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Systematic account of the hermeneutics of comparison and contrast of Rabbinic Judaism.This work both completes the project of which it is part and also stands on its own. It therefore is necessary to explain matters in their own terms and also to set the work into its context, both past and future. To state at the outset the thesis that I propose to demonstrate: in the Halakhic category-formations, each worked out in a hermeneutics particular to its topic, one can learn the principles of generic hermeneutics, with special reference to the rules of hierarchical classification. These encompass the speciation of a genus, the relationship of the species of a genus to one another, the comparison and contrast of species, the hierarchization of genera, the division of one thing into many things, the aggregation or conglomeration of many things into one thing, and related issues, all of them subject to generalization, of hierarchical classification. Accordingly, we now turn from the Halakhah's particular hermeneutics to the issues of generic hermeneutics: interstitiality, mixtures and connections, resolution of doubt, and demonstration of the many that yield the one and the one that yields the many. In each case I provide a theoretical introduction and then a rapid survey of suggestive examples, by tractates. I make no effort at including all possible cases. I cite only a sufficient number to show that the generic hermeneutics transcends the topical structure of Halakhic category-formations. In these five chapters I realize the purpose of this handbook: the demonstration that generic, not only particular, hermeneutics animate the Halakhah, transcending the bounds of the category-formations and their singular hermeneutics, a dual hermeneutics.
A propos de l'auteur
Professor
Marvin Fox received his B.A. in philosophy in 1942 from Northwestern University, the M.A. in the same field in 1946, and the Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1950 in that field as well. His education in Judaic texts was certified by rabbinical ordination as Rabbi by the Hebrew Theological College of Chicago in 1942. He served as a Jewish Chaplain in the US Army Air Force during World War II from 1942 to 1946. He taught at Ohio State University from 1948 through 1974, rising from Instructor to Professor of Philosophy. During those years he served also as Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University (1970-1971). In 1974 he came to Brandeis University as Appleman Professor of Jewish Thought, and from 1976 onward he has held the Lown Professorship. He has received numerous academic awards, lectured widely at universities and at national and international academic conferences and served as Member of the National Endowment for the Humanities National Board of Consultants for new programs at colleges and universities.
