Introduction

Medieval Jewish philosophy is in large measure an interpretation in philosophical terms of beliefs, concepts, and texts bequeathed to medieval Jews by the Bible and by rabbinic literature. Thus, much of the agenda of medieval Jewish philosophy is set by ideas featured in the Bible, Talmud, and midrash: God, creation, prophecy, providence, miracles, commandments, and more. For this reason, although there is a need here to present the biblical and rabbinic background to medieval Jewish philosophy, the discussion will largely be an exposition of one aspect of medieval Jewish philosophy itself: namely, its ambition to provide an exegesis of biblical and rabbinic texts, along with explications of their concepts, that would demonstrate the value of philosophy in earlier Judaism and would unearth rigorous philosophical propositions contained in the ancient works. Examples abound. Saadya Gaon (882–942), head of the academy in Babylonia and the father of medieval Jewish philosophy, and Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides) (1288–1344), an eminent philosopher, logician, and scientist, authored biblical commentaries – Gersonides’ cover a very substantial part of the Bible – that are controlled by a view of the book as shot through with philosophical truth and as standing in agreement with the conclusions of human reason. While the less illustrious rationalist Joseph ibn Kaspi (1279–1340) authored a commentary on the Bible that is controlled not by the assumption of an underlying philosophical truth, but instead by a historicist view, he is an exception among medieval rationalists.

32 SHOFAR THE PLACE OF ETHICS IN MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHYTHE CASE OF SAADIA GAON1 Menachem Kellner Menahem Marc Kellner is a professor at Haifa University. He is the author of a number of significant studies on medieval Jewish philosophy, especially on Maimonides and Gersonides. Editor of Contemporary Jewish Ethics, he is author of Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought, and most recently ofMaimonides on Human Perfection. This study examines the place of ethics as a distinct discipline in medieval Jewish philosophy, using as an example the case of Saadia Gaon. Before I turn to the question itself, however, a considerable amount of preliminary discussion is necessary. This involves the definition of ethics as a philosophic discipline, as well as the question of the relation between ethics and religion in general and between ethics and Judaism in particular. This last, of course, raises the question of the relation between ethics and halakhah. In these areas I do not plan to settle any issues, only to raise them in order to explicate the problematic of Jewish ethics which forms the background against which medieval discussions must be seen. These matters having been described, it then makes sense to sketch in the historical background, touching briefly on the place of ethics in Bible and Talmud, the periodization of the discussion of ethics in Judaism, and, finally, the various approaches to ethics which we find in the medieval period. These matters will take up the first part of this essay. In the second part of this study I will examine the way in which ethics as a distinct discipline was dealt with by Saadia Gaon, the first of the medieval Jewish philosophers. What, then, is ethics? The Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes among three different but related uses of the term: "Ethics" may signify "(1) a general pattern or 'way of life,' (2) a set of rules of conduct or 'moral code,' 1This essay originally appeared in ed. B. L. Sherwin, The Solomon Goldman LectLUes, Volume Five (Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1990) and is reprinted with permission. Volume 9, No.1 Fall1990 33 and (3) inquiry about ways of life and rules of conduct.,,2 The first two of these uses must be distinguished from the third. The first two relate to actual moral behavior, and it is customary to distinguish between two types of discussion concerning actual moral behavior: accounts of moral behavior (called "descriptive ethics") and prescriptive statements about how we ought actually to behave ("normative ethics"). The third use is more properly philosophical (or so, at least, it is taken to be by most academic philosophers ) and seeks, not to make moral judgments, but to analyze them. This form of inquiry is often called "meta-ethics." It will be noted that in the preceding paragraph I have distinguished different uses of the term "ethics" but have not yet answered the question posed at the beginning of the paragraph, "What, then, is ethics?" All I have done so far is to define "ethics" in terms of moral behavior or discussions concerning moral behavior. But what is moral behavior? Questions of ethics and morality are, in the first place, questions of value. Within the realm of evaluative issues the domain of ethics is determined by the particular values it seeks to describe, inculcate, or analyze. These values are generally conceded to be good and evil, right and wrong. What sorts of things can be good and evil, right and wrong? One obvious candidate is works of art. After all, we often speak of good paintings and bad poetry. But there is the rub; "bad poetry," yes, but not "evil poetry." Evaluations of works of art, then, aesthetic judgments, are surely evaluations and share that characteristic with ethical evaluations but are withal distinct from them. This should further help to narrow down the domain of ethics. There seem to be two sorts of things which we evaluate when engaged in ethical (not meta-ethical) evaluation: human behavior and human character. Most ethicists relate the two (Kant is an important exception) and emphasize the former over the latter. Not all human behavior falls under the domain of ethicsj if it did, psychologists, anthropologists, etc. would...

