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Looks at some of the implications for Jewish philosophy in general of taking this PoP approach to the justification of practices. It is argued that Jewish philosophy has been presented as having a critical function. In a Rortian manner, it is an anti-system building, lending its voice to the anti-theory lobby, at least in the practical sphere. Theory does not, however, become obsolete, but is rather undertaken as an interpretative enterprise, leading to the idea of Jewish philosophy as interpretation.

This chapter explores medieval Jewish philosophy by focusing primarily on Maimonides. Maimonides implicitly develops a peaceful reading of Judaism by accentuating a universalism predicated on the notion that all human beings can achieve intellectual perfection. Moreover, Maimonides mitigates the violence of the Bible by insisting that the Canaanites and Amalekites had to be offered terms of peace before Israel waged war on them, a condition absent in the biblical text. Maimonides also depicts the messianic period as a time in which there will be peace among the nations. According to a second reading, Maimonides implicitly encourages violence. He still saw the Jewish people as being superior to other nations. He expressed hostility to Christianity and Islam. He endorsed violence against the Canaanites and Amalekites, despite the terms of peace offered to them. And while he characterizes the messianic era as peaceful, it is a peace that comes about through war.

This chapter analyzes the debate on the existence of Jewish philosophy. It suggests that the most important motives of its course of argumentation remain grounded in the specificity of the context from which they arise and contends that arguments for or against the existence of a category of Jewish philosophy can run to the intention of the debate. This chapter also argues that the discourse on what Jewish philosophy is highlights philosophy's own problematic stand when it comes to the task of examining its own premises.

This introductory chapter provides a background of al-Andalus. Within the Islamic world, “al-Andalus” (Islamic Spain) constituted a distinct cultural unit with its own unique characteristics. The borders of this territory changed over time, following the advance of the Christian conquests. Toward the end of the second/eighth century, al-Andalus covered most of the peninsula (today's Spain as well as Portugal), while in the eighth/fifteenth century, the shrunken Emirate of Granada alone, at the southernmost tip of the peninsula, remained in Muslim hands. This book's period of interest extends mainly from the tenth to the sixth/twelfth century, when Jews living under Islam in the Iberian Peninsula played a significant cultural role, and when philosophy flourished in al-Andalus. The philosophy and theology that were produced in this cultural unit developed as a continuation of speculative thought in the Islamic East and remained in constant dialogue with it. Yet the philosophical and theological works of Andalusian authors are not servile replicas of Maghreban or Eastern sources. They have a distinctive character that, while showing their different sources, displays their originality and their Andalusian provenance.

Prior to Avicenna, philosophy in Arabic-speaking lands was identified with a Neoplatonized Aristotelianism; however, after him it was Avicenna’s philosophical vision that came to dominate, which itself incorporated the best of ancient Greek science and philosophy with the Islamic religion, law, and theology. Even among later Jewish and Christian philosophers, Avicenna was to have a significant influence. This chapter, thus, considers some of the more notable instances of Avicenna’s influence both on Judeo-Islamic philosophical theology and Christian scholasticism. The chapter gestures at Avicenna’s influence on such luminaries within the intellectual circles of Muslims and Jews as the great Islamic theologian al-Ghazālī, as-Suhrawardī, the founder of the Illuminationist school, and the renowned Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, while Christian philosophers in the Latin West inspired by Avicenna include Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the history of the development of Jewish philosophy and Jewish thought. It suggests that critical reflections on “Jewish philosophy” are as old as its modern use and that the widening of the scope from “philosophy” to “thought” made it possible to develop a more inclusive approach to Jewish tradition's significance for the emergence of modern philosophy. This volume argues against the presumption of Jewish philosophy as a separate and independent entity and category of philosophy and contends that it should be considered as representing a differential move that engages critically with philosophy, which it seeks to complicate, differentiate, and enrich.

