DOCSLIB.ORG

Jewish Philosophy, Science of Judaism and Philology in Salomon Munk and Samuel David Luzzatto’S Letters Exchange

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Jewish Philosophy, Science of Judaism and Philology in Salomon Munk and Samuel David Luzzatto’S Letters Exchange European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129 brill.com/ejjs Jewish Philosophy, Science of Judaism and Philology in Salomon Munk and Samuel David Luzzatto’s Letters Exchange Chiara Adorisio Abstract The correspondence of the Italian Hebraist Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865) and the German-Jewish Orientalist Salomon Munk (1803–1867) sheds light on the trans- European dimension of the movement known as the Science of Judaism. This arti- cle is based on the reconstruction of the friendship between Luzzatto and Munk as reflected in Luzzatto’s letters to Munk in Paris. Their relationship was personal as well as intellectual: Luzzatto sent his son Philoxène, a promising Orientalist, to study under Munk’s supervision. Together with Munk’s letter to Philoxène, these letters provide us with details central to an understanding of the relationship between the two scholars. Although differing in their attitude toward Jewish faith and philosophy, Munk and Luzzatto shared a common interest in Hebrew and Oriental languages. Through their philological and linguistic studies, they challenged the Orientalistic attitude prevalent among European scholars and historians of philosophy in the first half of the nine- teenth century. Keywords Samuel David Luzzatto – Salomon Munk – Jewish philosophy – Wissenschaft des Judentums – Jewish studies – Orientalism – Judeo-Arabic literature and philosophy Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), Italian Hebraist and professor at the Rabbinic College of Padua, and Salomon Munk (1803–1867), German-Jewish Orientalist and professor of Semitic languages and literature at the Collège de France in Paris, are two outstanding figures of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe. They contributed to the main goal of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the development of Jewish studies as an academic discipline in European © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�87�47�X-��34��Downloaded99 from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:39:25AM via free access 116 Adorisio universities, through their pioneering philological and historical works on Hebrew literature and language (Luzzatto) and on Islamic and Judeo-Arabic philosophy and literature (Munk). They both were accomplished scholars of Oriental languages and of Hebrew grammar and history. Munk, as the author of a geographical, historical and archaeological description of Palestine,1 was considered by his contemporaries, among them Adolph Jellinek in his Eulogy for Salomon Munk,2 to be one of the most important Orientalists of his epoch. Munk and Luzzatto were both in contact with representative figures of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, founded in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Munk began his studies with Leopold Zunz and was a student of Abraham Geiger and Eduard Gans in Berlin before he emi- grated to Paris in 1928; Samuel David Luzzatto held lively scholarly exchanges with Moritz Steinschneider, Leopold Zunz, Abraham Geiger, and others. They remained orthodox Jews throughout their lives—a fact which sets them apart from other representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, such as Eduard Gans and Heinrich Heine, who abandoned Jewish orthodoxy or converted to Christianity. Although they were very dissimilar in personality and philo- sophical position, Munk and Luzzatto exchanged several ideas on the scien- tific and objective method of the Science of Judaism, shared their knowledge of Hebrew grammar and Hebrew literature, and warned, through their works, against the threat represented by pantheism both in Jewish mystical currents and in philosophy. Munk and Luzzatto were authors who tried to adapt the ideas of the German-Jewish Wissenschaft des Judentums to two very different contexts: the French academic world, and the world of Italian Hebraism, during the first half of the nineteenth century. The reconstruction of their scholarly dialogue will also allow us to reflect on Munk and Luzzatto’s position on the relationship between Judaism, rationalism and the scientific method. And though Munk and Luzzatto are much more known as historical scholars and philologists, and less as philosophers and Orientalists, still, in their historical and philologi- cal works, one finds numerous philosophical reflections influenced both by Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers, testifying to their profound interest in that subject. The present article is just such an examination of Munk and Luzzatto’s relationship—a relationship that exemplifies the trans-European dimension 1 Salomon Munk, Palestine: Description géographique, historique et archéologique (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1845). 