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Ben-Ami Scharfstein

  •  Home
  •  Publications
    57
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    38

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Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy
Aesthetics
17th/18th Century Philosophy
Asian Philosophy
  • All publications (57)
  •  2
    The Contextual Fallacy
    In Gerald James Larson & Eliot Deutsch (eds.), Interpreting across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, Princeton University Press. pp. 84-97. 1988.
  •  16
    Artistas, expositores y críticos
    Praxis Filosófica 7 23-30. 1997.
    Lo que consideramos «nuestro arte» no es solo obra de los artistas, sino también de los teóricos en el sentido más amplio, cuya función queda patente en las innumerables circunstancias creativas que reunieron a artistas, historiadores del arte y críticos. La gama de problemas que aquí se plantea despierta de forma refrescante todas nuestras perplejidades estéticas. Perplejidades que encuentran tanto el simple aficionado al arte contemporáneo como el esteta consumado.
  •  7
    Amoral Politics: The Persistent Truth of Machiavellism
    SUNY Press. 2016.
  •  10
    Roots of Bergson’S Philosophy
    Columbia University Press. 1943.
  •  15
    Art Without Borders: A Philosophical Exploration of Art and Humanity
    University of Chicago Press. 2019.
  •  4
    The Nonsense of Kant and Lewis Carroll: Unexpected Essays on Philosophy, Art, Life, and Death
    University of Chicago Press. 2019.
  •  6
    Myths and Fictions (edited book)
    with Schlomo Biderman
    BRILL. 1993.
    _Myths and Fictions_ — the third in a series of books on comparative philosophy and religion — is a collection of original essays, none previously published, on the theory and the actuality of myths and fictions in the different cultures of the world. Through all the essays there runs the question of the relation of literal truth to truth conceived in other ways or dimensions. Taken as a whole, the book makes a serious attempt to get beyond the confines of any single culture and enter into the m…Read more
    _Myths and Fictions_ — the third in a series of books on comparative philosophy and religion — is a collection of original essays, none previously published, on the theory and the actuality of myths and fictions in the different cultures of the world. Through all the essays there runs the question of the relation of literal truth to truth conceived in other ways or dimensions. Taken as a whole, the book makes a serious attempt to get beyond the confines of any single culture and enter into the mythical imagination of the ancient Hindus, Chinese, Hebrews and Christians, and by this act of imagination to escape (in Italo Calvino's words) "the limited perspective of the individual ego, not only to enter into selves like our own but to give speech to that which has no language..."
  •  23
    A B s T r a C t
    with Shlomo Biderman and Joseph Agassi
    The traditional hermeneutic ruling not to use reports and legends for questioning edicts and rules signifies the tacit recognition, contrary to explicit statement, of the part of the Rabbinical leadership, of the inevitability of change in diverse aspects if Jewish life. This may invite criticism of the conduct of the ancient leadership, which, as always, is questionable and useless. Rather, an open discussion should be instituted on the proposal to make future changes openly, not surreptitiousl…Read more
    The traditional hermeneutic ruling not to use reports and legends for questioning edicts and rules signifies the tacit recognition, contrary to explicit statement, of the part of the Rabbinical leadership, of the inevitability of change in diverse aspects if Jewish life. This may invite criticism of the conduct of the ancient leadership, which, as always, is questionable and useless. Rather, an open discussion should be instituted on the proposal to make future changes openly, not surreptitiously; particularly the change from surreptitious changes to open changes is better done openly.
    Ethics
  •  5
    Ha-Oman be-tarbuyot ha-ʻolam
    ʻAm ʻoved. 1970.
  • Toldot ha-filosofyah: meha-Renesans ṿe-ʻad Ḳanṭ
    Maṭkal/Ḳetsin ḥinukh rashi/Gale Tsahal, Miśrad ha-biṭaḥon. 1978.
  •  80
    Walter Kaufmann, "Discovering the Mind" (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (2): 244. 1983.
    History of Western Philosophy20th Century Philosophy
  •  29
    Interpretation in Religion (edited book)
    with Shlomo Biderman
    BRILL. 1992.
    _Interpretation in Religion_ is the work of a group of contemporary American, European, and Israeli scholars and philosophers, who analyze the crucial course of interpretation in religion — religion in general, and, in particular, Hinduism, ancient Egyptian religion, Judaism, christianity, and Islam.
  •  65
    Rationality in question: on Eastern and Western views of rationality (edited book)
    with Shlomo Bidermann
    E.J. Brill. 1989.
