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Taking its point of departure from a curious remark of Franz Kafka concerning the comparability of the Great Wall of China and the Tower of Babel, Peter Fenves' chapter investigates a series of often-overlooked passages in the work of such exemplary German-Jewish writers as Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, and Gershom Scholem, in addition to Kafka. The general aim of the chapter consists in sketching a schema of cultural connectivity in which the concept of connection is neither subsumed under the category of cause nor dependent on evidence of reciprocity. The author seeks to show a range of experiments in cultural connectivity, whereby certain Jewish messianic traditions are reflected through the text of the Daodejing and the figure of Laozi.

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-0635-8_11

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