Reviewed by:

• Horace Kallen Confronts America: Jewish Identity, Science and Secularism by Matthew Kaufman
• M.M. Silver (bio)

Horace Kallen Confronts America is a highly readable, analytically engaged and valuable contribution toward our understanding of the American Jewish thinker who is credited with introducing concepts of group diversity in discourse about the meaning of democracy in America and of modern life in general. Kaufman takes issue with critics who lately have disparaged Kallen's theory of cultural pluralism, claiming that its allegiance to diversity was biased and simplistic, particularly due to its failure to relate to race prejudice as an autonomously powerful and problematic force in America. Kaufman does not deny Kallen's blind spots, but he quite deliberately does not dwell on them. Instead, Kaufman's project is to reframe Kallen's work and legacy, particularly by insisting that he was, despite his avowed hostility to religious structures (or, paradoxically, because of his assertive secularism) a serious religious thinker. [End Page 638]

Some readers might not be fully convinced by this particular assertion. Kallen was as much an intellectual weathervane as he was a theological progenitor, and his views changed significantly over time. The quasi-biological essentialism of his key World War I period, provocatively encapsulated in Kallen's assertion about how men cannot change their grandfathers, was jettisoned in subsequent decades, and by the 1950s he passionately denied having ever given credence to biologically-based ideas such as race. Similarly, idealistic references to the American democratic idea elastically somersaulted in Kallen's work over the decades, and it is hard to presume that he was always talking about the same one thing.

As Kaufman eloquently demonstrates, key ideas and orientations—such as the value of diversity, and also the framing of human identity in group, rather than individual, terms—persisted in Kallen's thought and activities, meaning that a measure of continuity can be found despite the obvious shifts and turnabouts in his ideological pronouncements. Still, rather than making a knockdown case in support of the creative originality of Kallen's theology (or theologies) in his voluminous writings, this study reinforces a view of Kallen as a serious American Jewish thinker, wherein the measure of "seriousness" is not limited to the acuity of Kallen's own prose but also takes into account social considerations and ongoing dynamics in Jewish history.

The book is presented as an "intellectual biography" of Kallen, but most of its chapters are semi-independent essays concentrating on the early, especially influential, period of Kallen's career, when he published "Democracy versus the Melting Pot." These chapters deftly identify the impact of Kallen's lesser-known orientations and interests (e.g. Darwinism, or artistic Modernism) on his presentation of cultural pluralism. There is also an outstanding discussion of Kallen's dramatization of the Book of Job.

On the "American" side of Kallen's status as an American Jewish thinker, relevant contexts sometimes seem underplayed or absent. For instance, how Scopes Trial-type grand public debates about modern life and religion staged in America in the 1920s impinged on Kallen's pronounced secularity, culminating in his 1931 publication of a polemical tract, The Warfare of Religion against Science, is not really explored. Similarly, World War I-era nativist dynamics, in opposition to which Kallen formulated his landmark 1915 essay, are somewhat under-analyzed. Kaufman suggestively shows how Kallen shared some of the assumptions of his nativist antagonists. He dabbled, for instance, with eugenics, opposing, in 1910, intermarriage as a "threat to Jewish racial integrity" (43). I think, however, that there was probably more interplay here than Kaufman allows. Somewhat in contradistinction to [End Page 639] scholars such as John Higham, who grasped nativism as one, ongoing tradition of hatred in America, newer works present Kallen's nativist antagonists as extremely manipulative, well-connected, characters who were essentially inventing a new form of pseudo-scientific racism. One such figure was a University of Wisconsin academic identified with the Progressive movement, Edward Alsworth Ross. As Kaufman forcefully details, Kallen's 1915 essay was largely a sophisticated polemical attack on...

审核人：

• 霍拉斯·卡伦（Horace Kallen）面对美国：犹太身份，科学和世俗主义（Matthew Kaufman）
• MM银（生物）

霍拉斯·卡伦（Horace Kallen）面对美国是对我们对美国犹太思想家的理解的高度可读性，分析性和有价值的贡献，他被认为在介绍美国民主和整个现代生活的意义时引入了群体多样性的概念。考夫曼对最近批评卡伦的文化多元化理论的批评家表示质疑，他们声称其对多样性的忠诚是有偏见的和简单的，特别是由于它未能将种族偏见与美国的自主权和有问题的力量联系起来。考夫曼并没有否认卡伦的盲点，但他有意不留在盲点上。相反，考夫曼（Kaufman）的计划是重塑卡伦（Kalen）的工作和遗产，特别是坚持认为他尽管对宗教结构怀有敌意（或者反常地，（因为他的主张世俗主义）认真的宗教思想家。[完第638页]

一些读者可能不完全相信这个特定的断言。卡伦既是神学上的祖先，也是思想上的风向标，随着时间的流逝，他的观点发生了重大变化。他的第一次世界大战时期的准生物学本质主义被激进地囊括在卡伦关于人类如何无法改变祖父的主张中，此后的几十年被抛弃。到了1950年代，他热情地否认曾信任过基于生物学的思想，例如种族。同样，几十年来，卡林的工作中，对美国民主思想的理想主义论点弹性地折腾了，很难假设他总是在谈论同一件事。

正如考夫曼（Kaufman）雄辩地证明的那样，关键的思想和取向，例如多样性的价值，以及群体身份而非个人术语的人格构架，始终存在于卡伦的思想和活动中，这意味着尽管存在他的思想宣言有明显的转变和转折。尽管如此，这项研究并没有提出一个足以证明卡伦神学（或多个神学）在其大量著作中具有创造性的独创性的论据，而是强调了卡伦是认真的美国犹太思想家的观点，其中“严肃性”的衡量标准不受限制。不仅体现了卡伦自己的散文的敏锐度，而且还考虑了社会因素以及犹太历史上持续不断的变化。

这本书是卡伦的《知识分子传记》，但其大部分章节都是半独立的文章，着眼于卡伦在其职业生涯的早期（尤其是有影响力的时期）发表著作《民主与熔炉》。这些章节巧妙地确定了卡伦鲜为人知的取向和兴趣（如达尔文主义或艺术现代主义）对他的文化多元性的影响。关于卡伦的《约伯记》戏剧化的讨论也很精彩。

在卡伦（Kallen）作为美国犹太思想家的地位的“美国”方面，有时似乎忽视或缺乏相关的背景。例如，1920年代在美国举行的关于现代生活和宗教的Scopes Trial型公众辩论如何影响了Kallen的明显世俗性，并最终在他于1931年发表的论辩性著作《反对科学的战争》（The Warfare of Religion to Science）中，并不是真正的探索。同样，对于第一次世界大战时期的本土主义动力，卡伦（Kallen）提出了他在1915年发表的具有里程碑意义的论文提出了相反的观点，但这种分析在某种程度上没有得到充分的分析。考夫曼暗示性地展示了卡伦如何分享他的本土主义者的反对者的一些假设。例如，他涉足优生学，于1910年反对通婚是“对犹太人种族完整的威胁”（43）。但是，我认为这里可能存在比考夫曼所允许的更多的相互作用。与[End Page 639]有所不同约翰·海厄姆（John Higham）等学者将本土主义视为一种持续存在的美国仇恨传统，而较新的作品则将卡伦的本土主义者的反对者视为极具操纵性，人脉相通的人物，他们本质上是在发明一种新型的伪科学种族主义。威斯康星大学的一位学者就是爱德华·阿尔斯沃思·罗斯（Edward Alsworth Ross）。由于考夫曼（Kaufman）有力地详述，卡伦（Kallen）1915年的文章很大程度上是对...的辩论。