The sages of Israel and natural wisdom -- Jews and natural philosophy -- Jews and science.

"As a recently established field of Jewish thought, Jewish political philosophy has made increasingly frequent appearances in recently edited histories of Jewish philosophy. Following the pioneering efforts of Leo Strauss, Ralph Lerner and Daniel Elazar, among others, Jewish political philosophy gained its proper place alongside ethics and metaphysics in the study of the history of Jewish philosophy. This volume is another manifestation of this welcomed development. Consisting of selected papers published in English over the last thirty years, Wisdom's Little (...) Sister concentrates on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, from Sa'adiah Gaon in the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth century. These were the formative periods in the development of Jewish political philosophy, when Jewish scholars, versed in the canonical Jewish sources (biblical and rabbinic), encountered Greek political philosophy as transmitted by Muslim philosophers such as Alfarabi, Ibn Bajja and Averroes. In combining Greek, Jewish and Muslim thought, these scholars are the originators of what we now know as Jewish political philosophy."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

This book by an internationally reputed Indian scientist traces the developments of Science, Religion and Philosophy in human civilization through the ages. The common underlying bond-more specifically, a linkage of philosophy with both science and religion-has been examined incisively. All the three sub-areas of human culture have been presented from a holistic point of view, and at the same time, stressing some of their irreconcilable basic differences in scope and outlook. Meant primarily for general readers, the book achieves a fine (...) balance between basic comcepts, historical evolution and a critical unbiased analysis of rituals, dogmas, unresolved queries and it leads to an enlightened view of 'humanism', 'Nature', 'Unity of man', need for a new paradigm of social and political order transcending globalization and control of resources of weaker nations by supremacy in global power equation. The book reviews the wisdom of the ancient Hindus, Buddhism, Jainism and of the three semitic religions-Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It presents a concise account of the Indian Vedas, Vedangan, Saddarsana, the two epics and the Bhagavadgita, of the philosophy and science of the Greeks, science and technology of ancient Egypt, Babylonia and China. A valuable special feature is a summary of the status of present-day science, starting with the classical phase, and ending with the developments in the last century comprising the Theory of Relativity, quantum physics, genetics, various aspects of human consciousness, modern astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. Last but not least, the author critically reviews some of the presentday fashionable discourses on 'science as the best way to reach God' and leads the readers to an appraisal of the on-going researches on the unification of the four fundamental interactions of physical sciences. He ends with the inexorable conclusion that this unification, when fully achieved, would still not strictly identify the unique force as 'God as concieved in different religions. (shrink)

It is the contention of this article that Proverbs chs. 1–9 is a literary unity in which wisdom has the denotation of the parental household teaching. Teachings which have other contexts in other parts of the Old Testament have in Pr. 1–9 a parental teaching context. Besides denoting the parental teaching, personified speaking Wisdom has the personal features of a teacher. Both Wisdom’s features and her message serve to reinforce the parental teaching. Personified Wisdom also denotes (...) the teaching of the entire Book of Proverbs. Through the device of personified Wisdom, the wisdom of Solomon enshrined in the Book of Proverbs is re‐located from the royal court to the individual Israelite household. This is evident in the literary design of the book. It also reflects the situation of the book’s redaction in post‐exilic Judaism. (shrink)

The unique wisdom of Judaism comes from the Talmud and the Judaic sages' other ancient writings that preserve the tradition of the originally oral Torah, or Teachings of Moses. Sometimes surprising - "better sincere sin than hypocritical virtue" - and always penetrating and helpful - "who are rich? those who are happy with their lot" - the wisdom of the oral Torah is set forth on more than one hundred subjects, arranged alphabetically, in their sources' own words, here (...) rendered in clear and easily readable English. This is the "how-to" book for people who think deeply about everyday life: facing death of a loved one, the duties and rights of women and men together, busy-ness versus real achievement, deceit, gossip, discretion, virtue, honor, forbearance, forgiveness. (shrink)

