Krochmal, Nachman (1785–1840)

Nachman Krochmal was leader of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah in Galicia, eastern Europe. An astute observer of the German philosophical environment, Krochmal provided one of the first Jewish responses to, and adaptations of, elements of the philosophical work of Spinoza, Kant, Herder, Schelling and Hegel. His posthumously published Moreh Nevukhei ha-Zeman (Guide to the Perplexed of Today) (1851) adapted Kantian epistemological methods to interpret the Jewish religious sources with an eye to discovering their inner, philosophical meaning. Krochmal argued that at that their deeper level these sources, both ancient and medieval, anticipated the discoveries of the German Idealist philosophers. Thus, for example, the Jewish belief in a personal God who created the world and revealed a desired way of life could remain philosophically fruitful. For, when properly interpreted, such ideas were concrete representations of the truths laid bare in the metaphysics of Hegel and Schelling. Krochmal answered the regnant philosophy of history, which considered Jewish culture to have been sublated, by arguing that Jewish religion, by its apprehension of the absolute, stood outside the historical ‘laws’ that mandate the eventual cultural demise of all nations and states.

Although he was an important model for aspiring Jewish intellectuals in eastern Europe, Krochmal’s work was of limited philosophical influence. His lasting contribution may be his implicit exposure of the unstated cultural biases of modern idealist philosophy. For his work shows that alternative cultural assumptions would turn idealist philosophy towards philosophical and religious conclusions significantly different from those of the German Idealists themselves.