Download or read book The Virtue Ethics of Levi Gersonides written by Alexander Green and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that Levi Gersonides articulates a unique model of virtue ethics among medieval Jewish thinkers. Gersonides is recognized by scholars as one of the most innovative Jewish philosophers of the medieval period. His first model of virtue is a response to the seemingly capricious forces of luck through training in endeavor, diligence, and cunning aimed at physical self-preservation. His second model of virtue is altruistic in nature. It is based on the human imitation of God as creator of the laws of the universe for no self-interested benefit, leading humans to imitate God through the virtues of loving-kindness, grace, and beneficence. Both these models are amplified through the institutions of the kingship and the priesthood, which serve to actualize physical preservation and beneficence on a larger scale, amounting to recognition of the political necessity for a division of powers.
Download or read book Jewish Virtue Ethics written by Geoffrey D. Claussen and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is good character? What are the traits of a good person? How should virtues be cultivated? How should vices be avoided? The history of Jewish literature is filled with reflection on questions of character and virtue such as these, reflecting a wide range of contexts and influences. Beginning with the Bible and culminating with twenty-first-century feminism and environmentalism, Jewish Virtue Ethics explores thirty-five influential Jewish approaches to character and virtue. Virtue ethics has been a burgeoning field of moral inquiry among academic philosophers in the postwar period. Although Jewish ethics has also flourished as an academic (and practical) field, attention to the role of virtue in Jewish thought has been underdeveloped. This volume seeks to illuminate its centrality not only for readers primarily interested in Jewish ethics but also for readers who take other approaches to virtue ethics, including within the Western virtue ethics tradition. The original essays written for this volume provide valuable sources for philosophical reflection.
Download or read book Edinburgh Critical History of Middle Ages and Renaissance Philosophy written by Andrew LaZella and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A team of leading international scholars examine Middle Ages and Renaissance philosophy from the perspective of themes and lines of thought that cut across authors, disciplines and national boundaries, opening up new ways to conceptualise the history of this period within philosophy, politics, religious studies and literature.
Download or read book Plato s Republic in the Islamic Context written by Alexander Orwin and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The goal of the book is to provide an anthology covering the reception of Plato's Republic in the Islamic world, with a focus on Averroes's outstanding but underappreciated commentary on Plato's most famous dialogue. Despite the publication of Ralph Lerner's excellent English translation almost 50 years ago, very few scholarly studies have been written on it. We propose the following chapters, keeping in mind that some might be changed owing to collaboration with contributors"--
Download or read book Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages written by T. M. Rudavsky and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: T. M. Rudavsky presents a new account of the development of Jewish philosophy from the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth, viewed as part of an ongoing dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. Her aim is to provide a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, focusing on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought. This is reflected in particular philosophical controversies across a wide range of issues in metaphysics, language, cosmology, and philosophical theology. The book illuminates our understanding of medieval thought by offering a much richer view of the Jewish philosophical tradition, informed by the considerable recent research that has been done in this area.
Download or read book Averroes and Averroism in Medieval Jewish Thought written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Andalusian Muslim philosopher Averroes (1126–1198) is known for his authoritative commentaries on Aristotle and for his challenging ideas about the relationship between philosophy and religion, and the place of religion in society. Among Jewish authors, he found many admirers and just as many harsh critics. This volume brings together, for the first time, essays investigating Averroes’s complex reception, in different philosophical topics and among several Jewish authors, with special attention to its relation to the reception of Maimonides.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics written by Thomas Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers historical and topical chapters on the whole range of medieval ethical thought in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophy.
Download or read book Power and Progress written by Alexander Green and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosopher and biblical commentator Joseph Ibn Kaspi (1280–1345) was a provocative Jewish thinker of the medieval era whose works have generally been overlooked by modern scholars. Power and Progress by Alexander Green is the first book in English to focus on a central aspect of his work: Ibn Kaspi's philosophy of history. Green argues that Ibn Kaspi understood history as guided by two distinct but interdependent forces: power and progress, both of which he saw manifest in the biblical narrative. Ibn Kaspi discerned that the use of power to shape history is predominantly seen in the political competition between kingdoms. Yet he also believed that there is historical progress in the continuous development and dissemination of knowledge over time. This he derived from the biblical vision of the divine chariot and its varied descriptions across different biblical texts, each revealing more details of a complex, multifaceted picture. Although these two concepts of what drives history are separate, they are also reliant upon one another. National survival is dependent on the progress of knowledge of the order of nature, and the progress of knowledge is reliant on national success. In this way, Green reveals Ibn Kaspi to be more than a mere commentator on texts, but a highly innovative thinker whose insights into the subtleties of the Bible produced a view of history that is both groundbreaking and original.
Download or read book Gersonides Afterlife written by Ofer Elior and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-06-29 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gersonides’ Afterlife is the first full-scale treatment of the reception of one of the greatest scientific minds of medieval Judaism: the philosopher-scientist Levi ben Gershom (1288–1344). The papers collected here describe his multifarious impact from the fourteenth century to present-day religious Zionism.
Download or read book Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy written by Steven M. Nadler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of its kind, this essay collection offers an extensive examination of Spinoza's relationship to medieval Jewish philosophy.
