[PHILOS-L] WORKSHOP: German Jewish Thought, Critical Theory, and the Global South (17-18 June 2026, Essen, Germany and hybrid)

[Julia Ng]

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Workshop: German Jewish Thought, Critical Theory, and the Global South

17-18 June 2026

College for Social Sciences and Humanities, Institute for Advanced Study, UA Ruhr

In person and online 

https://www.college-uaruhr.de/news-events/events/german-jewish-thought-critical-theory

Co-organized by Julia Ng and Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

TO REGISTER: https://eveeno.com/528695725 

In the history of German Jewish thought, Critical Theory emerges as a secondary moment in the longer line of questions concerning rational religion, tradition and modernity, and political-economic emancipation first posed by Mendelssohn and reframed by Marx and others. Histories of Critical Theory, by contrast, situate the legacy of German Jewish philosophy as one empirical instance of the problem of religion and myth in general and generally framed by Protestant theology. Meanwhile, in the histories of neither has there been a sustained account of their relations to European imperialism and colonialism. Yet the first decades of the twentieth century were arguably the most consequential decades of German colonialism, German Jewish philosophical modernism, and German critical social theory. What happens when we take seriously this mutual irritation of discourses, whose figures and source texts nevertheless aggregate into a barely conspicuous network of shared references and biographical data, not as a historical anomaly but as a negative space from which systematic and methodological insights might emerge? Combining presentations and textual close readings, this workshop asks how apparently non-systematic references irritate established meanings, allowing the Global South to penetrate into European philosophical modernity. 

FORMAT: 

The workshop will combine lectures together with reading sessions devoted to exploring and discussing texts that have been selected by the speakers. The texts will be distributed prior to the workshop to registered participants. Texts will be provided in both their original languages and in English translation where relevant.

PROGRAMME:

DAY ONE: 17 June 2026

3:00 pm

Julia Ng (College for Social Sciences and Humanities, UA Ruhr / Goldsmiths, University of London) and Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky (Ruhr Universität Bochum)

Welcome and Introduction to the Workshop 

3:30 pm

Julia Ng (College for Social Sciences and Humanities, UA Ruhr / Goldsmiths, University of London)

LECTURE: "Laozi in Palestine"

4:30 pm

Break 

4:40 pm 

María Pía Lara (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City)

LECTURE: "Waves of Progress and Regression" 

READING SESSION: Reinhart Koselleck, ""Progress" and "Decline"", in The Practice of Conceptual History; Ernst Bloch and Theodor Adorno, "Something's Missing: A Discussion Between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing"; François Hartog, "Introduction. Orders of Time and Regimes of Historicity" in Regimes of Historicity; and Rahel Jaeggi, "Preface", in Progress and Regression.

6:10 pm 

Break

6:20 pm 

Peter Fenves (Northwestern University, USA) 

LECTURE: "On a Second Program of the Coming Philosophy" 

READING SESSION: Walter Benjamin, "Modes of Knowing" and related fragments; excerpts from Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim

7:50 pm 

END of DAY ONE

DAY TWO: 18 June 2026 

11:00 am 

Yossef Schwartz (Tel Aviv University)

LECTURE: "The Historiographic Debate on Jewish Orientalism — Jews, Germans and the Mobility of Colonial Frontiers."

READING SESSION: Martin Buber, "The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism"

12:30 pm 

Break

12:40 pm 

Daniel Loick (University of Amsterdam) 

READING SESSION: "Messianic Politics (A People Beyond Violence in Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption)" — on "Part Three, Book One: The Fire or Eternal Life" of Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption

1:40 pm 

Lunch 

2:40 pm 

Galili Shahar (Tel Aviv University / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) 

LECTURE: "Rosenzweig's Shahada: Being-Jewish, Becoming-Muslim"

READING SESSION: Rosenzweig's translations of Jehuda Halevi, Heine's short poem on the Princess of Sabbat, the first chapter of Arendt's essay "The Hidden Tradition", and two of Arendt's short essays concerning the Jewish-Arab Question and the Problem of the Palestinian Refugees (co-written) 

4:10 pm

Break 

4:20 pm 

Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky (Ruhr Universität Bochum)  

READING SESSION: "Social Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie under the Political Form of Despotism: Benjamin And/On Goethe" — on Walter Benjamin's "Goethe"

5:20 pm

Break

5:30 pm 

Friedrich Balke (Ruhr Universität Bochum) 

LECTURE: "The 'Butterfly Hunt': 'Toward' the Critique of Violence in Walter Benjamin's Berlin Childhood around 1900"

READING SESSION: Walter Benjamin, "Butterfly Hunt" from Berlin Childhood; excerpt from Jacques Derrida's "L'animal que donc je suis"

7:00 pm

Closing Remarks 

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