Hegel’s treatment of Judaism in his early theological writings and his lectures on the philosophy of world history is relatively well-known. One of the best and most recent discussions of it is found in Shlomo Avineri’s paper, “The Fossil and the Phoenix: Hegel and Krochmal on the Jewish Volksgeist,” presented at the 1982 biennial meeting of the Hegel Society of America. Avineri points out that Hegel’s portrayal of Judaism in the early writings mainly followed the conventional image found in traditional (...) Christian theology. He depicted Judaism as a religion of “slavish obedience to laws” laid down not by the people themselves but by a “supreme wisdom on high,” as well as a religion of deceit, cowardice, alienation, and stubborn particularism. In one significant instance, however, Hegel deviated from these traditional stereotypes, namely, in his understanding of and sympathy for the political, national feelings of the Jews during the period of Roman subjugation prior to the destruction of the second temple. They “discarded their ineffective messianic hopes and took up arms,” resisting courageously but suffering “the most appalling of human calamities,” the loss of city and nation. “The scattered remnant of the Jews have not abandoned the idea of the Jewish state, but they have reverted not to the banners of their own courage, but only to the standards of an ineffective messianic hope.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-BeingDaniel H. FrankHava Tirosh-Samuelson. Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 596. Cloth, $50.00.Franz Rosenzweig tried hard to convince the neoKantian Hermann Cohen of the merits of Zionism and the normalization it would bring to Jews and Jewish life. His attempt met with this response from Cohen: "Oho! So the gang (...) now wants to be happy, does it?" For those ignorant of the history of Jewish philosophy, one might imagine that Jewish philosophers, no less than their non-philosophical kinsmen, were so weighed down by the burdens of history and persecution that happiness could play no role in their theorizing. But happiness plays a key role in the history of Jewish moral and political philosophy, especially in the premodern period. Even Spinoza, the last of the medievals and the first of the moderns, the great critic of the rabbinic tradition and of Maimonides in particular, is concerned in his Ethics with identifying those activities that together constitute human well-being and the good life. Only lately, since the Enlightenment and Kant, has non-eudaimonism been a live option for Jewish thinkers. Only with the rise of (modern) Orthodoxy, and its predilection for construing goodness as rectitude and rule-following, has eudaimonism fallen out of favor. But with Tirosh-Samuelson's weighty volume on happiness in premodern Judaism, there can be no excuse in the future to imagine that all Jews are, or must be, closet Kantians, strict deontologists. To think otherwise seems to come close to taking on the classical (anti-Semitic) dichotomy of legalistic Judaism vs. spiritual Christianity. In it own way, Happiness in Premodern Judaism is a critique of such a one-sided, monochromatic view of Judaism, whether from the Christian or even from the Jewish side.Tirosh-Samuelson writes explicitly as an intellectual historian, rather than as a philosopher. She understands herself and her project as one that presents just the facts, without evaluating them. While one may cavil at a lost opportunity, in the present case this would be churlish, given the enormous erudition on display. After an introductory chapter outlining the foundational moral theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic philosophers, the text presents the (Greek-inspired) areteic wisdom literature of the Second Temple period, the teleological theocentrism of the rabbis, the Greco-Arabic Islamicate culture that nurtured Jewish philosophers from Saadia in the tenth century to Maimonides in the twelfth, the rabbinic and kabbalistic critiques of the philosophical ideal of happiness commencing [End Page 338] with the translation (into Hebrew) of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and finally, very important and the focus of much recent scholarly work, the transformation of Jewish eudaimonism through direct contact with Christian Scholasticism and later with the humanist Renaissance. All in all, a millennium and a half of Jewish intellectual history is presented in a sober and scholarly way.Not surprisingly Maimonides plays a pivotal role in the story that Tirosh-Samuelson relates. A Janus-like figure, he represents the culmination and height of accommodation with Greek and Greco-Arabic philosophical culture. However, with the gradual worsening of the socio-economic condition of European Jewry in the thirteenth century, his accommodationism seemed traitorous, and as a result generations of thinkers, mystics and philosophers alike, strove to critically distance themselves from Maimonidean Aristotelianism. Tirosh-Samuelson is admirably clear in pointing out that such anti-Maimonidean tendencies are ill-characterized as anti-philosophical. Hasdai Crescas in the late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries launched a massive critique of Maimonides' physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, but did so in as rigorous a manner as any philosopher would. The picture that enfolds over the course of the text is one of vigorous dialectic between partisans of 'alien' (Greek) wisdom and those who viewed such wisdom with considerable suspicion. Such a dialectic parallels, not surprisingly, developments in Christian philosophy.The trajectory of the story of premodern Jewish musings on happiness is from the centrality of reason and intellect, and the contemplative activity that is reason's preeminent actuality, to the primacy... (shrink)

The purpose of One Heart is to illuminate the common sacred ground at the heart of seven faiths: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism. Its method is to identify 65 essential principles, among them: Feel what other people feel; Don't harm others; Lead with virtue and concern for others; Be honest ; Practice what you preach; Be content; Don't let anger take over; Choose your companions wisely; Accept the existence of spiritual beings; Seek and you will find. Illustrating (...) each principle are one, two, or three quotations from a wide variety of texts sacred to each of the seven faiths—including the Old and New Testaments, the Talmud, the Mahabarata, the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, the Analects of Confucius, and many other sacred sources. In addition, each chapter also provides guidance on a spiritual theme or practice—prayer beads, a home altar, labyrinth walking—to enhance our understanding of these wise words and universal principles. (shrink)

