Moses Mendelssohn was the leading Jewish thinker of the German Enlightenment and the founder of modern Jewish philosophy. His writings, especially his attempt during the Pantheism Controversy to defend the philosophical legacies of Spinoza and Leibniz against F. H. Jacobi’s philosophy of faith, captured the attention of a young Leo Strauss and played a critical role in the development of his thought on one of the fundamental themes of his life’s work: the conflicting demands of reason and revelation. _ Leo (...) Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn_ is a superbly annotated translation of ten introductions written by Strauss to a multi-volume critical edition of Mendelssohn’s work. Commissioned in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, the project was suppressed and nearly destroyed during Nazi rule and was not revived until the 1960s. In addition to Strauss’s introductions, Martin D. Yaffe has translated Strauss’s editorial remarks on each of the passages he annotates in Mendelssohn’s texts and brings those together with the introductions themselves. Yaffe has also contributed an extensive interpretive essay that both analyzes the introductions on their own terms and discusses what Strauss writes elsewhere about the broader themes broached in his Mendelssohn studies. Strauss’s critique of Mendelssohn represents one of the largest bodies of work by the young Strauss on a single thinker to be made available in English. It illuminates not only a formerly obscure phase in the emergence of his thought but also a critical moment in the history of the German Enlightenment. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

This volume is a scholarly tribute to Fackenheim’s memory. It covers a wide spectrum of Fackenheim’s work including biographical, philosophical, and theological aspects of his thought that have not been addressed adequately in the past. Elie Wiesel, a close personal friend to Fackenheim for over 30 years, has provided the Foreword for the volume.

Fackenheim's combination of erudition and generosity served to inspire a lifetime of philosophical inquiry, and a number of his students are represented in this ...

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction; Martin D. Yaffe and Richard S. Ruderman -- 1. How Strauss Became Strauss; Heinrich Meier -- 2. Spinoza's Critique of Religion: Reading Too Literally and Not Reading Literally Enough; Steven Frank -- 3. The Light Shed on the Crucial Development of Strauss's Thought by his Correspondence with Gerhard Krüger; Thomas L. Pangle -- 4. Strauss on Hermann Cohen's 'Idealizing' Appropriation of Maimonides as a Platonist; Martin D. Yaffe -- 5. Strauss on the Religious and (...) Intellectual Situation of the Present; Timothy W. Burns -- 6. Carl Schmitt and Strauss's Return to Pre-Modern Philosophy; Nasser Behnegar -- 7. Strauss, Hobbes, and the Origins of Natural Science; Timothy W. Burns -- 8. Strauss on Farabi, Maimonides, et al. in the 1930s; Joshua Parens -- 9. The Problem of the Enlightenment: Strauss, Jacobi, and the Pantheism Controversy; David Janssens -- 10. 'Through the Keyhole': Strauss's Rediscovery of Classical Political Philosophy in Xenophon's Constitution of the Lacedaemonians; Richard S. Ruderman -- 11. Strauss and Schleiermacher on How to Read Plato: An Introduction to 'Exoteric Teaching'; Hannes Kerber -- Appendix: Seven Writings by Leo Strauss -- A. 'Conspectivism' (1929); Translated by Anna Schmidt and Martin D. Yaffe -- B. 'Religious Situation of the Present' (1930); Translated by Anna Schmidt and Martin D. Yaffe -- C. 'The Intellectual Situation of the Present' (1932); Translated by Anna Schmidt and Martin D. Yaffe -- D. 'A Lost Writing of Farâbîs' (1936); Translated by Gabriel Bartlett and Martin D. Yaffe -- E. 'On Abravanel's Critique of Monarchy' (1937); Translated by Martin D. Yaffe -- F. 'Exoteric Teaching' (1939); Edited by Hannes Kerber -- G. Lecture Notes for 'Persecution and the Art of Writing' (1939); Edited by Hannes Kerber -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

A complete translation in English of this modern text, with substantive apparatus to allow the student and serious reader to grapple in a meaningful way with this seminal text. The text includes ample footnotes, Spinoza’s annotations, an interpretative essay, glossary and other indices. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood (...) by Spinoza’s immediate audience. This is the paperback edition. (shrink)

Ritual atonement for Cohen aims exclusively at ethical repentance. Sins, or ethical failures, are regarded as unwitting misdeeds, corrigible once recognized. As individuals continue to vacillate, their need for repentance remains life-long. Rosenzweig, however, considers redemption from sin impossible without recourse to miracles. Individual failures are failures in wish, Rosenzweig implies, rather than failures in deed, as Cohen maintains; hence atonement requires above all the ongoing regulating of wishes through liturgical prayer. "Repentance" (t'shuvah), which for Cohen is the "return" to (...) ethical integrity, is for Rosenzweig the "return" to the daily, weekly, and yearly prayers of the Jewish liturgy. (shrink)