bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Halevi, Judah (before 1075–1141)
Authors: Goodman L.E. 
Published: September 2018

Physician, philosopher and perhaps the greatest Hebrew poet since the Psalms, Judah Halevi studied the Neoplatonic Aristotelianism widespread in Islamic Spain, but his loyalty to Judaic traditions, love of Israel and poetic empathy for the sufferings and aspirations of his people made him a powerful critic of that philosophical tradition. His philosophical masterpiece, the Kuzari, is a fictional dialogue set at the court of the king of the Khazars, a people of the Volga basin whose leaders had converted to Judaism in the early ninth century. Reports of the Khazar realm sparked Halevi’s imagination and gave him the backdrop for this effort to celebrate and shape his ancestral faith.
Beyond heartening his fellow Jews in times of upheaval, Halevi confronted philosophical questions that conventional thinkers often begged or ignored. He found the erudite Neoplatonism of his day too confining to God, too speculative and a priori. Tellingly, he condemns Neoplatonism for cultural vacuity, moral sterility and spiritual escapism: while Christians and Muslims, with the highest spiritual intentions, earnestly set about one another’s murder, the philosophers fail to differentiate one faith from another. What is needed, Halevi reasons, is not a still more spiritual intellectualism but a historically and geographically rooted tradition concretely directed by God’s love.
Halevi did not, as romantics often suppose, simply turn his back on reason, or on philosophy generically. Rather, he used his own philosophical gifts and poetic tact to retune philosophy to the ground notes of Jewish experience. He retained but structurally adapted the Neoplatonic linkage of God to the world via emanation, replacing the elaborate hierarchy of star souls with the simple manifestation of God’s word, the ’Amr. Like Philo’s Logos, Halevi’s ’Amr was at once an attribute of God, his wisdom and a manifestation of God immanent in nature. Since the ’Amr is an imperative, it connotes power, volition and command, not just logical entailment or necessitation. Since it is immanent, it allows fuller appropriation than was possible for many philosophers and many of the pietists and mystics in their wake, of the material side of nature, including human nature: language, material culture – including agriculture and other economic activities – law and politics belong to realm of God’s expression. Particularity is not isolated from God. Poetry and works of imagination can be expressions of the divine, not just stepchildren mediating the ever more abstract and abtruse flights of the intellect. Zion could be acknowledged as the land where the divine afflatus was most clearly articulated as a way of life. Longing for Zion need no longer be sublimated in prayer; rather, Israel’s songs of longing for the robust life of the land of God’s grace would voice a spiritual imperative that demanded practical expression and historical realization.
Nahmanides, Moses (1194–1270)
Authors: Stern Josef 
Published: September 2018

One of the most influential medieval Jewish thinkers to engage with the philosophical tradition, Nahmanides was also a leading Talmudist, biblical exegete, and a founding figure of the Jewish mystical tradition (Kabbalah) that emerged in thirteenth-century Spain. Generally critical of Aristotle, he was deeply influenced by predecessors such as Moses Maimonides. As the leading rabbi in Catalonia, Nahmanides played a central role in the ‘Maimonidean controversy’ of 1232–3, a dispute that raged over the permissibility of philosophical study. He was also at the centre of the ‘Barcelona disputation’ of 1263, conducted with the apostate Pablo Christiani over the issue of philosophically motivated allegories.
Unlike his Provençal contemporaries, Nahmanides wrote neither free-standing philosophical treatises nor commentaries on Graeco-Arabic philosophical texts. Instead, he developed his original metaphysical views in sermons and his highlt influential biblical commentaries treating such topics as miracles, providence and idolatry. The commentaries proved especially influential through their thematic treatments of philosophical questions raised by the biblical text and for their suggestive expositions of mystical and theosophical ideas.
Albo, Joseph (c.1380–c.1444)
Authors: Frank Daniel H. 
Published: September 2018

Writing in the early fifteenth century, in times of extreme urgency for Spanish Jewry, Joseph Albo presented Judaism as an axiomatic system founded on three primary principles and eight secondary ones. His Sefer ha-‘Iqqarim (Book of Principles), sought to defend Judaism against Christian attacks by laying out the basic presuppositions of the Mosaic law.
Albo’s theology belongs to a tradition of theorizing going back to Maimonides in the twelfth century. But his approach was grounded in a non-Maimonidean moral psychology. Responding to the Aristotelian intellectualism of the Maimonidean philosophy, which held true belief to be essential to human virtue and salvation, Albo focused on practice, fulfilment of the commandments. His act-centred view, grounded in the premise that beliefs cannot be commanded, allowed for a certain latitude in faith, which had both intra-communal and inter-communal advantages. If controversial doctrines such as ex nihilo creation could be made less prominent, acrimonious internal debates could be avoided, and the community could be somewhat less exposed to external attack.
Messer Leon, Judah (c.1425–c.1495)
Authors: Tirosh-Samuelson Hava 
Published: September 2018

