ABSTRACT

Intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin saw a totalitarian and dogmatic tendency within the Enlightenment tradition which he called “optimistic monism,” that is, the idea that personal freedom and cultural differences have to be sacrificed for universal goals and the progress of human perfection. Thus, he turned to the proponents of the “Counter-Enlightenment” in order to render the negative traits of enlightened universalism visible. Although the Haskalah would have served well as an example of a pluralistic critique of enlightened monism, it is quite surprising that Berlin hardly wrote anything about the Jewish Enlightenment or its contemporary critics. This paper argues that this is due to a misinterpretation of Moses Mendelssohn as well as to a specific Jewish version of Berlin’s own Counter-Enlightenment, which connects to his Zionism as an answer to the failure of assimilation.

摘要

思想史学家以赛亚·伯林在启蒙运动传统中看到了一种极权主义和教条主义的倾向，他称之为“乐观一元论”，即必须牺牲个人自由和文化差异以实现普遍目标和人类完美进步的观念。因此，他转向“反启蒙”的支持者，以使开明普遍主义的负面特征可见。尽管《哈斯卡拉》可以很好地作为对开明一元论的多元批判的一个例子，但令人惊讶的是，柏林几乎没有写任何关于犹太启蒙运动或其当代批评者的文章。本文认为这是由于对摩西·门德尔松的误解以及柏林自己的反启蒙运动的特定犹太版本，