Jewish and Islamic Philosophy

Lenn E. Goodman is an American philosopher. His philosophy, particularly his constructive work, draws from classical and medieval sources as well as religious texts. Goodman is also an academic, scholar, and a historian with research interest in metaphysics, ethics, and Jewish philosophy.

Lenn E. Goodman, one of the world's most elegant and prolific students of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, argues convincingly that the reason that Jewish authors found so much of Islamic philosophy, pietism, mysticism, jurisprudence and grammar congenial was that Islamic ideas in these fields were rooted in Biblical categories . . . sharpened by Greek analysis [and] rendered vivid by Greek imagery. . . . At its best Goodman's work remains one of that of the Tosafists: an attempt to derive from painstaking textual analysis a glimpse of the broader principles informing these texts. Goodman is a master of rising from details to ever higher levels of abstraction and it is at the highest levels of abstraction that Greek, Muslim, and Jewish thought meet. (Jewish History) Goodman's nearly poetic writing is vivid and accessible beyond narrow professional confines. . . . This work argues forcefully that cross-pollination not only afforded freshness and strengths to the giants of Islamic and Jewish philosophy in 11th and 12th-century Spain, but that it offers the same to us today. Recommended. (Choice) Professor Lenn E. Goodman is a philosopher and scholar of world-class stature, whose writings have enhanced the intellectual lives of all who work in his field. - Ian Netton (Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds) He is without doubt one of the outstanding authors in his field. - Oliver Leaman (Department of Philosophy, Liverpool John Moores University)

• PrefaceAbbreviations and short titles1. Crosspollinations 1. Hearing God's voice in words2. "He who knows himself knows his Lord"3. God's act in history 2. Razi and Epicurus 1. Perception and sensation2. Pleasure and pain3. Desire, motivation, and free will4. Razi's Ethics and the ethical transparency of hedonism 3. Bahya and Kant 1. The antinomy2. Bahya's response3. The philosphical impact of Bahya's approach 4. Maimonides and the Philosophers of Islam 1. Creation2. Theophany 5. Friendship 1. Friendship as reciprocated virtue2. Biblical, Rabbinic, Maimonidean and Qur'anic fellowship3. Miskawayh on friendship4. Friendship in al-Ghazali 6. Determinism and freedom in Spinoza, Maimoonides and Aristotle 1. Aristotle's determinism2. Maimonides' determinism3. Spinoza's determinism4. Spinoza's defence of human freedom5. Maimonides on character and freedom6. Freedom and akrasia7. Conclusion 7. Ibn Khaldun and Thucydides 1. A science of history and civilisation2. Governance in historyBibliographyIndex