New Directions in Jewish Philosophy

by Hughes, Aaron W.

• ISBN13: 9780253221643
• ISBN10: 0253221641
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Breaking with strictly historical or textual perspectives, this book explores Jewish philosophy as philosophy. Often regarded as too technical for Judaic studies and too religious for philosophy departments, Jewish philosophy has had an ambiguous position in the academy. These provocative essays propose new models for the study of Jewish philosophy that embrace wider intellectual arenas-including linguistics, poetics, aesthetics, and visual culture-as a path toward understanding the particular philosophic concerns of Judaism. As they reread classic Jewish texts, the essays articulate a new set of questions and demonstrate the vitality and originality of Jewish philosophy.

Author Biography

Aaron W. Hughes is Associate Professor of History and the Gordon and Gretchen Gross Professor in the Institute of Jewish Thought and Heritage at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is author of The Texture of the Divine (IUP, 2004) and The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy (IUP, 2008).

Elliot R. Wolfson is Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. He is author of Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism and Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Charting an Alternative Course for the Study of Jewish Philosophy	p. 1
The Past Confronts the Present, The Present Confronts Its Past: Challenging Canonicity
Screening the Canon: Levinas and Medieval Jewish Philosophy	p. 19
Precursorship and the Forgetting of History: Franz Rosenzweig and Saadya Gaon on the Memory of Translation	p. 52
Text Beyond Text: Emphasizing Vision and The Visual
Light Does Not Talk but Shines: Apophasis and Vision in Rosenzweig's Theopoetic Temporality	p. 87
Textual Body Landscapes and the Artist's Geometry of Talmud: Atelier-Work with the Materiality of Scripture
Others Confront Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Philosophy Absorbs its Others
Construction of Animals in Medieval Jewish Philosophy	p. 175
Sharing Secrets: Inter-confessional Philosophy as Dialogical Practice	p. 205
Ethical-Political Universality Out of the Sources of Judaism: Reading Hermann Cohen's 1888 Affidavit in and Out of Context	p. 229
New Takes on Old Problems
What is the Sophist? Who is the Rabbi?	p. 253
Forging a New Righteous Nation: Maimonides' Midrashic Interweave of Verse and Text	p. 286
Aesthetics and the Infinite: Moses Mendelssohn on the Poetics of Biblical Prophecy	p. 326
List of Contributors	p. 355
Index	p. 357
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.