Abstract

Samuel David Luzzatto is well known as one of the most important Jewish Bible scholars of the nineteenth century. What is less known is that, as a teacher in the Padua Rabbinical Seminary for most of his life, he took it upon himself to develop a religious philosophy of Judaism whose core is ethics. He is unique in the history of Jewish thought of the period in that he bases his analysis of Jewish ethical texts on moral sense theory, similar to the approaches to ethics of Rousseau, Hume, and others in France, Italy, and England, whom he read enthusiastically. His theory is a unique blend of analysis of Jewish sources together with a critical reading of moral sense theory and natural law theory. ;I begin with a study of three autobiographies, and his collected Italian and Hebrew letters. This will demonstrate the interaction of his personal history and the development of his ethical thought. I move on to the substance of his moral sense theory as it is expressed in Lezioni id teologia morale israelitica, and Sefer Yesode ha-Torah, among other writings. ;A critical characteristic of Luzzatto's ethics is its heavy reliance upon Biblical materials and its complex interaction with rabbinic sources. I examine the relationship of Luzzatto to rabbinic Judaism, and demonstrate that he both faithfully incorporates rabbinic Judaism and law into his ethics but also critically evaluates the rabbis in the light of the priorities of the ethics of sentiment, particularly as it affects the question of the extension of Jewish ethics to non-Jews. ;I then demonstrate how Luzzatto derives the ethics of sentiment from the sources of classical Judaism. ;Luzzatto examines the challenges to his theory in the texts of Judaism, both rabbinic and Biblical, and I demonstrate the successes and failures of this effort. ;I then present in detail Luzzatto's philosophy of Mitsvot, thus completing his account of Judaism