•  562
    The Second Person in Fichte and Levinas
    with Owen Ware
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 41 (2): 1-20. 2020.
    Levinas never engaged closely with Fichte’s work, but there are two places in the chapter “Substitution,” in Otherwise than Being (1974), where he mentions Fichte by name. The point that Levinas underscores in both of these passages is that the other’s encounter with the subject is not the outcome of the subject’s freedom; it is not posited by the subject, as Fichte has it, but is prior to any free activity. The aim of this paper is to deepen the comparison between Levinas and Fichte, giving spe…Read more
  •  2
    "Philosophy" in Plato's Sophist
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 9 83-111. 1993.
  • Brill Online Books and Journals
    with Norbert M. le GoodmanSamuelson, Kenneth Seeskin, David Novak, Ehud Z. Benor, Menachem Kellner, Eric Lawee, Michael Zank, and Avihu Zakai
    Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5 (2). 1996.
  •  3
    Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's "Phaedrus" (review) (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 28 (1): 121-123. 1990.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 121 her hermeneutical enterprise. I agree that the Hippolytean interpretation is interesting (how could any interpretation of Heraclitus be without interest?) but I am not convinced that it is new. Here I must be brief: as early as Plato a case can be made for awareness of the moral implications of Heraclitus's cosmological views. The interconnection which Plato sees between Protagorean relativism (moral as well as epist…Read more
  •  2
    Plato and the Painters
    Apeiron 23 121-45. 1990.
  •  18
    Idealization and modelling
    Journal of Economic Methodology 3 (1): 131-138. 1996.
  •  43
  •  19
    The Central Problem of Fackenheim's To Mend the World
    Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5 (2): 297-312. 1996.
  •  23
    On Shame
    Routledge. 2008.
    Shame is one of a family of self-conscious emotions that includes embarrassment, guilt, disgrace, and humiliation. _On Shame_ examines this emotion psychologically and philosophically, in order to show how it can be a galvanizing force for moral action against the violence and atrocity that characterize the world we live in. Michael L. Morgan argues that because shame is global in its sense of the self, the moral failures of all groups in which we are a member – including the entire human race –…Read more
  •  5
    An Epitaph for German Judaism: From Halle to Jerusalem
    with Emil Fackenheim
    University of Wisconsin Press. 2007.
    Emil Fackenheim’s life work was to call upon the world at large—and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular—to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the Sachsenhause…Read more
  • Introduction: Modern Jewish Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, and Modern Judaism
    with Peter Eli Gordon
    In Michael L. Morgan & Peter Eli Gordon (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, Cambrige University Press. 2007.
  •  11
    Spinoza: Complete Works (edited book)
    Hackett Publishing Company. 2002.
    The only complete edition in English of Baruch Spinoza's works, this volume features Samuel Shirley’s preeminent translations, distinguished at once by the lucidity and fluency with which they convey the flavor and meaning of Spinoza’s original texts. Michael L. Morgan provides a general introduction that places Spinoza in Western philosophy and culture and sketches the philosophical, scientific, religious, moral and political dimensions of Spinoza’s thought. Morgan’s brief introductions to each…Read more
  •  34
  •  5
    Levinas and Judaism
    Levinas Studies 1 1-17. 2005.
    I would like to try to clarify one aspect of the relationship between Levinas’s philosophy — or “ethical metaphysics,” as Edith Wyschogrod has called it — and Judaism as Levinas understands it. In and of itself it is interesting to try to understand Levinas’s thinking and its relationship to his life as a Jew and to Judaism as he takes it to be. But I also have ulterior motives — that is, I have what some might think are larger fish to fry. I will begin by saying something about Hilary Putnam’s …Read more
  •  3
    Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy
    Ind. : Indiana University Press. 1996.
    If, in content and in method, philosophy and religion conflict, can there be a Jewish philosophy? What makes a Jewish thinker a philosopher? Emil L. Fackenheim confronts these questions in a profound and insightful series of essays on the great Jewish thinkers from Maimonides through Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Leo Strauss. Fackenheim also contemplates the task of Jewish philosophy after the Holocaust. While providing access to key Jewish thinkers of the past, this volume …Read more
  • Liberalism in mendelssohn'jerusalem'
    History of Political Thought 10 (2): 281-294. 1989.
  •  18
    Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 48 (3): 636-638. 1995.
    The philosophy of mind is an especially flourishing plot of philosophical terrain these days. In part this activity derives from the quality of the work and in part from the topic's location, at the intersection of science--computer science, mathematics, biology, and cognitive psychology--and metaphysics and epistemology, even ethics. If recent developments date from Ryle and his iconoclasm, the modern study of mind has an older provenance in the writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hu…Read more
  •  23
    Meaning and Context. Quentin Skinner and his Critics (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 43 (2): 425-426. 1989.
    Both as historian and as theoretician, Quentin Skinner has contributed brilliantly to our understanding of the tradition of political thinking and to the renewed interest in a genuinely historical reading of the texts of that tradition. Until now, however, Skinner's methodological articles have not been conveniently available under one cover. James Tully's excellent volume remedies that deficiency. Tully brings together five of Skinner's most important writings on interpretation, his own fine in…Read more
  •  36
    Levinas and Judaism
    Levinas Studies 1 1-17. 2005.
    I would like to try to clarify one aspect of the relationship between Levinas’s philosophy — or “ethical metaphysics,” as Edith Wyschogrod has called it — and Judaism as Levinas understands it. In and of itself it is interesting to try to understand Levinas’s thinking and its relationship to his life as a Jew and to Judaism as he takes it to be. But I also have ulterior motives — that is, I have what some might think are larger fish to fry. I will begin by saying something about Hilary Putnam’s …Read more
  • Emmanuel Levinas as a Philosopher of the Ordinary
    In Scott Davidson & Diane Perpich (eds.), Totality and Infinity at 50, Duquesne University Press. 2012.
  •  24
    Authorship and the History of Philosophy
    Review of Metaphysics 42 (2). 1988.
    There is a type of history of philosophy that involves both philosophical analysis and historical understanding. in this paper i try to show how this enterprise attempts to construct a surrogate author for the texts under investigation. in order to clarify this model of interpretation, i compare the notion of surrogate author with collingwood's notion of reenactment and with nehamas's criticism of foucault's conception of authorship. i also discuss the roles of history and philosophy both as par…Read more