An account of the three rival conceptions of Western philosophy: "theoretical," "difference," and "practical." -/- Posted 29 January 2023. Note that a previous version of this paper appears as chapter 13 of my Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Merton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday MindKristin Johnston LargenMerton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday Mind. Edited by Bonnie Bowman Thurston. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2007. 271 pp.This particular book—Merton and Buddhism—is the fourth in a series that seeks to study world religions “through the lens of Thomas Merton’s life and writing” (p. viii). The first three volumes in the series are Merton and Sufism, (...) Merton and Hesychasm, and Merton and Judaism. This book continues in the same format and includes essays from a variety of scholars addressing various aspects of Merton’s engagement with different schools of Buddhism. It is divided into four main parts, with a fifth part that contains a helpful bibliography as well as notes on the different contributors. Additionally the text is peppered with a variety of illustrations, including a center section with many pictures of images of the Buddha from different cultural contexts. The assortment of black-and-white illustrations include pictures of people Thomas Merton (1915–1968) met on his travels, pictures he took while on his “Asian Journey,” and pictures of Merton himself and Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery.The volume begins with two helpful essays that orient a novice reader to the volume. The first essay, by the late Roger Corless (1938–2007), is a simple, straight-forward [End Page 218] introduction to Buddhism. This is useful for readers who are drawn to this book by the desire to learn more about Merton but have no background in Buddhism itself. The second essay is by Bonnie Thurston, who describes her piece as “Merton and Buddhism 101” (p. 15). Her essay describes primarily the “when” and the “why” of Merton’s interest in Buddhism, noting that Merton was not interested in becoming a Buddhist himself, but rather believed that his own (and others’) practice of Christianity could be positively informed by Buddhism, particularly in its attention to meditation and dismantling what Merton called the “false self.”The second main part of the book is devoted to essays that each focus on Merton’s engagement with a specific Buddhist tradition. While it is clear that Merton was particularly influenced by and drawn to Zen Buddhism (Ruben Habito supplies the essay on Merton’s experience with Zen in this section), he did not limit himself to Zen, but sought out connections and experience with individuals from diverse Buddhist backgrounds. Thus, the first essay in this section details his meetings with monks from the Theravada tradition and emphasizes the central role Merton’s own monastic identity played in his understanding and evaluation of Buddhism as a whole.The second essay is of particular importance, as it discusses Merton’s engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, which many believe would have developed into a much deeper connection had his exposure to Tibetan Buddhism not come at the very end of Merton’s life. The author of this essay, Judith Simmer-Brown, notes that “Previously, Merton’s interests had been in Zen Buddhism, but after meeting Tibetans in India he felt an immediate rapport” (p. 53). The Tibetans also shared this experience. The Dalai Lama (from whom Merton received meditation instruction), Trungpa Rinpoche, and Chadral Rinpoche, among others, all recognized his spiritual depth and honesty. At the end of her essay, Simmer-Brown reflects on the strong impression the mountain Kanchenjunga made on him (this is the “seventh mountain” of Merton’s personal geography—see The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, by Michael Mott) and speculates as to how Merton might have continued to explore Tibetan Buddhism, had he lived beyond the year.The final essay in this section is of a different nature, but serves a very important purpose. John Keenan’s essay, “The Limits of Thomas Merton’s Understanding of Buddhism,” makes clear that Merton’s understanding of Buddhism reflects the general ignorance of Buddhism by Western Christians at that time, and thus, while Merton’s engagement with Buddhism was “welcome and mind-stretching” to his audience in the 1960s, it is “quite insufficient today for any dialogue with Buddhism, or with Zen” (p. 121). Keenan notes that a large part of the problem stems from Merton’s... (shrink)

Abstract. The object of this essay is to explain what there is about discussions of Judaism and the sciences that is distinctive from discussions about religion in general and the sciences. The description draws primarily but not exclusively from recent meetings of the Judaism, Medicine, and Science Group in Tempe, Arizona. The author's Jewish Faith and Modern Science, together with a selective bibliography of writings in this subfield, are used to generate a list of science issues—focused around the religious doctrines (...) of creation, revelation, and redemption in Judaism—that raise specific challenges to Jewish faith. Special attention is given to Leon Kass's The Hungry Soul as an example of a distinctive way to integration knowledge of both science and rabbinic Judaism on a philosophical issue. (shrink)

This essay sketches a method for identifying the insights that diverse religious traditions offer to the field of business ethics. Each article in this volume asserts or assumes faith-based claims about what is "truly real" as the ground of moral aspiration and obligation. Four distinct kinds of claims yield four kinds of wisdom, that is, moral guidance for business practice. 1) In Judaism and Islam, scriptural commands, as interpreted authoritatively down through these traditions, yield precise methods for rendering specific (...) moral judgments; in Roman Catholicism, similar guidance is provided through natural law. 2) In Buddhism, Judaism, and most of the surveyed Christian traditions, the values of compassion, love, and justice provide spiritual resources to counter pressures towards immoral behavior in business. 3) The African-American and Mennonite churches interpret their particular histories of oppression to offer distinctive models of fortitude and hope. 4) In Evangelical Calvinism, Mormonism, and Roman Catholic social teaching, convictions about God's redemptive and sanctifying activity offer a robust moral vision for successful striving. (shrink)

Sam Lebens’ The Principles of Judaism is an extraordinary book in its rigor and richness. It is a sophisticated examination of three central propositions, which Lebens maintains, are the fundamental doctrines that “can make sense of continued commitment to an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle.” (Lebens, 273). He presents and discusses the following three propositions: 1) The universe is the creation of one God; 2) The Torah is a divine system of laws and wisdom, revealed by the creator of the universe; (...) and, 3) The creator exercises provi-dential care over his creation, manifest in the creator’s continued sustenance of the world, reward and punishment for human action, and in the promise of ultimate salvation. (Lebens, 3).Lebens presents the principles as they were variously explicated and de-fended in key Jewish texts written by the most influential Jewish thinkers; he then turns to search for “the most plausible rendering of this set of prin-ciples...” (Lebens, 274). After so doing, he specifies those doctrinal compo-nents among them, which he deems necessary “for making sense of commit-ment to Judaism” (Lebens, 275), identifying a “commitment to Judaism” with being “faithful to the tenets of Judaism” in the sense of having faith in them:To the extent that these principles are necessary for making sense of commitment to Judaism, I argue that you cannot be considered faithful to the tenets of Judaism without holding an attitude of faith toward some element of each of the three principles... (Lebens 275).The distance between Lebens’ philosophical and religious outlook and pre-suppositions, as they show themselves in his Principles of Judaism, and my own is great. I shall start with a critique of Lebens’ reduction of Judaism to so-called Orthodox Judaism, and argue that Lebens has no justification for characterizing the principles that he identifies, as the “principles of Judaism” without qualification. I shall then turn to argue that there are grounds for questioning whether the principles that Lebens identifies can be understood as the principles that so-called “Orthodox Jews”, too, have faith in. It is, how-ever, clear that the utterances that Lebens discusses do play a central role within the life of committed Jews. I shall end by proposing that we adopt the later Wittgenstein’s philosophical method for making perspicuous their meaning and their different roles. (shrink)

