Judaism

The aim of this article is to contrast Hegelian insights about the secret with Derrida’s literary account of the secret in the story of Abraham. Derrida outlines two kinds of secret in “Literature in Secret,” one revealable and the other apophatic. I propose that the first kind of secret is Hegelian in nature because a productive concept of contradiction underlies it. On the other hand, the second kind of secret is Derridean because it withdraws from all revelation. Through an analysis (...) of the role of contradiction in Hegel’s Logic and Derrida’s distinction between revealable and unrevealable secrets, I aim to explore the logical and structural components of the concept of the secret. (shrink)

The malaise of modernity, in particular the malaise diagnosed by Nietzsche in the face of the absurdity of suffering, stems from an unfinished, dogmatic and contradictory revival of elements that medieval synthesis had marginalised: hope and earthliness. The ideologies of modernity - revolutionary-progressive or technical - were condemned to be ideologies, and therefore dogmatic, because they were based on faiths smuggled as reasons. Today we live a moment of awareness of the unfinished character of scientific discourses and the partial and (...) provisional character of political discourses. It is precisely the awareness of these limits that opens the space for the paradox that is what the Jewish tradition has remained attached to, a tradition that today, to some of us, sounds as pertinent as ever. (shrink)

Ovaj leksikon je namenjen savremenom čoveku. Praktičan je i zanimljiv te može koristiti učenicima, studentima i svima koji žele da obogate svoja stručna i opšta znanja.

In this paper, I discuss an argument for the existence of God known as “The Argument from the Survival of the Jews.” This argument has the form of an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). It proceeds from the phenomenon of Jewish survival to the existence of God as the best explanation for this phenomenon. I will argue that, even if we grant that Jewish survival is a remarkable occurrence that demands an explanation, and even if we gloss over the (...) difficulties in defining the terms “Jewish” and “survive,” the argument ultimately fails as an argument for the existence of God. It fails because it postulates divine supervision in order to explain Jewish endurance, but it doesn’t provide any clues as to what might be the underlying mechanism at work. (shrink)

In this volume, Douglas Yoder uses the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and biblical criticism to elucidate the epistemology of the Tanakh, the collection of writings that comprise the Hebrew Bible. Despite the conceptual sophistication of the Tanakh, its epistemology has been overlooked in both religious and secular hermeneutics. The concept of revelation, the genre of apocalypse, and critiques of ideology and theory are all found within or derive from epistemic texts of the Tanakh. Yoder examines how philosophers such (...) as Spinoza, Hume, and Kant interacted with such matters. He also explores how the motifs of writing, reading, interpretation, image, and animals, topics that figure prominently in the work of Derrida, Foucault, and Nietzsche, appear also in the Tanakh. An understanding of Tanakh epistemology, he concludes, can lead to new appraisals of religious and secular life throughout the modern world. (shrink)

This is a review of Miles Hollingworth's recent intellectual biography of Wittgenstein.

‘Process Theology enables us to establish a robust relationship to Jewish scriptures and practice in a context of personal integrity, with openness to contemporary knowledge and insight and with an emphasis on spiritual depth and social engagement’ (61). ‘ …a process approach makes the centrality of love clear…’ (62)Rabbi Artson is Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and VP of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. It is important to know, I think, that his interest in process (...) theology is because he has a profoundly personal commitment to Judaism and his calling as a Rabbi. In his credo online, he writes that he refuses ‘to read halakhah or the Torah in such a way that it makes God seem cruel…’ He turns to process theology not to escape or dilute his Jewish faith, but because it helps him to articulate Judaism in a way which he believes allows greater integrity and a deeper understanding of the love and justice of God and Torah.Artson has the gift of writing clearly. (shrink)

The wealth of scholarship on Christian mysticism attests an enduring interest in this subject matter. Amidst the immense collection of commentaries on Christian mysticism lies this valuable book by Nelstrop, Magill, and Onishi. Their book, far from merely offering a survey of current theories on Christian mysticism, does make significant inroads in teasing out logical connections amongst interpretive theories and interpreted themes.Four different theories on mysticism, namely, perennialist, contextualist, performative language, and feminist, are set to work on examining themes within (...) the Christian tradition such as Neoplatonic influences, apophatic language, erotic imagery, scriptural symbolism and exegesis, self-introspection, church hierarchy, female mysticism, and imaginative meditations. The first two parts of the book range over the readings of these themes through the lenses of the four mentioned theoretical approaches. The last chapter of part two presents viewpoints of the four. (shrink)

Judaism was a mythical, strongly tribal religion with anthropomorphic God in which the leading element was the concept of a covenant between God and the exceptional “chosen people.” Such views produced a strong emphasis on tribal unity and attitude of election and moral superiority vis-à-vis the rest of humanity. Philo must have felt inadequacy of the ancient Judaism and its limitations to compete for the minds of Hellenes with their universalistic philosophical thought. Philo represented a trend in Jewish ideology which (...) attempted, in confrontation with the Greek culture, to assert itself as a valid cosmic view to support the existence of a community. He attempted to reevaluate Hebrew ideology found in the scriptures adopting Greek metaphysical, ethical, and religious doctrines to Judaism.The focus of this article is on Philo’s introduction of the Greek concept of Logos, in the modified version of Xenocrates into Judaism. Philo developed this concept further and transformed from a metaphysical entity into an extension of a divine and transcendental anthropomorphic being and mediator between God and men. Thus Philo produced a synthesis of both Hebrew and Greek traditions developing concepts that were used for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought by providing foundations for Christianity. (shrink)

The scant scholarship associated with Newman’s Anglican views about Judaism has focused on his negative rhetoric against Judaism and portrayed him as anti-Semitic. His Anglican writings, however, applied terms associated with Judaism in a typological sense to the political and religious realities of his day, primarily to support his apologetic agenda and to highlight threats to the Church of England. Simultaneously, he stressed the positive characteristics of Judaism, illustrated the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, and pointed out that the religious (...) system of Judaism was divinely inspired and contained worthy examples for Christian living. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the 1729 Dissertation on Liberty and Neces­sity should be attributed to Anthony Collins. This was the prevailing view until the publication of James O’Higgins’s 1970 biography of Collins. Since then, most have followed Collins’s modern-day biographer in denying that Collins penned the Dissertation. After reviewing O’Higgins’s six reasons for rejecting Collins as the author, I respond to the substantive issues in what follows. Part I is a historical positioning of the Clarke-Collins liberty-necessity debate where (...) I discuss the debate’s context, Collins’s methods and disposition, and timeline issues pertinent to ascribing authorship of the Dissertation to Collins. Part II is a demonstration of the fittingness of the Dissertation as Collins’s response to the earlier debate regarding liberty and necessity he had with Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

The present essay is apologetic in as much as it aims to justify as well as to explain the philosophical appropriation of Dionysian metaphysics by contemporaryFrench phenomenology, especially by the work of Jean-Luc Marion. It should be noted that Dionysius serves as the inspiration, direct or indirect, of many authors in the contemporary French school, among whom the most notable are Jacques Derrida, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Jean-Yves Lacoste. The present essaywill focus particularly on the convergence between Dionysius’s theology and Marion’s (...) phenomenology. (shrink)