Thinking Impossibilities : : The Intellectual Legacy of Amos Funkenstein / / David Biale, Robert S. Westman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• TeilnehmendeR: Biale, David,; Westman, Robert S.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Intellectuals rarely make a significant impact on one field of scholarship let alone several, yet Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) displayed an intellectual range that encompassed several disciplines and broke new ground across seemingly impenetrable scholarly boundaries. The philosophy of history from antiquity to modernity, medieval and early modern history of science, medieval scholasticism, Jewish history in all of its periods - these are all areas in which he made lasting contributions. Thinking Impossibilities brings together Funkenstein's colleagues, friends, and former students to engage with important aspects of his intellectual legacy.Funkenstein's diverse interests were bound together by common figures of thought, especially the search for pre-modern intellectual groundings of modern ideas and how the seeming 'impossibilities' of one historical moment might become positive resources of conceptual construction and development in another. The essays in this volume take up major themes in European intellectual history, and examine them through the unique lens that Funkenstein himself employed during his career. Of particular interest are ways in which topics of Jewish history are engaged with the larger field of the history of ideas in the West. Richly interdisciplinary and full of fresh insights, Thinking Impossibilities is a fitting tribute to an important twentieth-century scholar.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction: The Last German-Jewish Philosopher: An Intellectual Biography of Amos Funkenstein / Biale, David / Westman, Robert S. -- PART I: HISTORICAL DIALECTICS -- 1. Divine Omnipotence and First Principles: A Late Medieval Argument on the Subalternation of the Sciences / Livesey, Steven -- 2. Was Kepler a Secular Theologian? / Westman, Robert S. -- 3. Jewish Traditionalism and Early Modern Science: Rabbi Israel Zamosc's Dialectic of Enlightenment (Berlin, 1744) / Freudenthal, Gad -- 4. Religion, Theology, and the Hermetic Imagination in the Late German Enlightenment: The Case of Johann Salomo Semler / Reill, Peter Hanns -- 5. Science and the Musical Imagination from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period / Tanay, Dorit -- PART II: HISTORICAL ACCOMMODATIONS -- 6. Amos Funkenstein on the Theological Origins of Historicism / Moyn, Samuel -- 7. Of Divine Cunning and Prolonged Madness: Amos Funkenstein on Maimonides' Historical Reasoning / Socher, Abraham P. -- 8. History and/or Memory: The Origins of the Principle of Accommodation / Ginzburg, Carlo -- 9. Historical Consciousness Revisited: From Vico's Mythology to Funkenstein's Methodology / Mali, Joseph -- 10. Francesco Bianchini, Historian. In Memory of Amos Funkenstein / Heilbron, J.L. -- PART III: MAKING KNOWLEDGE -- 11. Amos Funkenstein and the History of Scepticism / Popkin, Richard H. -- 12. Two Talmudic Understandings of the Dictum 'Appoint for Yourself a Teacher' / Ben-Menahem, Hanina -- LAST WORDS -- 13. Jewish History among the Thorns / Funkenstein, Amos -- A Bibliography of the Published Works of Amos Funkenstein -- Contributors -- Index