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...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Ochs, Peter 1950- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: Wiley-Blackwell 2023
Dans: Modern theology
Année: 2023, Volume: 39, Numéro: 2, Pages: 232-254
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Ḳreśḳaś, Ḥasdai 1340-1410 / Peirce, Charles S. 1839-1914 / Pragmatisme / Torah
Classifications IxTheo:BH Judaïsme
NBB Révélation
TH Moyen Âge tardif
TJ Époque moderne
VA Philosophie
Accès en ligne: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Résumé: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.
ISSN:1468-0025
Contient:Enthalten in: Modern theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/moth.12810