What is Jewish in Jewish philosophy?

Authors

• Karl-Johan Illman Åbo akademi

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30752/nj.69567

Keywords:

Philosophy, Jewish, Philosophers, Jewish literature, Christianity and Judaism

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore understandings of Jewish philosophy. According to Daniel H. Frank, Jewish philosophy is an academic discipline invented in the nineteenth century by scholars intent on gaining a foothold of academic respectability. Once the category Jewish philosophy was created by the German Wissenschaft des Judentums it was associated with general philosophy in order to include certain thinkers and exclude others. The author defines two criteria on what can be defined as Jewish philosophy. The author claims that Jewish in Jewish philosophy is in some reasonable way, 1) the identity of the philosopher and 2) the theme or the subject of his or her philosophy. We can speak of Jewish philosophy without thinking about it as a subdivision of general philosophy. It is then what Jewish philosophers do when they make Jewish tradition or Jewish questions their subject matter.