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Law, Reason, and Morality in Medieval Jewish Philosophy: Sadia Gaon, Bahya ibn Pakuda, and Moses Maimonides

Jonathan Jacobs

This is a study of the key features of the moral psychology and metaethics of three important medieval Jewish philosophers, Saadia Gaon, Bahya ibn Pakuda, and Moses Maimonides. They are selected ... More

This is a study of the key features of the moral psychology and metaethics of three important medieval Jewish philosophers, Saadia Gaon, Bahya ibn Pakuda, and Moses Maimonides. They are selected because of the depth and subtlety of their thought and because of their relevance to central, enduring issues in moral philosophy. The book examines their views of freedom of the will, the virtues, the rationality of moral requirements, and the relation between rational justification and revelation. Their appropriations of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought are explicated, showing how their theistic commitments make crucial differences to moral psychology and moral epistemology. All three thinkers developed rationalistic philosophies and sought to show how Judaism does not include doctrines in conflict with reason. Maimonides receives the fullest attention, given that he articulated the most systematic and influential accounts of the main issues. While explicating the main claims and arguments of these thinkers, the book also shows the respects in which their thought remains relevant to several important issues and debates in moral philosophy. These thinkers' views of ‘the reasons of the commandments’ (in Torah) include resources for a sophisticated moral epistemology of tradition. The points of contact and contrast between medieval Jewish moral thought and the practical wisdom approach to moral theory and also natural law approaches are examined in detail.Less

The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched

Paul Woodruff

The Necessity of Theater examines the whole art of theater, which teaches us how best to watch and be watched, and is as necessary to human life as language. We practice the art of ... More

The Necessity of Theater examines the whole art of theater, which teaches us how best to watch and be watched, and is as necessary to human life as language. We practice the art of theater on the formal stage, but also in sports events, weddings, and ceremonies of all kinds. The book begins by defining the art in a broad way, so as to include as many kinds of theater as possible across world cultures. After defining theater, The Necessity of Theater examines in turn each of the main elements of its two main components: the art of watching and that of being watched. Performers practice the art of making their actions worth watching. This means that they should pay attention to such elements as action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space. All of these are covered in the book. Audiences practice the art of paying attention to the actions before them. To do that they need to know how to find events worth watching. A good audience is emotionally engaged through one of the many forms of empathy that are distinguished in this book, one of which leads to human wisdom. Plato's ancient attack on theater is right in that theater cannot teach us transcendent truths, but theater does each us about ourselves.Less

Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City: Political Philosophy in the Early Stoa

Katja Maria Vogt

The book is a comprehensive study of early Stoic political philosophy. It considers the conceptions of the cosmic city and the common law as central to the Stoics' theory, and discusses how these ... More

The book is a comprehensive study of early Stoic political philosophy. It considers the conceptions of the cosmic city and the common law as central to the Stoics' theory, and discusses how these conceptions are integral to Stoic thought on reason, wisdom, and life in agreement with nature. Accordingly, the book devotes detailed attention to central areas of Stoic philosophy, such as the theory of affiliation (oikeiôsis), appropriate and perfect action, epistemology, and theology. The book discusses competing interpretations of Stoic cosmopolitanism, arguing that the ideal city of the early Stoics is the cosmos and thus is already in existence. All human beings live in the cosmic city, but only the wise and the gods are its citizens. The book devotes equal attention to the interpretation of the Stoics' conception of law. To live by the law, it is argued, is to live by nature, in a way which relies on understanding what is of value to human beings, rather than on following a set of rules. Against the view that early Stoic thought about these issues is best described as exploring an ideal for individual agents, the book argues that the Stoics are offering a theory which, while deeply connected with the core concerns of Stoic ethics, can be considered a genuine contribution to political philosophy.Less

The Reflective Life: Living Wisely With Our Limits

Valerie Tiberius

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? ... More

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, or should you do lots of research? Should you make lists of pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather, these questions are addressed to the first person point of view, to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we're aiming for. To answer them, this book focuses on the process of living one's life from the inside, rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology, this book argues that to live well, we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences, to have perspective on our successes and failures, and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further, we need to know when to think about our values, character, and choices, and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom, the book maintains, is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical; to be realistic; to examine life when reflection is appropriate, but not when we should lose ourselves in experience.Less

De Doctrina Christiana

Saint Augustine

R. P. H. Green (ed.)

This is a completely new translation of the work that Augustine wrote to guide the Christian on how to interpret Scripture and communicate it to others, a kind of do‐it‐yourself manual for ... More

This is a completely new translation of the work that Augustine wrote to guide the Christian on how to interpret Scripture and communicate it to others, a kind of do‐it‐yourself manual for discovering what the Bible teaches and passing it on. Begun at the same time as his famous Confessions, but not completed until some thirty years later, it gives fascinating insight into many sides of his thinking, not least on the value of the traditional education of which the Confessions gives such a poor impression. Augustine begins by relating his theme to the love (and enjoyment) of God and the love of one's neighbour, and then proceeds to develop a theory of signs with which he can analyse the nature of difficulties in scripture. In studying unknown signs, Augustine finds a place for some disciplines enshrined in traditional culture and the school curriculum but not all; as for ambiguous signs, he carefully explores various kinds of problems, such as that of distinguishing the figurative from the literal, and has recourse to the hermeneutic system of the Donatist Tyconius. In the fourth and last book, he discusses how to communicate scriptural teaching, drawing on a lifetime of experience but also making notable use of the writings on rhetoric of Cicero, the classical orator. The translation is equipped with an introduction that discusses the work's aims and circumstances, outlines its contents and significance, commenting briefly on the manuscripts from which the Latin text – which is also provided in this volume – is derived, and also brief explanatory notes. There is a select bibliography of useful and approachable modern criticism of this important work.Less

