The Ban on Images and the Prohibition of Idolatry in German Jewish Thought

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Germanic Languages and Literatures

First Advisor

North, Paul

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how modern German Jewish thinkers reinterpreted the prohibition of idolatry and the ban on images (Bilderverbot) beyond strictly religious contexts, arguing that idolatry has served as a foundational category in shaping modern Jewish thought. While scholarship has often treated aniconism as the defining principle of Jewish intellectual history, this study demonstrates that idolatry, as a philosophical and epistemological critique, offers a more fundamental framework for understanding how Jewish thinkers navigated modernity. This dissertation shows that despite the gradual decline of Judaism as a practiced way of life in central European modernity, these prohibitions remained a vital point of reference for modern Jewish thinkers. While other religious terminologies became irrelevant and suppressed, idolatry evolved into powerful philosophical and political critiques concerning representation, mediation, and authority. Through an analysis of key German Jewish thinkers, Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Erich Fromm, and Vilém Flusser, this study demonstrates how traditional theological concerns with idolatry were transformed into a broader intellectual framework addressing modernity’s central dilemmas of representation and power. Each thinker, while distinct in methodology and context, utilizes the critique of idolatry to interrogate the boundaries between the infinite and finite, authentic representation and ideological distortion, as well as ethical autonomy and authoritarian subjugation. In so doing, this dissertation not only revises existing scholarly narratives but also proposes idolatry as a key category for understanding how German Jewish thought has engaged with—and continues to speak to—modern philosophical, political, and media-theoretical questions. Throughout its four chapters, the dissertation investigates fundamental ways traditional prohibitions were adapted in a modern register. Each chapter examines how a key thinker—Mendelssohn, Cohen, Fromm, and Flusser— repurposed the concept of idolatry within their intellectual contexts, transforming it into a framework for engaging with epistemology, ethics, political thought, and media theory. The first chapter explores Mendelssohn’s reinterpretation of idolatry as a semiotic problem, arguing that he shifts its meaning from a prohibition on worship to a cognitive and epistemological challenge, preventing the fixation of signs as absolute truths. Chapter two turns to Hermann Cohen, who universalizes idolatry into an ethical and philosophical principle, warning that moral systems become idolatrous when they reify finite constructs as ultimate ideals. The third chapter examines Erich Fromm’s psychoanalytic and sociological reworking of idolatry, arguing that he locates it in modern alienation—manifesting in the surrender of autonomy to secular ideologies, authoritarian regimes, or psychological authorities. Finally, the fourth chapter addresses Vilém Flusser’s media-theoretical expansion of idolatry, demonstrating that he situated idolatry as a problem emerging from the interaction of mediations, from cave paintings to digital images. Collectively, these discussions reveal that idolatry, far from being a static theological doctrine, functions as a dynamic concept capable of addressing diverse philosophical, political, and cultural issues. The dissertation thus repositions idolatry as essential for understanding modern Jewish intellectual history, illuminating its role in shaping critiques of representation, power structures, and ideological authority.

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