European Philosophy and Jewish Tradition

Network for European Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition

Doctoral defence Thomas Froy, 20 April 2026

Abstract

How do we think about home today? What does it mean to ‘belong’? To call a place ‘one’s own’? Conversely, what is it like to be away from home? To feel as if you don’t belong? To feel unwelcome?

This dissertation attempts to answer such questions by examining ongoing debates in Jewish Thought concerning the notions of home and ‘dwelling’. I begin by unpacking the concepts of ‘Homeland’ and ‘Earth’ as they appear in current philosophical and political discourse. I turn to the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger and his work on ‘dwelling’, as an ideological forefather of both ideas. I focus, in particular, on his attempt to define dwelling as a way of being at home which is open to the ‘unfamiliar’. I tie this openness to traditional discourses of nationalism and current work in ecological and ecofeminist thought in order to show that, for Heidegger, the Earth is our Homeland, and dwelling within it means being open to the unfamiliarity of the world itself.

Against Heidegger, I turn to a Jewish tradition which centralises everyday life. I read Martin Buber’s dialogical thought, and his later Zionism, as a demand to think about the banal interactions which colour our domestic existence. The meaning of home is not found by abstraction to the scale of the national and the terrestrial, but in daily life. I interpret this as a simultaneous riposte to the notion of Homeland and an opening to ecological thought, inasmuch as this attention to the banal can entail an orientation to the materiality of existence itself.

In a similar way, I interpret Emmanuel Levinas’ early work as a call to think about the everyday life of the home itself: what do we do, most of the time, at home? Eating and sleeping. Being at home, for Levinas, is an essentially mundane, domestic activity. The final part of the dissertation engages with Jacques Derrida’s thinking on hospitality, where home is a place for hosting others. Being at home means hosting others.

I conclude my research with a reflection on Jewish Thought today, and the challenges and opportunities for thinking about home which remain as present and important as ever.

The Network for European Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition brings together international scholars from the fields of philosophy and Jewish studies to explore the encounters and intersections, but also the differences and mutual exclusions between European philosophy and the Jewish tradition. 

From antiquity and medieval times to the present, the Hebrew Bible and its commentaries, the Talmud, Rabbinic writings and the Kabbalah as well as works of modern Jewish thought are a rich well for inquiry and philosophical reflection. In turn, European philosophy is often associated with three dominant intellectual traditions – Greek thought, Christian faith, and secular Enlightenment. This classic triad tends to obscure other influences. Philosophers and historians of European philosophy have often failed to recognize the specifically Jewish influences on their field of study. Research in the context of the network seeks to investigate and map the commonalities, parallels, and lines of influence between the traditions of European thought and the Jewish tradition, focusing on the manifold encounters between them. 

The Network will organize a yearly international conference or workshop, virtual and in-person reading groups, and a bi-annual lecture that will alternately take place at one of our three Flemish host institutions – the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven, the Institute of Jewish Studies, and the Center for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp. It will encourage and support similar events at other locations suggested by the network’s participants.

The network was opened with the inaugural lecture "What is Jewish Philosophy? Between the Particular and the Universal" by Prof. Moshe Halbertal, with welcoming words by rector Prof. Herman Van Goethem (University of Antwerp) and Prof. Vivian Liska (Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp), and reflections by Prof. Arthur Cools (University of Antwerp) and Ass. Prof. Willem Styfhals (KU Leuven).