Wisdom's Little Sister: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought (Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah)
Abraham Melamed
Language: English
Pages: 430
ISBN: 1936235323
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The study of Jewish political philosophy is a recently established field 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 it. Following the pioneering efforts 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 author 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.
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sources and forms of political organization that make Jewish political thought distinct and, at times, hard to identify as political thought. 45 Moses of Rieti, Mikdash Me’at, p. 22. — 49 — ——————————————————— chapter two ——————————————————— Chapter two Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Philosophy: An Overview The question of how to define Jewish political philosophy is no less complicated and subject to disagreement than the question of what Jewish philosophy in general is, and in
social cooperation. This description of the original state of humanity completely contradicts the premises of Greek political philosophy, which viewed politics as an essential means to elevate humanity from its primeval bestial state. Theology and philosophy are at odds. Theology views political life as an expression of humanity’s deterioration from its original perfect state. However, for Plato and Aristotle, political life is an expression 25 On Maimonides’ political philosophy in general, see
than what was counselled. Jethro advised him to create a system that would basically have been a combination of monarchy and aristocracy. Moses added to it also a democratic element, whereby he created a more balanced Aristotelian-Polybian system. To sum up, medieval Jewish thought following Platonic and Muslim political philosophy, on the one hand, and halakhic concepts on the other, was basically, although reluctantly, monarchist, and inherently anti-democratic. It rejected outright what we
based on the theocratic analogy,29 Maimonides made no direct parallel use of it in a political context. He did, however, use the analogy of the king as heart of the people: “His [the king] heart is the heart of the entire community of Israel” (Laws of Kingship 3:6). In the Guide, this single use receives a theoretical basis. Following alFarabi and Aristotle, Maimonides defines the heart as “the part of the body in which resides the principle of life of every being endowed with a heart.” The term
organic analogy had now completed its role—except in the case of various later national and nationalistic movements derived from Romanticism in modern times, where it would reappear. This change in the perception of the state was a factor in the changed attitude towards the Jews in modern times. The organic theory identified them at best as the basest parts of the body, like the stomach and the feet in Luzzatto’s apology. In worse cases, it identified them as a separate body hostile to and even