INTRODUCTION The question whether God exists and what his attributes are is not a philosophical concern in either the Hebrew Bible or in the classical rabbinic texts from the Mishnah to the Talmud. To be sure, the Bible includes texts bearing witness to a deep crisis of the conception of a providential God interacting with human beings, most importantly the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. It even reports that “the fool says in his heart: ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). Whereas the Athenian in Plato’s Laws responds to such a denial with the first extant proof for the existence of the Divine, no such attempt is recorded in the Bible however. Passages abound, moreover, which taken literally contradict crucial features of the conception of God held by medieval Jewish philosophers – God’s incorporeality, for example, or God’s internal unity. Jewish philosophical discussions of God usually arise at those intellectual intersections where natural theology – starting with the speculations of the pre-Socratics about the archē of nature – encounters the representations of God contained in the Jewish sources. It is important to stress that this encounter would be decidedly misconstrued as an encounter between the God of philosophy and the God of religion. Aristotle, for example, takes both the worship and the contemplation of God to be the highest human good. Conversely, for Jewish philosophers like Philo of Alexandria in late antiquity, Maimonides in the Middle Ages, and Spinoza in the early-modern period, the ideal of philosophy and the ideal of religion coincide in the intellectual love of God, much of which consists in reflecting on the issues discussed in the present chapter.

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 598-601 Sylvie Anne Goldberg. La Clepsydre: Essai sur la pluralité des temps dans le judaïsme. Paris: Albin Michel, 2000. Pp. 398. Tamar M. Rudavsky. Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Pp. xviii + 287. Ironically, the year 2000 of the Christian Era began with two important books by Jewish scholars on the concept of time among Jews. One book is La Clepsydre by Sylvie Anne Goldberg of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; the other is Time Matters by Tamar M. Rudavsky of Ohio State University. Both books have clocks on the cover: La Clepsydre catches our eye with a 19th century synagogue clock from Pisek, Bohemia ; Time Matters features the sundial atop the old Immigrant Shelter building in Jerusalem. Both books are concerned with the relationship between our subjective consciousness of time and our objective clocks. Both also raise the question of whether there is a particularly Jewish consciousness of time. However, the two books are very different in their scope and their approaches . La Clepsydre is subtitled "an essay on the plurality of times in Judaism," and seeks to understand the different sorts of consciousness of time found in Judaism. To this end, it consults biblical and rabbinic sources, and refers to medieval and modern texts only to the extent that they clarify or elaborate on those sources. Its approach is that of cultural history, or what is called in France anthropologie historique. Time matters is subtitled "time, creation, and cosmology in medieval Jewish philosophy," and seeks to explicate the main statements of medieval Jewish philosophers on these abstruse physical and metaphysical topics. Its approach is that of the history of philosophy. Goldberg's book explores the mentalité of the Jewish masses; Rudavsky's explores the minds of the Jewish philosophic elite. La Clepsydre is divided in two parts: Part I discusses Ie temps conté (pp. 37-152) and Part II discusses Ie temps décompté (pp. 153-330). The suggestive distinction between these two kinds of time is that between narrated time and measured time, recounted time and counted time, or time told and time tolled. The distinction is roughly similar to the Aristotelian one between continuous and discrete time (cf. pp. 93-97), except that Ie temps conté is not conceived of as an empty or pure duration, but as a human story. Part I asks, "What is Jewish time?" or "What is the story that constitutes time for the Jews?" Part II discusses temporal, eschatological, historiographical, and mathematical scansions of time. Just as a poem may be scanned, that is, divided into feet, accented and unaccented syllables, TWO BOOKS ON TIME—HARVEY599 caesurae, etc., so Ie temps conté can be scanned, that is, divided into eras, years, months, days, holy days, etc. If Ie temps conté is a poem, Ie temps décompté is its meter. The poem is about human beings and God, creation and redemption, enslavement and liberation, expulsion and return, rejoicing and suffering, love and awe. The meter is both lunar and solar; it is marked not only by days, months, and years, but also by portions of the Torah , Hanukkah candles, the offering of the first sheaf of the barley harvest, and so forth. Many of its accented syllables have to do with the exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Mount Sinai, or the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem first by the Babylonians and then the Romans. In Jewish time, Goldberg argues, past, present, and future are intertwined, and comprise one perpetual narrative, much as the stanzas of a great poem are intertextually bound together, and cannot be understood apart from one another. Goldberg is a perceptive and eloquent observer of Jewish lore and customs, and La Clepsydre is a fascinating essay. Time Matters is divided into six chapters: "Time and Cosmology in Athens and Jerusalem" (pp. 1-21); "Time, Creation, and Cosmology" (pp. 2357 ); "Time, Motion, and the Instant: Jewish Philosophers Confront Zeno" (pp. 59-94); "Temporality, Human Freedom, and Divine Omniscience" (pp. 95-148); "Prelude to Modernity" (pp. 149-173); and...