Download or read book Happiness in Premodern Judaism written by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and published by Hebrew Union College Press. This book was released on 2003-12-31 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is not common to think that Jews were interested in happiness or that Judaism has anything to say about happiness. On the contrary, the concept of happiness was a central concern of Jewish thinkers. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson shows that rabbinic Judaism regarded itself primarily as a prescription for the attainment of happiness, and that the discourse on happiness captures the evolution of Jewish intellectual history from antiquity to the seventeenth century. These claims make sense if one understands happiness as human flourishing on the basis of Aristotle's thought in the Nichomachean Ethics. Linking virtue, knowledge, and well-being, Aristotle's analysis of happiness can be traced in Jewish understanding of human flourishing as early as the Greco-Roman world, but the fusion of Greek and Judaic perspectives on happiness reached its zenith in in the Middle Ages in the thought of Moses Maimonides and his followers. Even the controversies about Maimonides' ideas could be viewed as discussions about the meaning of happiness and the way to attain it within Judaism. Much of this book, then, concerns the reception of Aristotle's Ethics in medieval Jewish philosophy. This book shows how a certain notion of happiness reflects the intellectual culture of a given period, including cultural exchanges among Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Demonstrating the discourse on happiness as a dramatic interplay between Wisdom and Torah, between philosophy and religion, between reason and faith, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson presents, to specialists and non-specialists alike, a fascinating tour of Jewish intellectual history.
Download or read book Heidegger s Being and Time and the Possibility of Political Philosophy written by Mark Blitz and published by Paul Dry Books. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) challenged earlier thinking about the basic structures of human being, our involvement in practical affairs, and our understanding of history, time, and being. Blitz clarifies Heidegger’s discussions, offers alternative analyses of phenomena central to Heidegger’s argument, and examines the connection between Heidegger’s position in Being and Time and his support of Nazism. As Blitz explains in his new afterword, “When I began to study Martin Heidegger nearly fifty years ago, my goal was to explore the meaning of Being and Time for political philosophy. I wished to discover what it might offer for clarifying the grounds on which the basic concepts and alternatives of political philosophy rest. Would a close reading of it help us understand the questions of justice, freedom, the common good, natural rights, virtue, human happiness, and the philosophic life? These questions are as important today as they were then.” Although Blitz often questions and criticizes Heidegger’s views, he presents them with scrupulous care and clarity. Specialists and students in the areas of political theory, phenomenology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy will find Heidegger’s Being and Time & the Possibility of Political Philosophy an invaluable resource.
Download or read book Jewish Philosophy written by Norbert Samuelson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-09-19 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the history of Jewish philosophy, from the formation of the Hebrew Scriptures. This book is intended for courses in Jewish philosophy, as well as for more general courses in religious thought, Judaism, and philosophy. It highlights the Hebrew Scriptures, the Midrash, medieval rabbinic commentaries, and modern works of Jewish theology.
Download or read book Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age without Plato written by Yehuda Halper and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Goldstein-Goren Book Award from the Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Yehuda Halper examines Jewish depictions of Socrates and Socratic questioning of the divine among European and North African Jews of the 12th-15th centuries. Without direct access to Plato, their understanding of Socrates is indirect, based on legendary material, on fragmentary quotations from Plato, or on Aristotle. Out of these sources, Jewish authors of this period formed two distinct views of Socrates: one as a wise, ascetic, monotheist, and the other as a vocal skeptic. The latter view has its roots in Plato's Apology where Socrates describes his divine mandate to question all knowledge, including knowledge of the divine. After exploring how this and similar questions arise in the works of Judah Halevi and the Hebrew Averroes, Halper traces how such open-questioning of the divine arises in the works of Maimonides, Jacob Anatoli, Gersonides, and Abraham Bibago.
Download or read book The Coming Community written by Giorgio Agamben and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unquestionably an influential thinker in Italy today, Giorgio Agamben has contributed to some of the most vital philosophical debates of our time. "The Coming Community" is an indispensable addition to the body of his work. How can we conceive a human community that lays no claim to identity - being American, being Muslim, being communist? How can a community be formed of singularities that refuse any criteria of belonging? Agamben draws on an eclectic and exciting set of sources to explore the status of human subjectivities outside of general identity. From St Thomas' analysis of halos to a stocking commercial shown in French cinemas, and from the Talmud's warning about entering paradise to the power of the multitude in Tiananmen Square, Agamben tracks down the singular subjectivity that is coming in the contemporary world and shaping the world to come. Agamben develops the concept of community and the social implications of his philosophical thought. "The Coming Community" offers both a philosophical mediation and the beginnings of a new foundation for ethics, one grounded beyond subjectivity, ideology, and the concepts of good and evil. Agamben's exploration is, in part, a contemporary and creative response to the work of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, and, more historically, Plato, Spinoza, and medieval scholars and theorists of Judeo-Christian scriptures. This volume is the first in a new series that encourages transdisciplinary exploration and destabilizes traditional boundaries between disciplines, nations, genders, races, humans, and machines. Giorgio Agamben currently teaches philosophy at the College International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata (Italy). He is the author of "Language and Death" (Minnesota, 1991) and "Stanzas" (Minnesota, 1992). This book is intended for those in the fields of cultural theory, literary theory, philosophy.
Download or read book Vico and Plato written by Nancy Du Bois Marcus and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the four authors Vico states that he had always before him - Plato, Tacitus, Bacon, and Grotius - the most famous has also been the most neglected. Vico and Plato is the first book-length study of Vico's relationship to his first author, Plato. This study traces the enigmatic references to Plato and the Platonists in Vico's major works. Seen in the light of its Platonic dimension, Vico's New Science forges a middle way between the extremes of dogmatism and skepticism in epistemology as well as Stoicism and Epicureanism in metaphysics and moral philosophy. What emerges from placing Vico's thought in the context of «the family of Plato» - from Socrates and Plato to Augustine and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - is a portrait of Vico as a Platonic philosophical hero for our own time.
Download or read book Major World Religions written by Lloyd V. J. Ridgeon and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses upon those religions that continue to demand the attention of the Western world.
