There is no notion of postmortem Heaven and Hell in both ancient Israeli and Confucian traditions, and the two traditions also share quite a number of similarities about the idea of immortal life after death. Therefore, a comparison of the commonness in this field, e.g. the Jewish Levirate Marriage custom and the Confucian custom of adopting one’s son as heir; the idea of name surviving death in Biblical Judaism and that of glorifying one’s parents by making one’s name (...) famous in future ages in Confucianism, can help us reveal the common pursuit in the two traditions: the postmortem fulfillment of an individual is realized in the form of the continuation of one’s family/ tribe/ nation of which they were, and forever remain, a generational link. In addition, this can help clarify a long faulted Confucian dogma of “Having no male heir being the gravest of the three cardinal offences against filial piety”. (shrink)

Emil Fackenheim’s life work was to call upon the world at large—and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular—to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the (...) Sachsenhausen concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was released and escaped to Scotland and then to Canada, where he lived in a refugee internment camp before eventually becoming a congregational rabbi and then, for thirty-five years, a professor of philosophy. He recalls here what it meant to be a German Jew in North America, the desperate need to respond to the crisis in Europe and to cope with its overwhelming implications for Jewish identity and community. His second great turning point came in 1967, as he saw Jews threatened with another Holocaust, this time in Israel. This crisis led him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ultimately back to Germany, where he continued to grapple with the question, How can the Jewish faith—and the Christian faith—exist after the Holocaust? “An ‘epoch-making’ autobiography.”—Arnold Ages, _Jewish Tribune_. (shrink)

Introduction, by D. J. Silver.--The issues: Some current trends in ethical theory, by A. Edel. Contemporary problems in ethics from a Jewish perspective, by H. Jonas. What is the contemporary problematic of ethics in Christianity? By J. M. Gustafson. Modern images of man, by J. N. Hartt. Is there a common Judaeo-Christian ethical tradition? By I. M. Blank. Problematics of Jewish ethics, by M. A. Meyer. Revealed morality and modern thought, by N. Samuelson.--The Jewish background: Does Torah mean law? By (...) J. Neusner. Confrontation of Greek and Jewish ethics: Philo: De Decalogo, by S. Sandmel. Reprobation, prohibition, invalidity: an examination of the Halakhic development concerning intermarriage, by L. Silberman. Death and burial in the Jewish tradition, by S. B. Freehof. God and the ethical impulse, by W. G. Plaut.--Social action: Civil disobedience and the Jewish tradition, by S. G. Broude. Religious responsibility for the social order: A Jewish view, by E. L. Fackenheim. Toward a theology for social action, by R. G. Hirsch. The mission of Israel and social action, by E. Lipman. Some cautionary remarks, by J. Kravetz.--The mission of Israel: On the theology of Jewish survival, by S. S. Schwarzchild. Meaning and purpose of Jewish survival, by A. Gilbert. Beyond the apologetics of mission, by D. J. Silver. (shrink)

In Matters of Life and Death Elliot Dorff thoroughly addresses this unavoidable confluence of medical technology and Jewish law and ethics.

This research outlines the concept of resurrection from the ancient Hebrew Torah to Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity according to authoritative and linguistically accurate scriptures accompanied by English translations. Although some contemporary scholars are of the opinion that resurrection is vaguely portrayed in the Hebrew Torah, our research into the ancient texts offers quotes and provides proofs to the contrary. With the passing time, the concept of the resurrection grew even stronger and became one of the most important doctrines of Judaism, (...) enjoined as one of the thirteen articles of faith by Maimonides in the Mishnah. Imitative of the Jewish concept of God reaching out to save Israelites from gehenna, Jesus’ crucifixion and death for the sins of the world, resurrection on the third day, descend into the hells and subsequent rise into heavens became the essential foundation of Christianity, with Christ's resurrection as the impetus for the resurrection of those who believe in him. According to this Pauline theology, Christian faith is based upon the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German PhilosophyClaire Elise KatzPeter Eli Gordon. Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xxix + 328. Cloth, $65.00.Peter Gordon's recent book brings together two seemingly disparate authors—Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger. Gordon intends to demonstrate that although Franz Rosenzweig is most frequently viewed as a Jewish thinker, this perspective obfuscates his German background, which (...) Gordon argues plays an even more prominent role in his thinking. His claim is that Rosenzweig should be situated within his German background and within German thought in order to gain a broader and more accurate perspective of who he was and what his work means.The book is coherently organized with a substantial introduction that lays the groundwork for the rest of the argument. Here, Gordon introduces us to Rosenzweig, Heidegger, and modern German and Jewish thought. Subsequent discussions explore primary philosophical influences on Rosenzweig's thought, for example, the roots of Rosenzweig's "New Thinking" found in Hermann Cohen and the need for a critique of totality found in Hegel. The central chapters, which offer a re-reading of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, are clearly written and are alone worth the time of this book.In these two chapters, Gordon outlines the significance of Rosenzweig's thought as situated within the canon of western philosophy by demonstrating that Rosenzweig's work engages central questions and concerns within the history of philosophy. Primarily, Rosenzweig believes that western philosophy has concerned itself too much with death, the death of the individual and a need to transcend completely from this world. Rosenzweig, contra the history of western philosophy, argues for a philosophical position that emphasizes life here and now—the everyday—and, more importantly, that we remain in time and the world (179). And here he draws interesting comparisons to Heidegger, indicating that these philosophers had a similar relationship to the history of philosophy, both of which were influenced by the German milieu in which they wrote and thought.Gordon ends his study of the relationship between Rosenzweig and Heidegger by drawing our attention to Rosenzweig's last writings, which were in the form of newspaper articles. These writings attended to the Davos Disputation, the now infamous debate between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. In these articles Rosenzweig indicates his partiality to Heidegger's position, in particular his position on redemption (285 ff.), indicating that Heidegger's philosophical stance represented most clearly Rosenzweig's New Thinking.Regardless of whether one agrees with Gordon's main thesis, this book is an original and significant contribution to philosophy and Jewish thought. Clearly Heidegger does not represent philosophy proper, since we still see grave signs of the split between analytic and "contemporary continental" philosophy; however, he does loom large as a central figure within European philosophy and specifically within German thought. To engage Rosenzweig's views with those of Heidegger brings Rosenzweig into a conversation from which he is normally excluded. And unfortuntately, when Rosenzweig is studied along with other figures such as Emmanuel Levinas, philosophers whose work is outside of Jewish thought will simply claim that Levinas is even more "Jewish" than they thought rather than admit that Rosenzweig is a philosophical thinker worthy of engagement. Although Gordon might hope that Rosenzweig scholars take more notice of the German background of Rosenzweig's thought, instead of circumscribing him within a strictly Jewish context, the engagement with Heidegger might be of more importance for Heidegger scholars and scholars of contemporary European philosophy.My sense is that Rosenzweig scholars in fact do notice the Germanic influence but also see the significance of treating Jewish philosophy as philosophy in its own right. It is "mainstream" philosophy that might need the reminder that Jewish philosophy is also philosophy. As a result, my primary concern is that Gordon's book might have de-emphasized the "Jewish" in order to make room for the "German." At the beginning of the book Gordon tells us that "Levinas was always suspicious of Heidegger." That, actually, is not true. Levinas attended the Davos debate and sided with Heidegger. But the events of the early 1930s led him... (shrink)

