Hugo Bergmann

Hugo Bergmann (Prague, 1883 – Jerusalem, 1975) was a philosopher born in Prague in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a central figure in the intellectual life of the emerging State of Israel. His work belongs to the neo-Kantian and phenomenological traditions, and his study of Bernard Bolzano made him a reference point for research in logic and the philosophy of mathematics.

In Prague he took part in the salon around Berta Fanta, where he knew Franz Kafka from school and Max Brod, whom he drew into Zionism before 1910. In 1920 he emigrated with his wife, Else Fanta, to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. He directed the Jewish National Library from 1920 to 1935, where he brought Gershom Scholem to head the Judaica division, and later became a professor and dean at the Hebrew University. Together with Martin Buber he founded Brit Shalom, which advocated a binational solution for coexistence between Jews and Arabs.

In his reflections on causality he argued that the closer one comes to the elements of nature or to the components of the individual, the less tenable strict determinism becomes, leaving room for decisive personal factors and freedom. His influence endures in Israeli philosophy, in the study of Jewish thought and in the history of cultural Zionism.