Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

In my paper I would like to critically analyze the dispute between two prominent Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century – Leo Strauss and Gershom Scholem – over the religious meaning of progress and return. With reference to the messianic idea in Judaism, Strauss argued that the role of religious thinking is to “redeem” modern people of progress, bring them back to tradition and restitute the origins. Scholem accused Strauss of misreading Jewish messianism and accentuated its dialectical spin: the function of religion is neither restorative, nor progressive but restorative and progressive at the same time. In other words, the return in Judaism shall not be associated with restoration but with a utopian figure of “return to what has never been.” The aim of my paper is not only to reconstruct the debate (Strauss’s “Progress or Return?” and Scholem’s “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism” being of primary importance here) but also use it to deconstruct the apparent opposition of progress and return in the religious discourse.