Most of the world's religions hold a belief in some form of life after death. The editors of this major anthology seek a global perspective on the importance of these beliefs, based on religion, psychical research, and the natural sciences. Eleven chapters explore the afterlife teachings of religions around the world. In order to emphasize the diversity beliefs - even across particular belief systems - some contributors write from within the traditions, while others offer critical and alternate views. The (...) chapters cover afterlife beliefs in African religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism while raising a number of important questions. Is a belief in an afterlife necessary to provide meaning to the here and now? Can science provide the means of affirming such beliefs? A further four contributions address these questions directly, and critique the belief systems from the perspectives of philosophy and psychical research. The final chapter highlights the importance of research into states of consciousness during near-death and other mystical experiences. Taken as a whole, the book constitutes the most valuable resource on the subject to date. The editors conclude that in some respects, a global perspective does emerge - particularly that human beings are more than just our bodies, but are "composed of a physical and nonphysical element." The contributors are all prominent international scholars, including Kofi Asare Opoku, Daniel Cohn-Sherbok, Thomas McGowan, Sulayman S. Nyang, Salih Tug, Mariasusai Dhavamony, R. Balasubramanian, Saeng Chandra-Ngarm, Bruce R. Reichenbach, Antony Flew, Arthur S. Berger, David Lorimer, and the editors themselves. (shrink)

Interest in Leo Strauss is greater now than at any time since his death, mostly because of the purported link between his thought and the political movement known as neoconservatism. Steven B. Smith, though, surprisingly depicts Strauss not as the high priest of neoconservatism but as a friend of liberal democracy—perhaps the best defender democracy has ever had. Moreover, in _Reading Leo Strauss, _Smith shows that Strauss’s defense of liberal democracy was closely connected to his skepticism of both the (...) extreme Left and extreme Right. Smith asserts that this philosophical skepticism defined Strauss’s thought. It was as a skeptic, Smith argues, that Strauss considered the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between reason and revelation—a conflict Strauss dubbed the “theologico-political problem.” Calling this problem “_the_ theme of my investigations,” Strauss asked the same fundamental question throughout his life: what is the relation of the political order to revelation in general and Judaism in particular? Smith organizes his book with this question, first addressing Strauss’s views on religion and then examining his thought on philosophical and political issues. In his investigation of these philosophical and political issues, Smith assesses Strauss’s attempt to direct the teaching of political science away from the examination of mass behavior and interest group politics and toward the study of the philosophical principles on which politics are based. With his provocative, lucid essays, Smith goes a long way toward establishing a distinctive form of Straussian liberalism. (shrink)

This article examines the cultural ways in which traditional Judaism understands the relationship between an individual and Divinity. The article shows that this understanding has deep gendered dimensions. Grounded in feminist critiques of theology, as well as in Jewish studies and cultural studies, the article shows that the conceptualization of God-person relationship, in both Orthodox and Kaballic Jewish streams, is based on a hierarchical division to three different spaces. These spaces are: Mitzvah, Grace, and Desire or Will. The Mitzvah is (...) perceived to be the highest space and is represented as 'manly'. The intermediate space-Grace-is represented as a 'good woman' or as 'mother'. This space is characterized by a sacred yearning, as well as by lack of stability and continuity, paralysis, and even death. The lowest space is the space of Desire and personal will, which is culturally represented by a child or a whore-woman. This space is characterized by an attitude of disregard, resistance and fear. The article demonstrates how this cultural division of Divinity in to three, contradicts the declared Jewish position that God/divinity is 'One, Sole and Unique', and points at the inherent need of genderless conceptualization of Divinity in Judaism. (shrink)

The celebrated western humanist tradition has its source in its early philosophical texts. In The Gift of Death, Derrida analyses the history of the emergence of ethical responsibility in the so-called Religions of the Book such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While the humanist project helped itself through its conquest of the human sphere, it has served to upset the ecological balance and jeopardize sustainability. While searching for an inclusive vision for a sustainable, ethical perspective, Dōgen’s philosophy gains relevance (...) in the contemporary context. (shrink)

This paper explores definitions of death from the perspectives of several world and indigenous religions, with practical application for health care providers in relation to end of life decisions and organ and tissue donation after death. It provides background material on several traditions and explains how different religions derive their conclusions for end of life decisions from the ethical guidelines they proffer.

