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 nine 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.

MCAS offers a senior and junior fellowship programme that allows both internationally established scholars and aspiring early career researchers to participate for either extended or shorter periods of time.

This year, it will host thirteen senior fellows and two junior fellows (PhD and postdoctoral candidates) during the summer term.

 Senior Fellows

• Doerte Bischoff (Universität Hamburg, Germany)
• Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Michael Della Rocca (Yale University, USA)
• James Diamond (University of Waterloo, Canada)
• Cristiana Facchini (Università di Bologna, Italy)
• Christine Hayes (Yale University, USA)
• Patrick Koch (Universität Hamburg, Germany)
• Diego Machuca (CONICET, Argentina)
• Charles Manekin (University of Maryland, USA)
• Rachel Manekin (University of Maryland, USA)
• Alan Mittleman (Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, USA)
• Abraham Rubin (University of Dayton, USA)
• Ran Segev (Universität Hamburg, Germany)
  

Junior Fellows

• Kirill Chepurin
• Frank Kurzmann
  

MCAS would like to invite you to attend the online launch of Cedric Cohen Skalli and Libera Pisano’s collected volume Skepsis and Antipolitics: The Alternative of Gustav Landauer, which will take place on Zoom on Wednesday 19 April 2023 at 18:00.

Gustav Landauer was an unconventional anarchist who aspired to a return to a communal life. His antipolitical rejection of authoritarian assumptions is based on a radical linguistic scepticism that could be considered the theoretical premise of his anarchism. The present volume aims to add to the existing scholarship on Landauer by shedding new light on his work, focussing on the two interrelated notions of skepsis and antipolitics. In a time marked by a deep doubt concerning modern politics, Landauer’s alternative can help us to more seriously address the struggle for a different articulation of our communitarian and ecological needs.

 Participants

• Cedric Cohen Skalli (University of Haifa, Israel)
• Liliana Feierstein (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
• Paul Mendes-Flohr (University of Chicago, USA/Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
• Libera Pisano (Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain)
• Galili Shahar (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
• Giuseppe Veltri (Universität Hamburg, Germany)
• Sarah Wobick-Segev (Universität Hamburg, Germany)

For further information and registration (Zoom link), please email maimonides-centre@uni-hamburg.de.

The Maimonides Lectures on Scepticism are scheduled two to three times a semester. In these lectures, eminent scholars focusing on various aspects of scepticism are invited to present and discuss their research at an evening lecture.

Tuesday 2 May 2023, 18:00
David N. Myers (University of California, Los Angeles)

Scepticism, Postmodernism, and Modern Jewish Historiography

This lecture offers a recounting of modern intellectual and personal history in order to address the claim that postmodernism introduced a debilitating scepticism about the capacity of history to grasp the past. Drawing on the critique of Carlo Ginzburg, it will confront the argument that postmodernism blurs the boundary between fact and fiction and thereby renders the noble craft of history an incoherent jumble of relativism. It will recall a memorable debate in Germany that laid out the stakes of the debate over postmodernism’s effects and will conclude with reflections on where we stand today in our post-postmodern era.

Tuesday 9 May 2023, 18:00
Nadja Germann (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)

Before al-Ghazālī: Scepticism and Doubt in Early Islamic Thought

Al-Ghazālī’s scepticism is proverbial, at least among specialists. The chief point of reference for this assessment is his Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), particularly the Seventeenth Discussion dealing with causality and miracles. The primary message of this text seems to be clear: there is nothing that human beings can know with certainty, for everything utterly depends on God, at once the free creator and the unbound sustainer of everything, with the effect that from one moment to the other, He could change everything: turn an animal into a stone, black into white, or good into evil. The target of this devastating epistemic view likewise seems to be evident: the falāsifa, the Greek-inspired Arabic philosophers, first and foremost al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, with their excessive trust in the human capacity to know. However, what is often overlooked in current research is the fact that al-Ghazālī’s critique does not come out of the blue. It may primarily react to the falāsifa, but in order to fully seize its significance, other approaches, beyond falsafa, must be taken into account. This is what Nadja Germann intends to do, with the example of al-Jāḥiẓ and the adab tradition sparked by his œuvre.

Tuesday 11 July 2023, 18:00
Michael Brenner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München/American University, Washington DC)
Further information will follow soon.

Date
13–14 June 2023

Convenor
Sarah Wobick-Segev (Universität Hamburg)

Abstract
The Holocaust was a traumatic event that challenged human understanding and occasioned impassioned, intellectual reactions in various genres, from poetry and literature to historical and political-theoretical essays to philosophy. It is well known that the Holocaust provoked many to question and/or reinterpret their understanding of God and religion (Hans Jonas; Elie Wiesel). At the same time, its material realities also gave rise to questions about the ethical limits of scepticism and sceptical inquiry (Hayden White; Jean Amery). Yet, many of these questions and their answers have been discussed by male thinkers; what about the many women who wrote on similar topics? Additionally, we must note that these various responses have been treated distinctly, with philosophical and theological responses considered separately from personal testimony or literary writings. This workshop, therefore, aims to widen the repertoire of Holocaust “theology” by including genres that are not typically associated with the field. As well as this, it seeks to give a specific voice to Jewish women’s views on questions such as the nature of the Divine, the place of persecution in Jewish history and memory, and the meaning of Jewish tradition after Auschwitz.

To these ends, this workshop will foreground papers that explore women’s theological reactions—widely conceived—to the antisemitic persecution of the 1930s and the Shoah. It will ask how female authors and thinkers questioned the nature of Jewish religion and tradition in light of the Holocaust and how, if at all, these religious and theological considerations influenced possible limits they placed under inquiry.

Welcome to Dr Sarah Wobick-Segev, who joined the team at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion as a postdoctoral researcher in March 2023. Before taking up this position, she was a research associate at MCAS.

Welcome to Dr Chiara Rover, who joined MCAS’s research team in April 2022. Before coming to Hamburg, she was a teaching assistant at La Sapienza Università di Roma and a postdoctoral fellow at MCAS. She will act as the managing editor of the Encyclopedia of Scepticism and Jewish Tradition.

Welcome to Ulrike Hirschfelder, who joined the team at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion as a Hebrew language teacher in April 2023. Before taking up this position, she was a Hebrew language teacher at Universität Potsdam.

Welcome to Dr Lilian Türk, who will serve as a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion as a part-time replacement for Giuseppe Veltri in summer term 2023. Prof Veltri will be partially released from his professorship duties to allow him to carry out his duties as director of MCAS.