Description
Book SynopsisAs a recently established field of Jewish thought, Jewish political philosophy has made increasingly frequent appearances in recently edited histories of Jewish philosophy. Following the pioneering efforts of Leo Strauss, Ralph Lerner and Daniel Elazar, among others, Jewish political philosophy gained its proper place alongside ethics and metaphysics in the study of the history of Jewish philosophy. This volume is another manifestation of this welcomed development. Consisting of selected papers published in English over the last thirty years, Wisdom’s Little Sister concentrates on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, from Sa'adiah Gaon in the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth century. 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. In combining Greek, Jewish and Muslim thought, these scholars are the originators of what we now know as Jewish political philosophy.
Trade ReviewAbraham Melamed is one of the foremost scholars of medieval and Renaissance Jewish political thought today. Wisdom's Little Sister brings together a fine collection of his English studies, written over three decades. These thirteen studies range from the two opening oft-cited general articles that delineate the field to articles on particular subjects. This latter research is that for which Melamed is best known. He focuses on an important topic or problem, such as the knowledge of Aristotle's Politics among Jews or the presence of the tripartite classification of the law into natural, human, and divine in Jewish thought, explicates it, traces it through the ages, and then draws conclusions. In these learned and fascinating studies on Jewish political thought, Melamed presents the sources and parallel discussions in ancient Greek, medieval Islamic and Christian, and Renaissance philosophy. -- Steven Harvey
