The Art of Ambiguity: The Karaites as Portrayed in Judah Halevi's Book of the Kuzari

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-166
Author(s):  
Marzena Zawanowska
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Cairo Geniza ◽  
Main Fault ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
Founding Myth

On the basis of a letter preserved in the Cairo Geniza, Judah Halevi is assumed to have originally composed his influential book of religious thought, the Kuzari, as a polemical response to a Karaite convert. However, he neither perceived nor described the Karaites as heretics. In fact, his depiction of the adherents of this alternative to Rabbanite Judaism and their origins so appealed to the Karaites that some of them believed that the author had been a (crypto-)Karaite himself, and his reconstructions of the movement's history became appropriated as the founding myth of Karaism. This paper attempts to discern Halevi's attitude toward the Karaites, and his perception of their main fault. It also addresses the fundamental question of his purpose in writing the Kuzari.

Pre-modern Scriptures in Postmodern Times

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 293-315
Author(s):  
Diana Walsh Pasulka
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Localized Analysis ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Paul Griffiths

A contemporary movement in Christian religious thought advocates for the recovery of pre-modern exegetical practices. Wesley Kort, Paul Griffiths, and Catherine Pickstock are among several theorists who support a return to pre-modern reading and writing practices as an answer to the crisis of modernity. In the context of scripture studies, the works of Kort, Griffiths, and Pickstock can be understood as examples of analyses that focus on the performative elements of scripture. Their stress on memorization, recitation, and reading reflect the influence of studies of the performative function of scriptures by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and William Graham. Kort, Griffiths, and Pickstock take this line of argument even further, by arguing that is it the very loss of scripture as performance that has inaugurated a loss of the sacred in modernity. This development thus tackles the philosophical issues at stake between secularism and theology and moves beyond the localized analysis of the meaning of specific scriptures. The following analysis places this development in an historical and philosophical context by revealing the theoretical precedents that each scholar draws upon, specifically the later writings of Martin Heidegger.

Metode Tafsir Muhammad Abduh dan Muhammad Rasyid Ridha dalam Tafsîr Al-Manâr

TAJDID ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
Ahmad Tholabi Kharlie
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Muslim Scholars ◽  
Religious Counseling

Tafsîr al-Manar is one of the most popular exegesis of the Qur`anic studies. Al-Manar magazine, which contains this interpretation periodically, namely in the early 20th century, is widespread throughout the Islamic world and has an important role in enlightening thoughts and religious counseling. The influence of Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, along with his student, Sayyid Muhammad Rasyîd Ridhâ, on the development of religious thought in the Islamic world, thus, cannot be underestimated.This article is a result of a previous study of the Qur’an exegesis method of the two prominent Muslim scholars, Muhammad Abduh and Muhammad Rashid Ridha. The study reveals two main conclusions, they are (1) personally both Muhammad Abduh and Muhammad Rashid Ridha are independent who have extensive, well-known, and versatile insight and knowledge, have personality traits that are steady, honest, brave, passionate, intelligent, determined, and a number of other advantages, like other leading commentator (2) Al-manâr book, with its superiorities, is well recognized as a monumental work that broadly contributes to the development of Islamic thought, particularly in modern exegesis field. In regard to exegesis of Qur’anic legal verses, though it is not a special legal book, Al-manâr is able to explain deeply and comprehensively the Qur’anic legal verses just like the other legal exegesis works.

A Scientific Search for Altruism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Daniel Batson
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Altruistic Motivation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Past Half

This book provides an example of how the scientific method can be used to address a fundamental question about human nature. For centuries—indeed for millennia—the egoism–altruism debate has echoed through Western thought. Egoism says that the motivation for everything we do, including all of our seemingly selfless acts of care for others, is to gain one or another self-benefit. Altruism, while not denying the force of self-benefit, says that under certain circumstances we can care for others for their sakes, not our own. Over the past half-century, social psychologists have turned to laboratory experiments to provide a scientific resolution of this human nature debate. The experiments focused on the possibility that empathic concern—other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need—produces altruistic motivation to remove that need. With carefully constructed experimental designs, these psychologists have tested the nature of the motivation produced by empathic concern, determining whether it is egoistic or altruistic. This series of experiments has provided an answer to a fundamental question about what makes us tick. Framed as a detective story, the book traces this scientific search for altruism through the numerous twists and turns that led to the conclusion that empathy-induced altruism is indeed part of our nature. It then examines the implications of this conclusion—negative implications as well as positive—both for our understanding of who we are as humans and for how we might create a more humane society.

Holiness in Jewish Thought

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Life

Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. “Holiness” seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature. It offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development of the Jewish tradition. They think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

Religion and Toleration from the Enlightenment to the Post-Secular Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Forst
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the classical question of the relationship between enlightenment and religion. In doing so, the chapter compares Jürgen Habermas's thought to that of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. For, although Habermas undoubtedly stands in a tradition founded by Bayle and Kant, he develops a number of important orientations within this tradition and has changed his position in his recent work. The chapter studies this change to understand Habermas's position better. It also draws attention to a fundamental question raised by the modern world: what common ground can human reason establish in the practical and theoretical domain between human beings who are divided by profoundly different religious (including antireligious) views?

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurens van Apeldoorn ◽  
Robin Douglass
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
State 1

This volume investigates the complex and rich intersections between Thomas Hobbes’s political and religious thought. Hobbes is often credited with being one of the first great theorists of the modern state,1 but the state he theorized, as the title of his most famous work announces, was a commonwealth ecclesiastical and civil. One of the main goals of ...

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