Reviewed by: Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works Hannah Kasher Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works, by Herbert A. Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 567pp. $45.00. The publication of a comprehensive biography of Maimonides by a scholar of Herbert Davidson's caliber is surely a significant literary event. Given the tremendous range of disciplines in which Maimonides wrote—Halakhist, philosopher, and physician—the writing of his biography is a task that requires multi-disciplinary skills. In view of its extensive scope, this brief review cannot possibly do justice to the book and deal exhaustively with its many aspects. We must therefore be content with a survey of the chapters of the book and its main innovations, with a few further brief comments. The first chapter is a detailed account of Maimonides' life. Davidson has examined the sources for his life story and contends with the positions of various scholars in regard to disputed points. Thus, for example, he concludes that [End Page 201]there is no real basis for the theory that Maimonides converted to Islam, as believed today by some important authorities; similarly, there is no evidence that his family suffered Almohad persecution (p. 29). Davidson also touches on another scholarly bone of contention when he asserts that "nothing whatsoever known of Maimonides' activities supports the hypothesis that he served as head of the Jews in Egypt" (p. 62). Chapter 2 is concerned with Maimonides' education. Davidson discusses the different disciplines in which he was instructed and offers the intriguing and challenging argument that, contrary to Maimonides' own recommendations as to the most desirable course of studies, he himself devoted most of his efforts and time to the study of rabbinics and medicine rather than philosophy. Subsequent chapters present detailed analyses of Maimonides' works, subject by subject, in the approximate chronological order of their composition. Three chapters are devoted to the rabbinic works: Maimonides' commentaries on the Mishnah and the Talmud, Sefer ha-Mitzvot, Mishneh Torah, the reception of Mishneh Torah, and the other Halakhic writings, including his responsa. Two further chapters deal with Maimonides' philosophical works. In that context Davidson argues that the Treatise on Logic( Millot ha-Higgayon) was probably not written by Maimonides; this conjecture will undoubtedly spark scholarly debate. He goes on to present a sharp critique of the well-known views of Leo Strauss, who saw the need to decipher the supposed esoteric dimension of The Guide for the Perplexed, and of Shlomo Pines' view of Maimonides as an agnostic: "Strauss further gives us to understand that [Maimonides] . . . not only saw himself as non-Jewish. He did not believe that God exists. . . . Both theses—that Maimonides was an atheist and that he was an agnostic—transform the Guide for the Perplexedinto one of the most grotesque books ever written" (pp. 401–402). The next chapter is devoted to Maimonides' medical works. Among other things, Davidson is dubious as to the authenticity of the Epistle on the Length of Life. In Chapter 9, "Miscellaneous Writings," Davidson expresses similar doubts as to the Epistle on Religious Persecutionand the Epistle in Opposition to Astrology. In the last, concluding chapter, he sums up this account of Maimonides, highlighting his complex character: philosopher and rabbi, a man inclined to severity who nevertheless softened his attitudes in time, conscious of his stature but accessible to the public. Whatever his "official" position, he was "head of the Jews not only in Egypt but throughout the medieval Jewish world." Speaking in terms of analogy, one might say that even while Davidson's book does not provide an explicit characterization of Maimonides, he is nevertheless defined in terms of attributes of action and privative attributes—attributes of action that describe Maimonides' literary achievements, privative [End Page 202]attributes that deny the Maimonidean authorship of certain writings hitherto attributed to the great sage of Fustat, and others that reject attempts to define him as a radical personality. In this context, some of Davidson's contentions merit attention. I shall treat them as they appear in the book. 1. Analyzing Maimonides' familiarity with the thought of the Kalamschool, he writes: "The words 'I have heard' . . . sound as...

