Discusses the problems Maimonides encountered, showing the depth and breadth of his philosophical thought.

Publisher Description

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology offers an overview of Jewish theology, an aspect of Judaism that is equal in importance to law and ethics. Covering the period from antiquity to the present, the volume focuses on what Jews believe about God and also about the relation of God to humans and the world. Parts I and II cover exciting new research in Jewish biblical and rabbinic theology, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah (mysticism), and liturgy. Parts III and IV turn to modern theology with an exploration of works by leading figures, such as Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the relation of theology to issues such as feminism and the Holocaust, and the relation of Judaism to other world religions. In Part V, the book explores how the insights of analytic philosophy have been integrated with Jewish theology.

Leo Strauss was a central figure in the twentieth century renaissance of political philosophy. The essays of The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss provide a comprehensive and non-partisan survey of the major themes and problems that constituted Strauss's work. These include his revival of the great 'quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,' his examination of tension between Jerusalem and Athens, and most controversially his recovery of the tradition of esoteric writing. The volume also examines Strauss's complex relation to a range of contemporary political movements and thinkers, including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Gershom Scholem, as well as the creation of a distinctive school of 'Straussian' political philosophy.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, first published in 2003, takes its readers into one of the most exciting periods in the history of philosophy. It spans a millennium of thought extending from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas and beyond. It includes not only the thinkers of the Latin West but also the profound contributions of Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as Avicenna and Maimonides. Leading specialists examine what it was like to do philosophy in the cultures and institutions of the Middle Ages and engage all the areas in which medieval philosophy flourished, including language and logic, the study of God and being, natural philosophy, human nature, morality, and politics. The discussion is supplemented with chronological charts, biographies of the major thinkers, and a guide to the transmission and translation of medieval texts. The volume will be invaluable for all who are interested in the philosophical thought of this period.

This is the first scholarly collection in English devoted to Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed.

The problems of evil and suffering have been extensively discussed in Jewish philosophy, and much of the discussion has centred on the Book of Job. In this new study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why has the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given its status as the chosen people? He explores these issues through an analysis of the views of Philo, Saadya, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and post-Holocaust thinkers, and suggests that a discussion of evil and suffering is really a discussion about our relationship with God. The Book of Job is thus both the point of departure and the point of return.