Pragmatism and Theology: Between Hasdai Crescas and Charles Peirce
The noted Jewish scholar Harry Wolfson (d. 1929) claimed in youthful writings that the fifteenth-century rabbinic thinker and physicist, Hasdai Crescas, was a pragmatist. This essay introduces evidence that there are, indeed, significant analogies between elements of Hasdai Crescas’s critique of Ari...
| Published in: | Modern theology |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2023
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| In: |
Modern theology
Year: 2023, Volume: 39, Issue: 2, Pages: 232-254 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Ḳreśḳaś, Ḥasdai 1340-1410
/ Peirce, Charles S. 1839-1914
/ Pragmatism
/ Torah
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| IxTheo Classification: | BH Judaism NBB Doctrine of Revelation TH Late Middle Ages TJ Modern history VA Philosophy |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | The noted Jewish scholar Harry Wolfson (d. 1929) claimed in youthful writings that the fifteenth-century rabbinic thinker and physicist, Hasdai Crescas, was a pragmatist. This essay introduces evidence that there are, indeed, significant analogies between elements of Hasdai Crescas’s critique of Aristotle and elements of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. The essay concludes that Crescas’s primary work, Light of the Lord (Or Hashem), displays a unique analogue to classical American pragmatism, which analogue I label “rabbinic pragmatism” and classify as a subtype of “Jewish pragmatism.” The essay’s central hypothesis is that Crescas’s scientific reasoning is correlative to his Torah-based reasoning. A second hypothesis is that the enabling conditions of this correlativity are the inquirer’s relation to God as author of Creation and of the Commandments (mitzvah). I argue that Crescas’s non-finite mathematics (a potential source for Galileo) is correlative to his account of the non-finite meanings of each Commandment so that each command displays fresh meanings in each new context of life. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-0025 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Modern theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/moth.12810 |