Abstract

While up to the 19th century there were philosophers within Judaism, these sages neither perceived themselves as Jewish philosophers nor did the Jewish community categorized them under this term. This situation changed with the rise of historicism. The first academically trained scholars in Judaism faced a new challenge: almost all leading contemporay German philosophers operated with a concept of a Christian philosophy which left no room for an acknowledgement of Jewish contributions to the history of philosophy. Zunz was the first Jewish scholar who took issue with this Christian challenge when he coined the term Jewish philosophy. Zunz followed Boeckh when he drew a distinction between Philosophy within Judaism and Jewish philosophy. Zunz used the first term for the historical contributions of Jews in the history of philosophy. If the modern scholar does examine the Jewish sources properly with the historical-critical method, the conclusions will lead him to a Jewish philosophy. Since Jewish philosophy for Zunz did not represent the Jewish Volksgeist, he did not elaborate further upon it. After Zunz, Geiger preferred a different approach. Since Geiger understood himself as a theologian who was closer to Schleiermacher, he described an alternative dialectical relationship by confronting the histoical-critical examination of Jewish philosophical sources now with Jewish theology. Munk’s Esquisse set the standard for all subsequent histories of Jewish philosophy. He was not interested in a contemporary Jewish philosophy but focussed exclusively on what Zunz had rendered philosophy within Judaism. His aim was to give back Jewish philosophy its rightful place as an integral part of the history of Western philosophy. Munk’s groundbreaking studies were triggered by Ritter. Even though Munk’s conception still has a certain heuristic value, the deficiency of this approach is obvious as well.