Although a certain mature historicism in contemporary philosophy takes dialogue with past writers to be the “ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood,” the problem of truth must persist for it—if only in the form of the question concerning the validity of interpretation. If there is no progress in philosophy toward a more precise and established body of true propositions, still there must be some sort of movement to conversation and some reference point by means of which the (...) movement can be gauged. The reference point for traditional metaphysics is presence and presentation —both as method and as subject matter. But our goal now is simply to understand the special philosophical senses of truth and presence in their historical reality. (shrink)

Although a certain mature historicism in contemporary philosophy takes dialogue with past writers to be the “ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood,” the problem of truth must persist for it—if only in the form of the question concerning the validity of interpretation. If there is no progress in philosophy toward a more precise and established body of true propositions, still there must be some sort of movement to conversation and some reference point by means of which the (...) movement can be gauged. The reference point for traditional metaphysics is presence and presentation —both as method and as subject matter. But our goal now is simply to understand the special philosophical senses of truth and presence in their historical reality. (shrink)

Although the bulk of this paper takes the form of an interpretation of the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, it is intended as an exploration of what I take to be a new nexus of assumptions about the objects and practice of philosophy. This new configuration might be designated the narrative paradigm. Here one treats philosophical statements about the world as speech acts in a context few of whose disparate dimensions -- psychological, political, economic, scientific, aesthetic or moral (...) -- can be mastered with the precision of a logical calculus, but which nevertheless exhibits structures and motifs that may let us make sense of philosophical strategies we can neither evade nor forego. Most philosophers from classical times on have been interested in some version of a complete.. (shrink)

The Myth of the Lost Tribes and the Ambiguity of “Israel” 23 Conversion and Return: The Yerushalmi’s Discussion 24 When is “this day”? (Deut. 29:28) 25 The Metaphysics of the Day 27 Hermeneutics in the Covenant of Moab 29..