SLONIMSKY, HENRY

SLONIMSKY, HENRY (1884–1970), philosopher and writer, who was born in Russia, and was taken to the United States in 1890. He studied under Hermann *Cohen and earned his Ph.D. in 1912 with a dissertation published as "Heraklit und Parmenides" (in: Philosophische Arbeiten, 7 (1913), ed. by H. Cohen and P. Natorp). From 1914 to 1924 he taught philosophy at various U.S. universities. In 1924, Stephen S. *Wise appointed him professor of ethics and philosophy of religion at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. In 1926 he became dean of the school, retiring in 1952. As an inspiring teacher, who shared his intellectual and human problems with his students, he profoundly influenced many American rabbis. His studies in Jewish philosophy were published as Essays (1967). Despite Slonimsky's lifelong emphasis on "oral teaching," it is possible to see the thrust of his thinking from his sparse writings. On the face of it, his concern with human needs and emotions would seem to separate him from his great teacher H. Cohen, the rationalist par excellence, but on closer consideration the latter's decisive and pervasive influence becomes clear. The importance Slonimsky attaches to the Platonic tradition in the history of human thinking, his wariness of the "bourgeois" dangers to the Jewish truth, and his reinterpretations of episodes in general and Jewish philosophy exemplify the spirit of the "Marburg School." His single most important doctrine, that of the "humanized," finite, growing (i.e., anthropomorphic) God, had three constituent considerations: (1) the idea of a "limited God" explains the dysteleology of human suffering; (2) man's ethical responsibilities are greatly enhanced when they are needed for the "growth of God" (cf. Cohen's "correlation"); (3) the Jewish formulation of Kant's "asymptotic" concept of the ideal is echoed in Slonimsky's commitment to messianism, God and "religion of the future."

[Steven S. Schwarzschild]