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Civic Virtue In Non-Ideal Republics, M. Victoria Costa

Arts & Sciences Articles

This paper defends a neorepublican account of civic virtue as consisting of stable traits of character, understood in broadly Aristotelian terms, that exhibit excellences associated with the role of citizen, and that contribute to the secure protection of freedom as non-domination. Such an account is important for the neorepublican project because neither laws nor social norms can yield reliable support for republican freedom without a parallel input from civic virtue. The paper emphasizes the need to distinguish civic virtue from desirable norms, which can operate in tandem. Against other neorepublican accounts of civic virtue, it argues that the primary function …

Exploring Moral Saints, Ruyu (Evelyn) Wang

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In “Saints and Heroes,” J. O. Urmson (1958) defines moral saints by reference to their supererogatory actions. He believes that saintly actions are praiseworthy but not obligatory. However, Andrew Flescher (2003) and Tom Dougherty (2017) argue that people have duties to improve themselves morally and to increase how much they sacrifice for others gradually. In this paper, I will propose an Aristotelian-inspired definition of “saint” and discuss the moral duties of saints and ordinary people (i.e., people who are not saints) based on Dougherty’s dynamic view of beneficence. I hold that ordinary people have prima facie duties to become saints, …

Against Leo Strauss, Zachary Braiterman

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Leo Strauss And Hermann Cohen’S “Archenemy”: A Quasi-Cohenian Apology Of Baruch Spinoza, Irene Abigail Piccinini

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Reading Strauss On Maimonides: A New Approach, Alan Verskin

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Guttmann’S Critique Of Strauss’S Modernist Approach To Medieval Philosophy: Some Arguments Toward A Counter Critique, Mari Rethelyi

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Strauss And Textual Reasoning, Leora Batnitzky, Michael Zank

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Jonathan L. Milevsky. Understanding The Evolving Meaning Of Reason In David Novak’S Natural Law Theory. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 146 Pp., Samuel J. Kessler

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Innovation In Crescas's Light Of The Lord, Peter Ochs

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Wolfson's Pragmatic Crescas, Warren Zev Harvey

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In a 1912 essay, written when he was a student of Santayana's at Harvard, a young Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974) presented Hasdai Crescas as a forerunner of American Pragmatism. Wolfson emphasized Crescas' "Hebraic" focus on action, and his critique of the Aristotelian notion of the vita contemplativa as the goal of life. The scientist's pleasure is not in contemplation itself, but in problem-solving, and problem-solving presupposes a "practical interest in the world." In 1929, Wolfson wrote his monumental Crescas' Critique of Aristotle, the most important study of Crescas' philosophy and one of the most impressive works of scholarship on …

Medieval Jewish Philosophy And Authentic Jewish Piety: Yitzhak Baer And Julius Guttmann On Hasdai Crescas’S Philosophy, Ari Ackerman

Journal of Textual Reasoning

The article examines personalistic elements in Hasdai Crescas’ conception of God. It argues that embedded in Crescas’ innovative approach to divine attributes and divine love is a critique of Maimonides’ impersonalistic theology and an alternative theology which attributes to God a relation with human beings and personalistic features. It also examines how Crescas’ theological orientation regarding divine personalism is integrated into the philosophies of modern Jewish thinkers particularly Samuel David Luzzatto and Julius Guttmann.

Crescas On Time, Space, And Infinity, Tamar Rudavsky

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In her introductory comments to her translation of Crescas's Light of the Lord (p. 9), Prof. Weiss suggests that Crescas must be credited with introducing a series of new perspectives with respect to theories of place and time. In contradistinction to standard Aristotelian physics, Crescas frees place and time from their connection to corporeal substances, allows for the possibility of actual infinity with respect to both place and time. As a result, Weiss continues, Crescas can entertain the idea of an expansive universe with no boundaries.

This paper explores Crescas’s theories of time (and to some extent place) in more …

"I Feel Love": Ḥasdai Crescas On Reward And Punishment, Igor De Souza

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In his work Light of the Lord, Ḥasdai Crescas develops a seemingly naturalistic account of the doctrine of personal reward and punishment. For Crescas, reward and punishment are not doled out by a deity to an individual for fulfilling the mitzvot. Rather, reward or punishment depend on the extent to which an individual exercises will and effort in investigating true beliefs. One is rewarded not merely for accepting true beliefs as such, but more so for assenting to them, a process that involves intention as well as exertion in establishing the truth of those beliefs. Furthermore, one is …

Ḥasdai Crescas And Simeon Ben Ẓemah Duran On Tradition Versus Rational Inquiry, Seth (Avi) Kadish

Journal of Textual Reasoning

Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340-1410/11) and Simeon ben Ẓemah Duran (1361-1444) were products of the same culture and reflect a shared intellectual tradition. Persecution of the Jews of Spain in 1391 led the former to devote his life to rebuilding Spanish Jewish communities, while the latter fled Spain and became a rabbinic leader in Algiers.

As time went on, the intellectual gap between them became much wider than the sea that separated them. Duran was an eclectic thinker with a passion for the details both in his Torah study and in his analysis of the shared general knowledge of the middle …

Philosophy And Religion In R. Crescas's Light Of The Lord, Shalom Tzadik

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Four Critiques Of Crescas Against Maimonides And The Relationship Of Intellect And Practice In Religion, Alexander Green

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

The Inexhaustible Metaphor Of Light: Illuminating The Fault Lines Between Crescas And Maimonides, James A. Diamond

Journal of Textual Reasoning

Moses Maimonides’ (1138-1205) Guide of the Perplexed, and his later philosophical and theological arch-nemesis Hasdai Crescas’ (circa 1340-1412) Light of the Lord, are works of philosophical theology intended in a core sense as primers on how to properly understand God’s revealed word. Since metaphor and allegory are the primary instruments of philosophical exegesis my paper focuses on light as a root metaphor which illuminates an array of the challenges Crescas mounts against Maimonides. Their different uses of light imagery capture what is the core issue that informs the opposition between them across the theological spectrum. For Maimonides reason is the …

Hasdai Crescas's Philosophical Biblical Exegesis, Roslyn Weiss

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In this paper I present several examples of Crescas’s biblical exegesis in which his unique understanding of the text in question informs his philosophic ideas. We shall consider first a Crescasian interpretation of a biblical text in which there is a pointed and explicit departure from a Maimonidean interpretation: trials in general and the Aqeidah, the Binding of Isaac, in particular. What we shall see is that for Crescas, the purpose of this trial is to increase Abraham’s love for God, since, on Crescas’s understanding, the purpose of doing deeds—whether in the form of specific trials or in fulfilling commandments …

Crescas Among The Textual Reasoners, Mark Randall James

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.