ of Zionism,” 61.

35. Schmidt, Horace M Kallen. Prophet of American Zionism; Greene, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism, 14–35.

36. Greene, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism, 35–62.

37. Kallen, Judaism at Bay, 4.

38. See Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism and Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus.

39. Kallen, “On the Import of ‘Universal Judaism’” (1910); Kallen, “Judaism by Proxy” (1916). Both in Judaism at Bay.

40. Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle, 98.

41. Kallen, Judaism at Bay, 4–5.

42. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy.

43. Ibid., 147.

44. Kallen, Judaism at Bay, 10.

45. Ibid., p. 11.

46. Kallen, “Judaism and the Modern Point of View” (1911) in Judaism at Bay, 42–56; Konvitz, “H.M. Kallen and the Hebraic Idea,” 215–26.

47. See also Slezkine, The Jewish Century who elaborates on this theme.

48. Kallen, The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy.

49. Fried, “Creating Hebraism, Confronting Hellenism,” 153.

50. Kallen, The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy, 55.

51. Kallen, “Democracy versus the Melting Pot. A Study of American Nationality I, II.”

52. Hebraists ranged from secularists such as Kallen, to religious reformers, scholars and Zionists such as Ahad Ha’am, who with different accents considered Judaism to be only an aspect of a wider cultural trajectory originating with the people who gave rise to the Hebrew Bible and the Prophets in particular. Kallen’s varied expositions of Hebraism in articles and lectures led to heated debates in the Menorah Journal over the character of Hebraism, which points to the crucial nature of this debate vis-à-vis the place of Jews and Judaism in America early in the twentieth century see Fried, “Creating Hebraism, Confronting Hellenism,” 146–74.

53. Kallen, The Book of Job, 10–11.

54. Ibid., 11.

55. See also Konvitz, “H.M. Kallen and his Hebraic Idea.”

56. Kallen, “On the Import of ‘Universal Judaism,’” in Judaism at Bay, 19.

57. Kallen, The Book of Job, 78.

58. See Rosman, How Jewish is Jewish History for an interesting discussion of historical contribution discourses.

59. Kallen, “Judaism and the Modern Point of View,” in Judaism at Bay, 53–6.

60. Fried, “Creating Hebraism, Confronting Hellenism,” 146–74.

61. Kronish, “John Dewey and Horace M. Kallen on Cultural Pluralism,” 135–48.

62. Zangwill, The Melting Pot. A Drama in Four Acts.

63. Kallen, “Democracy versus the Melting-Pot II,” 218.

64. Ibid., 218.

65. Ibid., 219.

66. Ibid., 218.

67. Breckenridge et al., Cosmopolitanism, 6.

68. Holton, Cosmopolitanisms, 17.

69. Ibid., 18.

70. Alexander, The Civil Sphere, 460.

71. Hansen, “Dewey and Cosmopolitanism,” 128