Judaic Sources and Western Thought

Judaic Sources and Western Thought
Author: Jonathan Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2011-06-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191618330

Judaic Sources and Western Thought: Jerusalem's Enduring Presence explores the significance and enduring relevance of Judaic roots and sources of important European and Western moral and political ideas and ideals. The volume focuses on the distinct character of Judaic thought concerning moral value, the individual human being, the nature of political order, relations between human beings, and between human beings and God. In doing so, it shows how Judaic thought contains crucial resources for engaging some of the most important issues of moral and political life. The currents of thought that have shaped the so-called 'Judeo-Christian' tradition involve diverse perspectives and emphases. The essays in this volume bring into relief the distinctly Judaic origins of many of them and explicate how they remain valuable resources for moral and political thought. These are not essays in Jewish intellectual history; rather, their purpose is to clarify the conceptual resources, insights, and perspectives grounded in Judaic texts and thought. To realize that purpose the essays address important topics in philosophical anthropology, exploring the normative dimensions of human nature and fundamental features of the human condition. The essays speak to scholars and students in several disciplines and areas of study. These include moral philosophy, religion, philosophy of religion, ethics, Jewish intellectual history, comparative religion, theology, and other areas.The volume draws the work of ten scholars into a coherent whole, reflecting the connections between fundamental insights and commitments of Judaic thought and ideals.

Judaic Sources and Western Thought

Judaic Sources and Western Thought
Author: Jonathan Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2011-06-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199583153

This volume focuses on the distinct character of Judaic thought concerning moral value, the individual human being, the nature of political order, relations between human beings, and between human beings and God. The work of ten scholars, it draws on moral philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, Jewish intellectual history, and theology.

The Hebrew Republic

The Hebrew Republic
Author: Eric Nelson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2010-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674050587

According to a commonplace narrative, the rise of modern political thought in the West resulted from secularization—the exclusion of religious arguments from political discourse. But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book’s central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson’s work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light. Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse.

The Name of God in Jewish Thought

The Name of God in Jewish Thought
Author: Michael T Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317372123

One of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century’s linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in – the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the articulation of human relationships and dialogue. The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God. Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion.

Reasoning After Revelation

Reasoning After Revelation
Author: Steven Kepnes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2018-03-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0429977468

In Reasoning After Revelation: Dialogues in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy, three preeminent Jewish scholars debate the form and meaning of Postmodern Jewish Philosophy after the failures of the great secular ideologies of modern western civilization. Emulating the methods as well as the premises of Talmudic argumentation, the authors present their responses as dialogues joined by a common love of the rabbinic tradition of commentary and interpretation of the Bible. The composers, Peter Ochs, Robert Gibbs, and Steven Kepnes, contemplate where Judaism has beenand where it is headed: on what basis will modern Jews now reason about the meaning of Jewish existence and the relevance of age-old Biblical traditions to the moral and social crises of the twenty-first century? The dialogues are further enriched by a set of responses from leading Jewish philosophers: Elliot R. Wolfson, Edith Wyschogrod, Almut Sh. Bruckstein, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, and Susan E. Shapiro. }Postmodern Jewish thinkers understand their Jewishness differently, but they all share a fidelity to what they call the Torah and to communal practices of reading and social action that have their bases in rabbinic interpretations of biblical narrative, law, and belief. Thus, postmodern Jewish thinking is thinking about God, Jews, and the worldwith the texts of the Torahin the company of fellow seekers and believers. It utilizes the tools of philosophy, but without their modern premises. Moreover, this form of Jewish thinking provides resources for philosophically disciplined readings of scripture by Jews, Christians, and Moslems seeking alternatives to the reductive discourses of secular academia, on the one hand, and to antimodern religious fundamentalisms, on the other. Postmodern Jewish Philosophy aims to utilize rabbinic modes of thinking to provide a model for ethical and religious thought in the twenty-first century, one which moves beyond the dichotomy of relativism and imperialism and is simultaneously definite and pluralistic. In Reasoning After Revelation: Dialogues in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy, three preeminent Jewish scholars debate the form and meaning of Postmodern Jewish Philosophy after the failures of the great secular ideologies of modern western civilization. Emulating the methods as well as the premises of Talmudic argumentation, the authors present their responses as dialogues joined by a common love of the rabbinic tradition of commentary and interpretation of the Bible. The composers, Peter Ochs, Robert Gibbs, and Steven Kepnes, contemplate where Judaism has beenand where it is headed: on what basis will modern Jews now reason about the meaning of Jewish existence and the relevance of age-old Biblical traditions to the moral and social crises of the twenty-first century? The dialogues are further enriched by a set of responses from leading Jewish philosophers: Elliot R. Wolfson, Edith Wyschogrod, Almut Sh. Bruckstein, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, and Susan E. Shapiro.