He is one of the wisest men of all time. Since the time of the Bible, he is the only man to be celebrated by the three major Western religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His name is Maimonides. A philosopher, rabbi, physician, religious thinker and logician, today this sage is considered among the greatest thinkers. The Secret Life reveals his ancient teachings in modern terms. In The Secret Life, you will discover true wisdom and success in every aspect (...) of life comes not from our public persona and life -- as so many believe -- but in our secret thoughts and actions. Maimonides shows how every person can find their true and best self, not only deriving happiness for themselves, but spreading that bliss to everyone they touch. The benefits of living the Secret Life are countless. Changing your approaches to giving charity, to seeking justice, to loving others, and to believing in yourself enough to find and act on your true calling will lead you to remarkable heights. You will find a new resilience against the difficulties and turmoil in life, a new inner power that will keep you focused on the things that really matter, and an inner peace few will ever have. The Secret Life is, quite literally, life changing. "Whatever you do should be done out of nothing else but pure love." -- Maimonides Jeffrey Katz is a lifelong student and teacher of rationalist religious philosophy. He became fascinated in his youth by his discovery of the ancient wisdom of Maimonides, and received rabbinic ordination while focusing on disseminating the ancient, life-changing wisdom he had uncovered. He is a practicing attorney, has appeared on national television on a broad range of issues, and has lectured widely. (shrink)

Whitehead had a place for God in his comprehensive cosmological vision, and his theism has long attracted interest from some Christian theologians. But Whitehead's ideas have much wider use. Some Buddhists have found help in articulating their nontheistic vision and relating it to the current world of thought and action. In this book religious writers in seven different traditions articulate how they can benefit from Whitehead's work. So this volume demonstrates that various features of his thought can contribute to many (...) communities. According to his followers, Whitehead shows that the deepest convictions and commitments of the major religious communities can be complementary rather than in conflict. Readers of this book will see how that plays out in some detail. A Whiteheadian Hindu can recognize the truth in a Whiteheadian Judaism, and both can appreciate the insights of Chinese Whiteheadians committed to their classical thinking. Perhaps a new day in interreligious understanding has come. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Santob do Carrion's Proverbios morales (Moral Proverbs) and also the first book-length study of that monumental work. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly (...) increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom holds that Judaism is indifferent or even suspiciously hostile to the visual arts due to the Second Commandment's prohibition on creating "graven images," the dictates of monotheism, and historical happenstance. This intellectual history of medieval and modern Jewish attitudes toward art and representation overturns the modern assumption of Jewish iconophobia that denies to Jewish culture a visual dimension. Kalman Bland synthesizes evidence from medieval Jewish philosophy, mysticism, poetry, biblical commentaries, travelogues, and law, concluding that premodern Jewish intellectuals (...) held a positive, liberal understanding of the Second Commandment and did, in fact, articulate a certain Jewish aesthetic. He draws on this insight to consider modern ideas of Jewish art, revealing how they are inextricably linked to diverse notions about modern Jewish identity that are themselves entwined with arguments over Zionism, integration, and anti-Semitism. Through its use of the past to illuminate the present and its analysis of how the present informs our readings of the past, this book establishes a new assessment of Jewish aesthetic theory rooted in historical analysis. Authoritative and original in its identification of authentic Jewish traditions of painting, sculpture, and architecture, this volume will ripple the waters of several disciplines, including Jewish studies, art history, medieval and modern history, and philosophy. (shrink)

ha-Higayon ha-shimʻi ba-filosofyah ha-datit be-Yiśraʼel -- ha-Higayon ha-Torani ha-shimʻi ba-midot sheha-Torah nidreshet bahen -- ha-Higayon ha-sodi ha-shimʻi ba-ḥokhmah ha-penimit -- Shiṭat ha-higayon ha-shimʻi ha-sodi be-sifrut ha-ḥokhmah ha-penimit -- Shivḥe ḳol ha nevuʼah.

A profoundly inspiring yet practical guide to well-being from one of modern Judaism's most beloved sages.As a congregational rabbi for half a century and the bestselling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People and twelve other books on faith, ethics, and how to translate the timeless wisdom of religious thought into dealing with everyday challenges, Harold Kushner knows a thing or two about living a good life. In this compassionate new work, Kushner distills nine essential lessons from (...) the sum of his teaching, study and experience, offering a lifetime's worth of spiritual food for thought, pragmatic advice, inspiration for better living, and strength for trying times. With vital, original insights into everything from belief ("there is no commandment in Judaism to believe in God"), to conscience (the Garden of Eden story as you've never heard it), to mercy ("forgiveness is a favor you do yourself, not a favor to the person who offended you"), grounded in Kushner's brilliant readings of Scripture, history and popular culture, Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life is a capstone addition to Kushner's oeuvre. (shrink)

