The richest account to date of Jewish philosophy during its great period of developmentRestores Jewish philosophy to a central role in the history of philosophy

Covers all areas of philosophy: theology, metaphysics, epistemology, mind, language, ethics, and politics

Explores the interactions between Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thoughtThe Oxford History of Philosophy series offers ground-breaking narrative history of philosophy for a broad interdisciplinary readership of researchers and advanced students

T. M. Rudavsky presents a new account of the development of Jewish philosophy from the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth, viewed as part of an ongoing dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. Her aim is to provide a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, focusing on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought. This is reflected in particular philosophical controversies across a wide range of issues in metaphysics, language, cosmology, and philosophical theology. The book illuminates our understanding of medieval thought by offering a much richer view of the Jewish philosophical tradition, informed by the considerable recent research that has been done in this area.

Table of Contents

1:Introduction: What Is Jewish Philosophy?
2:Athens, Jerusalem, and Beyond: The Formative Schools and Personalities
3:On Achieving Truth: Science, Philosophy, and Faith
4:Divine Science: The Existence and Nature of God
5:Philosophical Theology: God, Suffering, and Omniscience
6:Creation, Time, and Eternity
7:Philosophical Cosmology: The Nature of the Universe
8:On Immortality and the Nature of the Soul
9:Social and Political Thought: Happiness, Virtue, and Living the Good Life
10:Concluding Comments

T.M. Rudavsky is Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University. She is co-editor with Prof. Steven Nadler of the Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century (2009) and author of Time Matters: Time, Creation and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (2000). Her most recent book Maimonides (2010) has appeared in the "Great Minds" series with Blackwells-Wiley Press. She is the author of numerous articles and encyclopedia entries, and her major research continues to focus on issues connected to philosophical cosmology in medieval Jewish and scholastic thought.