Judaism in Contemporary Thought

Judaism in Contemporary Thought
Author: Agata Bielik-Robson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014-04-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317811607

The central aim of this collection is to trace the presence of Jewish tradition in contemporary philosophy. This presence is, on the one hand, undeniable, manifesting itself in manifold allusions and influences – on the other hand, difficult to define, rarely referring to openly revealed Judaic sources. Following the recent tradition of Lévinas and Derrida, this book tentatively refers to this mode of presence in terms of "traces of Judaism" and the contributors grapple with the following questions: What are these traces and how can we track them down? Is there such a thing as "Jewish difference" that truly makes a difference in philosophy? And if so, how can we define it? The additional working hypothesis, accepted by some and challenged by other contributors, is that Jewish thought draws, explicitly or implicitly, on three main concepts of Jewish theology, creation, revelation and redemption. If this is the case, then the specificity of the Jewish contribution to modern philosophy and the theoretical humanities should be found in – sometimes open, sometimes hidden – fidelity to these three categories. Offering a new understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology, this book is an important contribution to the fields of Theology, Philosophy and Jewish Studies.

On Justice

On Justice
Author: Lenn Evan Goodman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0300049439

What is fair? How and when can punishment be legitimate? Is there recompense for human suffering? How can we understand ideas about immortality or an afterlife in the context of critical thinking on the human condition? In this book L. E. Goodman presents the first general theory of justice in this century to make systematic use of the Jewish sources and to bring them into a philosophical dialogue with the leading ethical and political texts of the Western tradition. Goodman takes an ontological approach to questions of natural and human justice, developing a theory of community and of nonvindictive yet retributive punishment that is grounded in careful analysis of various Jewish sources--biblical, rabbinic, and philosophical, His exegesis of these sources allow Plato, Kant, and Rawls to join in a discourse with Spinoza and medieval rationalists, such as Saasidah and Maimonides, who speak in a very different idiom but address many of the same themes. Drawing on sources old and new, Jewish and non-Jewish, Goodman offers fresh perspectives on important moral and theological issues that will be of interest to both Jewish and secular philosophers.

Rethinking Jewish Philosophy

Rethinking Jewish Philosophy
Author: Aaron W. Hughes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2014-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199356815

Rather than assume that the terms "philosophy" and "Judaism" simply belong together, Aaron W. Hughes explores the juxtaposition and the creative tension that ensues from their cohabitation. He examines the historical, cultural, intellectual, and religious filiations between Judaism and philosophy.

Jewish Philosophy and Western Culture

Jewish Philosophy and Western Culture
Author: Victor J. Seidler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2007-11-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0857713949

This is one of the first textbooks to try to set the entire discipline of Jewish philosophy in its proper cultural and historical contexts. In so doing, it introduces the vibrant Jewish philosophical tradition to students while also making a significant contribution to inter-religious dialogue. Victor J Seidler argues that the dominant Platonic tradition in the West has led to a form of cultural ethics which asserts false superiority in its relationships with others. He offers a critical reappraisal of the philosophical underpinnings of this western Christian culture which for so long has viewed Judaism with hostility. Examining the work of seminal Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Buber, Mendelsohn, Herman Cohen, Leo Baeck, Levinas, Rosenzweig and others, the author argues for a code of ethics which prioritises particular and personal moral responsibility rather than the impersonal and universal emphases of the Greek tradition. His provocative and original overview of Jewish philosophy uncovers a vital and neglected tradition of thought which works against the likelihood of a Holocaust recurring.