© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 EJJS 1.1 * The problem dealt with in this essay has been on my mind since 1997 when Jacob Meskin and I organized what we called a “Requiem for Modern Jewish Thought” for the annual meeting of the AAR in San Francisco. Some of the ideas included in the following first appeared in a working paper that I wrote for, but never presented to, a Brandeis University Near Eastern and Judaic Studies collo- quium on Modern Jewish Thought, organized by Eugene Sheppard and Sylvia Fuchs-Fried in 2002. I would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for the journal of the EAJS and my student Ingrid Anderson who offered incisive com- ments on the first draft of this essay. In addition, I am indebted to Leah Hochman whose invaluable critique and advice helped me to reshape it thoroughly. I dedi- cate this essay to the memory of Marvin Fox, z”l, from whom I learned how to think about Jewish philosophy. 1 Moses Mendelssohn, the first modern Jewish philosopher in the sense of the criteria articulated in this article, died in 1786. ZWISCHEN DEN STÜHLEN? ON THE TAXONOMIC ANXIETIES OF MODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY* Michael Zank Abstract As a subfield of Jewish Studies modern Jewish philosophy is haunted by challenges arising from the culturally specific circumstances and original goals pursued by the Jewish philosophers of the past that are no longer immediately accessible. This essay looks at systematic and historical aspects of Jewish philosophy with the aim of deter- mining ways of retrieving the plausibility of a taxonomically problematic field oper- ating at the intersections of philosophy, history, religion, and Judaism. In the following, I will describe some of the changes in the acade- mic study of Jewish philosophy, especially as they affect the position of the modern Jewish philosophical canon in the curriculum of Jewish studies. As a field constituted by Jewish and philosophical commit- ments, Jewish philosophy has undergone dramatic shifts over the past 220 years. 1 As a result of these shifts, the modern Jewish philo- sophical canon of texts and ideas had to function in entirely different social and academic contexts. As with much of the material we teach in our courses, the question is ultimately whether the texts and ideas have stood the test of time, and how difficult it is to get students to see what the authors of these texts meant to convey or to achieve.