Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies

The Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies is a DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe directed by Prof Dr Giuseppe Veltri. It opened in October 2015 and will run for eight years. The central aim of the Maimonides Centre is to explore and research scepticism in Judaism in its dual manifestation as a purely philosophical tradition and as a more general expression of sceptical strategies, concepts, and attitudes in the cultural field.

 Date
26–27 July 2022

Convenors
Uriel Gellman (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan/Universität Hamburg) and Elke Morlok (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg/Universität Hamburg)

Abstract
Haskalah and Hasidism present two vital ideological trends that shaped Jewish culture in modern Europe. Classical historiography defined these two movements as the initiators of the rift in traditional society, with Haskalah representing modernity and Hasidism promoting traditionalism. The cultural struggle between Haskalah and Hasidism was indeed dramatic and comprehensive, and it was expressed through polemics, sarcastic satire, political competition, and social tensions, which fashioned the character and self-perception of both groups. Contemporary discourse on this cultural clash portrays more complex narratives and identifies both factions as intrinsic representatives of modernisation processes within European Jewry—also with regard to sceptical approaches, especially in the field of theosophy and its philosophical transformations. In our workshop, we will discuss whether lower forms of scepticism are superseded at some stage by mystical metaphysics or vice versa and which particular strategies are developed regarding doubt. This workshop will present both trends and their intertwining as reflections of “multiple modernities,” with all their socio-cultural and religious implications. The presentations will enquire into contesting paradigms of cultural, mystical, and religious scepticism that occasionally evolved from internal Jewish discourses into transcultural phenomena.

Date
22–23 August 2022

Convenors
Berislav Marušić (The University of Edinburgh), Sonja Schierbaum (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg), and Stephan Schmid (Unibersität Hamburg)

Abstract
Morality and emotions are closely related. What, for instance, would a strong moral verdict be (such as judging something to be morally wrong) if it were not accompanied by a corresponding emotion (such as anger or resentment about the alleged wrong-doer)? While philosophers throughout the history of Western philosophy from the ancient period until today have studied various aspects of this relationship, this workshop will focus on the sceptical puzzles that the relationship between morality and emotions seems to arouse.
One of these puzzles arises from the widely discussed question as to whether moral judgments can express proper knowledge if they are constituted by emotions (or by conative states more generally). Since knowledge aims at truth and emotions (and other conative states) seem not to, this appears to be impossible. Another sceptical puzzle may emerge from the fact that emotions often figure as reasons for moral judgments. A particularly telling case is the phenomenon of forgiveness, which requires an emotional change on the part of the forgiver: that which the forgiver has (or believes themselves to have) reasons for resenting is suddenly seen with indifference or serenity. This seems to be irrational or unintelligible: How can a moral subject consistently forgo a moral verdict that s/he has good reasons to render?
The relationship between morality and emotions, then, seems to leave us with a range of sceptical puzzles: with situations that defy our understanding and/or undermine our ability to know. It is these puzzles that the workshop will thematise from both contemporary and historical perspectives.

Yehuda Halper’s volume Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age without Plato. Permitting and Forbidding Open Inquiry in 12–15th Century Europe and North Africa has been awarded the Goldstein-Goren book award from the Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva. It is the first volume in MCAS’s new book series, the Maimonides Library for Philosophy and Religion, which is published by Brill.
Congratulations!

The Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles that seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies. Contributions to the Review place special thematic emphasis on scepticism within Jewish thought and its links to other religious traditions and secular worldviews. The Review is interested in the tension at the heart of matters of reason and faith, rationalism and mysticism, theory and practice, narrativity and normativity, and doubt and dogma.

This volume, which is available open access, features contributions by Reimund Leicht, Gitit Holzman, Jonathan Garb, Anna Lissa, Gianni Paganini, Adi Louria Hayon, Mark Marion Gondelman, and Jürgen Sarnowsky.

The vast body of Jewish moralistic writings (known in Hebrew as musar) has enjoyed an unbroken popularity within traditional circles of Jewish society. In the early modern period, musar was arguably one of the most popular literary modes. However, there are comparatively few studies that deal with this phenomenon in detail. Rather, the majority of scholars still tend to regard musar first and foremost as a medium that serves the purpose of disseminating other bodies of knowledge. For this reason, its intrinsic value as a driving force in the shaping of early modern Judaism(s) has largely been ignored.

The “Jewish Moralistic Writings of the Early Modern Period” Emmy Noether Junior Research Group aims to establish new tools that will help to make the vast body of musar more accessible to the scholarly community.

Early Modern Musar in Print (EMMIP) is an online tool developed to grant easy access to bibliographical data about musar literature printed during the early modern period. It is a powerful resource that allows scholars both to find quick answers to precisely defined questions and to browse the data without determining the specific parameters of a query. The database’s various search options allow users to obtain instant results to queries such as what books were published in a particular timespan, how many editions of a particular book were published in the early modern period, and which titles were printed in a particular place.