The Boundaries of Knowledge: The Unity of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Jewish Philosophy in Light of His Doctoral Dissertation

Two philosophical positions adopted by Soloveitchik in his doctoral dissertation continued to inform his Jewish philosophical writings throughout his career. The first position, epistemological pluralism, stands behind Soloveitchik’s approach to the religious view of causality and repentance in his writings during the 1940s–1960s. It also grounds his consistent use of the dialectical method. The second position, the eternal mystery of the unknown, comes from the Marburg neo-Kantian Paul Natorp; this idea is a consistent thread throughout Soloveitchik’s writings and a foundation of his existentialist writings through the late 1970s. The conclusion suggests how these two positions might be related to one another.

Is God a person? Maimonides, Crescas, and beyond

Drawing from multiple generations of Jewish philosophy (from Maimonides until today), this article argues for the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that God is both fully, and not at all, a person. The apparent contradiction in this conclusion is resolved by appeal to a two-layered ontology.

Maimonides’s Rationalization of the Incest Taboo, Its Reception in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah, and Their Affinity to Aquinas

This article discusses Maimonides’s rationale for the incest taboo and traces its reception in Christian and kabbalistic traditions in the thirteenth century. Tracing the reception of Maimonides’s view enables recognition of the resemblance between Maimonides and Aquinas, the ambivalent stance toward Maimonides’s explanation expressed by Nahmanides, and the incorporation of Maimonides’s reasoning in one of the most systematic and enigmatic works of kabbalistic rationalization of the commandments, the Castilian Kabbalist Joseph of Hamadan’s The Book of the Rationales of the Negative Commandments. R. Joseph’s acceptance of Maimonidean principles and his integration of them in the theurgic Kabbalah reveal a conflict in the heart of its system and teach us about an important aspect of the theory of sexuality in Kabbalah. The inquiry offered here examines the inter-relations between divergent medieval religious trends in constructing the role of sexuality. Instead of the common presentation of Kabbalah as diverging from the ascetic positions of Jewish philosophy and Christianity, this analysis will elucidate Kabbalah’s continuity with them.

GIORDANO BRUNO AND JEWISH THOUGHT: RECEPTION AND REINTERPRETATION

This article is focused on the philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and the references to Jewish culture in his oeuvre. We discuss about Bruno’s reception of Jewish thought and describe this subject in a comprehensive way. We highlight Bruno’s view on the Jews and their religion, also explaining the reasons behind his polemic against the Jewish people. Furthermore, we underline the influence of the Kabbalistic tradition and Jewish philosophy on various aspects of Brunian thought. Specifically, we discuss about the use of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in Bruno’s works on the art of memory, the relation between Brunian infinitist cosmology and Kabbalistic concepts such as ensoph and the ten sephirot, the relation between Brunian thought and the philosophical theories of Avicebron, Moses Maimonides, Hasdai Crescas and Leo the Hebrew.

Living Law

This book discusses the political theology developed by German Jewish philosophy in the 20th century on the basis of its original reconstruction of the teachings of Jewish prophetology. In the shadow of the modern experiences with anti-Semitism, the rise of Zionism, and the return of charismatic authority in mass societies, the discourse of Jewish political theology advances the radical hypothesis that the messianic idea of God’s Kingdom correlates with a post-sovereignty, anarchist political condition of radical non-domination. However, this messianic form of democracy, far from being antinomian, was combined with the ideal of cosmopolitan constitutionalism, itself based on the identity of divine law and natural law. This book examines the paradoxical unity of anarchy and rule of law in the democratic political theology developed by Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt. Critical of the Christian theological underpinnings of modern “representative” political institutions, this group of highly original thinkers took up the banner of Philo’s project to unify Greek philosophy with Judaism, so influential for medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and rejected the separation between faith and reason, biblical revelation and pagan philosophy. The Jewish political theology they developed stands for the idea that human redemption is inseparable from the redemption of nature.