Conclusions

2018 ◽  
pp. 413-416
Author(s):  
Eitan P. Fishbane
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Narrative Imagination ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
History Of

IN THIS BOOK I have studied the Zohar as a work of literature, seeking to understand the ways in which this corpus should be appreciated not only as a masterpiece of Jewish thought, theology, and exegesis but also as a great achievement of the Jewish narrative imagination. Presenting a poetics and morphology of zoharic storytelling, I have approached the text less from the vantage point of the history of ideas, and more through the phenomenology of literary forms. In short, I have set out to read the ...

L. A. Beaurline and the Illusion of Completeness

PMLA ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Ejner J. Jensen ◽  
L. A. Beaurline
Keyword(s):  
Human Activities ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Overall Design ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment

Scholarship, like most human activities, has its fashions. One mode very much in the ascendant at the moment is that which concerns itself with the relation between literary forms and other intellectual structures in a given era ; its method might be described as a combination of the history of ideas with a sort of formalism. L. A. Beaurline's recent article on Ben Jonson, in its design and strategy, illustrates this approach.1 The overall design of such a paper may be indicated as follows: the scholar describes a concept for which he claims wide intellectual acceptance; next, he shows how this concept may be traced in certain literary works. After this initial demonstration, his strategy consists primarily of moving between specific works of literature and other manifestations of the concept to show how each class illuminates the other and how each substantiates the other's status. The end of all this activity is not merely increased understanding of the temper of an age, nor is it merely a clearer view of the works under discussion; ideally, it is both.

Idleness

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kearney
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Human Labor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought

This essay examines the role that the specter of idleness played in the ongoing transformation of labor in England during the late medieval and early modern periods. It begins by tracing an historical shift in Christian conceptions of labor through a knotty genealogy of ideas about labor and idleness that extends from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The essay then turns to an early sixteenth-century text that is not often considered in either medieval or early modern histories of Christian thought about labor: Thomas More’sUtopia(1516). The essay contends thatUtopiais fundamentally shaped by More’s meditation on labor and idleness and that that meditation opens the utopian text out toward a vexed history of ideas concerning human work that extends forward from the fourteenth century. With its idiosyncratic but historically resonant meditation on human labor, More’sUtopiarepresents a particularly useful vantage point from which to address the ongoing transformation of Christian conceptions of work in late medieval and early modern England.

Pragmatism and Jewish Thought: Eliezer Berkovits’s Philosophy of Halakhic Fallibility

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-135
Author(s):  
Nadav Berman Shifman
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
History Of

Abstract In classical American pragmatism, fallibilism refers to the conception of truth as an ongoing process of improving human knowledge that is nevertheless susceptible to error. This paper traces appearances of fallibilism in Jewish thought in general, and particularly in the halakhic thought of Eliezer Berkovits. Berkovits recognizes the human condition’s persistent mutability, which he sees as characterizing the ongoing effort to interpret and apply halakhah in shifting historical and social contexts as Torat Ḥayyim. In the conclusion of the article, broader questions and observations are raised regarding Jewish tradition, fallibility, and modernity, and the interaction between Judaism and pragmatism in the history of ideas.

scholarly journals Beyond the Scope of Philosophy and Kabbalah

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 160
Author(s):  
Tzahi Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

The turn of the thirteenth century is a formative period for the historiography of medieval Jewish thought. These years saw the dissemination of the Hebrew translations of the Maimonidean corpus, alongside the simultaneous appearance of the first Kabbalistic treatises, in the same geographical regions. This concurrent appearance led scholars to examine Jewish theological discourse mainly via two juxtaposed categories: “Philosophy” and “Kabbalah”. In this paper, I will return to that formative moment in order to demonstrate that exploring Jewish history of ideas beyond the scope of these categories could be very advantageous in improving our understanding of both categories and the Jewish theological inner-dynamics in this period as a whole. I will draw attention to a contemporary theological attitude, which is neither Kabbalistic nor philosophical, which I will define as a medieval form of Jewish binitarianism. My argument in this paper will be composed of two parts—first, outlining the nature of this medieval Jewish theological trend, and second, showing how a precise definition of this belief within its context alters crucial notions and understandings in the common scholarly historiography of medieval Jewish thought.

Religious Truth

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Discourse ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Concrete Case ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Faith Tradition ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Theological Thinking ◽  
Do So

Truth informs much of the self-understanding of religious believers. Accordingly, understanding what we mean by 'truth' is a key challenge to interreligious collaboration. This book considers what is meant by truth in classical and contemporary Jewish thought, and it explores how making the notion of truth more nuanced can enable interfaith dialogue. The chapters take a range of approaches: some focus on philosophy proper, others on the intersection with the history of ideas, while others engage with the history of Jewish mysticism and thought. Together they open up the notion of truth in Jewish religious discourse and suggest ways in which upholding a notion of one's religion as true may be reconciled with an appreciation of other faiths. By combining philosophical and theological thinking with concrete case studies, and discussion of precedents and textual resources within Judaism, the volume proposes new interpretations of the concept of truth, going beyond traditional exclusivist uses of the term. A key aim is to help Jews seeking dialogue with other religions to do so while remaining true to their own faith tradition: in pursuit of this, the volume concludes with suggestions of how the ideas presented can be applied in practice.

Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menachem Kellner
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Moses Maimonides ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Feature ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals

This is a book on history of ideas which traces the development of creed formation in Judaism from its inception with Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) to the beginning of the sixteenth century when systematic attention to the problem disappeared from the agenda of Jewish intellectuals. The dogmatic systems of Maimonides, Duran, Crescas, Albo, Bibago, Abravanel, and a dozen lesser-known figures are described, analysed, and compared. Relevant texts are presented in English translation. For the most part these are texts which have never been critically edited and translated before. Among the theses defended in the book are the following: that systematic attention to dogma qua dogma was a new feature in Jewish theology introduced by Maimonides (for reasons examined at length in the book); that the subject languished for the two centuries after Maimonides’ death until it was revived in fifteenth-century Spain in response to Christian attacks on Judaism; that the differing systems of dogma offered by medieval Jewish thinkers reflect not different conceptions of what Judaism is, but different conceptions of what a principle of Judaism is; and that the very project of creed formation reflects an essentially Greek as opposed to a biblical/rabbinic view of the nature of religious faith and that this accounts for much of the resistance which Maimonides’ innovation aroused.

Is it Possible to Write a History of Jewish Thought?

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-300
Author(s):  
Dov Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
Modern Jewish Thought

AbstractIn the past few years, traditional scholars and would-be innovators have been locked in controversy over the scholarly study of Qabbalah. The field of Jewish philosophical thought, however, has witnessed no such upheavals. This is not to say that no progress has been made: Texts are being rescued from oblivion; philosophical systems are constantly under review. However, little work has been done in the direction of a new scholarly awareness of the history of Jewish thought wholly outside the area of mysticism. This situation is clearly mirrored in various attempts to write and document the history of Jewish philosophy. In what follows I describe various aspects of current efforts to write the history of ideas in the area of medieval and modern Jewish thought and speculate on what might have been. Without intending to exhaust the topic of the historiography of Jewish ideas, I would like to propose some new goals for future research into Jewish rationalism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.

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