Wisdom and wickedness as a 'Woman' have always attracted much discussion, especially in the ways images of the female are employed in wisdom literature. This article focuses on two Qumran texts that fall into the category of wisdom literature, namely 4Q184 and 4Q185, and the metaphorical appropriation of the woman as a figure of wisdom or a figure of wickedness. By combining a number of traditions in certain forms, sages tried to establish an education for their (...) learners on how to obtain wisdom with the ultimate purpose of creating harmony. The ultimate purpose of the wisdom teachings of the sages was to confirm the harmony in the universe, and these teachings were also conveyed to their learners. In their instructions, they often employed binary opposites such as 'wise' and 'fool' according to which someone was characterised, or rather stereotyped. The result of such binary stereotyping was that the 'whore' and the 'holy one' represented opposite poles, and became fixed images in Judaism. According to feminist exegetes, these images typify the concept of cultural stereotyping. This article aims to illustrate that two Qumran texts, 4Q184 and 4Q185, regarded as wisdom texts, employ the female stereotypes that were known in the wisdom literature of Judaism. (shrink)

Judaism in the twentieth century began to return to its scriptural, communal roots after a centuries-long detour through Greek-influenced natural philosophy, a detour during which science and ethics were assumed to be partners and Jewish ethics drew heavily on natural philosophy and science. Twentieth-century philosophical ethics and science, particularly biological science, have developed in such a way as to make any continuation of that historical partnership problematic. This is not altogether regrettable because the problematizing of this long-standing partnership has driven (...) Jewish ethics back to its real roots: covenantal relationship, and moral wisdom and discernment. (shrink)

Jewish by birth, though from a secular family, Alan Morinis took a deep journey into Hinduism and Buddhism as a young man. He received a doctorate for his study of Hindu pilgrimage, learned yoga in India with B. K. S. Iyengar, and attended his first Buddhist meditation course in the Himalayas in 1974. But in 1997, when his film career went off track and he reached for some spiritual oxygen, he felt inspired to explore his Jewish heritage. In his reading (...) he happened upon a Jewish tradition of spiritual practice called Mussar. Gradually he realized he had stumbled on an insightful discipline for self-development, complete with meditative, contemplative, and other well-developed transformative practices designed to penetrate the deepest roots of the inner life. Eventually reaching the limits of what he could learn on his own, he decided to seek out a Mussar teacher. That was not easily achieved, since almost the entire world of the Mussar tradition had been wiped out in the Holocaust. In time, he did find an accomplished master who stood in an unbroken line of transmission of the Mussar tradition, and who lived at the center of a community of Orthodox Jews on Long Island. This book tells the story of Morinis’s journey to meet his teacher and what he learned from him, and reveals the central teachings and practices that are the spiritual treasury and legacy of Mussar. Alan Morinis has written this book because the wisdom and practices that helped him so much have not penetrated the world beyond the confines of Orthodox Judaism, and may not be fully appreciated even there at this time. His hope is that Jews and non-Jews alike will find in Mussar a time-tested path of spiritual practice that will help them discover the hidden radiance within. (shrink)

Introducing a weekly spiritual practice for developing a strong and open heart—drawn from Judaism's Mussar tradition Mussar is a practice that draws from the vast storehouse of Jewish wisdom, law, revelation, and text, bringing it right home in a way that is completely practical. Judaism teaches that Torah (the collective wisdom of the tradition) provides the blueprint for human experience—and so the more of it we acquire, the more we gain a clearer, truer perspective on life and learn (...) how to navigate its pathways. The phrase “acquiring Torah” is code for the process of internalizing this wisdom to bring about a genuine transformation of the inner self. In short, accessible chapters, this book describes forty-eight methods through which we can acquire Torah—and turns them into a straightforward practice. These methods include cultivating humility, joy, awe, good-heartedness, closeness with friends, not taking credit for oneself, judging others favorably, and so on. The fruit of working through each quality or method is a refined soul and a strong and open heart. (shrink)

This volume contains essays by some of the leading scholars in the study of the Jewish religious ideas in the Second Temple period, that led up to the development of early forms of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Close attention is paid to the cosmological ideas to be found in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Bible and to the manner in which the translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek reflected the creativity with which Judaism engaged Hellenistic ideas (...) about the cosmos and the creation. The concepts of heaven and divine power, human mortality, the forces of nature, combat myths, and the philosophy of wisdom, as they occur in 2 Maccabees, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon and Tobit, are carefully analysed and compared with Greek and Roman world-views. There are also critical examinations of Dead Sea scroll texts, early Jewish prayers and Hebrew liturgical poetry and how they these adopt, adapt and alter earlier ideas. The editors have included appreciations of two major figures who played important roles in the study of the Second Temple period and in the history and development of the ISDCL, namely, Otto Kaiser and Alexander Di Lella, who died recently and are greatly missed by those in the field."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Edmund Burke : apologist for Judaism? -- George Eliot : the wisdom of Dorothea -- Jane Austen : the education of Emma -- Charles Dickens : "a low writer" -- Benjamin Disraeli : the Tory imagination -- John Stuart Mill : the other Mill -- Walter Bagehot : "a divided nature" -- John Buchan : an untimely appreciation -- The Knoxes : a God-haunted family -- Michael Oakeshott : the conservative disposition -- Winston Churchill : "quite simply, a great (...) man" -- Lionel Trilling : the moral imagination. (shrink)

