{"title":"The Ground Floor of Judaism: Scepticism and Certainty in Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem","authors":"Ze’ev Strauss","doi":"10.1515/9783110577686-010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110577686-010","url":null,"abstract":"catechism; The Jewish rights, and constitutions do not, however, convey us a favourable opinion of this nation. We marvel at the appearance of legal scholars who constantly ignore the spirit of the law , and solely want to acknowledge its letter ; who treat seriously and extensively the frivolities and wretched trifles, for which no law giver in the whole world cares; who issue prescriptions about unending improbable cases, of which no reasonable human being would conceive. We are sur-prised to find moral teachers which they follow who constantly ignore the eternal laws of nature, and decrees and constitutions of a very arbitrary essence,which seem to have no influence what-soever on human happiness, and which have neither real morality nor immorality; were there ever teachers of religion,who took customs and ceremonies to be the sole essence of that religion , and were used to taking the outer shell and shadow of the virtue for the virtue itself, and perceiving the externality of religion for the interiority thereof [ … ] such teachers are the Jews.","PeriodicalId":359593,"journal":{"name":"YEARBOOK OF THE MAIMONIDES CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121733180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anarchic Scepticism: Language, Mysticism and Revolution in Gustav Landauer","authors":"Libera Pisano","doi":"10.1515/9783110577686-013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110577686-013","url":null,"abstract":"Gustav Landauer (1870– 1919), a German-Jewish anarchist and a radical thinker, was brutally murdered by the Freikorps in Munich. He was an almost forgotten figure for a long time, even though his ideas exerted a crucial influence on the development of twentieth century Jewish thought and philosophy, particularly regarding the rehabilitation of utopian, messianic, anarchical and mystical elements. Landauer was one of very few Jewish authors permitting the word ‘scepticism’ to be included in the title of one of his works—namely Skepsis und Mystik2—in my view this very term is the fil rouge running through all his political and philosophical thought. However, this feature has not received the proper attention by scholars, which focus mainly on Landauer’s singular account of anarchism and mysticism, alongside his conception of revolution and community. In this essay, I will attempt to shed light on the connection between Fritz Mauthner’s (1849– 1923) linguistic critique and Landauer’s anarchy, showing the political implications of sceptical thought. To this end, I will focus on the sceptical features of Landauer’s anarchist socialism by analysing the connection between scepticism and mysticism, the role played by scepticism in his thought of community and in his account of revolution, history and time, and the definition of his anti-political attitude as sceptical Lebensform.","PeriodicalId":359593,"journal":{"name":"YEARBOOK OF THE MAIMONIDES CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114151220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jewish Scepticism in Christian Eyes: Jacob F. Reimmann and the Transformation of Jewish Philosophy","authors":"G. Bartolucci","doi":"10.1515/9783110577686-008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110577686-008","url":null,"abstract":"Much the most important part of any answer we give to our initial query into the nature of Jewish philosophy is that Jewish philosophy is an academic discipline. It is an invention, for reasons important to ponder, of nineteenth-century historians, intent on bringing together certain think-ers,while simultaneously excluding others. Before the invention of Jewish philosophy as an academic discipline no one asked or wondered about the nature of Jewish philosophy, quite simply because the subject did not exist. [ … ] No one in premodern, indeed, in much of modern times understood Jewish philosophy as a subdiscipline of philosophy, as a way of philosophizing. No one felt the need to ascertain the essence of Jewish philosophy [ … ] distinguishing it from every other kind of philosophy or mode of theological interpretation.³","PeriodicalId":359593,"journal":{"name":"YEARBOOK OF THE MAIMONIDES CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128971302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reidian Common Sense: An Antidote to Scepticism?","authors":"Lukas Lang","doi":"10.1515/9783110577686-009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110577686-009","url":null,"abstract":"Scepticism is in most cases disliked. Much of contemporary epistemology can be construed as a response to the modern incarnation of scepticism, i.e. the view that justification is impossible or that nothing is known, either in general or about a certain area of discourse (say, unperceivable objects).1 In contrast to this, its ancient relative did not preach theory or rely on dubitable premises. The Pyrrhonists2 were concerned with a way of life, the aim of which was ataraxia—tranquility of mind—and its method epoché—suspension of judgement. Whereas it had much influence in the early modern period (due to translations that made the works of Sextus Empiricus, the Pyrrhonist’s chief author, available to scholars at the time), it had not been taken seriously by contemporary scholars of ancient philosophy until a few decades ago, ‘because it was regarded as a patently absurd or far-fetched form of skepticism,’3 and the attention it received outside the ancient philosophy classroom was practically non-existent. One reason for the neglect of Pyrrhonian scepticism is the apraxia objection,4 which states in its evidential mode that sceptical life is impossible and in its pragmatic mode that sceptical life is impractical. The pragmatic mode presupposes that sceptical life (i.e., life without opinion or beliefs) is possible, but argues that","PeriodicalId":359593,"journal":{"name":"YEARBOOK OF THE MAIMONIDES CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES","volume":"171 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115767947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}