The 1981 Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) established the validity of both cardio-respiratory and neurological criteria of death. However, many religious traditions including most forms of Haredi Judaism (ultra-orthodox) and many varieties of Buddhism strongly disagree with death by neurological criteria (DNC). Only one state in the U.S., New Jersey, allows for both religious exemptions to DNC and provides continuation of health insurance coverage when an exception is invoked in its 1991 Declaration of Death Act (...) (NJDDA). There is yet no quantitative or qualitative data on the frequencies of religious exemptions in New Jersey. This study gathered information about the frequency of religious exemptions and policy in New Jersey that was created out of respect for religious beliefs. Literature and internet searches on topics related to religious objections to DNC were conducted. Fifty-three chaplains and heads of bioethics committees in New Jersey hospitals were contacted by phone or email requesting a research interview. Respondents answered a set of questions about religious exemptions to DNC at the hospital where they worked that explored the frequency of such religious exemptions in the past five years, the religious tradition indicated, and whether any request for a religious exemption had been denied. This study was approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (IRB #: 16–03-15). Eighteen chaplains and bioethics committee members participated in a full research interview. Of these, five reported instances of religious exemptions to DNC occurring at the hospital at which they worked for a total of approximately 30–36 known exemptions in the past five years. Families sought religious exemptions because of faith in an Orthodox Judaism tradition and nonreligious reasons. No failed attempts to obtain an exemption were reported. Religious exemptions to DNC in New Jersey do occur, although very infrequently. Prior to this study, there was no information on their frequency. Considering religious exemptions do occur, there is a need for national or state policies that addresses both religious objections to DNC and hospital resources. More information is needed to better understand the impact of granting religious exemptions before new policy can be established. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ethics of Death: Religious and Philosophical Perspectives in Dialogue by Lloyd Steffen and Dennis R. CooleySarah MosesThe Ethics of Death: Religious and Philosophical Perspectives in Dialogue Lloyd Steffen and Dennis R. Cooley MINNEAPOLIS: FORTRESS PRESS, 2014. 318 PP. $34.00In The Ethics of Death, religious studies scholar Lloyd Steffen and philosopher Dennis Cooley offer ethical analysis of a variety of topics with an approach they (...) refer to as "dialogic engagement," modeled upon their own interdisciplinary exchange with one another (4). In fact, each of the seven main chapters is explicitly structured as a dialogue: each author laying out his particular approach in two separate sections, which are then followed by a question-and-answer section where the authors pose questions to one another and provide brief responses. Intending to address death as it relates to the moral lives of the living, the chapters cover topics that are of enduring interest to students, scholars, and the general public: abortion, the death penalty, war, suicide, physician-assisted suicide, and euthanasia. To distinguish it from other recent titles that explore the dying experience in contemporary medical contexts, the book might be more accurately described as addressing the ethics of killing. [End Page 218]To set the stage for subsequent topical chapters, the book's first chapter provides a basic introduction to ethics, including outlining prominent ethical theories such as Kantian, utilitarian, virtue, and natural law approaches. Readers will find clear descriptions of key terms such as consequentialism, deontology, and pragmatism. In his section Steffen also addresses the contrast between religious and secular ethics, noting how religious ethical traditions are potentially distinctive (such as divine command theories or use of sacred texts) and potentially overlapping (such as similar practical judgments). In this chapter, the authors also indicate their own preferred normative approach: Steffen identifying with a "natural law hybrid ethic," a natural law approach that "allows the other ethical theories a part but says none has the final say" (22), and Cooley advocating what he calls the "Pragmatic Principle" approach, combining what he considers plausible and helpful from both deontology and consequentialism (32–33). The authors' normative approaches reveal the strengths and limitations of various ethical theories, and the practical usefulness of theoretical hybridity.Each of the topical chapters provides readers with relevant background information, such as the legal and policy history of particular issues. Given the flexible normative approaches taken by the authors, not surprisingly each chapter provides a nonabsolutist position on each form of killing (although Cooley's evaluation of war is strongly negative: "Some may be justified, whereas the vast majority cannot be" [165]). The chapters also provide balanced, thoughtful sections that outline major arguments on opposite sides of ethical debate, sometimes in the form of enumerated "for and against" lists. The chapters thus familiarize readers with important dimensions of contemporary debates, such as just war theory, pacifism, human rights theory, definitions of personhood, and the determination of medical futility. Chapters include useful references to thinkers who have shaped ethical debate such as Don Marquis and Judith Thompson on abortion and Mahatma Gandhi and Douglas Lackey on war and violence. Students of religious ethics will find the sections by Steffen particularly helpful in reviewing various ethical positions from religions such as Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.The book could certainly be effective in a topical survey course at the undergraduate or graduate level, with a major strength that the book's structure illustrates theoretical connections between philosophy and religious studies regarding ethical inquiry. The dialogue questions that conclude each chapter could be used to frame class discussion or even as prompts for student writing assignments. However, for a course focused on comparative religious ethics, instructors would want to supplement with more in-depth ethical analysis from particular religious ethical traditions. [End Page 219]Sarah MosesUniversity of MississippiCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 545 Congratulations to the publisher must be qualified only with regret that a work so valuable to students should be available only in a hardback edition costing nearly twenty dollars. Wabash College Crawfordsville, Indiana WILLIAM c. PLACHER God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion. By MEROLD WESTPHAL. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Pp. xiv+ 305. $27.50. At each stage of its history existential thought (...) has been deeply engaged with the phenomena of religion. However, the appeal to the existence has produced starkly opposed responses to the question of the significance of religion. The original and most obvious contrast is that between Kierkegaard and his near-conternpomry, Nietzsche. Where the first reflects on the existence of the " single one " as a way of defending religious consciousness against Hegelian rationalism; the latter makes a similar turn to existence (as the will to power of life) precisely in order to " unmask " the " lies " that tempt one to the religious life. Or, more recently, one could contrast the efforts of Marcel and Bultmann, who find in existential thinking the key to a deeper appreciation of traditional religiosity, with the resolutely atheistic project of Sartre, for whom "we are in a situation where there are only human beings," where "even if God existed it wouldn't make any difference." In spite of such controversy over the value of religion, the philosophical approach to religion in terms of existence has had the beneficial effect of shifting the locus of questioning from the cognitive status of religious utterances to the problem of the meaning of the religious life. An existentail approach does not exhaust itself in analyzing the evidential structure of propositions about God, the soul, etc., as though religion were simply a mode of cognition, but rather explores the question of "what it is (means) to be religious." In our own time Paul Ricoeur has taken up this issue in a way that seeks to do justice both to the critical moment in existential thought and to its promise of a deepened religious sensibility. Along with a "hermeneutics of suspicion" (grounded in the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud) Ricoeur calls for a "hermeneutics of recovery " which would reinvest the " symbolism of the sacred " with a depth drawn from consciousness of our existential situation. It is in the horizon of this latter project that we may locate Merold Westphal's sig- 546 BOOK REVIEWS nificant contribution, God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion. This book, addressed to a general audience of believer and unbeliever alike, has many virtues. While it draws judiciously from the central works of existentialism and phenomenology, as well as from a wide variety of literature on the world's religions. it is written in clear and engaging prose, entirely free from tedious jargon. And while vYestphal's sympathies are clearly with those who find a continued vitality in religious eonsciousness today, his book is written in the spirit of inquiry; it gracefully avoids the twin dangers of polemics and devotionality. He is sensitive to objections without allowing them to paralyze his arguments, and he offers some bold, important generalizations without being blind to the limits of his evidence. Finally, the book contains original phenomenological investigations, striving after eidetic insight through study of personal experience, world literature, and (mostly standard) works on other cultures and their religious life (including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, various forms of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Amerindian religions). Because Westphal draws on such a diversity of materials, there are likely to be many points with which the specialist will take issue. But an ad.equate phenomenology of religion must tackle this diversity, and Westphal has certainly given us one of the most accessible examples of such an enterprise. Westphal's approach to the existential question-What does it mean to be religious ~-is phenomenolog'ical. This means, first, that we are interested in the significance of religion from the descriptive first person perspective of the believing soul. The believing soul (a term borrowed from Ricoeur) is not simply "one who believes or affirms this or that proposition," but one. "who sees things in a certain way" (257). vYe are concerned here with a form... (shrink)