Messer Leon was a philosopher, physician, jurist, communal leader, poet and orator. Ordained as a rabbi by 1450, Messer Leon was qualified to adjudicate legal cases among Jews and head an academy (yeshivah) for advanced studies in Jewish law. He also came close to embodying the Renaissance ideal of uomo universale. His learning was formally recognized in 1469, when Emperor Frederick III awarded him a doctorate in medicine and philosophy and granted him the unusual privilege of conferring doctoral degrees in those subjects on Jewish students.
Messer Leon’s contribution to Jewish philosophy was in the field of logic, the art considered by him to be the key to the proper harmonization of religion and philosophy. He regarded scholastic logic to be superior to Arabic logic and wrote supercommentaries on Averroes’ logical works as well as an encyclopedia of logic, Mikhlal Yofi (Purest Beauty), in an attempt to shift Jewish philosophical education from the Judaeo-Arabic logical tradition to scholastic logic. Although his encyclopedia became a popular textbook, Messer Leon failed to mould the culture of Italian Jewry as he had intended. In particular, he could not curb the spread of Kabbalah, a tradition which he vehemently opposed because of its underlying Platonic metaphysics.
Most importantly, Messer Leon composed the first manual of Hebrew rhetoric, entitled Nofet Tzufim (The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow). Printed in 1476, this Jewish response to Latin humanism combines the Averroist-Aristotelianism tradition and the Ciceronian-Quintilian one. The appropriation of humanistic rhetoric was given a Jewish meaning when Messer Leon claimed that the Torah, rather than the writings of the pagan, classical orators, exemplified perfect speech because it was a revelation of perfect divine wisdom. By analysing Scripture from the perspective of classical rhetoric, Messer Leon legitimized the study of ancient pagan and Christian orators even as he argued for the supremacy of biblical rhetoric over all merely human eloquence.
Jewish philosophy in the early 19th century
Authors: Seeskin Kenneth 
Published: September 2018

Although Jewish philosophy flourished in the Middle Ages, it underwent a serious decline in 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain. The period following Kant and Mendelssohn witnessed an attempt to reintegrate Jewish philosophy into the mainstream of Western culture. The strategy of reintegration consisted of two elements: (1) showing that there is more to Judaism than the study of Scripture and (2) arguing that some of the ideas that won favour in the Enlightenment were anticipated by Jews centuries earlier.
The most central idea that Jewish thinkers claimed as their own is a shift in focus from theoretical issues to practical ones. As important features of the medieval worldview fell into disrepute, many philosophers began to ask whether there are limits to what human reason can know. Can it really prove that God exists or that the soul is immortal? One response was to argue that even if no proof can be found, there are still grounds for believing, particularly if our understanding of ourselves as moral agents makes no sense without them.
But it did not take long for people to argue that moral agency requires not just a God but a free and transcendent God capable of issuing commands to free agents created in the divine image. Here too, Jewish thinkers claimed that the idea of a God who is not limited by nature and insists on mercy and justice for all people was an integral part of monotheism as understood by the Hebrew prophets.
Bioethics, Jewish
Authors: Zohar Noam J. 
Published: September 2018

Jewish bioethics seeks to apply Jewish modes of normative discourse in bioethics. For some moral issues in medicine, explicit guidance may be found in the traditional sources of halakhah; but many others require creative application of ancient or medieval precedents and norms. Much of the contemporary writing in this area takes the classical form of rabbinic Responsa to specific queries from adherents of the halakhah. But the field also includes contributions from thinkers who offer not rulings on religious law but the fruits of moral inspiration by the tradition.
In the Judaic tradition the idea that each human being is created in God’s image fosters a powerful commitment to saving and prolonging life. Murder and suicide are terrible sacrileges. Procreation is highly valued. Contraception is not easily countenanced, and still less is abortion. But abortion is clearly distinguished from homicide.
The symbolic preciousness of the divine image disallows disfigurement of human corpses. The implications of this prohibition for pathology and for the study of anatomy are hotly disputed. The prohibition is overridden, however, in cases of immediate life-saving.
Regarding triage and resource allocation, the universal egalitarianism implied by the idea of God’s image fosters a powerful reluctance against bringing about any person’s death, even to save a number of lives. Some tension arises between this egalitarianism and traditional structures of social and religious hierarchy.
Eternity
Authors: Stump Eleonore , Kretzmann Norman 
Published: September 2018

