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Jewish Philosophy, Renaissance

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Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

Abstract

The turning point of Western thought and philosophy is, as is well known, the early modern period. Firstly, during this era, philosophy changes its focus from the (meta)physically centered study of establishing the existence and essence of sub- and superlunary worlds and of matter and form to an epistemological preoccupation with questioning the consistency, truth, and falsity of our knowledge through, beyond, and even without the senses. Also, a new consciousness was introduced in the perception of Jewish philosophy, namely, to reduce the vision of the mystery of creation in Jewish narrative philosophy (arcana mundi) to a simple account of rites and symbols called religion, a demythization of the Jewish tradition. It was precisely this period which gave birth to the denomination of Jewish philosophy (Philosophia Hebraeorum) and Jewish religion (Religio Hebraeorum or Iudaeorum), which some time later, in the nineteenth century, were summarized in German countries as Jüdische Philosophie, defining the history of the Jewish pursuit of philosophy and the history of mysticism, called Jewish wisdom.

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Veltri, G. (2022). Jewish Philosophy, Renaissance. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_1170

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