Brad Rappaport

Nima Adlerblum is a largely unknown thinker who devoted herself to working behind the scenes in a way perhaps typical of Jewish women active in Judaism prior to latter-day feminism. But she also contributed original philosophical writings to the record, portraying Jewish philosophy as the use of ancient Greek wisdom for the purposes of promoting the flourishing of the Jewish community.

Montaigne is a model of philosophy as anti-politics. As incapable as any man of reconciling warring religious parties in 16th-century France, he retires to his estate to write his Essays, revolutionary in its time for collecting its author’s thoughts on a miscellany of subjects – with no didactic intent whatsoever.

Yoram Hazony asserts that the distinction between revelation and reason tacitly demeans Hebrew Scripture as irrational despite Greek philosophy’s speaking of inspiration by the divine, precisely the grounds for the disqualification of Hebrew Scripture as rational. The aim is to render the Bible intelligible as offering political instruction in the same manner that we turn to Greek texts for wisdom. Hazony’s reading of the Bible as political rather than spiritual is brought into question.