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Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Edited by Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University) Christian Wiese (University of Frankfurt) Hartwig Wiedebach (University of Zurich) VOLUME 23 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sjjt Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century Personal Reflections Edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes LEIDEN | BOSTON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jewish philosophy for the twenty-first century : personal reflections / by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes. pages cm. — (Supplements to the Journal of Jewish thought and philosophy ; volume 23) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-27961-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27962-9 (e-book) 1. Jewish philosophy—21st century. I. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava, 1950– editor. II. Hughes, Aaron W., 1968– editor. B5800.J49 2014 181’.06—dc23 2014020416 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1873-9008 isbn 978-90-0�-�7961-� (hardback) isbn 978-90-0�-�796�-9 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Acknowledgements ix Contributors x Introduction: Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century 1 Aaron W. Hughes and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson 1 The Historian as Thinker: Reflections on (Jewish) Intellectual History 11 Asher D. Biemann 2 After Germany: An American Jewish Philosophical Manifesto 42 Zachary J. Braiterman 3 Constructing a Jewish Philosophy of Being toward Death 61 James A. Diamond 4 Jewish Philosophy: Living Language at Its Limits 81 Cass Fisher 5 Toward a Synthetic Philosophy 101 Lenn Evan Goodman 6 Jewish Philosophy Tomorrow: Post-Messianic and Post-Lachrymose 119 Warren Zev Harvey 7 Transgressing Boundaries: Jewish Philosophy and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict 133 Aaron W. Hughes 8 Philosophy, the Academy, and the Future of Jewish Learning 152 Claire E. Katz 9 Revisioning the Jewish Philosophical Encounter with Christianity 172 Martin Kavka and Randi Rashkover vi contents 10 Doubt and Certainty in Contemporary Jewish Piety 205 Shaul Magid 11 Otherness and a Vital Jewish Religious Identity 229 Ephraim Meir 12 The Need for Jewish Philosophy 248 Alan Mittleman 13 Historicity, Dialogical Philosophy, and Moral Normativity: Discovering the Second Person 266 Michael L. Morgan 14 Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Jewish Philosophers of Encounter 296 Michael D. Oppenheim 15 A Shadowed Light: Continuity and New Directions in Jewish Philosophy 319 Sarah Pessin 16 Jewish Philosophy, Ethics, and the New Brain Sciences 343 Heidi M. Ravven 17 God Accused: Jewish Philosophy as Antitheodicy 358 Bruce Rosenstock 18 Overcoming the Epistemological Barrier 372 Tamar Ross 19 Toward a New Jewish Philosophy: From Metaphysics to Praxis 391 Avi Sagi 20 A Plea for Transcendence 410 Kenneth Seeskin 21 The Preciousness of Being Human: Jewish Philosophy and the Challenge of Technology 428 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson contents vii 22 In Search of Eternal Israel: Back to an Intellectual Journey 458 Shmuel Trigano 23 Skepticism and the Philosopher’s Keeping Faith 481 Elliot R. Wolfson Index 517 Acknowledgements Although the idea behind this volume originated in 2008, it took some time to materi- alize into a solid book proposal and find an appropriate home. We wish to thank the editors of Brill Academic Publishers, especially Jennifer Pavelko, for their continual support of our work on Jewish philosophy in the contemporary world. Their interest in the project could not have been possible without the commitment of Elliot R. Wolfson, the editor of the series Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, in which this volume appears. We are very grateful to Professor Wolfson for accepting our book for publication in his distinguished series. Editing volumes, especially one of this size, takes a lot of work. We could not have done it without the expert copyediting of Mary Lou Bertucci, whose attention to minute details has been superb and with whom it has been a pleasure to work. Thanks are also due to Ina Gravitz, the 2013–2014 President of the American Society for Indexing, for the compilation of the Index. Finally, we wish to thank the contributors to the volume, all of whom accepted our challenge to participate in a rather unconventional project that asked them both to share and theorize the personal dimension of their professional and academic jour- neys. Their subsequent reflections on their individual paths to Jewish philosophy and their articulations of both the challenges to and tasks of Jewish philosophy today are, we firmly believe, of universal interest. We hope that the volume will invigorate the field of Jewish philosophy by inspiring readers to respond to the reflections presented herein. Contributors Asher D. Biemann is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, where he teaches modern Jewish thought and intellectual history. He is the author of a critical edition of Martin Buber’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften (2003), as well as of Inventing New Beginnings: On the Idea of Renaissance in Modern Judaism (2009) and Dreaming of Michelangelo: Jewish Variations on a Modern Theme (2012), both of which appeared with Stanford University Press. Zachary J. Braiterman is a professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. He is the author of The Shape of Revelation: Aesthetics and Modern Jewish Thought (2007) and (God) after Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post Holocaust Jewish Thought (1998). He is also the coeditor of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: The Modern Era (2012). James A. Diamond is the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He specializes in medieval Jewish philosophy and exegesis and has published widely on all aspects of Jewish thought. His previous publications include Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in the Guide of the Perplexed (2002), Converts, Heretics and Lepers: Maimonides and the Insider (2007), and Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (2014). Cass Fisher is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on philosophical questions regarding Jewish theological language. His first book, Contemplative Nation: A Philosophical Account of Jewish Theological Language (2012), draws on resources from philosophical hermeneutics and analytic religious epistemology to construct a new model for understanding Jewish theology. His essays on rabbinic theology and modern Jewish thought have appeared in the Journal of Religion, Modern Judaism, and several edited collections. contributors xi Lenn Evan Goodman is a professor of philosophy and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, who works in metaphysics and ethics. He is a specialist in Jewish and Islamic philosophies and has written widely on theology, law, and philosophy of nature. His most recent books include Creation and Evolution (2011); his Gifford Lectures, Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself (2012); and the forthcoming Coming to Mind: The Soul and Its Body, coauthored with D. Gregory Caramenico. Warren Zev Harvey is professor emeritus in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has taught since 1977. He studied philosophy at Columbia University (PhD 1973) and taught at McGill University before moving to Jerusalem. He is the author of more than 150 studies in medieval and modern Jewish philosophy. Among his publications is Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998). He is the recipient of the EMET Prize given in Israel in 2009. Aaron W. Hughes is the Philip S. Bernstein Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Rochester. He specializes in Jewish philosophy and theory and method in the academic study of religion. Recent books include Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (2012), The Study of Judaism: Identity, Authenticity, Scholarship (2013), and Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism (2014). Claire E. Katz is a professor of philosophy and women’s and gender studies at Texas A & M University, where she also directs the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. She teaches and conducts research at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and gender; and focuses on modern Jewish philosophy, philosophy of education, social and political philosophy, contemporary French philosophy, and feminist theory. She is the author of An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy
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