The author encountered evocations of suffering and death in all the studies and research he devoted, over 40 or so years, to the intellectual, social and religious life of western Muslim Judaism, and indeed the whole of traditional Jewish thought and its varied modes of expression: rabbinical law, Hebrew poetry, the literature of homily and preaching, mystical writings and the kabbala, dialect and popular literatures in Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Berber. Some passages are taken from the Zohar (‘The town the angel (...) of death cannot enter’, for instance). The author also refers to the Talmud and magic therapeutics, the power of sacred names, Jewish and Muslim miracle workers, hunting down and casting out demons, etc. Agony, refusal to die, joyous commemoration of death, the cemetery and the cult of the dead, Judeo-Muslim pilgrimages, the wealth of the customs, beliefs and rites of the past lead the author to reflect on the question of death in the present-day world. (shrink)

The evil of the holocaust demands a radical rethink of the traditional Christian understanding of Judaism. This does not mean jettisoning Christianity's deepest convictions in order to make it conform to Judaism. Rather, Richard Harries develops the work of recent Jewish scholarship to discern resonances between central Christian and Jewish beliefs. This thought-provoking book offers fresh approaches to contentious and sensitive issues. A key chapter on the nature of forgiveness is sympathetic to the Jewish charge that Christians talk much too (...) easily about forgiveness. Another chapter on suffering in Judaism and Christianity rejects the usual stereotypes and argues for important common ground, for example in the idea that God suffers in the suffering of his people. There are also chapters on the state of Israel and the place of Jerusalem in Christian and Jewish thought. Richard Harries argues that the basic covenant is not with either Judaism or Christianity but with humanity. These, like other religions, are different, distinctive voices in response to God's primal affirmation of human life, which for Christians is achieved and given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the light of this the author maintains - controversially - that Christians should not be trying to convert Jews to Christianity. Rather Jews and Christians should stand together and build on the great amount they have in common to work together for a better world. (shrink)

This companion to Elliot Dorff's three books on Jewish ethics -- Matters of Life and Death , To Do the Right and the Good , and Love Your Neighbor and Yourself -- is designed for group as well as individual study. Through suggested readings from Dorff's books, probing questions, lively discussion topics, and simple writing exercises, readers will be able to analyze and clarify their own positions on a host of controversial issues: sex, surrogate motherhood, adoption, family abuse, responsibilities (...) for charitable giving, the ethics of war, suicide, and euthanasia, and more. (shrink)

This work is a revised version of my dissertation, originally presented in 2002. It explores questions of God and faith in the context of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, as developed in Being and Time. One problem with traditional philosophical approaches to the question of God is their tendency to regard God's existence as an objective datum, which might be proven or disproven through logical argumentation. Since Kant, such arguments have largely been dismissed as predicated on a priori assumptions whose legitimacy (...) cannot be substantiated. This dismissal has led to a widening divorce between 'faith' and 'reason,' as the rational grounds for faith have come under increasing, and radical, attack. Heidegger's phenomenological ontology provides us a new approach to the question of faith by showing that concernful relations lie at the heart of our apprehension of Being. This affords us a new way of approaching the question of God philosophically; one which pursues this question, not in terms of metaphysical categories, but in terms of the existential concerns central to human life. At the same time that Heidegger allows us this new approach, however, his existential analyses seem to deny any legitimacy to religious faith. For the Heidegger of Being and Time, the human being is 'Being-towards-death,' i.e., essentially enclosed in finitude, whereas for religion the human being has an essential relation to the infinitude of God. This work, then, has a twofold purpose: It seeks, first, to explore the meaning of God and faith as these may be understood in the terms provided by Heidegger's phenomenological ontology. It seeks, second, to examine the way in which that ontology might be challenged and revised through a religious conception of human Being. (shrink)

When, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche poses the question of how the natural sciences are possible, he insists that they depend not on a principle that is natural but on the will to truth, the will not to deceive even oneself, with which, he holds, ?we stand on moral ground.? Yet, that the natural sciences stand on ground that is moral also means, for Nietzsche, that their origin is to be located in ?a faith that is thousands of years old,? (...) a faith that, in the Genealogy of Morals, he develops as presupposing what he calls the ascetic ideals of Judaism and Christianity. Further, in holding that the natural sciences have their origin in principles that are biblical, Nietzsche goes on to indicate that, like the natural sciences, his own critical position, unconditionally honest atheism, is, in forbidding itself ?the lie involved in belief in God,? not opposed to, but is rather an expression of, Judaism and Christianity's ascetic ideals. In addressing the interrelationships among the religious, the secular, and the natural sciences in light of Nietzsche, I argue that the natural sciences have their origin in principles that are not natural but that are no less religious than secular. (shrink)

The attitude towards death and dying reflects the society’s view on a human being as a subject. Due to the progress in medical science a growing interest has been observed in the problem of death, including the right to dignified dying. One of the issues connected with the phenomenon of dying is the problem of euthanasia seen as one’s right to decide on one’s own death in extreme cases. The question of the legality of euthanasia is becoming (...) a subject of consideration more and more often, which is a result of a celebratory culture of death and the obsolescence of faith and religious practice. The aim of the following report is to show the attitude of major religions of the world towards euthanasia. What arguments of religious nature are against the legality of mercy killing? Both Christian and non-Christian religions rise to speak on the matter. All religions stress their veto over mercy killing, justifying their view in various ways. Christians claim that God is the donor and lord of life; a man cannot decide on ending human life as he or she is only the user, not the owner of it. Judaism assumes that human life has an absolute value, is sacred, untouchable, as God’s gift. Islam, quoting Koran, also preserves life as God’s gift. According to Buddhist ethics, the annihilation of both one’s own and someone else’s life is the worst of evil deeds. Will the arguments of religious nature mean enough to stop the legality of euthanasia? (shrink)

This is a book about writing and thinking about bioethics of a particular sort, a feminism of a particular sort, and a Jewish philosophy of a particular sort. It is about all of these things-feminist thought, Judaism, and the practice of bioethics-as I have written about them in a distinctive moment in the field and from the moral location from which I worked, which was as an academic in the disciplines of Jewish Studies and moral philosophy who also worked as (...) a clinical ethicist in a large public hospital. These are cases of children and families facing illness and death within the clinical world, a world of scarcity, desperation, and grace, and the choices they make within that world. It explores the meaning of these choices and reflects on why the dilemmas are so important in our society. The book considers the moral gesture that is medicine and the role of the ethicist as she comes to learn her practice. This is a book about the memory and meaning, re-evaluated and considered in light of the traditional texts of Jewish thought. (shrink)