Calls for taking up wisdom in its place risk re-inscribing coloniality at the level of signification if attempts to resituate intelligibility in the specificity of place are not enacted through a careful translation of experience between victims and perpetrators of colonial violence. At some level, decolonization ought to be conceived as a kind of translation. Emmanuel Levinas’ project to “translate” Judaism into Greek is one way of staging such decolonial translation by providing us an internal critique of coloniality while (...) remaining receptive to indigenous inspirations that enrich eco-phenomenological ways of encountering place. In the final instance, however, this paper calls for encountering place through the indigenous languages that make place ethically legible. (shrink)

Calls for taking up wisdom in its place risk re-inscribing coloniality at the level of signification if attempts to resituate intelligibility in the specificity of place are not enacted through a careful translation of experience between victims and perpetrators of colonial violence. At some level, decolonization ought to be conceived as a kind of translation. Emmanuel Levinas’ project to “translate” Judaism into Greek is one way of staging such decolonial translation by providing us an internal critique of coloniality while (...) remaining receptive to indigenous inspirations that enrich eco-phenomenological ways of encountering place. In the final instance, however, this paper calls for encountering place through the indigenous languages that make place ethically legible. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is often depicted in popular and scholarly discourse as a lonely philosopher dealing with abstract concerns unconnected to the intellectual debates of his time and place. Robert C. Holub counters this narrative, arguing that Nietzsche was very well attuned to the events and issues of his era and responded to them frequently in his writings. Organized around nine important questions circulating in Europe at the time in the realms of politics, society, and science, Nietzsche in the Nineteenth Century (...) presents a thorough investigation of Nietzsche's familiarity with contemporary life, his contact with and comments on these various questions, and the sources from which he gathered his knowledge. Holub begins his analysis with Nietzsche's views on education, nationhood, and the working-class movement, turns to questions of women and women's emancipation, colonialism, and Jews and Judaism, and looks at Nietzsche's dealings with evolutionary biology, cosmological theories, and the new "science" of eugenics. He shows how Nietzsche, although infrequently read during his lifetime, formulated his thought in an ongoing dialogue with the concerns of his contemporaries, and how his philosophy can be conceived as a contribution to the debates taking place in the nineteenth century. Throughout his examination, Holub finds that, against conventional wisdom, Nietzsche was only indirectly in conversation with the modern philosophical tradition from Descartes through German idealism, and that the books and individuals central to his development were more obscure writers, most of whom have long since been forgotten. This book thus sheds light on Nietzsche's thought as enmeshed in a web of nineteenth-century discourses and offers new insights into his interactive method of engaging with the philosophical universe of his time. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 128-129 [Access article in PDF] Robert Crocker, editor. Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Pp. xix + 228. Cloth, $77.00. By describing the early modern period as such, we thereby avow a continuity with it that ill squares with the following, insufficiently appreciated fact. The early modern counterparts of the largely atheistic American Philosophical Association, let's (...) say, were to an even greater degree theistic, and, moreover, theism affected their description and explanation of the world in a profound way—certainly more so than it does their few theistic descendents. This is true even of authors, like Hobbes and Spinoza, who might be read as leading to later atheism. The fact of early modern theism and its centrality in early modern philosophy and science are amply demonstrated in one after another of the eleven essays of this book.An emblematic figure is Robert Boyle, who figures as a main player in three of the essays, and is at least mentioned in five of the others. Lotte Mulligan, for example, investigates the role of "right reason" in Boyle's argument that religion is illuminated and made [End Page 128] plausible by metaphorically expressed analogies with natural philosophy, and conversely. The upshot is that only the "Christian Virtuoso," endowed with right reason whereby he is inspired to notice and express these analogies, was in a position to interpret the codes expressed both in the book of revelation and in the book of nature, one being incomplete without the other.Luisa Simonutti treats Boyle's engagement with the theological and scientific work of Spinoza through Spinoza's correspondence with Oldenburg. And G. A. J. Rogers deploys the work of Boyle, as well as of Locke, Newton, and the Cambridge Platonists, against the once-standard view (vide Butterfield) that "a major feature of the seventeenth-century was a secularization of knowledge." (Given just the other papers in this volume, this may seem like shooting fish in a barrel. Even so, perhaps one or two of the shots appear to miss. Newton seems proleptically to answer Hume's skepticism about induction by invoking, not divine simplicity, but an argument to the best explanation.)These papers overlap with two others, forming the core of the book. Sarah Hutton and Robert Crocker take on Cambridge Platonism. The former deals with Ralph Cudworth's rejection of Cartesian voluntarism in favor of an intellectualism of goodness and wisdom that grounds both the providential governance of the world and its intelligibility to human inquiry. The latter deals with Henry More's doctrine of the soul's pre-existence, a prima facie unlikely doctrine, but one that is less problematic, according to More, than the orthodox alternatives (creationism and traducianism).Three other papers fall outside this core, but their topics are no less relevant. Perhaps the most undeniable connection between the natural and the supernatural is to be found in Grotius, here studied by Jacqueline Lagree. Likely the most unexpected player will be the eccentric esprit fort, Cyrano de Bergerac. His work of nearly pure fantasy, in the Rabelaisian tradition, might well have made later, more serious heterodoxies possible. James E. Force provides a nice case study in Newton's reliance on what he took to be providentially guided comets as sources for the replenishment of otherwise declining celestial motion and matter (a line which, ironically, was picked up by Hume as a premise of an argument designed to undo the argument from design). Richard H. Popkin outlines three views of Judaism in the period. There is little connection with nature, but an important one with reason via a problem that exercised Cudworth and Newton: most peoples are polytheistic despite the clear monotheism of revelation. One theory had it that Judaism was the original, pure religion, which degenerated into various forms of paganism. But this degeneracy was soon read by the English deists such that originally there was a natural religion, of which Judaism and all others were a degeneration. Transmitted to the Enlightenment by Spinoza... (shrink)

