The “Failure of Success” in Enlightenment Thought: Jonathan Sacks as a Jewish Philosopher

This article focuses on the Enlightenment and its implications for modern Jewish philosophy in the thought of Jonathan Sacks (1948–2020). It will examine how the philosophical ideas of Kant, Hegel, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and others led Sacks to take a position which claimed that the “abstract universalism” of Enlightenment thought had failed. The premise for this conclusion was rooted in the Shoah which he viewed in a philosophical sense as the culmination of the Enlightenment. That is, the “Final Solution” had not been prevented by modern values but, rather, had been propelled by aspects of Enlightenment thought. This essay analyzes the role that Spinoza played for Sacks as representative of a Jewish figure who contributed to Enlightenment values and thus complexified his claims. The discipline of “Modern Jewish thought”—discussed here in relation to Rabbis A. I. Kook and Samson Raphael Hirsch—presented challenges and required redefinition owing to Sacks’ relation to the Enlightenment. These challenges came in the form of postmodernism and the ethical relativism it entailed, and the quest to retain ethics as the first priority according to the views of Levinas and others. Thus, this essay brings Sacks into conversation with several other philosophers and Jewish thinkers and puts forward an original perspective on a new contribution to contemporary Jewish thought.