THE FREEHOF INSTITUTE OF PROGRESSIVE HALAKHAH The Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah is a creative research center devoted to studying and defining the progressive character of the halakhah in accordance with the principles and theology of Reform Judaism. It seeks to establish the ideological basis of Progressive halakhah, and its application to daily life. The Institute fosters serious studies, and helps scholars in various portions of the world to work together for a common cause. It provides an ongoing forum through (...) symposia, and publications including the quarterly newsletter, HalakhaH, published under the editorship of Walter Jacob, in the United States. The foremost halakhic scholars in the Reform, Liberal, and Progressive rabbinate along with some Conservative and Orthodox colleagues as well as university professors serve on our Academic Council. This collection of essays is the product of the symposia held in Atlanta and Pittsburgh in 1995 and 1996. This book follows the volumes DYNAMIC JEWISH LAW; Progressive Halakhah - Essence and Application (1991), RABBINIC -LAY RELATIONS IN JEWISH LAW (1993), CONVERSION TO JUDAISM IN JEWISH LAW (l994), DEATH AND EUTHANASIA INJEWISH LAW (1995) and THE FETUS AND FERTILITY IN JEWISH LAW (1995), ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA IN JEWISH LAW (1997). It is part of a series whose subjects are diverse and the approaches taken by the authors are equally so. We wish to encourage wide ranging discussions of contemporary and historic themes. (shrink)

The loss of a loved one can be a devastating blow, its impact unpredictable and often perplexing. In this sensitively written volume, letters to a young man offer solace, strength and rare insight. The correspondence format allow Meir Munk to.

Mass death resulting from war, starvation, and disease as well as the vicissitudes of extreme poverty and enforced sexual servitude are recognizably pandemic ills of the contemporary world. In light of their magnitude, are repentance, regret for the harms inflicted upon others or oneself, and forgiveness, proferring the erasure of the guilt of those who have inflicted these harms, rendered nugatory? Jacques Derrida claims that forgiveness is intrinsically rather than circumstantially or historically impossible. Forgiveness, trapped in a paradox, is (...) possible only if there is such a thing as the unforgivable. "Thus, forgiveness, if there is such a thing," can only exist as exempt from the law of the possible. Does this claim not open the way for hopelessness and despair? More troubling for Derrida is his concession that forgiveness may be necessary in the realm of the political and juridical. If so, is not the purity of the impossibility of forgiveness so crucial for him, contaminated? In pointing to some of the difficulties in Derrida's position, I shall appeal to Vladimir Jankelevitch's distinction between the unforgivable and the inexcusable. I shall also consider the significance of repentance in the theological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and Max Scheler. Forgiveness, I conclude, is vacuous without expiation, a position that can be helpfully understood in the context of Judaism's analysis of purification and acquittal in the Day of Atonement liturgy. I argue that what disappears is Derrida's assurance of the impossibility of forgiveness, a disappearance that allows for hope. (shrink)

Chacun connaît les pyramides égyptiennes, les temples grecs, le forum romain et convient que ces traces de civilisations mortes prouvent... que les civilisations meurent, donc qu'elles sont mortelles! Notre civilisation judéo-chrétienne vieille de deux mille ans n'échappe pas à cette loi. Du concept de Jésus, annoncé dans l'Ancien Testament et progressivement nourri d'images par des siècles d'art chrétien, à Ben Laden qui déclare la guerre à mort à notre Occident épuisé, c'est la fresque épique de notre civilisation que je propose (...) ici. On y trouve : des moines fous du désert, des empereurs chrétiens sanguinaires, des musulmans construisant leur "paradis à l'ombre des épées", de grands inquisiteurs, des sorcières chevauchant des balais, des procès d'animaux, des Indiens à plumes avec Montaigne dans les rues de Bordeaux, la résurrection de Lucrèce, un curé athée qui annonce la mort de Dieu, une révolution jacobine qui tue deux rois, des dictatures de gauche puis de droite, des camps de la mort bruns et rouges, un artiste qui vend ses excréments, un écrivain condamné à mort pour avoir écrit un roman, deux jeunes garçons qui se réclament de l'islam et égorgent un prêtre en plein office, sans parler de mille autres choses... Ce livre n'est ni optimiste ni pessimiste, mais tragique car, à cette heure, il ne s'agit plus de rire ou de pleurer, mais de comprendre. -- Book cover. (shrink)

Introduction -- The Judaism of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) : a religion of adults -- From the night of the world to the blaze of redemption : the star of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) -- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) : the angel of history and the experience of the century -- Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) : the tradition, between knowledge and repair -- Martin Buber (1878-1965) : humanism in the age of the death of God -- Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) : a hermeneutics of (...) waiting -- The testament of Leo Dtrauss (1899-1973) -- Hans Jonas (1903-1994) : the experience of thought and responsibility toward the world -- With Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) : history judged. (shrink)

Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these (...) topics, we note how Traditional African Religion posits claims that clash with mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and that, being prima facie plausible, indicate the need for systematic cross-cultural philosophical debate. (shrink)

The philosophical works of F. Rosenzweig have particular meaning for both academic and existential inquiries and interests, as he deeply re-observes the religious life of Judaism and Christianity through the reflection of human existence. Fear of death, observation of Plato’s understanding of Eros, overcoming of atheism of Goethe in the experience of faith - these key motives form a challenging discourse of Rosenzweig’s theological and philosophical thought, which invites reader into a truly charming spiritual journey. The article provides an (...) intriguing introduction to the issue of RUDN Journal of Philosophy, which is dedicated to F. Rosenzweig and provides a scope to various aspects of the philosophy of one of the most prominent German-Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, including topics such as criticism and reception of German idealism and existentialism, «new thinking» as a philosophical system, philosophical interpretation of biblical texts, Kabbalah and mysticism. (shrink)

The unique wisdom of Judaism comes from the Talmud and the Judaic sages' other ancient writings that preserve the tradition of the originally oral Torah, or Teachings of Moses. Sometimes surprising - "better sincere sin than hypocritical virtue" - and always penetrating and helpful - "who are rich? those who are happy with their lot" - the wisdom of the oral Torah is set forth on more than one hundred subjects, arranged alphabetically, in their sources' own words, here rendered in (...) clear and easily readable English. This is the "how-to" book for people who think deeply about everyday life: facing death of a loved one, the duties and rights of women and men together, busy-ness versus real achievement, deceit, gossip, discretion, virtue, honor, forbearance, forgiveness. (shrink)

Prayer has long been a staple in the proverbial Jewish medical toolbox. While the vast majority of relevant prayers seek renewed health and prolonged life, what might prayers for someone to die look like? What ethical dimensions are involved in such liturgical expressions? By examining both prayers for oneself to die and prayers for someone else to die, this essay discerns reasons why it may be good and even necessary to pray for a patient's demise.