The distinctive, philosophically interesting concept of eternity arose very early in the history of philosophy as the concept of a mode of existence that was not only beginningless and endless but also essentially different from time. It was introduced into early Greek philosophy as the mode of existence required for fundamental reality (being) contrasted with ordinary appearance (becoming). But the concept was given its classic formulation by Boethius, who thought of eternity as God’s mode of existence and defined God’s eternality as ‘the complete possession all at once of illimitable life’. As defined by Boethius the concept was important in medieval philosophy. The elements of the Boethian definition are life, illimitability (and hence duration), and absence of succession (or timelessness). Defined in this way, eternality is proper to an entity identifiable as a mind or a person (and in just that sense living) but existing beginninglessly, endlessly and timelessly.
Such a concept raises obvious difficulties. Some philosophers think the difficulties can be resolved, but others think that in the light of such difficulties the concept must be modified or simply rejected as incoherent. The most obvious difficulty has to do with the combination of atemporality and duration.
Special objections have arisen in connection with ascribing eternality to God. Some people have thought that an eternal being could not do anything at all, especially not in the temporal world. But the notion of an atemporal person’s acting is not incoherent. Such acts as knowing necessary truths or willing that a world exist for a certain length of time are acts that themselves take no time and require no temporal location. An eternal God could engage in acts of cognition and of volition and could even do things that might seem to require a temporal location, such as answering a prayer.
The concept of God’s eternality is relevant to several issues in philosophy of religion, including the apparent irreconcilability of divine omniscience with divine immutability and with human freedom.
Feminist theology
Authors: Suchocki Marjorie 
Published: September 2018

Feminist theology began as a reaction to the exclusion of women and women’s concerns from traditional Christian theology, but it soon incorporated constructive as well as critical elements. Originating ‘from the margins’ of women’s exclusion, it now is a major force within Christian theological thought. The issue it raised initially was the cultural and social suppositions that inform all theological thinking and that enter into theologies as ‘universals’. In response to such universals, a feminist ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ seeks out the hidden norms and biases within religious texts.
Feminist theology is diverse, but it is characterized by pervasive themes. Immanence is valued over transcendence, relation over substance, change over immutability, liberation over salvation, and ecological concerns over traditional Christian eschatological concerns. As could be expected from its hermeneutic of suspicion, feminist theology is also characterized by its insistence on the social location of all thinking. Feminist theologians uniformly use gender-inclusive language not only in reference to humanity, but also in reference to God. Finally, all feminist theologians manifest a concern for liberation from every type of oppression, environmental as well as social, and not just liberation from the oppression women have experienced.
Illumination
Authors: MacDonald Scott 
Published: September 2018

The most influential theories of illumination explain certain features of our knowledge by developing an analogy with ordinary sensory vision and the role played in it by light. According to theories of this sort, our knowledge of necessary and immutable objects and truths requires the activity of a kind of intelligible light illumining objects that are purely intelligible, thereby making them ‘visible’ to our mind. Plato held that this light comes from the Form of the Good, Augustine that it comes from God, and others that it is intrinsic to reason itself.
The peculiar nature and behaviour of light has provided a model not just for theories of knowledge but also for philosophical accounts of fundamental features of reality. Neoplatonist cosmologies, for example, liken the genesis of the universe to the emanation of rays of light from a light source. Theories of illumination therefore can be metaphysical as well as epistemological. Both kinds of theory have their historical roots in Platonism broadly construed.
Justification, religious
Authors: Allen Diogenes 
Published: September 2018

Justification is about the restoration of human beings after Adam’s Fall, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the beginning of a new life that anticipates the glory of heaven. According to the Roman Catholic Church, justification has two aspects: forgiveness of sin and the infusion of grace that makes Christians just (innocent). It is the beginning of a new life of grace, in which the gifts of faith, hope and charity enable one to perform meritorious works. However, the restoration is never complete in this life and concupiscence remains; a fall from the state of grace is thus possible, but this is reversible through penance.
A central feature of the Protestant Reformation was a dispute with the Roman Catholic Church over how justification should be understood. According to Luther, one does not become renewed (innocent) in justification. Rather, one is forgiven because the righteousness or justice of Christ is imputed to those who have faith in God’s promise of redemption; however, one remains a sinner. More recent thought, however, has pointed to the fact that in both Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of justification, there is a sense of incompleteness, that it is just part of the process of redemption. There has also been interest in the idea of justification involving an indwelling of God rather than a gift from God to the individual; this has interesting affinities with Eastern Orthodox beliefs.
Mysticism, history of
Authors: Payne Steven 
Published: September 2018

