Second session of the seminar series 'Between Empire and Nation: Jewish thought in historical transition' by Prof. Cedric Cohen-Skalli (University of Haifa), visiting professor at Memory Lab.
Date: 09 OCTOBER 2025 from 15:00 to 17:00
Event location: Aula Gambi, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
Type: Cluster 1 - Trauma and Memory
In this seminar, we will study the debate between Martin Buber (1878–1965) and Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) during World War I and its immediate aftermath. Indeed, the two Jewish philosophers developed two contradictory visions of the imperial world war, its traumas and its potential benefits for Jews or for Jewish nationalism. Both expected much from German or English imperial expansion and were left with harsh disillusionment and frightening questions about the fate of Jews, who would go on to face to the terrible challenges of the Holocaust in Europe and of 1948 in Palestine.