Twenty-five years after her death, we are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing the life and work of this seminal twentieth-century philosopher, Julia Kristeva provides us with an elegant, sophisticated biography brimming with historical and philosophical insight. Centering on the theme of female genius, _Hannah Arendt_ emphasizes three features of the philosopher's work. First, by exploring Arendt's critique of Saint Augustine and her biographical essay on Rahel Varnhagen, Kristeva accentuates Arendt's commitment to recounting (...) lives and narration. Second, Kristeva reflects on Arendt's perspective on Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the "banality of evil." Finally, the biography assesses Arendt's intellectual journey, placing her enthusiasm for observing both social phenomena and political events in the context of her personal life. Drawing on fragments of Arendt's most intimate correspondence with her longtime lover Martin Heidegger and her husband Heinrich Blucher, excerpts from her mother's "Unser Kind" (a diary tracking Hannah's formative years), and passages from Arendt's philosophical writings, Kristeva presents a luminous story. With a thorough thematic index and bibliographical references, _Hannah Arendt_ is a major breakthrough in the understanding of an essential thinker. (shrink)

What should philosophical theology look like after the critique of Onto-theology, after Phenomenology, and in the age of Speculative Realism? What does Kabbalah have to say to Philosophy? Since Kant and especially since Husserl, philosophy has only permitted itself to speak about how one relates to God in terms of the intentionality of consciousness and not of how God is in himself. This meant that one could only ever speak to God as an addressed and yearned-for holy Thou, but not (...) to God as infinite creator of all. In this book-length essay, the author argues that reality itself is made up of the Holy Name of God. Drawing upon the set-theoretical ontology of Alain Badiou, the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram, the physics of Frank Tipler, the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, and the genius of Georg Cantor, the author works to demonstrate that the universe is a computer processing the divine Name and that all existence is made of information (the bit). As a result of this ontic pan-computationalism, it is shown that the future resurrection of the dead can take place and how it may in fact occur. Along the way, the book also offers compelling critiques of several significant theories of reality, including the phenomenological theologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, Process Theology, and Object-Oriented Ontology. Reality in the Name of God explores how the concepts of Jewish mysticism can be articulated and deployed as philosophical theses within current metaphysical debates. It provides a new and dynamic Structural Realist ontology of information. Ultimately, the book aims to deal a death blow to the restriction of philosophy and theology in relation to elaborations of a how a believer relates to a God outside the mind and to return thought to a direct encounter with the divine nature of reality itself and its creator"--Website of the publisher, October 19, 2020. (shrink)

In Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve, Juliana Geran Pilon argues for a return to an egalitarian view of men and women, found in the original Genesis narrative, as reflected through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In each of these Abrahamic traditions, it was understood that man and woman were created to be soulmates in God's image—equal despite their different functions within society. Pilon writes that this original message has gradually been distorted, with disastrous effect. Any hope for an ennobling human community begins by (...) resurrecting Eve as an equal partner to Adam. The work examines the Biblical creation narrative, comparing it to Greek and other ancient mythologies. Pilon explains how the disturbing association of woman with sin and death led to Eve's demise as Adam's equal. The final section of the work deals with the Goddess myth, love and marriage in early religious narratives, and modern man's search for his soul no less than for a soulmate. The book, at its core, is a meditation on the relationship between men and women but also among human beings. The resurrection of Eve is indispensable to attaining a true appreciation of love and faith. Pilon uses religious texts, expert commentary, and various works of fiction, poetry, and psychology to make her argument come alive. The work is strengthened by the writing style, alternately poetic and humorous, and a clear and illuminating progression of ideas. Its emphasis on reconciliation and understanding, and its post-feminist outlook will find a receptive audience. (shrink)

Lessing's death in 1781 was a severe blow to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn wrote his last two works to commemorate Lessing and to carry on the work to which they had dedicated much of their lives.

The Pale God examines the relationship between secularism and religious tradition. It begins with a description of the secular options as expressed by Israeli intellectuals, and describes how these options have led to a dead end. A new option must be sought, and one of the key sources for this option is the works of Spinoza. The author explains that unlike Nietzsche, who discussed "the death of God," Spinoza tried to undermine the authority of religious virtuosos and establish the (...) image of a rational "Pale God." Such changes could channel religious tradition to the basic principles of secular political rule. The author demonstrates that the secular option is inherent in Israeli society, fits the type of secularism that Zionism instilled in the Jewish people, and complements the traditional trends deeply rooted in that society. (shrink)

The Star of Redemption, * which presents Franz Rosenzweig's system of philosophy, begins with the sentence "from death, (vom Tode) , from the fear of death, originates all cognition of the All" and concludes with the words "into life. " This beginning and this conclusion of the book signify more than the first and last words of philosophical books usually do. Taken together - "from death into life" - they comprise the entire meaning of Rosenzweig's philosophy. The (...) leitmotif of this philosophy is the life and death of the human being and not the I of philosophical idealism, where man ultimately signifies "for ethics" no more than" . . . a point to which it (ethics) relates its problems, as for science also he (man) is only a particular case of its general laws. "l Rosenzweig deals with the individual's actual existence, that which is termi nated by death; he speaks of the individual's hic et nunc, of his actions and decisions in the realm of concrete reality. This philosophy is not an exposition of theoretical principles. It is not concerned with man in general in abstract time, but rather with the individual human being, designated by a proper name, living in his particular time. ** Human existence in its finiteness and temporalness forms the focus in which Rosenzweig's motif can be gathered together. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

