Jewish Philosophy

Abstract

This entry opens by going through the customary difficulties in giving an introduction to Jewish philosophy: the term is an academic category and not one native to Judaism, and its very phrasing unnecessarily casts “Jewish philosophy” as fraught between particularist and universalist leanings. It then turns away from these problems, and tells a story not about what Jewish philosophy is, but about the good that Jewish philosophy can do, by introducing Jewish philosophy as a discipline that inculcates in its readers the virtue of a self's being plastic or adaptable.