In the current paper I rely on two outstanding studies. The one, by Warren Zev Harvey, draws a portrait of Spinoza as Maimonidean, stressing the continuity between Maimonides and Spinoza on the issue of morality and the highest good. The other is the magisterial study by Steven Shmuel Harvey of the reception of the Nicomachean Ethics in medieval Jewish philosophy, from its being subject to almost complete indifference in the period before Maimonides until it became “the best known and (...) most cited work of Aristotle” in sixteenth-century Jewish philosophy. In the first part of this paper I will discuss some main junctions in the medieval Jewish reception of the notion of the highest good. This discussion will be cursory and will mostly focus on matters that will help us approach Spinoza’s views on the issue, views which will be examined closely in the second part of the paper. (shrink)

ALL THE MORE, by Avi Sion, Ph.D., comprises a merged list of 72 qal vachomer arguments in the Tanakh, i.e. of a fortiori arguments in the Hebrew Bible. This listing brings together lists proposed in past rabbinic literature and in more recent studies by the author. The literature research for it was carried out mainly by R. Yaakov Gabay, who looked into works in Hebrew by five rabbis who had proposed lists, namely: R. Shmuel Yaffe Ashkenazi (Yefeh Toar, 1597), (...) R. Zvi Hirsch Katzenellenbogen (Netivot Olam, 1822), R. Zeev Wolf Einhorn (Midrash Tannaim, 1839), R. Mattityahu Strashun (Mattat Yah, 1892), R. Chaim Hirschensohn (Berure HaMidot, 1928). The author of the present essay brought additional information from the Tanakh commentary of R. Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi, 11th Cent.) and an essay by R. Louis Jacobs (2005), as well as from his own past works (Judaic Logic, 1995, and A Fortiori Logic, 2013). The information thus gathered is here presented in a systematic manner, after careful evaluation by the author of each case with reference to narrative context, language used, and logical form. Efforts are made to identify which cases were known to each of the past authors, and to determine who found each case first and whether subsequent listings of the case (if any) were independent or derivative. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the way people engage with politics around the world: how citizens consume news, how they view the institutions and norms, how civic groups mobilize public interests, how data-driven campaigns are shaping elections, and so on (Ho & Vuong, 2024). Placing people at the center of the increasingly AI-mediated political landscape has become an urgent matter that transcends all forms of institutions. In this essay, we argue that, in this era, it is necessary to look beyond (...) certain limited notions of democracy and broaden our views of what it means to put people at the heart of political governance. Thus, we introduce some key features of a very, if not the most important concept, in East Asian political culture, ‘people as roots (of the state)’ or (dân bản in Vietnamese and 民本 in Chinese) . We propose that a more culturally sensitive analysis, which takes into account the diverse interpretations of people-centeredness within different political cultures, can provide valuable insights for researchers and leaders worldwide. Indeed, as the sociologist Shmuel Eisenstadt succinctly puts, modernity does not and should not correspond to Westernization. (shrink)