    Rationality and Logic J. Kekes i It is a basic assumption of the Western intellectual and moral tradition that rationality is a central value....
    Rationality
  •  1
    'Il dubbio alle loro due case!' La cecità occidentale nei confronti delle filosofie non occidentali
    In Sergio Cremaschi (ed.), Filosofia Analitica e Filosofia Continentale, La Nuova Italia. pp. 253-282. 1997.
    Philosophical Traditions
  •  77
    The Western Blindness to Non-Western Philosophies
    The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 5 102-108. 1998.
    Western philosophers still tend to think that philosophy, in a sense that they can take with professional interest, does not exist in non-Western traditions. To persuade them otherwise would require them to make an effort that they prefer to evade. I attempt to begin to persuade them by closely paraphrasing a few arguments by the early Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu and a few by the Indian skeptic and mystic Shriharsha. One of Chuang Tzu's arguments has some resemblance to Plato's Third-Man argu…Read more
    Western philosophers still tend to think that philosophy, in a sense that they can take with professional interest, does not exist in non-Western traditions. To persuade them otherwise would require them to make an effort that they prefer to evade. I attempt to begin to persuade them by closely paraphrasing a few arguments by the early Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu and a few by the Indian skeptic and mystic Shriharsha. One of Chuang Tzu's arguments has some resemblance to Plato's Third-Man argument, another with the impossibility of distinguishing between waking reality and dream, and a third with the impossibility of objective victories in debates. The skeptic Shriharsha, in a way that can be taken to parallel Wittgenstein's attack on conventional philosophy, shows that philosophical definitions cannot be rigorous enough to fulfill the task that philosophers set for them. The rest of this paper is devoted to the problem of commensurability. I contend that philosophies are either commensurable or incommensurable depending on the light in which one prefers to see them. Each way of seeing them involves a loss of a possibility that may be considered precious, but the Westerner who continues to insist on the full incommensurability of non-Western philosophies with his or her own is losing a great deal that might be intellectually helpful.
  •  78
    Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 54 (3): 76-78. 1957.
  •  48
    Analyse des poetischen Denkens
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 14 (1): 134-135. 1955.
    Aesthetics
  •  209
    Bergson and Merleau-Ponty: A Preliminary Comparison
    Journal of Philosophy 52 (14): 380. 1955.
    Henri BergsonMaurice Merleau-Ponty
  • Roots of Bergson's Philosophy
    Philosophy 19 (74): 278-278. 1944.
  • The three philosophical traditions
    Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 59 235-296. 1997.
    Science, Logic, and Mathematics
  •  62
    A Comparative History of World Philosophy
    Philosophy East and West 49 (1): 96-97. 1999.
    Asian PhilosophyChinese PhilosophyChinese Philosophy: Topics, Misc
  • On Scharfstein's "The philosophers"
    History and Philosophy of Logic 4 (2): 221. 1983.
  •  40
    How Death Deals with Philosophy
    In Hagi Kenaan & Ilit Ferber (eds.), Philosophy's moods: the affective grounds of thinking, Springer. pp. 201--208. 2011.
    Death and Dying
  •  74
    A Comparative History of World Philosophy: From the Upanishads to Kant
    State University of New York Press. 1998.
    Breaks through the cultural barriers between Western, Indian, and Chinese philosophy and demonstrates that despite considerable differences between these three great philosophical traditions, there are fundamental resemblances in their abstract principles
    Chinese Philosophy: TopicsChinese Philosophy: Topics, Misc
  •  35
    The Dilemma of Context
    NYU Press. 1989.
    In The Dilemma of Context, Scharfstein contends that the problems encountered with context are insoluble. He explains why this problem lays an intellectual burden on us that, while remaining inescapable,can become so heavy it destroys the understandingit was created to further.
    Philosophy of Social Science, General Works
  •  5
    Roots of Bergson's Philosophy
    Philosophical Review 52 (n/a): 626. 1943.
  • Los filósofos y sus vidas. Para una historia psicológica de la filosofía
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 43 (1): 218-220. 1987.
  • Descartes' Dreams
    Philosophical Forum 1 (3): 293. 1969.
    Continental Philosophy
  • Rationality in Question. On Eastern and Western views of rationality. Leiden: EJ Brill
    with Shlomo Biderman
    In Nand Kishore Devaraja (ed.), Philosophy and religion, Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Association With Indus Pub. Co.. pp. 1. 1989.
  •  60
    The philosopher as the rational artist
    Man and World 1 (2): 240-266. 1968.
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