2 Adolph Jellinek, Gedächtnisrede auf den verewigten Herrn Salomon Munk (Vienna: Herzfeld & Bauer, 1867). European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 115–129 08:39:25AM via free access Jewish Philosophy, Science Of Judaism And Philology 117 of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, and the influence that the German-Jewish scholars had on the development of nineteenth-century Orientalism through- out the continent. My examination is mainly based on the reconstruction of Luzzatto’s and Munk’s friendship through Luzzatto’s correspondence. Both his published and unpublished letters, as well as the letter that Munk wrote to Luzzatto’s son, Philoxène (who was for a brief period of time Munk’s student in Paris), will provide us with details about their relationship. All these letters are preserved in the Samuel David Luzzatto archive of the Centro Bibliografico dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane in Rome. 1 The Relationship between the Study of Judaism and the Study of Language in Munk and Luzzatto The correspondence between Luzzatto and Munk began around March 1850, when Salomon Munk wrote to Samuel David’s son, Philoxène Luzzatto, a promising student of Oriental languages, saying that he would like to read an example of the young scholar’s work on Assyrian.3 After this letter, Philoxène decided to move to Paris in order to continue his studies under Munk’s guid- ance, and thus became a sort of intermediary between his father and Munk. Writing to Munk about his son, Luzzatto also discusses several questions regarding his own work: I have waited far too long in writing to you and in praising your admirable “Notice” on our ancient grammarians, always awaiting the opportunity to send you my letter with my Philoxène. I am happy to have, in Paris, a man worthy of being a father to my son. His feelings of admiration and sym- pathy toward you equal my own . I thank God that my son may reach France after the fall from power of the pompous words and charlatanism of the tribune, which are diametrically opposed to the motto of Judaism, “speak little and do much.”4 3 At that time, Philoxène Luzzatto had already written his Le sanscritisme de la langue assyri- enne (Padua: A. Bianchi, 1849), and was thinking about publishing a study on Assyrian Inscriptions: Etudes sur les inscriptions assyriennes de Persépolis, Hamadan, Van et Khorsabad (Padua: A. Bianchi, 1850). 4 “J’ai trop long-temps tardé à vous écrire et à vous faire l’éloge de votre admirable ‘Notice’ sur nos anciens Grammairiens, attendant toujours le moment de pouvoir vous envoyer ma lettre par mon Philoxène. Je suis heureux d’avoir à Paris un homme digne d’être père à mon fils. Ses sentiments d’admiration et de sympathie envers vous égalent les miens. Je remercie Dieu European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:39:25AM via free access 118 Adorisio In his letters (to his son, to Munk and to other scholars such as Albert Cohn), Luzzatto expressed great interest in the work of his German-Jewish émigré colleague, who around 1850 was already known for his French translation of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. At that time, Munk had already pub- lished seminal studies on Judeo-Arabic texts, a study on the Jewish philoso- pher Salomon Ibn Gabirol and a survey of the history of Jewish philosophy titled Philosophy and Philosophical Authors of the Jews: A Historical Sketch with Explanatory Notes, in which he sketched a history of Jewish philosophy up to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and claimed that there was a fundamental conflict between philosophy and Judaism. This claim notwith- standing, the idea of the fundamental difficulty of reconciling Judaism and philosophy took different paths in the thought of the two authors, whose let- ters show their awareness of the differences in their positions. In 1850, Munk invited Luzzatto to join him in Paris and to accept a position at the French Academy of Inscriptions and Literature. Luzzatto politely turned down Munk’s offer and explained his decision in a letter to his son in Paris: Although Munk’s idea consoled me, I have already told you that I would prefer not to leave Italy. But I am happy that that man, whom I consider the best and most learned of the Israelites of France, holds me worthy of such an eminent position, which, however, is not for me; it would impede my studies and distract me with worries alien to my vocation.5 In his autobiography, Luzzatto himself explains what that vocation is. He tells us, for example, that when he was eight years old, a young teacher awakened in him a love for the search for truth, for progress, and for rigorous enquiry. Then, under the influence of the Catholic author Francesco Soave,6 in particular, via Soave’s book Istituzioni di Logica, Metafisica ed Etica, Luzzatto became inter- ested in modern philosophers such as Montesquieu, Locke, and Condillac. Luzzatto never abandoned the study of Jewish sources, but considered que mon fils arrive en France après la chûte du pouvoir des paroles pompeuses, et du char- latanisme de la tribune, diamétralement opposé à la devise du Judaïsme, ‘emor me’at va’aseh harbeh.’ ” From a letter to Salomon Munk in Paris, Padua, Purim 1852, in Epistolario italiano, francese, latino, di Samuel David Luzzatto da Trieste; pubblicato da’ suoi figli, ed.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • German Jews in the United States: a Guide to Archival Collections
    GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE,WASHINGTON,DC REFERENCE GUIDE 24 GERMAN JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES: AGUIDE TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS Contents INTRODUCTION &ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 ABOUT THE EDITOR 6 ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS (arranged alphabetically by state and then city) ALABAMA Montgomery 1. Alabama Department of Archives and History ................................ 7 ARIZONA Phoenix 2. Arizona Jewish Historical Society ........................................................ 8 ARKANSAS Little Rock 3. Arkansas History Commission and State Archives .......................... 9 CALIFORNIA Berkeley 4. University of California, Berkeley: Bancroft Library, Archives .................................................................................................. 10 5. Judah L. Mages Museum: Western Jewish History Center ........... 14 Beverly Hills 6. Acad. of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Margaret Herrick Library, Special Coll. ............................................................................ 16 Davis 7. University of California at Davis: Shields Library, Special Collections and Archives ..................................................................... 16 Long Beach 8. California State Library, Long Beach: Special Collections ............. 17 Los Angeles 9. John F. Kennedy Memorial Library: Special Collections ...............18 10. UCLA Film and Television Archive .................................................. 18 11. USC: Doheny Memorial Library, Lion Feuchtwanger Archive ...................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Development of Marxist Thought in the Young Karl Marx Helenhund
    DOUGLAS L. BENDELL AWARD THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARXIST THOUGHT IN THE YOUNG KARL MARX HELENHUND Karl Marx was born a contradiction to the world of his time: from a Jewish family, he would become the world's foremost proponent of atheism; from a culture steeped in German romanticism and Hegelian idealist philosophy, he would become the foremost materialist philosopher; from a profligate son and later, profligate husband and father, he would become the economist who spent hours researching the topic of money for the world­ changing "Das Kapital;" and from this man noted for his culture, intelligence, and arrogance would come the destruction of the old order of privilege through the "Communist Manifesto." Karl Marx was a contradiction to his times, and a revolutionary with a burning desire to change the existing society. His thought, however, was not revolutionary in the sense of being original, but a monumental synthesis of influences in his life, which congealed and culminated in three early works: "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," and the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844." Marx was born May 5, 1818 in Trier, a city on the Mosel River • a region renowned for its wine, Roman history, Catholicism, and revolutionary French ideas. Trier, a beautiful city surrounded by vineyards and almost Mediterranean vegetation, had a reputation for wine production from Roman times: Treves (Trier) metropolis, most beautiful city, You, who cultivate the grape, are most pleasing to Bacchus. Give your inhabitants the wines strongest for sweetnessP Marx also had a life-long appreciation of wine; he drank it for medicine when sick, and for pleasure when he could afford it.
    [Show full text]
  • “Neusnerian Turn” in Method and the End of the Wissenschaft As We Knew It
    The “Neusnerian Turn” in Method and the End of the Wissenschaft as We Knew It Peter J. Haas Over the course of a career marked by extraordinary productivity and the training of virtually a generation of Judaic studies scholars, Jacob Neusner has almost singlehandedly altered the entire methodological orientation of the field of Jewish Studies. I take this occasion to look at this extraordinary Neusnerian turn in method for the field of Jewish Studies. Prior to Jacob Neusner’s work, the greatest paradigm shift in Jewish Studies since the emergence of the talmuds was probably the coalescence of the Wissenschaft des Judenthums movement in the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury. In a broad way, the Wissenschaft brought the methods of German phi- lology into Jewish Studies, or, to put matters the other way around, brought Jewish Studies into conversation with the German “scientific” university dis- course of the time. In a similar vein we can say that the second major shift, which took place over a hundred years later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s was when the methods of the North American academic world were brought to bear on classical rabbinic materials, or, again to restate matters, when Judaic Studies was brought into conversation with modern American higher educa- tion. This is what I referred to above as the “Neusnerian turn.” Before turning to the critical methodological shift in Neusner’s early scholar- ship, it will be helpful to review the older paradigm to which it was responding and which it ultimately overturned. The Wissenschaft des Judenthums had its roots in the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judenthums that was estab- lished in 1819 by Leopold Zunz, Eduard Gans, and Isaac Marcus Jost, among others.
