How the Rabbinic Mode of Thinking Gave Irving Kristol His Rare Independence of Mind
The great Jewish realist.
September 25, 2019
How the Rabbinic Mode of Thinking Gave Irving Kristol His Rare Independence of Mind
The great Jewish realist.
In a study of the American political thinker Irving Kristol, the founding father of neoconservatism, Ruth R. Wisse points to the “rabbinic tradition whose mode of thought he had imbibed from the culture of his youth” as “fundamental to understanding Kristol and his legacy.” The influence of this tradition can be found in Kristol’s writings on Jews and Judaism, but not only in those writings. It contributed to his rare independence of mind, and made him receptive to the ideas of such religious thinkers as Reinhold Niebuhr:
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