Yehuda Halper, "Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age Without Plato: Permitting and Forbidding Open-Inquiry in 12-15th Century Europe and North Africa" (Brill, 2021)

episode

New Books in Intellectual History not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from New Books in Intellectual History

Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026) 54 min · 09 Sep 2026

Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French 48 min · 20 Dec 2025

All episodes from New Books in Intellectual History →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded15 Aug 2023

Publisherfeeds.megaphone.fm

Handlerec:5050676

Show notes

In Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age Without Plato: Permitting and Forbidding Open-Inquiry in 12-15th Century Europe and North Africa (Brill, 2021), Yehuda Halper examines Jewish depictions of Socrates and Socratic questioning of the divine among European and North African Jews of the 12th-15th centuries. Without direct access to Plato, their understanding of Socrates is indirect, based on legendary material, on fragmentary quotations from Plato, or on Aristotle. Out of these sources, Jewish authors of this period formed two distinct views of Socrates: one as a wise, ascetic, monotheist, and the other as a vocal skeptic. The latter view has its roots in Plato's Apology where Socrates describes his divine mandate to question all knowledge, including knowledge of the divine. After exploring how this and similar questions arise in the works of Judah Halevi and the Hebrew Averroes, Halper traces how such open-questioning of the divine arises in the works of Maimonides, Jacob Anatoli, Gersonides, and Abraham Bibago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.