    [Show full text]
  • Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789–1848 Review
    Book Reviews 417 semantic meaning (sometimes exceeding the precepts of the post-hermeneutic theo- retical approach). Given the strong connection between the readings and the specific qualities of the poems, Holzmu¨ller’s readings do not yield abstractly summarizable ‘results,’ per se, but it is worth mentioning a few particular strengths. First, her treat- ment of previous scholarship on the poems (and, in the next section, their settings) is thorough and effective, as for example when she reflects on the claims of a long line of scholars about the “Unantastbarkeit” of “Wandrers Nachtlied II” and lists the words whose removal each claims would destroy the poem (232–233) before explaining the phenomenon as a result of the work’s material-linguistic qualities (233ff.). Moreover, in contrast to many approaches focused on formal structuration, Holzmu¨ller keeps the historical-cultural development and connotations of various forms in view (for ex- ample in her analysis of the relation between lineation in “Wandrers Nachtlied I” and the “Abendlied-Strophe” [200–211]). Finally, her reading of the tensions and conflicts between various schemata for formal organization (in “Wandrers Nachtlied II”) pro- vides a model for readers striving to give non-reductive accounts of formal interac- tions and effects (259–261). The third section, which analyzes and compares settings of the two poems by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Carl Loewe, Franz Schubert, and Hugo Wolf (“Wandrers Nachtlied I”) and Carl Friedrich Zelter, Schubert, and Robert Schumann (“Wandrers Nachtlied II”), is similarly impressive. Holzmu¨ller acknowledges Goethe’s virtuosic shaping of Sprachklang as a problem or challenge for musical setting (one attested to by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Johannes Brahms, among others [289]) and reflects on the rarity of music-theoretical analyses that take into account the fact that song settings always involve the interaction of two sound systems (linguistic and musical), not merely the fitting of a (musical) sound system to a thematic (linguistic) content.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Arabic Sciences: a Selected Bibliography
    THE HISTORY OF ARABIC SCIENCES: A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Mohamed ABATTOUY Fez University Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin A first version of this bibliography was presented to the Group Frühe Neuzeit (Max Planck Institute for History of Science, Berlin) in April 1996. I revised and expanded it during a stay of research in MPIWG during the summer 1996 and in Fez (november 1996). During the Workshop Experience and Knowledge Structures in Arabic and Latin Sciences, held in the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin on December 16-17, 1996, a limited number of copies of the present Bibliography was already distributed. Finally, I express my gratitude to Paul Weinig (Berlin) for valuable advice and for proofreading. PREFACE The principal sources for the history of Arabic and Islamic sciences are of course original works written mainly in Arabic between the VIIIth and the XVIth centuries, for the most part. A great part of this scientific material is still in original manuscripts, but many texts had been edited since the XIXth century, and in many cases translated to European languages. In the case of sciences as astronomy and mechanics, instruments and mechanical devices still extant and preserved in museums throughout the world bring important informations. A total of several thousands of mathematical, astronomical, physical, alchemical, biologico-medical manuscripts survived. They are written mainly in Arabic, but some are in Persian and Turkish. The main libraries in which they are preserved are those in the Arabic World: Cairo, Damascus, Tunis, Algiers, Rabat ... as well as in private collections. Beside this material in the Arabic countries, the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Biblioteca del Escorial near Madrid, the British Museum and the Bodleian Library in England, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Süleymaniye and Topkapi Libraries in Istanbul, the National Libraries in Iran, India, Pakistan..
    [Show full text]
  • King Solomon, Jesus, and Aristotle Shavit, Yaacov
    www.ssoar.info An Imaginary Trio: King Solomon, Jesus, and Aristotle Shavit, Yaacov Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Monographie / monograph Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Shavit, Y. (2020). An Imaginary Trio: King Solomon, Jesus, and Aristotle. Berlin: De Gruyter. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9783110677263 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY Lizenz (Namensnennung) zur This document is made available under a CC BY Licence Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden (Attribution). For more Information see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de Diese Version ist zitierbar unter / This version is citable under: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-70582-3 Yaacov Shavit An Imaginary Trio Yaacov Shavit An Imaginary Trio King Solomon, Jesus, and Aristotle Die freie Verfügbarkeit der E-Book-Ausgabe dieser Publikation wurde ermöglicht durch den Fachinformationsdienst Jüdische Studien an der Universitätsbibliothek J. C. Senckenberg Frankfurt am Main und 18 wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken, die die Open-Access-Transformation in den Jüdischen Studien unterstützen. ISBN 978-3-11-067718-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067726-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067730-0 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Das E-Book ist als Open-Access-Publikation verfügbar über www.degruyter.com, https://www.doabooks.org und https://www.oapen.org Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909307 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
