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This book aims to construct a contemporary Jewish philosophy that accounts for virtue ethics or, rather, to give Jewish virtue ethics a contemporary language for its expression. Ira Bedzow draws significantly on the work of Moses Maimonides and his religio-philosophical explanation of Jewish ethics. However, Bedzow moves away from various aspects of Maimonides's Aristotelian biology, physics, metaphysics, and psychology. The objective of the volume is to integrate the normative principles of the Jewish tradition into everyday life. While the book translates Jewish ethics from a medieval, Aristotelian framework into a contemporary one, it also serves as a means for Judaism to continue as a living tradition.
List of contents
Introduction.- 1. Teleology - One of Aspiration and not Actualization.- 2. Telos - To Be a Servant of God.- 3. Entelechy - Shlemut.- 4. The Law.- 5. A Contemporary Explanation of the Law's Construction of Reality.- 6. Practical Reason.- 7. The Virtues.- 8. Moral Motivation & Shlemut.- Appendix I: Lifnim Mishurat Hadin.- Appendix II: A Genealogy of the Expression Moshe emet v'Torato emet.
About the author
Ira Bedzow is the director of the Biomedical Ethics and Humanities Program at New York Medical College, USA, and the Senior Scholar of the Aspen Center for Social Values. Bedzow received his PhD from Emory University, USA. He is also an Orthodox rabbi (yoreh yoreh and yadin yadin).
Summary
This book aims to construct a contemporary Jewish philosophy that accounts for virtue ethics or, rather, to give Jewish virtue ethics a contemporary language for its expression. Ira Bedzow draws significantly on the work of Moses Maimonides and his religio-philosophical explanation of Jewish ethics. However, Bedzow moves away from various aspects of Maimonides’s Aristotelian biology, physics, metaphysics, and psychology. The objective of the volume is to integrate the normative principles of the Jewish tradition into everyday life. While the book translates Jewish ethics from a medieval, Aristotelian framework into a contemporary one, it also serves as a means for Judaism to continue as a living tradition.
