Maimonides' Political Thought
Maimonides' Political Thought

Author: Howard Kreisel

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1438409672

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents a series of studies that cover a wide range of issues relating to Maimonides' political thought, including the basis for political and ethical knowledge; the notion of the "good"; imitatio Dei; apparent contradictions in his position on ethics; the conception of God that he attempts to inculcate to Jewish society at large; and his novel approach to the love and fear of God. Taking into account his medieval Aristotelian and Jewish sources, these explorations also deal with some of the opposing considerations that Maimonides had to balance in developing and presenting his positions on such subjects as the nature of divine law, the static vs. dynamic dimensions of Mosaic law, prophetic and rabbinic authority within Judaism, the reasons for the commandments, and martyrdom. A close reading of the manner in which he formulates his views, in light of their literary and intellectual-historical contexts, allows us a better glimpse of how profound and subtle Maimonides is as a thinker and an educator.

Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides
Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides

Author: Kenneth Hart Green

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-05-16

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0226307018

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides, Kenneth Hart Green explores the critical role played by Maimonides in shaping Leo Strauss’s thought. In uncovering the esoteric tradition employed in Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, Strauss made the radical realization that other ancient and medieval philosophers might be concealing their true thoughts through literary artifice. Maimonides and al-Farabi, he saw, allowed their message to be altered by dogmatic considerations only to the extent required by moral and political imperatives and were in fact avid advocates for enlightenment. Strauss also revealed Maimonides’s potential relevance to contemporary concerns, especially his paradoxical conviction that one must confront the conflict between reason and revelation rather than resolve it. An invaluable companion to Green’s comprehensive collection of Strauss’s writings on Maimonides, this volume shows how Strauss confronted the commonly accepted approaches to the medieval philosopher, resulting in both a new understanding of Maimonides and a new depth and direction for his own thought. It will be welcomed by anyone engaged with the work of either philosopher.

Maimonides
Maimonides

Author: Moshe Halbertal

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-11-24

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1400848474

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A comprehensive and accessible account of the life and thought of Judaism's most celebrated philosopher Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to his life and work, revealing how his philosophical sensibility and outlook informed his interpretation of Jewish tradition. Moshe Halbertal vividly describes Maimonides's childhood in Muslim Spain, his family's flight to North Africa to escape persecution, and their eventual resettling in Egypt. He draws on Maimonides's letters and the testimonies of his contemporaries, both Muslims and Jews, to offer new insights into his personality and the circumstances that shaped his thinking. Halbertal then turns to Maimonides's legal and philosophical work, analyzing his three great books—Commentary on the Mishnah, the Mishneh Torah, and the Guide of the Perplexed. He discusses Maimonides's battle against all attempts to personify God, his conviction that God's presence in the world is mediated through the natural order rather than through miracles, and his locating of philosophy and science at the summit of the religious life of Torah. Halbertal examines Maimonides's philosophical positions on fundamental questions such as the nature and limits of religious language, creation and nature, prophecy, providence, the problem of evil, and the meaning of the commandments. A stunning achievement, Maimonides offers an unparalleled look at the life and thought of this important Jewish philosopher, scholar, and theologian.

Maimonides & Spinoza
Maimonides & Spinoza

Author: Joshua Parens

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-04-09

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0226645762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Until the last century, it was generally agreed that Maimonides was a great defender of Judaism, and Spinoza—as an Enlightenment advocate for secularization—among its key opponents. However, a new scholarly consensus has recently emerged that the teachings of the two philosophers were in fact much closer than was previously thought. In his perceptive new book, Joshua Parens sets out to challenge the now predominant view of Maimonides as a protomodern forerunner to Spinoza—and to show that a chief reason to read Maimonides is in fact to gain distance from our progressively secularized worldview. Turning the focus from Spinoza’s oft-analyzed Theologico-Political Treatise, this book has at its heart a nuanced analysis of his theory of human nature in the Ethics. Viewing this work in contrast to Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, it makes clear that Spinoza can no longer be thought of as the founder of modern Jewish identity, nor should Maimonides be thought of as having paved the way for a modern secular worldview. Maimonides and Spinoza dramatically revises our understanding of both philosophers.