The contributions in the current issue of Ethical Perspectives mainly derive from a conference on Catholic Intellectual Traditions organized jointly by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame, and held at Leuven from November 10th to the 11th, 2000. As the reader can see from a quick perusal of the table of contents, the contributions cover a diverse range of topics. The reader might well ask what such contributions have to do with a journal concerned (...) with ethical perspectives. What do contributions bearing on religious themes from literature, or reflections on mystical love, or on Catholicism and modern scholarship, have to do with a journal devoted to ethics? Surely we have all learned to our benefit from Kant that ethics is entirely autonomous with respect to religion. If there is a relation, it is one that must respect that autonomy, and not muddy the waters by bringing back the outmoded promiscuity of religion and ethics, and especially it must guard against religion trying to sly its way back to dominion over ethics once again.A reply to this line of reflection would be that Ethical Perspectives is concerned not only with perspectives, not only with what happens within perspectives, but with ethical perspectives as themselves coming to articulation within contexts that contain all the richness of human life as lived. Such contexts cannot be considered apart from serious reflection on religion as expressing the sense of ultimate worth that humans understand and try to live diversely. Contexts have to do with the ethos within which ethical perspectives, and our determinate address to specific ethical dilemmas occur. The practice of a religion, or the absence of it, or indeed the rejection of such practice, communicates something of our sense of the most ultimate ethos of being, and its goodness.Clearly this communication will also be effected in a diversity of ways: for instance, in the understanding we have of the economy and the state as serving, or despoiling, the worth of human life; or in the art and literature that offer us images of significant human possibility set forth for imaginative contemplation with a forthrightness more integral than the confused flux of everyday life allows; or in the secret love of prayer that draws the human soul towards its most extreme abandonment and adoration. Ethical perspectives do not make full sense in the determinate terms they overtly set forth, but draw from sources of value that more often than not remain implicit and intimate to the perspectives themselves. Full ethical reflection requires mindfulness of these more intimate sources, and an honest address towards our religious being is demanded by such reflection. Such honesty is asked of a non-believer as of a believer. Both indeed may be differently called into question by that honesty.If the conference was organized with reference to Catholic Traditions, does this indicate a kind of sectarian narrowness for the intellectual, despite what the word `catholic' might betoken? It will be evident from the contributions that no such narrowness is here at work. Quite the opposite: it is the rich diversity that is striking. One does hear reference to the `ghetto' of Catholic ways, perhaps Church ways, perhaps Christian ways generally. This is a very interesting word: `ghetto'. The discerning reader will note in some of the contributions a strong sympathy for Judaism. But in some instances we will be urged to get out of our `ghetto'. It might seem that as `Catholics' or `Christians' we are already `Jews'. Who put us into the `ghetto'? Is this self-incurred? It seems there are some who have consigned themselves to their own `ghetto', but while this may be true, are there not `ghettos' of religion that are the afterlives of certain Enlightenment ways of thinking about religion, afterlives internalized by those religious who would get out of this now self-imposed ghetto, and make their accommodation with more enlightened ways. How delightfully tangled it all is! We preach repentance and wonder at the end who it is that needs to repent, perhaps we the preachers! One thinks of Lear telling the judge to bring the lash to himself. I don't believe Lear was a Catholic, but he certainly was not an Enlightenment intellectual.There is a question worth asking here, in that for not a few the notion of a `Catholic intellectual' or `Christian intellectual' is an oxymoron. To be a real intellectual is not to be affiliated to an organization that already knows in advance what the truth is. One is reminded of those debates earlier in the 20th century between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston. Russell: You are a Catholic, ergo you already know the answer, ergo you cannot honestly ask the question, ergo what you do cannot be philosophy, that is, free thinking.Very clever, of course, and not without some truth. Do we have to agree with Heidegger that a Christian philosophy is a round square? The problem here, of course, is philosophical. I would say: to be a philosopher is to be able to ask about anything, including religion. But the how of the asking is very important. The asking about religion might well seek a confirmation for what is held beforehand. But this holds true of the critics of religion as much as the sympathizers. The shoe is sometimes on the other foot. It is not only the apologetic Catholics who bring presuppositions to bear on the asking of a question, but so also do those critics who, mirabile dictu, strangely often find their own presuppositions confirmed once again. How easy to accuse the other of not being a `real' intellectual; how galling when it turns out that one's own practice of the free intellect mirrors one's chained opponent.The lesson I take: we inevitably bring fundamental presuppositions to bear in the asking of determinate questions. And it is these presuppositions we need to understand as much as the determinate questions and determinate answers. We are all put to the test. This is more catholic than the offensive critic or the defensive apologist. But you must have trust in mind to be willing to let one's thought be thus open. Such trust cannot be accounted for fully in the determinate ideas one explores or defends. It is interesting also that this trust, in the how of asking questions, mirrors the trust in the how of a person's faith or hope in God. This trust bears on this and that situation or difficulty, but it is in excess of this or that determinate situation or difficulty. It concerns sources of expectation in truth and goodness that are more than we can determine in advance. They are more than we can ever determine completely, since they make our determining possible. We are given to be in this expectation which we cannot completely determine through ourselves alone. And one might say that religion is the way we are given to keep open our communication to these sources of ultimate trust. Russell's cleverness is admirable, but that cleverness will not do to deal with the issue. If the issue concerns ethos or context in the sense implied above, cleverness will never do justice to that. While religion has the power to make us more discerning here, there is a cleverness that tends to make us obtuse.Of course, we intellectuals and academics love cleverness, since we think we are very clever ourselves. Here is one of our sources of difficulty with religion. People who are not clever like us also seem to be religious. If so, one might be tempted to say: being religious then cannot be the same as being clever; it might not even be clever to be religious; ergo to be a truly clever intellectual and academic, I must leave religion in my youth, and put on adult ways of thinking. One might even add to the clinching argument: for ethical reasons we must leave that behind, for just as our thinking must be autonomous, so we must our being ethical become entirely autonomous. Adieu religion!There is an argument here, but one wonders if there are also hints of the operation of a sly process of shaming. We now live in a time where processes of embarrassment are often at work in the initiation of young academics and intellectuals. I hear it said, or rather I hear the significant silence saying this: “It is not that we argue against religion, it's just that well, we real intellectuals don't talk about such things anymore”. We may speak at the top of our heads as post-modernists who have robustly deconstructed the Enlightenment ideal, but at the level of the more elusive and intimate embarrassment we are unself-conscious children of the Enlightenment. But did not the Enlightenment tell us no longer to be children. But now, with our heads we postmoderns tell ourselves we no longer want to be children of the Enlightenment, but in our hearts with regard to religion we are still such children — I mean children of the Enlightenment. Is it not time for that child also to grow up. If I were allowed to prophesy — and of course I am not allowed, since prophecy is now said not only to be inadmissible but impossible — I would inadmissibly and impossibly have to say that at the end of that growing up being religious might again wait gently for this stout child. How galling this will be, I do not prophesy, since we will then have to make our peace with all those people there who are not as clever as we are.We all know Kant's remarks about Enlightenment freeing us from self-incurred tutelage. And of course, our servility to spiritual despots and priestly powers was part of that tutelage. And so we have become autonomous thinkers. What if this autonomy comes to mean that we substitute for self-incurred tutelage a kind of self-incurred spiritual mutilation? If God is the distinguished thing, this may be so; and no amount of self-exculpation, not even ethical self-exculpation, in terms of our being denizens of the epoch of the death of God, will quite exonerate our blasé lack of urgency about divine ultimacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From the Sacrifice of the Letter to the Voice of TestimonyGiorgio Agamben’s Fulfillment of MetaphysicsJeffrey S. Librett (bio)By denying us the limit of the Limitless, the death of God leads to an experience in which nothing may again announce the exteriority of being, and consequently to an experience which is interior and sovereign. But such an experience, for which the death of God is an explosive reality, (...) discloses as its own secret and clarification, its intrinsic finitude, the limitless reign of the Limit, and the emptiness of those excesses in which it spends itself and where it is found wanting.—Michel Foucault, “Preface to Transgression”Can there be a discourse that, without being a metalanguage or sinking into the unsayable, says language itself and exposes its limits?—Giorgio Agamben, “The Idea of Language”I shall not rest until every German sees that it is a shameful thing to be a lawyer.—Adolf Hitler, speech before theReichstag, April 26, 1942From his early works on, Giorgio Agamben has opposed the thought of no contemporary philosopher more consistently and programmatically than that of Jacques Derrida, whose questioning of phonocentric metaphysics Agamben has tried to replace by a characterization of metaphysics as (what I am calling here) graphocentric. To go back behind the replacement of the voice by the letter is for Agamben to recover the event of language itself, the taking-place of language as Being.1 In his conceptualization of the project for such a recovery, as we shall see, Agamben’s commitment to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is overdetermined by his investment in the Christian God as logos.This philosophical program in Agamben’s early essays guides his later work on the homo sacer-sovereign relation but also distorts and disturbs the later work in three principal ways. First, it prompts him to propose an exclusively juridicopolitical understanding of the sacredness of the homo sacer, effectively scapegoating the juridical sphere for a more broadly theopolitical problem, while placing the specifically Christian background [End Page 11] of his antinomianism in a misleadingly secular, rational, and universalist light. Symptomatically, in order to accomplish this juridicopolitical reduction Agamben must reject Bataille’s analysis of sacrifice—along with the entire modern anthropological reading of the sacred—out of hand. For this rejection protects his discourse against any sustained confrontation with the importance of the sacrificial dimension for both what he calls the homo sacer and his own approach to law in his theorization of the homo sacer..Second, Agamben’s philosophical program impoverishes the account he provides of the Nazi death camps as an extreme example of the sovereign-homo sacer relation by making it impossible for him to appreciate the importance of Christian antinomianism in the formation of National Socialist ideology. For Agamben’s philosophical orientation requires or presupposes that he ignore or underestimate, first of all, the sacrificially anti-Semitic dimension of Christian antinomianism—the tendency of such antinomianism to make Judaism responsible for the ontological desert into which representation exiles us all. Further, as a consequence of his continuing commitment to this tradition, Agamben cannot see how important the tradition remains, even if in a displaced form, for Nazi anti-Semitism. I argue that Agamben’s animus against the letter blinds him to the Christian and sacrificial dimensions of the Holocaust—he ignores the former and explicitly, emphatically denies the latter dimension—because this animus represents his own commitment to the Christian antinomianism that, in its racialized National Socialist form, attempts to rid itself of the letter by sacrificing not only Judaism but the (biologically, racially construed) Jews. Because his radically antinomian program would become unsettled by his recognition of its important overlap with the ideological bases of National Socialism, Agamben cannot ultimately acknowledge the Christian and sacrificial aspects of the Holocaust.Finally, in Remnants of Auschwitz—his main reading (outside of Homo Sacer) of the significance of the Nazi death camps—Agamben positions “testimony” as the exemplary instance of the speaking of speech, the taking-place of language. The result of the destruction of European Jewry becomes here the revelation of poetic speech as a manifestation of the absolute. Unwittingly, Agamben ends up participating in... (shrink)

