Ethics of Maimonides

Ethics of Maimonides
Author: Hermann Cohen
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2003-01-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0299177637

Hermann Cohen’s essay on Maimonides’ ethics is one of the most fundamental texts of twentieth-century Jewish philosophy, correlating Platonic, prophetic, Maimonidean, and Kantian traditions. Almut Sh. Bruckstein provides the first English translation and her own extensive commentary on this landmark 1908 work, which inspired readings of medieval and rabbinic sources by Leo Strauss, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas. Cohen rejects the notion that we should try to understand texts of the past solely in the context of their own historical era. Subverting the historical order, he interprets the ethical meanings of texts in the light of a future yet to be realized. He commits the entire Jewish tradition to a universal socialism prophetically inspired by ideals of humanity, peace, and universal justice. Through her own probing commentary on Cohen’s text, like the margin notes of a medieval treatise, Bruckstein performs the hermeneutical act that lies at the core of Cohen’s argument: she reads Jewish sources from a perspective that recognizes the interpretive act of commentary itself.

Maimonides' Ethics

Maimonides' Ethics
Author: Raymond L. Weiss
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1991-10-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780226891521

Papers from the conference on Priority Issues, Publications Services distributes for the Australian Institution of Engineers. No index. Shows how the 12th-century Hebrew scholar integrated the philosophical systems of Athens and Jerusalem without violating the spirit of either or downplaying their essential incompatibility. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Ethical Writings of Maimonides

Ethical Writings of Maimonides
Author: Maimonides
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2012-06-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0486119343

Philosopher, physician, and master of rabbinical literature, Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) strove to reconcile biblical revelation with medieval Aristotelianism. His writings, especially the celebrated Guide for the Perplexed, exercised considerable influence on both Jewish and Christian scholasticism and brought him lasting renown as one of the greatest medieval thinkers. This volume contains his most significant ethical works, newly translated from the original sources by Professors Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth, well-known Maimonides scholars. Previous translations have often been inadequate — either because they were not based on the best possible texts or from a lack of precision. That deficiency has been remedied in this text; the translations are based on the latest scholarship and have been made with a view toward maximum accuracy and readability. Moreover, the long "Letter to Joseph" has been translated into English for the first time. This edition includes the following selections: I. Laws Concerning Character Traits (complete) II. Eight Chapters (complete) III. On the Management of Health IV. Letter to Joseph V. Guide of the Perplexed VII. The Days of the Messiah Taken as a whole, this collection presents a comprehensive and revealing overview of Maimonides' thought regarding the relationship of revelation and reason in the sphere of ethics. Here are his teachings concerning "natural law," secular versus religious authority, the goals of moral conduct, diseases of the soul, the application of logic to ethical matters, and the messianic era. Throughout, the great sage is concerned to reconcile the apparent divergence between biblical teachings and Greek philosophy.

Interpreting Maimonides

Interpreting Maimonides
Author: Marvin Fox
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 1990
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0226259420

In this comprehensive study, Marvin Fox offers an approach to Moses Maimonides that illuminates the intersections of his philosophical, religious, and Jewish visions—ideas that have embattled readers of Maimonides since the twelfth century.

A Covenant of Creatures

A Covenant of Creatures
Author: Michael Fagenblat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2010-06-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0804774684

"I am not a particularly Jewish thinker," said Emmanuel Levinas, "I am just a thinker." This book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas's philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael Fagenblat argues that what Levinas called "ethics" is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Decoding the Levinas's philosophy of Judaism within a Heideggerian and Pauline framework, Fagenblat uses biblical, rabbinic, and Maimonidean texts to provide sustained interpretations of the philosopher's work. Ultimately he calls for a reconsideration of the relation between tradition and philosophy, and of the meaning of faith after the death of epistemology.

Maimonides

Maimonides
Author: Moshe Halbertal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2013-11-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1400848474

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

The Reception of Aristotle's Ethics

The Reception of Aristotle's Ethics
Author: Jon Miller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-12-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 052151388X

A new collection of thirteen essays, covering the reception of Aristotle's ethics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. Provides both a history of reception and conceptual analysis for each figure or school. For students of philosophy and of the history of ethics and ideas.

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed
Author: Alfred L. Ivry
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022639526X

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

Maimonides' Political Thought

Maimonides' Political Thought
Author: Howard Kreisel
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438409672

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