Broadcasts on Jewish Philosophy at PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE.

Including the following programmes:

• Overview 1: We begin this series with an introduction to Jewish philosophy, from Ancient times onwards - an attempt to explore some of the key thinkers and recurring philosophical questions. Our guide is Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3318686.htm);
• Overview 2: in part two of our introduction we take up the story during the 17th century, with the great European thinker Baruch Spinoza. Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University is again our guide (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3318715.htm);
• Maimonides: Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, became a hugely important figure in that great era of Moorish cultural flourishing, 12th century Spain (Cordoba). Maimonides adapted the ideas of Aristotle, was a significant influence on Thomas Aquinas, and became one of the leading Rabbinical scholars of his time, and perhaps of all time (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3318761.htm);
• Moses Mendelssohn: Moses Mendelssohn scandalised his more pious fellow 18th century Germans when he said: 'My religion recognises no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths.' This week we look at the life and ideas of one of the great proponents of Judaism as a rational religion (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3318825.htm);
• Martin Buber: Martin Buber was born in pre-Nazi Austria and emigrated to Israel in 1938 where he spent much of the rest of his life. He grappled with Zionism, Jewish thought, secular philosophy and politics and the result is a body of thought very much based on relationships (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3318843.htm).

Kavka, Martin. "Review of Dana Hollander's EXEMPLARITY AND CHOSENNESS." NDPR (October 2008).

Hollander, Dana. Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. There are approximately seven books wrapped up in Exemplarity and Chosenness, a book which treats the intellectual debt of Franz Rosenzweig to Hermann Cohen, of Jacques Derrida to Edmund Husserl, of Derrida to Emmanuel Levinas, of Derrida to Rosenzweig, of Continental philosophy to Jewish thought, of Jewish thought to Continental philosophy, and finally the equiprimordiality of life and thought. There will be readers who will feel as if reading this book will itself require teaching a graduate seminar that follows along, chapter by chapter. It is by no means a quick read, and so I err in this review on the side of giving an overly summary account. Still, the central two claims of Hollander's excellent book can be telegraphed quite briefly. First, there is no possibility of thinking the universality of philosophy without thinking the historically and culturally determined particularity of the philosopher who takes that particularity as an example from which universality is derived. In other words, universality is never given as such to thought; it is for this reason that philosophy is bound up with national affirmation (e.g. Greece, Germany, Jewishness). The second move points out that particularity, if it is to be given to thought, can no longer be given as the particularity that it is. For this reason, universalism can, and should be, expressed in terms of an exile from or desertification of the rootedness typically associated with nationalism. We see this move exemplified in Derrida's notion of the "messianic without messianism" in Specters of Marx as well as Rosenzweig's notion of the Jewish people as beyond time in The Star of Redemption. What we are left with is particular communities pointing beyond themselves, invoking the universal as a phantasmatic idea, both regulative and grounding, but all the while invoking it in their own idioms. The universal and particular, the infinite and finite, the nations and the elect nation, require each other to be thought at all. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=14506.

Socher, Abraham. "Review of Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon, eds. CAMBRIDGE COMPANTION TO MODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY." NDPR March 15, 2008.

Morgan, Michael L., and Peter Eli Gordon, eds. Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. In 1916, Isaac Husik ended his still-useful History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy on an elegiac note: "There are Jews now and there are philosophers, but there are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy." Although Husik's epitaph isn't mentioned, the contributors and editors of the new Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy repeatedly and even worriedly address the question of whether there is any such distinctively philosophical sub-field through which the reader must be guided. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12643.