The introductory chapter describes Joseph Albo’s biography and historical context to provide background for an analysis of his work. The structure and content of his popular Sefer ha-‘Iqqarim is discussed, as well as his philosophical influences. Criticism of Albo as an unoriginal philosopher is described in an effort to refute the scholarly consensus and argue for the philosophical ingenuity embedded within Albo’s individual homilies. The explicit objective of Albo’s Sefer ha-‘Iqqarim was to provide an explication of dogma to defend the authenticity of Judaism and create a uniform set of Jewish doctrine for his persecuted coreligionists. Albo integrates individual biblical homilies that convey theological lessons within his discussions of principles of faith which provide a vivid and accessible understanding of complex philosophical ideas. Several of Albo’s exegetical analyses focus on free choice, which emerges as a conceptual scheme throughout his work, demonstrating its significance during a period of religious coercion.

This chapter discusses the need to consider Jewish philosophy as a discipline and not merely as a category. It highlights the interrelationship between the emergence of modern philosophy and the invention of Jewish thought as its critical supplement and argues that the dialogue between Jewish and German philosophers is one of the most creative force fields in the development of modern philosophy. This chapter also discusses the contribution of Hermann Levin Goldschmidt in highlighting the enduring importance of the legacy of modern Jewry's sustained reasoning “out of the sources of Judaism” and in making the contributions of Jewish philosophers of the past newly legible as a creative dialogue crucially important to the project of critical philosophy.

This chapter analyzes how the attraction to Neoplatonism unfolded in al-Andalus in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries. Until the middle of the twelfth century, philosophy in al-Andalus was almost entirely dominated by Neoplatonism. It ranged from mystical philosophy and Sufi-inspired pietism, via compositions dedicated to the occult, to comprehensive, sometimes highly abstract Neoplatonist systems. In itself, this Neoplatonist near-monopoly in al-Andalus is hardly surprising: different shades of Neoplatonism were also prevalent in the Islamic East in this period. Remarkable, however, are the relative parts played by Muslims and Jews in Andalusian philosophy. Within the overarching Andalusian Neoplatonism, one can clearly detect a two-pronged development, the two branches of which progress in the same direction. They do so, however, at a drastically different pace and with different levels of self-confidence. Thus, beginning with Isaac Israeli in the tenth century, Jewish philosophy emerged in an uninterrupted vigorous tradition. In contrast, since Ibn Masarra in the first half of the tenth century, Muslim al-Andalus witnessed a decidedly sporadic growth of Neoplatonism, one that alternately ducked and surfaced. It was the political map of al-Andalus, and the different ways it impacted on Muslims and Jews, that determined this difference.

This chapter briefly explores the question of whether or not there is a Jewish philosophy. It first attempts to define what is meant by the phrase specifically and reviews extant scholarship on the subject. The chapter reveals a variety of possibilities as to the nature of the subject. At the one extreme there is David Neumark with his History of Philosophy among the Jews, then Salomon Munk and the generality of students with their histories of Jewish philosophy. The intermediate position is occupied by the histories of the Jewish philosophy of religion. After exploring this wealth of literature in some detail, the chapter goes on to explore the role of Judaism within the context of this question and presents reasons as to why the question of a Jewish philosophy is important in the first place.

It is customary to begin studies devoted to the topic of Jewish philosophy by defining what exactly this term, concept, or even discipline is. Unless done so in a pejorative sense, we tend not to speak of Jewish mathematics, Jewish physics, or Jewish sociology. All the nouns in these compounds imply a discipline that, for the most part, is agreed upon by all who engage in it; yet, when the particularist adjective “Jewish” is added, the result is nonsense. If we are not comfortable with coupling particularist adjectives and universally recognized disciplines, why do we insist on thinking that it is okay to refer to something as “Jewish philosophy”? Can one philosophize from a Jewish perspective? Does Judaism provide some sort of insight into philosophy that those who are not Jewish lack? Implicit in the term “Jewish philosophy,” not surprisingly, is a great paradox.

This chapter uses the figure of Maimonides as its case study, and his writings as a prism with which to re-imagine the creation of a canon of medieval Jewish philosophy in the nineteenth century. The quest to create a good, rational, and liberal medieval Jew has created an unstable terrain upon which stands the edifice of Jewish philosophy. This chapter seeks to deconstruct our inherited narrative of the history of medieval Jewish philosophy by retelling it from a different perspective. The medieval Jewish philosophers, while claiming rationalism as their gold standard, produced a totalitarian version of Judaism, one predicated on what they considered to be an authentic and pristine past.