Molière: Reasoning With Fools

Michael Hawcroft

Molière wrote, directed, and starred in comedies for public and court audiences in 17th-century France. He is perennially successful, but perennially subject to critical controversy: do his plays aim ... More

Molière wrote, directed, and starred in comedies for public and court audiences in 17th-century France. He is perennially successful, but perennially subject to critical controversy: do his plays aim to do more than make audiences laugh? This book focuses on a group of characters in the plays, the interpretation of whose role lies at the heart of any answer to this question. For over a century critics have called them raisonneurs. They are characters who engage with some of Molière's most foolish protagonists, but they have been variously interpreted as either exponents of wisdom or as bores who are subject to ridicule. This book argues that new light can be shed on the words and actions of these characters, and on the tenor of the plays as a whole by detailed contextual analysis of the structures of dramaturgy and comedy in which they are deployed. They emerge neither as the mouthpieces of common sense nor as pompous fools, but as thoughtful, witty, and resourceful friends of the foolish protagonists whom Molière himself played. The book takes into account what is known of the performance styles of Molière's troupe of actors as well as engaging closely with the text of the plays and the critical debate to date. Some of Molière's most teasingly problematic plays are held up to fresh scrutiny, including L'Ecole des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, and Le Malade imaginaire.Less

Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament: The Ordering of Life in Israel and Early Judaism

Joseph Blenkinsopp

This new edition has been considerably expanded to take in work on the legal and didactic material published since the 1980s. It gives more attention to the different literary genres used by Israel's ... More

This new edition has been considerably expanded to take in work on the legal and didactic material published since the 1980s. It gives more attention to the different literary genres used by Israel's sages, and to the social settings in which the material came into existence and circulated. References to relevant archaeological data have also been brought up to date. The main purpose of the book, however, remains the same – to trace the course of two related key streams of tradition, law, and wisdom throughout the history of Israel in the biblical period, and to demonstrate their essential lines of continuity with classical Jewish thought and early Christian theology.Less

First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea

Paul Woodruff

Americans have an unwavering faith in democracy and are ever eager to import it to nations around the world. But how democratic is our own “democracy”? If you can vote, if the majority rules, if you ... More

Americans have an unwavering faith in democracy and are ever eager to import it to nations around the world. But how democratic is our own “democracy”? If you can vote, if the majority rules, if you have elected representatives—does this automatically mean that you have a democracy? In this eye-opening look at an ideal that we all take for granted, this book offers some surprising answers to these questions. Drawing on classical literature, philosophy, and history—with many intriguing passages from Sophocles, Aesop, and Plato, among others—the book enters the world of ancient Athens to uncover how the democratic impulse first came to life. The heart of the book isolates seven conditions that are the sine qua non of democracy: freedom from tyranny, harmony, the rule of law, natural equality, citizen wisdom, reasoning without knowledge, and general education. The book concludes that a true democracy must be willing to invite everyone to join in government. It must respect the rule of law so strongly that even the government is not above the law. True democracy must be mature enough to accept changes that come from the people. And it must be willing to pay the price of education for thoughtful citizenship. If we learn anything from the story of Athens, the book concludes, it should be this—never lose sight of the ideals of democracy.Less

Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz

John Marenbon

From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the ‘Problem of Paganism’, which this book identifies and examines for the ... More

From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the ‘Problem of Paganism’, which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. This book explores how writers — philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travellers such as Las Casas and Ricci — tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, the book provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.Less

The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations

Carol A Newsom

From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of ... More

From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of the divine speeches, this book provides an intense encounter with the aesthetic resources of Hebrew verbal art. In this brilliant new study, the author illuminates the relation between the aesthetic forms of the book and the claims made by its various characters. Her innovative approach makes possible a new understanding of the unity of the book of Job; she rejects the dismantling of the book by historical criticism and the flattening of the text that characterizes certain final form readings.Less

Instruction and Imagery in Proverbs 1-9

Stuart Weeks

Proverbs 1-9 is often characterized as an anthology of materials, loosely related to the ‘instructions’ composed in Egypt and elsewhere, and possibly originating in an educational setting. This book ... More

Proverbs 1-9 is often characterized as an anthology of materials, loosely related to the ‘instructions’ composed in Egypt and elsewhere, and possibly originating in an educational setting. This book argues that it is, instead, a sophisticated poetic work, with a basic unity of composition and message. Beginning with an examination of the Egyptian instructions, which are themselves poetic and testamentary rather than pedagogical, the study explores the way in which Proverbs 1-9 combines conventions of the instruction genre with a figurative representation of the reasons for instruction. Drawing on a traditional association of foreign women with the corruption and apostasy of Jewish youths-which was given added impetus by the post-exilic controversy over mixed marriages-Proverbs 1-9 sets a foreign seductress in opposition to a personified figure of Wisdom. The two compete for those youths who are uncommitted, and who can only hope to recognize which invitation they should accept if they have already received and internalized instruction. In this context, instruction is associated with the Torah, and is the prerequisite for the wisdom by which God's will can be recognized. These ideas, and elements of the imagery, persist into later Jewish literature, but the linking of wisdom with traditional concepts in Jewish piety goes back to Proverbs 1-9 itself.Less