The treatment of mystical marriage among seventeenth-century religious writers is a broad subject – the first half of the century witnessed the publication of numerous commentaries, sermon collections, translations and verse paraphrases of Biblical mystical marriage texts, particularly the Song of Songs. This chapter is not long enough to consider all of these texts, or to draw generalisations about mystical marriage that cover a cross-section of early modern thinkers. Instead, the men discussed here are all moderate or Puritan theologians and prose writers; their work suggests the intellectual context from which the women poets of this book approached mystical marriage. For the most part, these 'blockish Adams' (as Lady Anne Southwell might have called them) understood mystical marriage very differently from their female contemporaries, viewing that 'misterie, perhaps too deepe' as fundamentally marked by inequality and obedience, not companionship and respect.

Simply in quantitative terms, scholarship in medieval Jewish philosophy runs a distant third to its counterparts in Christian and Islamic philosophy. Nevertheless, work over the past ten years shows that the scope of medieval Jewish philosophy is expanding with respect to the study of authors as well as issues.

Efros' "Studies in Medieval Jewish Philosophy"

This chapter describes the extensive work of medieval Jewish philosophy. It survives in fragmentary form in a single manuscript. The chapter focuses exclusively upon distinct colorings, which set this work apart from any other writing of the medieval period that the author has seen. It deals with two issues that combine to define the authors theological orientation: panentheism and a polemic against dualism. The chapter dwells longest on the second of these, mainly because it offers the most promising leads for locating treatise in historical context. The author's discussion of astronomical matters, much like his treatment of the one as well as other issues that must be left out of the chapter, is reminiscent of Levi ben Gersom. His long discourse on the notion of unity, and his quest to uphold the one, transcendent, creator God, leads him to investigate the subject of motion. Keywords: anti-dualistic polemic; astronomy; medieval jewish philosophy; panentheism

This article explores the significance of Judah Halevis Kuzari – the classic work of particularism and ethnocentrism in medieval Jewish philosophy – for the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. Specifically, it argues that Rosenzweigs conception of the corresponding messianic tasks of Judaism and Christianity in the final section of The Star of Redemption was based on an idiosyncratic interpretation of Halevis parable of the seed (Kuzari 4.23). By interpreting Rosenzweigs writings against the backdrop of his affinity for the Kuzari, this study clarifies some of the most vexing and contested elements of Rosenzweigs philosophy of Judaism. In particular, it provides a new interpretation of his provocative and much-discussed characterization of the Jewish people as a »blood-community« and argues that The Star, far from affirming the truth and equal standing of Christianity alongside Judaism, offers a radical vision of Judaisms superiority over it.