The Septuagint Book of Judith and its derivatives have had an enormous influence on the history of Western Europe and the Christian church. Judith has been employed in various situations to incite violence against a perceived opposition. In this regard, this article focuses on the climax of this book (Jdt 13:1–9) as performance text. In this context, many of the insights proffered by Perry in his seminal work Insights from Performance Criticism (2016) have been expanded upon from the perspective of (...) a Greek and/or Hellenistic environment.Contribution: The value of reading LXXJudith as performance is clearly demonstrated. The conclusion is reached that this pericope is indeed highly subversive. Suggestion is also made that, contrary to more conservative wisdom, with reference specifically to LXXJudith 13:1–9, the Judith fabula is not really reconciliatory in nature. Rather, it seems to provoke conflict between competing powers. (shrink)

"Max Picard was a Swiss-German writer, who converted to Catholicism from Judaism. A doctor and psychologist, Picard worked in Berlin but retired in the 1920s to Switzerland. He is often regarded as a "wisdom thinker," and his rich and penetrating writings continue to speak to us in the twenty-first century. The Flight from God is an incisive, profound description of many of the problems facing modern culture, and its analysis resonates with us more today than when first published in (...) 1934. Picard illustrates that modern culture is essentially in Flight, and so the individual is under pressure to make a choice; in earlier generations only an individual could be in flight because the culture itself was not in flight but in Faith. The flight does not require courage or gui. (shrink)

_____This book challenges us to take a broad and ethical view of economic behavior, which includes all forms of exchange and human interaction, from how we spend our money to how we fulfill our role as responsible human beings in a global ecological framework. Drawing on Jewish ethical teachings, mystical lore, and tales of the Hasidic masters, the author examines a wide range of subjects, including competition, partnerships, and contracts, loans and interest, the laws of fair exchange, and tips and (...) presents. _____ The Kabbalistic teachings in this book not only impart wisdom about the world of money, but also lead us to self-understanding and the magic of knowing who we are, what we really want, and how to receive it. _____. (shrink)

Resonances of Samuel David Luzzatto's characterization of Italian Jewry can be heard in the personal memoirs of Arnaldo Momigliano. Pagan, Jewish, and Christian -these were the three civilizations which dominated Momigliano's life work. Between 1930 and 1934 Momigliano wrote four major works on representative areas of the triple civilizations: one on the Maccabean tradition; two articles on Josephus' defense of Judaism, the Contra Apionem; a presentation of his conception of first century Pharisaic Judaism; and Alien Wisdom, in which he (...) explored the Hellenistic discovery of Jews, Celts, Romans, and Iranians, and Rome's meeting of these cultures. Momigliano's discussions of the ways that Judaism both absorbed GrecoRoman culture and reacted to it should be taken into account when examining the central texts of rabbinic literature, for the Rabbis themselves were conscious that they belonged to the triple civilizations. Through an analysis of the Midrash, it is shown that Momigliano helps us to appreciate some of the characteristics which emunah holds in common with pistis or fides. An example of the way Jews reacted to the imposition of Roman rule is given in their reaction to the imperial cult. (shrink)

This is a relatively short but important book. Boys-Stones argues for the following : Both Platonists and Christians from the end of the first century A.D. onwards grounded the authority of a doctrine in its antiquity. Christian writers claimed that Christianity is the expression of an ancient wisdom from which both Judaism and pagan philosophy are deviations. Platonists claimed that Plato gave the fullest expression to an ancient wisdom also preserved, though less perfectly, in the supposed writings of (...) Orpheus and Pythagoras. This approach is itself a development from the attempts of Platonists to resist skeptical arguments from the disagreements between different schools by claiming that the philosophical schools that developed after Plato changed his doctrines for the worse, this explaining their disagreements, combined with the appeal, developed by the Stoics and more widely influential in the early Imperial period, to a supposed wisdom of earlier mankind preserved in imperfect form in mythological doctrines. Boys-Stones draws careful distinctions: while the early Stoics distinguished between the pre-philosophical, natural understanding of the earliest humans, and the subsequent development of a conscious inquiry into nature, Posidonius argued for the presence of philosophers even in the Golden Age, resisting an innate human tendency towards evil. Boys-Stones describes how the first-century A.D. Stoic Cornutus took the further step of arguing that the early philosophers themselves expressed their doctrines in allegorical form, whereas for the early Stoics the contributions of poets had obscured the truth rather than expressing it. A new emphasis on antiquity is also apparent, Boys-Stones argues, in Josephus’s responses to Hellenistic anti-Semitic arguments, and in Philo of Alexandria’s readiness to interpret Greek myths as allegorical expressions of the truth. Thus, for Boys-Stones, and together gave rise to the view that Plato gave the fullest expression to truths which derived their authority from their antiquity. (shrink)

Following conventional wisdom Theology as an academic discipline (taught at Universities) is something which developed only in the Middle Ages, or in a certain sense even as late as the 19th century. The present essay in contrast traces its origins to Classical Antiquity and outlines its development in early Christianity, especially with a view to institutions of higher education that existed in Late Antiquity, e. g. in rhetoric and philosophy. It concludes that there were forms of academic theological discourse (...) in Late Antiquity which were to become the basis of later developments in the discipline. (shrink)