The Holocaust is one of the most intractable and challenging tragedies of moral evil to understand, assuming the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving God, and it has important implications for all theists. This paper critically examines the problem of evil in the philosophical theologies of two prominent Jewish philosophers: Emil Fackenheim and Richard Rubenstein. The article defends their view that the six million deaths are existentially meaningless because no justifiable reason exists why God permitted this. Thus, a Jewish (...) theodicy is not possible for them. Fackenheim attempts to salvage traditional Judaism, and urges Jews not to lose their faith, lest Hitler be given a posthumous victory. Rubenstein rejects Fackenheim’s position and encourages Jews to accept the death of God and his mystical radical theology, and still continue traditional religious practices. I question both these responses, and hold that it is more plausible that God is not perfectly loving. (shrink)

In 1903 Otto Weininger, A Viennese Jew who converted to Protestantism, published Geschiecht und Charakter, a book in which he set out to prove the moral inferiority and character deficiency of "the woman" and "the Jew." Almost immediately, he was acclaimed as a young genius for bringing these two elements together. Shortly thereafter, at the age of twenty-three, Weininger committed suicide in the room where Beethoven had died. Weininger's sensationalized death immortalized him as an intellectual who expressed the abject (...) misogyny and antisemitism.This collection of essays, many translated into English for the first time, examines Weininger's influence and reception in Western culture, particularly his impact on important writers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce. One essay considers the ways Weininger's ideas were used to further Nazi ideology, and several offer feminist approaches to interpreting the intersection of antisemitism and misogyny. The concluding essay explores Weininger's surprising role in Israel's ongoing sociopolitical self-definition through the bold production of Joshua Sobol's play, "The Soul of a Jew."This volume 's close examination of Weininger's ideas, and their subsequent appearance in other well-known texts, suggests how the legacies of prejudice affect Western culture today. Author note: Nancy A. Harrowitz is author of Antisemitism, Misogyny and the Logic of Cultural Difference: Cesare Lombroso and Matilde Serao and editor of Tainted Greatness: Antisemitism and Cultural Heroes. >P>Barbara Hyams is Lecturer with the rank of Assistant Professor of German at Brandeis University. (shrink)

Many recent journal articles and monographs by students of Jewish philosophy have been dedicated to the question of definition: what is Jewish philosophy, and how can it be distinguished from its others, such as Jewish thought, non-philosophical Judaism, and non-Jewish philosophy, philosophical theory of religion, etc. In this essay, I take a somewhat playful alternative approach by asking about philosophers rather than philosophies. The first parts compares the status of philosophers in different cultures. In comparison with the high regard for (...) philosophy and philosophers, philosophers were not regarded highly by the Jews, at least not since the rabbinic tradition made Hellenism appear contemptible. Conversely, Hellenizing Greeks and Jews considered Judaism not just compatible with the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle but itself a philosophy and regarded the Jews as a “race of philosophers” (Theophrastus). The canon of Jewish philosophers wavers between none and all, depending on who establishes such a canon. In the final section, I follow the intuitions of Gillian Rose, whose death-bed conversion may, to some, put her beyond the pale of Jewish philosophers and who contributes a useful mode of decanonization to the discussion of who is a Jewish philosopher. (shrink)