The Midrash ha-hokhmah ('The exposition of science') is a thirteenth-century Hebrew encyclopedic text that aims to divu lge contemporary science and philosophy among Jews. Its author is the rather unknown Judah ben Solomon ha-Kohen of Toledo. Originally drafted in Arabic in Toledo, the Hebrew version of the compllmlon, produced In Italy, dates from c. 1247. It comprises a survey of (i) Aristotelian philosophy based on Averroes' Middle Commentaries and Epitomes: (ii) Euclid's geometry: (iii) astronomy based on Ptolemy and a-Bitrudji: (iv) Ptolemy's astrology, as well as some treatises on Jewish religious subjects. Only a few portions of the text have been edited so far. In the last quarter of the past century the composition started to attract serious scholarly attention. The article is concerned with the section on Aristotle's natural philosophy. It aims to outline the importance of this text for the study of the reception of Aristotle in medieval Jewish philosophy by looking into the motivation underlying the Midrash ha-Hokhmah; its background; its manner of compilation and the attitude displayed by the author vis-a-vis Aristotle's philosophy.

Moses Maimonides' contribution to the biopsychosocial approach in clinical medicine

In its treatment of imagination as understood by medieval Jewish philosophers, modern scholarship has tended to neglect the intersection of animal fables and political thought. This paper examines several Aesopian themes in Greek philosophy and medieval Jewish philosophic literature, especially the tales composed by Berakhiah ha-Naqdan, in order to highlight the attention lavished by these premoderns on the faculty of imagination. It is argued that, according to the philosophers, human perfection requires the cultivation of both intellect and imagination. It is also shown that Pierre Hadot’s notion of “spiritual exercises” as constituting philosophy is fruitfully applicable to the genre of fable.

Arthur A. Cohen (1928-1987) was born into an affiuent Jewish family in New York City. A gifted student, he received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1946 and his M.A. three years later from the same institution. At Chicago he began to take a serious academic interest in Jewish thought and therefore he enrolled, in 1950, to do a master’s degree in medieval Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. After two years at the Seminary, he made a life-altering decision that his future lay outside academic life and in the world of publishing. Accordingly, in 1951 he founded Noonday Press; in 1956 he created Meridien Books; and from 1960 to 1974 he founded and ran the Ex Libris Publishing Company. He also served as editor in chief of Holt, Rinehart and Winston. During all this time, however, his interest in Jewish thought remained strong, and in 1962 he published his significant study of modern Jewish philosophy, The Natural and Supernatural Jew, in which he declares himself a decidedly “supernatural”Jew. In addition, he began to write novels, many with a Jewish theme. Over a period of sixteen years he published The Carpenter Years (1967), In the Days of Simon Stern (1973), A Hero in His Time (1976), Acts of Theft (1980), and An Admirable Woman (1983), which won a National Jewish Book Award. Near the end of his life he also returned directly to Jewish thought through his work in connection with the valuable collection of essays on Jewish theology that he co-edited with Paul Mendes Flohr, Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought. The book appeared just after his death in 1987.

In a classic paper, Leon Roth asked »Is there a Jewish Philosophy?« to which he replied No. In this paper, focusing on the case of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, I argue, first, that we cannot characterize Jewish philosophy in terms of the identity, religious or secular, of its philosophers, in terms of a language in which it was written or conducted, in terms of a particular style or school, or in terms of content: as philosophy specifically of Judaism the religion. I then go on to argue that all the medieval Jewish philosophers were doing was Philosophy, although I sketch two different conceptions of what a philosophical interpretation of Judaism and the Jews might be: a Saadyanic model and Maimonides’. However, even though there is no kind of philosophy called »Jewish philosophy« as opposed to simply »Philosophy,« I argue that we can identify (medieval) Jewish philosophy as a philosophical »tradition,« a causally related sequence of philosophers who influence and are influenced by each other and who engage in a distinguishable dialogue or conversation among themselves. In the last part of the paper, I critically discuss various recent arguments that purport to show that there is something paradoxical, self-contradictory, and philosophically illegitimate about the very idea of a Jewish philosophy.