Contemporary authors generally associate mysticism with a form of consciousness involving an apparent encounter or union with an ultimate order of reality, however this is understood. Mysticism in this sense, it is argued, can be found in virtually all cultures and religious traditions, and is perhaps as old as humanity itself. None the less, there is no agreement on the identifying characteristics of mystical states; the term ‘mysticism’ and its cognates have undergone long evolution and been used in a bewildering variety of ways.
Such ongoing disputes about the nature and significance of mysticism only underscore both the challenge and the importance of studying its history. On the one hand, without consensus on a definition, scholars disagree on which texts and figures merit inclusion in a historical survey of mysticism. On the other hand, arguments about whether mystical experiences are ‘everywhere the same’ can hardly be settled apart from attention to the historical evidence.
Mysticism, nature of
Authors: Payne Steven 
Published: September 2018

Mysticism continues to elude easy definition, and its nature and significance remain the subject of intense debate. The terms ‘mystic’, ‘mystical’ and ‘mysticism’ have been used in an astonishing variety of ways by different authors in different eras.
Nevertheless, modern philosophical discussions have tended to focus on so-called ‘mystical experiences’, understood as certain states or modes of awareness, allegedly found within (and even outside) virtually all faith-traditions, and variously characterized as ‘consciousness without content’, ‘the experience of absolute oneness’, ‘union with the transcendent’, ‘immediate consciousness of the presence of God’, and so on. Philosophers are particularly interested in whether such experiences constitute a ‘way of knowing’, and whether they provide any support for either traditional religious beliefs or unusual metaphysical claims made by certain mystics (for example, that time is illusory). Some authors argue affirmatively, on the basis of an alleged ‘universal consensus among mystics’, for example, or the parallels between mystical consciousness and other modes of experience accepted as cognitive. Others, however, challenge these views, noting that mystics often appear to disagree precisely along the lines of their prior religious convictions, that mystical awareness seems capable of explanation in terms of natural causes, that mystical claims (like claims about one’s private feelings) do not admit of ordinary testing, or that the alleged ‘ineffability’ of mystical states frustrates any attempt at rational analysis.
These concerns, then, tend to shape the kinds of questions typically addressed in contemporary philosophical discussions of mysticism, such as: What is mysticism? What are the identifying characteristics of mystical experience? Is mysticism ‘everywhere the same’, and if so, in what sense? Are there different types of mystical experience? What is the relationship between mystical awareness and its interpretation? Are mystical experiences a ‘way of knowing’? Do they involve some form of union or contact with God? Are mystical experiences ‘ineffable’ or ‘nonlogical’, and in what sense? Can drugs or other natural stimuli induce mystical experiences, and would that affect their cognitive value?
Finally, in light of the increasingly technical nature of much of the philosophical debate, in which the primary mystical sources themselves often play a relatively minor role (except as mined for brief ‘proof texts’), there have been calls for renewed attention to the larger historical, cultural and religious contexts from which mysticism and mystical literature emerge, and within which they must be interpreted.
Religion, history of philosophy of
Authors: Alston William P. 
Published: September 2018

The philosophy of religion comprises any philosophical discussion of questions arising from religion. This has primarily consisted in the clarification and critical evaluation of fundamental beliefs and concepts from one or another religious tradition. Major issues of concern in the philosophy of religion include arguments for and against the existence of God, problems about the attributes of God, the problem of evil, and the epistemology of religious belief.
Of arguments for the existence of God, the most prominent ones can be assigned to four types. First, cosmological arguments, which go back to Plato and Aristotle, explain the existence of the universe by reference to a being on whom all else depends for its existence. Second, teleological arguments seek to explain adaptation in the world, for example, the way organisms have structures adapted to their needs, by positing an intelligent designer of the world. Third, ontological arguments, first introduced by Anselm, focus on the concept of a perfect being and argue that it is incoherent to deny that such a being exists. Finally, moral arguments maintain that objective moral statuses, distinctions or principles presuppose a divine being as the locus of their objectivity.
Discussions of the attributes of God have focused on omniscience and omnipotence. These raise various problems, for example, whether complete divine foreknowledge of human actions is compatible with human free will. Moreover, these attributes, together with God’s perfect goodness give rise to the problem of evil. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good, how can there be wickedness, suffering and other undesirable states of affairs in the world? This problem has been repeatedly discussed from ancient times to the present.
The epistemology of religious belief has to do with the questions of what is the proper approach to the assessment of religious belief (for rationality, justification, or whatever) and with the carrying out of such assessments. Much of the discussion has turned on the contrast between the roles of human reason and God’s revelation to us. A variety of views have been held on this. Many, such as Aquinas, have tried to forge a synthesis of the two; Kant and his followers have sought to ground religion solely on reason; others, most notably Kierkegaard, have held that the subjecting of religious belief to rational scrutiny is subversive of true religious faith. Recently, a group of ‘Reformed epistemologists’ (so-called because of the heavy influence of the Reformed theology of Calvin and his followers on their thinking) has attacked ‘evidentialism’ and has argued that religious beliefs can be rationally justified even if one has no reasons or evidence for them.