Wisdom's Little Sister : : Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought / / Abraham Melamed.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Backlist eBook-Package 2008-2013
• VerfasserIn: Melamed, Abraham,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (430 p.)

The study of Jewish political philosophy is a recently established field in the study of Jewish philosophy. While in older histories of Jewish philosophy there is hardly any discussion of this topic, recent editors of such books have found it useful to add chapters on it. Following the pioneering efforts of Leo Strauss, Ralph Lerner and Daniel Elazar, among others, political philosophy has gained its proper place alongside ethics and metaphysics in the study of the history of Jewish philosophy. This volume is another manifestation of this welcome development. Consisting of selected English-language papers the author published over the last thirty years, it concentrates on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, from Sa’adiah Gaon in the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth. These were the formative periods in the development of Jewish political philosophy, when Jewish scholars versed in the canonical Jewish sources (biblical and rabbinic) encountered Greek political philosophy, as transmitted by Muslim philosophers such as Alfarabi, Ibn Bajja and Averroes, and adapted it to their Jewish terms of reference. The outcome of this effort was Jewish political philosophy.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Personal Introduction -- On This Volume -- Part I: The Framework -- Chapter One: Is There a Jewish Political Philosophy?: The Medieval Case Reconsidered -- Chapter Two: Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Philosophy: An Overview -- Part II: Studies: The Middle Ages -- Chapter Three: Aristotle’s Politics in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought -- Chapter Four: The Attitude towards Democracy in Medieval Jewish Political Thought -- Chapter Five: The Organic Theory of the State in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Though -- Chapter Six: Jethro’s Advice in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish and Christian Political Thought -- Chapter Seven: The Anonymous Hebrew Translation of Aegidius’ De Regimine Principum: An Unknown Chapter in Medieval Jewish Political Philosophy -- Part III: Studies: The Renaissance -- Chapter Eight: The Myth of Venice in Italian Renaissance Jewish Thought -- Chapter Nine: Natural, Human, Divine: Classification of the Law among Some Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Thinkers -- Chapter Ten: The Hebrew Laudatio of Yohanan Alemanno: In Praise of Lorenzo il Magnifico and the Florentine Constitution -- Chapter Eleven: Simone Luzzatto on Tacitus: Apologetica and Ragione di Stato -- Chapter Twelve: English Travellers and Venetian Jewish Scholars: The Case of Simone Luzzatto and James Harrington -- Chapter Thirteen: Machiavellism and Anti-Machiavellism in Seventeenth-Century Jewish Amsterdam: From Ragione di Stato to Razon de Estado -- Works Cited -- Index