From Radical Enlightenment to Religious Reform: On Saul Ascher’s Reconstruction to Judaism

Abstract

Saul Ascher is one of the Jewish thinkers that were influenced by Immanuel Kant in the late 18th century. Unlike many of his contemporaries advocating Jewish enlightenment, he tried to remove the political and modern anti-Semitic elements in Kant and Fichte’s philosophy, and constructed the system of Jewish ethical monotheism that originated from Moses Law and based on Kant’s reason and moral principles. Under the background of religious and philosophical anti-Semitism, and Jewish fighting for the liberation, Asher’s ideas showed a strong political and philosophical criticism and the motives that defended the Judaism and Jewish survival in a rationalist context, and he was one of the key figures who guided the Berlin Jewish community from radical enlightenment to positive religious reform.