    [Show full text]
  • Leopold Zunz and the Invention of Jewish Culture
    SCHOLARSHIP OF LITERATURE AND LIFE: LEOPOLD ZUNZ AND THE INVENTION OF JEWISH CULTURE Irene Zwiep Around 1820, a group of Berlin students assembled to found Europe’s first Jewish historical society. The various stages in the society’s brief his- tory neatly mirror the turbulent intellectual Werdegang of its members. The studious, typically Humboldian Wissenschaftszirkel they established in 1816 was changed into the more political Verein zur Verbesserung des Zustandes der Juden im deutschen Bundesstaate in the wake of the HEP!HEP! pogroms of 1819, only to be relabelled the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden two years later, in November 1821. In January 1824, in a session attended by a mere three members, the society’s meet- ings were again suspended. Thus, within less than five years, its ambitious attempts at building an alternative, modern scholarly infrastructure had come to a halt. The new Institut für die Wissenschaft des Judentums that was to serve as the Verein’s headquarters never materialized. Its relentless- ly academic Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1822/23) did not survive its first issue. And when trying to strengthen their position within German society, many of its supporters, including first president Eduard Gans (1797-1839) and the ever-ambivalent Heinrich Heine, seem to have preferred smooth conversion to Lutheranism to a prolonged ca- reer in Jewish activism.1 Yet if the Verein’s attempts at establishing a new, comprehensive in- frastructure remained without immediate success, its overall agenda had a lasting impact on modern Jewish discourse. In the early 1820s, Wis- senschaft des Judentums as a form of shared political activism had been doomed to fail; during the following decades, however, a whole genera- 1 For a short history of the Verein, see I.
    [Show full text]
  • Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Middle Islamic Period
    © 2017, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847107927 – ISBN E-Book: 9783847007920 Mamluk Studies Volume 16 Edited by Stephan Conermann and Bethany J. Walker Editorial Board: Thomas Bauer (Münster, Germany), Albrecht Fuess (Marburg, Germany), ThomasHerzog (Bern, Switzerland), Konrad Hirschler (London, Great Britain),Anna Paulina Lewicka (Warsaw, Poland), Linda Northrup (Toronto, Canada), Jo VanSteenbergen (Gent, Belgium) © 2017, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847107927 – ISBN E-Book: 9783847007920 Stephan Conermann (ed.) Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Middle Islamic Period Jews in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Sultanates (1171–1517) V&Runipress Bonn University Press © 2017, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847107927 – ISBN E-Book: 9783847007920 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 2198-5375 ISBN 978-3-8470-0792-0 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our website: www.v-r.de Publications of Bonn University Press are published by V&R unipress GmbH. Sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel College ªHistory and Society during the Mamluk Era, 1250±1517º. © 2017, V&R unipress GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, 37079 Göttingen, Germany / www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Cover image: Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo, Egypt (photographer: Faris Knight, 10/12/2011). © 2017, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847107927 – ISBN E-Book: 9783847007920 Contents Stephan Conermann Introduction.................................
    [Show full text]
  • Brief Bibliographic Guide in Medieval Islamic Philosophy and Theology
    BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE IN MEDIEVAL AND POST-CLASSICAL ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY (2012-2013) Thérèse-Anne Druart The Catholic University of America I cannot thank enough all the scholars who kindly sent me information and, in particular, those who provided me with a copy of their publications or photocopies of tables of contents of collective works. They are true scholars and true friends. Collective Works or Collections of Articles Ad notitiam ignoti. L’organon dans la translatio studiorum à l’époque d’Albert le Grand, ed. by Julie Brumberg-Chaumont (Studia Artistarum 37). Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, 348 pp., ISBN 9782503541839. Circolazione dei saperi nel Mediterraneo. Filosofia e scienze (secoli IX-XVII). Circulation des savoirs autour de la Méditerranée. Philosophie et sciences (IXe-XVIIe siècle). Atti del VII Colloquio Internazionale della Société Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences et de la Philosophie Arabes et Islamiques, Firenze, 16-28 febbraio 2006, ed. by Graziella Federici Vescovini e Ahmad Hasnawi (Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione e dei Processi Culturali e Formativi, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Firenze; Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Università degli Studi di Firenze; Centre d’Histoire des Sciences et des Philosophies Arabes et Médiévales, CNRS Paris). Florence: Cadmo, 2013, xviii-402 pp., ISBN 9788879234085. The Early Islamic Grammatical Tradition, ed. by Ramzi Baalbaki (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 36). Farnham: Ashgate, 2007, l-365 pp., ISBN 9780860787181. Education and Learning in the Early Islamic World, ed. by Claude Gilliot (Formation of the Classical Islamic World 43). Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, xc-410 pp., ISBN 9780860787174.