"Max Picard was a Swiss-German writer, who converted to Catholicism from Judaism. A doctor and psychologist, Picard worked in Berlin but retired in the 1920s to Switzerland. He is often regarded as a "wisdom thinker," and his rich and penetrating writings continue to speak to us in the twenty-first century. The Flight from God is an incisive, profound description of many of the problems facing modern culture, and its analysis resonates with us more today than when first published in (...) 1934. Picard illustrates that modern culture is essentially in Flight, and so the individual is under pressure to make a choice; in earlier generations only an individual could be in flight because the culture itself was not in flight but in Faith. The flight does not require courage or gui. (shrink)

Recent research in the humanities and social sciences suggests that individuals who understand themselves as belonging to something greater than the self--a family, community, or religious or spiritual group--often feel happier, have a deeper sense of purpose or meaning in their lives, and have overall better life outcomes than those who do not. Some positive and personality psychologists have labeled this location of the self within a broader perspective "self-transcendence." This book presents and integrates new, interdisciplinary research into virtue, happiness, (...) and the meaning of life by re-orienting these discussions around the concept of self-transcendence. The essays are organized around three broad themes connected to self-transcendence. First, they investigate how self-transcendence helps us to understand aspects of the moral life as it is studied within psychology, including the development of wisdom, the practice of moral praise, and psychological well-being. Second, they explore how self-transcendence is linked to virtue in different religious and spiritual traditions including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Finally, they ask how self-transcendence can help us theorize about Aristotelean and Thomist conceptions of virtue, like hope and piety, and how this helps us to re-conceptualize happiness and meaning in life. (shrink)

The article talks of an evolution of a Biblical notion of Law. The author shows the way, the meaning of the Hebrew term “Torah” was transformed throughout the Pentateuch, in the prophetic tradition and in the wisdom books. He puts into analysis the relationship between the Judaism as a religious formation and the Law as a code. The Law included basic regulations to the moral, religious and political life of Israel.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the BuddhaAlon Goshen-GottsteinBeside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha. Edited by Harold Kasimow, John P. Keenan, and Linda Klepinger Keenan. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. 284 pp.Religion,Wilfred Cantwell Smith teaches us, is about people, not about ideas. This remarkable collection of essays provides us with a glimpse into people, their spiritual aspirations, and their life (...) journeys. This collection of narratives of Jews and Christians, who recount the story of their involvement with Buddhism, turns out to be a powerful spiritual medium. It allows us to get to know, at times in a very intimate and revealing manner, the stories, struggles, and processes that have shaped participants in this enterprise. Many of the participants are well-known figures in academia and in religious or interfaith circles. Getting to know the person behind the idea, or the book, is always a valuable means of grounding and contextualizing what might otherwise be disembodied ideas or concepts. But the volume does much more than introduce us to an impressive array of sensitive and thoughtful personalities. Through the life stories told in this volume, key elements of the relationship between the three religions—theological, philosophical, and ritual—are confronted. The flow of the book moves in interesting ways between the personal, philosophical, theological, experiential, and mystical, as the various life stories weave the greater whole of this book. The sum total of the fourteen stories of Jews and Christians and their encounter with Buddhism provides an interesting vantage point on the Jewish-Buddhist and the Christian-Buddhist encounters. (I use the term "encounter," as opposed to "dialogue," following the distinction made in this volume byE.Burke Rochford Jr.; "encounter" involves personal change and transformation, something shared by nearly all participants in this volume.) From this perspective, interesting observations emerge regarding the ways in which the encounter impacts and interfaces with both Judaism and Christianity, on the sociological, ritual, theological, and experiential levels. The juxtaposition of two sets of stories, Jewish and Christian, allows us, finally, to make some interesting observations on the difference between these two parallel sets of encounters with Buddhism. [End Page 259]The concept underlying this volume—sharing stories, short spiritual biographies —suggests the growing importance of biography or autobiography and narrative in the study of religion. This collection of short contemporary spiritual biographies makes us aware of the importance of narrative as part of spiritual process, and of its sharing. As the reader discovers, storytelling is a very powerful medium for conveying ideas and sharing processes. Something of the transformative nature of the very enterprise of encounter is thus communicated through the medium of this book. There is no doubt that every reader of this book who is sympathetic to the sensibilities of interreligious encounter will be moved and inspired by some of the stories and testimonies here collected.The strengths of Beside Still Waters are also its weaknesses. The medium of storytelling calls for particular literary skills quite distinct from the spiritual and intellectual qualities that have rightly earned participants in this volume their place in it. Moreover, not all participants are able to share a personal, let alone a spiritual, process. Some of the writers (Cobb, Lubarsky) share an intellectual journey, couched in the appropriate autobiographical context. Others (notably Muck) offer theological insight. At the other extreme, a significant group of Christian contributors shares with us some of the most intimate mystical moments of their spiritual odyssey. The uniform assignment that contributors were asked to fulfill has thus been variously interpreted. This makes the book both highly interesting and, in some sense, weak. The lack of consistent focus takes the reader on a ride between a range of dimensions and experiences—intellectual, experiential, mystical, sociological, and more. With the exception of the mystical-experiential dimension that looms large in some of thepresentations, none of the substantive issues is ever fully developed. The cross between autobiography and religious reflection whets one's reflective appetite, offering tantalizing theological insight, only to fade into one of the dimensions of narrative through which the individual contributors address their task. The sum total of the... (shrink)