The Jewish Intellectual Tradition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Kadish ◽  
Michael A. Shmidman ◽  
Simcha Fishbane
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Jewish Intellectual

The Jewish Intellectual Tradition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN KADISH ◽  
MICHAEL A. SHMIDMAN ◽  
SIMCHA FISHBANE
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Jewish Intellectual

‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science

1997 ◽  
pp. 79-118
Author(s):  
Yaacov Shavit
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Positive Signal ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on how ‘Greek wisdom’ is treated in Jewish culture. It shows that the term ‘Greek wisdom’ had a long history, and the maskilim (men of letters and thinkers) turned to it to seek support and legitimization for their views in the Jewish intellectual tradition. The term ‘wisdom’ was the main — perhaps even the only positive signal with which the Jews marked part of the Greek-Hellenistic culture, and the one with the longest and most consecutive history; it was generally identified with Greek wisdom. It meant the heritage and legacy of classical antiquity and Hellenism in philosophy, sciences, and the arts; it also symbolized a lost Jewish heritage and the proper relationship between the Jewish world and the world of the Gentiles. Moreover, wisdom became a multipurpose and multivalent concept that in the intellectual utopia of the maskilim was intended to serve as a bridge and intermediary between the Jewish intellectual tradition and the outside world.

The Laws of Hammurabi

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Barmash
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

The Laws of Hammurabi is one of the earliest law codes, dating from the eighteenth century BCE Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It is the culmination of a tradition in which scribes would demonstrate their legal flair by composing statutes on a repertoire of traditional cases, articulating what they deemed just and fair. The book describes how the scribe of the Laws of Hammurabi advanced beyond earlier scribes in composing statutes that manifest systematization and implicit legal principles. The scribe inserted the statutes into the structure of a royal inscription, skillfully reshaping the genre. This approach allowed the king to use the law code to demonstrate that Hammurabi had fulfilled the mandate to guarantee justice enjoined upon him by the gods, affirming his authority as king. This tradition of scribal improvisation on a set of traditional cases continued outside of Mesopotamia, influencing biblical law and the law of the Hittite Empire and perhaps shaping Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of intellectual tradition. It became a classic text and the subject of formal commentaries, marking a Copernican revolution in intellectual culture.

Naming an Unnamable God

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
The Moment

One of the most crucial sources for divulging knowledge about the nature of God and his relationship with his creation are the various names by which God is identified throughout the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic corpus. This chapter examines those names, especially the Tetragrammaton, based on God’s revelation to Moses recorded in Exodus of the name “I will be who I will be.” Close readings of the biblical narratives as interpreted by all the Jewish intellectual traditions, including rabbinic/midrashic, rationalist/philosophical, and kabbalistic/mystical, reveal a God of “becoming” rather than the philosophical God of “being.” The encounter and dialogue, between Moses and God, out of which the name emerges is the moment that transformatively envisages all future divine–human encounters.

Paul Valéry’s Vitalism: Life and Entropy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Life Sciences ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Inanimate Matter ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Unique Status ◽  
Mathematics And Physics

Abstract Paul Valéry’s interest in the life sciences is an important yet little-studied aspect of his work. Although Valéry was known primarily as a reader of mathematics and physics, his fascination with the life sciences has often been ignored or regarded as mere curiosity. This article examines Valéry’s writing on the subject of biology by focusing on the unique status he accords to the notion of life. In both his theoretical and poetic writings, Valéry addresses the notion of life as a category endowed with distinct ontological attributes — as a phenomenon that encompasses a distinct type of order. Life, as an independent force, is capable of resisting and even reversing the principle of entropy, which Valéry regards as a universal tendency towards degradation and dispersion that affects all inanimate matter. Valéry’s thought thus exhibits a complicated yet clear affinity with the intellectual tradition known as vitalism. The article discusses this affinity by analysing the presence of vitalist ideas and imagery in Valéry’s corpus, giving special attention to his most expressly ‘biological’ work, the essay ‘L’Homme et la coquille’ (‘The Man and the Seashell’).

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