Wisdom's little sister: studies in medieval and renaissance Jewish political thought

✍ Scribed by Melamed, Abraham

• Publisher: Academic Studies Press
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 430
• Series: Emunot
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The study of Jewish political philosophy is a recently established fi eld in the study of Jewish philosophy. While in older histories of Jewish philosophy there is hardly any discussion of this topic, recent editors of such books have found it useful to add chapters on the topic. Following the pioneering eff orts of Leo Strauss, Ralph Lerner and Daniel Elazar, among others, political philosophy has gained its proper place alongside ethics and metaphysics in the study of the history of Jewish philosophy. This volume is another manifestation of this welcome development. Consisting of selected English-language papers the authors published over the last thirty years, it concentrates on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, from Sa'adiah Gaon in the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth. These were the formative periods in the development of Jewish political philosophy, when Jewish scholars versed in the canonical Jewish sources (biblical and rabbinic) encountered Greek political philosophy, as transmitted by Muslim philosophers such as Alfarabi, Ibn Bajja and Averroes, and adapted it to their Jewish terms of reference. The outcome of this effort was Jewish political philosophy.

✦ Table of Contents

Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah......Page 2
Table of Contents......Page 7
Personal Introduction......Page 9
On This Volume......Page 12
Part I The Framework......Page 15
Chapter One Is There a Jewish Political Philosophy? The Medieval Case Reconsidered......Page 16
Chapter Two Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Philosophy: An Overview......Page 50
Part II Studies: The Middle Ages......Page 77
Chapter Three Aristotle’s Politics in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought......Page 78
Chapter Four The Attitude towards Democracy in Medieval Jewish Philosophy......Page 120
Chapter Five The Organic Theory of the State in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought......Page 140
Chapter Six Jethro’s Advice in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish and Christian Political Thought......Page 175
Chapter Seven The Anonymous Hebrew Translation of Aegidius’ De Regimine Principum: An Unknown Chapter in Medieval Jewish Political Philosophy......Page 212
Part III Studies: The Renaissance......Page 229
Chapter Eight The Myth of Venice in Italian Renaissance Jewish Thought......Page 230
Chapter Nine Natural, Human, Divine: Classification of the Law Among Some Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Thinkers......Page 244
Chapter Ten The Hebrew Laudatio of Yohanan Alamanno: In Praise of Lorenzo il Magnifico and the Florentine Constitution*......Page 272
Chapter Eleven Simone Luzzatto on Tacitus: Apologetica and Ragione Di Stato......Page 305
Chapter Twelve English Travellers and Venetian Jewish Scholars: The Case of Simone Luzzatto and James Harrington......Page 335
Chapter Thirteen Machiavellism and Anti-Machiavellism in Seventeenth-Century Jewish Amsterdam: From Ragione di Stato to Razon de Estado......Page 355
Works Cited......Page 371
Index......Page 424