    [Show full text]
  • Inventing Tradition: on the Formation Of
    SHULAMIT VOLKOV INVENTING TRADITION On the Formation of Modern Jewish Culture I Tradition is such a self-evident element in our culture that it seems to require no special explanation. Nevertheless, it has recently become a sub- ject for a prolonged debate in a number of scholarly disciplines1. Repeated efforts to redefine and analyse its meaning led especially to some funda- mental rethinking especially in the field of Volkskunde, in Folklore-studies, in what Americans usually call Anthropology. 2 Interestingly enough, the matter has now invaded other domains, too. The problematising of the con- cept of tradition, together with some of its most common antipodes, such as innovation and modernity, brought about a fundamental rethinking in Kunst- and Literaturwissenschaft3 and, as could only be expected, its reeval- uation is now slowly becoming an issue for historians too. In an ever expanding and changing world, with continuously shifting perspectives, explaining what has always seemed only obvious is no mere luxury. The clearing-up of terminological mess becomes an absolute necessity if one wishes to avoid dogmatism and, worse still, the ever-present danger of provincialism. Terms like tradition must be repeatedly rethought and reconsidered and their meaning reconstructed again and again; they must, in fact, be deconstructed. 1 A shorter version of this study has been the basis of a lecture given in the framework of the Jewish Studies Public Lecture Series of the Central European University on 4 December 2001. 2 See the interesting discussion in D. Ben-Amos, ‘The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in Its Meaning in American Foklore Studies’, Journal of Folklore Research 21 (1984), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • The Canon of Medieval Jewish Philosophy: a Response to Dov Schwartz
    THE CANON OF MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY: A RESPONSE TO DOV SCHWARTZ Daniel J. Lasker Ben-Gurion University of the Negev An obvious problem in writing a history of medieval Jewish philosophy is determining which compositions are the appropriate source mate- rial for that history. Should such a history concern itself only with a few outstanding compositions or with every treatise that could qual- ify as medieval, Jewish, and philosophical? One of Dov Schwartz’s major contributions to the study of medieval Jewish philosophy has been his locating and examining of forgotten treatises and expand- ing, thereby, the literary basis for such a history. Yet it is unclear that just because a medieval Jewish thinker penned a composition, which may barely have survived in manuscript and which is unlikely to have been read by more than a handful of people, that one is obligated to include it in a history of what we call medieval Jewish philosophy. As Schwartz points out in his article, authors of histo- ries of Jewish philosophy have generally concentrated on only a select number of works. So we must ask: what are the criteria for choos- ing or excluding compositions? Another way of asking the question is: what is the canon of medieval Jewish philosophy? Determining the canon of medieval Jewish philosophy requires rst of all recognizing that the term “canon of medieval Jewish philosophy” applies to more than one set of books. In the Middle Ages, onecould de ne the canon as the list of books that a Jewish aspirant to philos- ophy would be expected to read.
    [Show full text]
  • Yaacov Shavit an Imaginary Trio
    Yaacov Shavit An Imaginary Trio Yaacov Shavit An Imaginary Trio King Solomon, Jesus, and Aristotle Die freie Verfügbarkeit der E-Book-Ausgabe dieser Publikation wurde ermöglicht durch den Fachinformationsdienst Jüdische Studien an der Universitätsbibliothek J. C. Senckenberg Frankfurt am Main und 18 wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken, die die Open-Access-Transformation in den Jüdischen Studien unterstützen. ISBN 978-3-11-067718-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067726-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067730-0 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Das E-Book ist als Open-Access-Publikation verfügbar über www.degruyter.com, https://www.doabooks.org und https://www.oapen.org Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909307 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Yaacov Shavit, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Statue of King Solomon and Christ in the center of the southern portal of the cathedral Notre-Dame of Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin, France), Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Open-Access-Transformation in den Jüdischen Studien Open Access für exzellente Publikationen aus den Jüdischen Studien: Dies ist das Ziel der gemeinsamen Initiative des Fachinformationsdiensts Jüdische Studien an der Universitäts- bibliothek J. C. Senckenberg Frankfurt am Main und des Verlags Walter De Gruyter. Unterstützt von 18 Konsortialpartnern können 2020 insgesamt acht Neuerscheinungen im Open Access Goldstandard veröffentlicht werden, darunter auch diese Publikation.
    [Show full text]