Leo Strauss on Maimonides
Leo Strauss on Maimonides

Author: Leo Strauss

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 691

ISBN-13: 0226776794

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leo Strauss is widely recognized as one of the foremost interpreters of Maimonides. His studies of the medieval Jewish philosopher led to his rediscovery of esotericism and deepened his sense that the tension between reason and revelation was central to modern political thought. His writings throughout the twentieth century were chiefly responsible for restoring Maimonides as a philosophical thinker of the first rank. Yet, to appreciate the extent of Strauss’s contribution to the scholarship on Maimonides, one has traditionally had to seek out essays he published separately spanning almost fifty years. With Leo Strauss on Maimonides, Kenneth Hart Green presents for the first time a comprehensive, annotated collection of Strauss’s writings on Maimonides, comprising sixteen essays, three of which appear in English for the first time. Green has also provided careful translations of materials that had originally been quoted in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, German, and French; written an informative introduction highlighting the original contributions found in each essay; and brought references to out-of-print editions fully up to date. The result will become the standard edition of Strauss’s writings on Maimonides.

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed

Author: Alfred L. Ivry

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-09-27

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 022639526X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A classic of medieval Jewish philosophy, Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed is as influential as it is difficult and demanding. Not only does the work contain contrary—even contradictory—statements, but Maimonides deliberately wrote in a guarded and dissembling manner in order to convey different meanings to different readers, with the knowledge that many would resist his bold reformulations of God and his relation to mankind. As a result, for all the acclaim the Guide has received, comprehension of it has been unattainable to all but a few in every generation. Drawing on a lifetime of study, Alfred L. Ivry has written the definitive guide to the Guide—one that makes it comprehensible and exciting to even those relatively unacquainted with Maimonides’ thought, while also offering an original and provocative interpretation that will command the interest of scholars. Ivry offers a chapter-by-chapter exposition of the widely accepted Shlomo Pines translation of the text along with a clear paraphrase that clarifies the key terms and concepts. Corresponding analyses take readers more deeply into the text, exploring the philosophical issues it raises, many dealing with metaphysics in both its ontological and epistemic aspects.

Philosophy and Law
Philosophy and Law

Author: Leo Strauss

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1438421435

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leo Strauss's Philosophy and Law contains a groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors, and it offers an argument on behalf of that philosophy which is also a profound critique of modern philosophy. Here is an entirely new and complete English translation of Strauss's work, which takes as its ideal the exacting standards of accuracy that Strauss himself emphasized in his own work. It includes a prefatory essay introducing the argument of each of the four sections of Philosophy and Law. This is a fresh and challenging treatment of the perennial conflict between reason and revelation, or philosophy and religion. Strauss's key contention in this book is that the most influential modern approaches to this conflict have run aground in ways that reflect their loss of key insights developed by the medieval philosophers of Islam and their Jewish pupils, especially Maimonides. Strauss challenges the modern view that scientific enlightenment must ultimately amount to atheism, and that therefore there can be no such thing as enlightened religion. Through a careful, original, and detailed treatment of central works of the medieval Islamic-Jewish tradition, especially Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, Strauss aims to recover their key insights into this question.

Maimonides' Cure of Souls
Maimonides' Cure of Souls

Author: David Bakan

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2010-07-02

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1438427441

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Explores the unacknowledged psychological element in Maimonides’ work, one which prefigures the latter insights of Freud.

Worship of the Heart
Worship of the Heart

Author: Ehud Z. Benor

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0791496325

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Benor's study offers a systematic Aristotelian account of Maimonides' philosophy of religion that reconciles the ideals of rabbinic Judaism with the sensibilities of a medieval Jewish philosopher, coherently unifies his work, and shows where Maimonides' uncompromising radicalism presents enduring and challenging insights to the history and the philosophy of religion. Worship of the Heart explores Maimonides' contribution to the understanding of prayer, examining it against the background of two contrasting notions—dialogue and contemplation. The author argues that Maimonides integrates fundamental elements of these conceptions with his own insights to forge a mediating conception of prayer—a conception as constitutive of a world view.

Maimonides on the "Decline of the Generations" and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority
Maimonides on the

Author: Menachem Kellner

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1438408676

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Moses Maimonides, medieval Judaism's leading legist and philosopher, and a figure of central importance for contemporary Jewish self-understanding, held a view of Judaism which maintained the authority of the Talmudic rabbis in matters of Jewish law while allowing for free and open inquiry in matters of science and philosophy. Maimonides affirmed, not the superiority of the "moderns" (the scholars of his and subsequent generations) over the "ancients" (the Tannaim and Amoraim, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud) but the inherent equality of the two. The equality presented here is not equality of halakhic authority, but equality of ability, of essential human characteristics. In order to substantiate these claims, Kellner explores the related idea that Maimonides does not adopt the notion of "the decline of the generations," according to which each succeeding generation, or each succeeding epoch, is in some significant and religiously relevant sense inferior to preceding generations or epochs.