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21The Virtue Ethics of Levi Gersonides by Alexander GreenJournal of the History of Philosophy 56 (2): 368-369. 2018.The works of Gersonides encompass science, philosophy, and biblical exegesis. The majority of the philosophical writings are constituted by supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle’s works, whereas his magnum opus, The Wars of the Lord, encompasses all three genres. Since these works engage his preeminent predecessors, Maimonides and Averroes, and since Gersonides explains the motivation to composing the Wars as a concern for human flourishing, the absence of a supercommentary o…Read more
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76The Maimonidean ControversyIn Daniel H. Frank & Oliver Leaman (eds.), History of Jewish Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 2--331. 1997.
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53A Praxis Oriented by the Debt to the PastEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2): 443-461. 2012.This paper explores Benjamin’s and Adorno’s materialist critique of the philosophy of history as a metaphysical fiction which harbors and shields the barbarism at the heart of culture. Each undertakes a radical critique of ontological, future-oriented notions of temporality and history, proposing instead a political understanding oriented to the past for the sake of the present or, more precisely, for the sake of actively resisting the persistent barbarism. The more culture insists on its progre…Read more
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7Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of ReasonSuny Press. 1995.This book shows that Maimonides and St. Thomas reached strikingly similar conclusions regarding the limits of reason and that these limits, in turn, show the dimensions of philosophical understanding.
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17The Power of Prejudice and the Force of LawEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 51-70. 2002.
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9Spinoza's Critique of Religion and its Heirs: Marx, Benjamin, AdornoCambridge University Press. 2015.Spinoza's heritage has been occluded by his incorporation into the single, western, philosophical canon formed and enforced by theologico-political condemnation, and his heritage is further occluded by controversies whose secular garb shields their religious origins. By situating Spinoza's thought in a materialist Aristotelian tradition, this book sheds new light on those who inherit Spinoza's thought and its consequences materially and historically rather than metaphysically. By focusing on Mar…Read more
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42The Power of Prejudice and the Force of LawEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 51-70. 2002.
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The Concept of Providence in the Thought of Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas AquinasDissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 1987.The thesis investigates the philosophical dimension of providence as the manifestation of human perfection in the thought of Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas. In contrast to most studies of providence, which question the possibility of affirming human freedom in the light of divine knowledge, the thesis examines the function of providence in human existence. I argue that principally the concept becomes intelligible only if God is understood as providens rather than praevidens, since, for …Read more
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91Whose History? Spinoza’s Critique of Religion As an Other ModernityIdealistic Studies 33 (2-3): 219-235. 2003.This paper discusses Spinoza's critique of religion as a visible moment of a radically occluded materialist Judeo-Arabic Aristotelian philosophical tradition. While the prevailing (Christo-Platonic) tradition begins with the familiar gesture to metaphysics as first philosophy, Spinoza's thought (and thus, this Other Tradition) takes politics as its point of departure with its concrete emphasis on a critique of dogma. This paper will show-by way of differing readings of Spinoza-how this materiali…Read more
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44Maimonidean Aspects in Spinoza’s ThoughtGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17 (1-2): 153-174. 1994.A cursory review of studies of Spinoza’s thought discloses that diverse and often opposed religious, philosophical, historical, even literary traditions have claimed and disclaimed his debt to them as well as theirs to him. A Jewish, Christian, pantheist, and atheist Spinoza vies with a rationalist and a mystic, a realist and a nominalist, an analytic and a continental, an historicist and an a-historical one. And this list is far from exhaustive of the dazzling array of further, nuanced debates …Read more
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