Holy, holy, holy! The Lord of hosts! The fill of all the earth is His glory. In these few ecstatic words, the prophet Isaiah captured the core of Jewish thinking about humanity, nature, and God. If the idea of holiness generally points toward God's transcendence, Isaiah brings it back down to earth, recognizing God's presence throughout the world. The Holy One of Israel is a philosophical exploration of that remarkable and distinctively Jewish idea: that God is everywher...

Is God a necessary being? Infinite yet simple? Creator of a world that seems equally able to explain itself? In this volume, prize-winning philosopher Lenn Goodman probes key religious questions against the backdrop of sacred texts and philosophical classics. In dialogue with a range of philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant, he examines the relationship between truth and the idea of God. Exploring the nexus between theism and logic, he probes o...

How can we, as people and communities with different religions and cultures, live together with integrity? Does tolerance require us to deny our deep differences or give up all claims to truth, to trade our received traditions for skepticism or relativism? Cultural philosopher Lenn E. Goodman argues that we can respect one another and learn from one another's ways without either sharing them or relinquishing our own. He argues that our commitments to our own ideals and norms need not mean ...

This book is an attempt to explain how, in the face of increasing religious authoritarianism in medieval Islamic civilization, some Muslim thinkers continued to pursue essentially humanistic, rational, and scientific discourses in the quest for knowledge, meaning, and values. Drawing on a wide range of Islamic writings, from love poetry to history to philosophical theology, Goodman shows that medieval Islam was open to individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism, even liberalism.

This book is an attempt to explain how, in the face of increasing religious authoritarianism in medieval Islamic civilization, some Muslim thinkers continued to pursue essentially humanistic, rational, and scientific discourses in the quest for knowledge, meaning, and values. Drawing on a wide range of Islamic writings, from love poetry to history to philosophical theology, Goodman shows that medieval Islam was open to individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism, even liberalism.

Can religion survive Darwinism? Do scientists entering the lab or heading for the field have to bracket, or reject outright, all religious commitments and convictions? Trenchantly laying out the evidence for natural selection and carefully following and underscoring the themes and theses of Genesis, L. E. Goodman traces the historical and conceptual backgrounds of today’s evolution controversies, revealing the deep complementarities of religion and the life sciences. Solidly researched and...

Judaism, as a religion and a way of life, has guided millions of lives and profoundly influenced its younger sisters, Christianity and Islam, as well as contributing major themes and norms to the liberal and humanistic traditions of the West. Not all Jews are religious, and not all of Judaism is philosophical; but at its core Judaism rests on a complex of values and ideas that address the abiding concerns of philosophy and perennial questions about the meaning and purpose of life, the natu...

How should we speak of bodies and souls? In Coming to Mind, Lenn E. Goodman and D. Gregory Caramenico pick their way through the minefields of materialist reductionism to present the soul not as the brain's rival but as its partner. What acts, they argue, is what is real. The soul is not an ethereal wisp but a lively subject, emergent from the body but inadequately described in its terms.Rooted in some of the richest philosophical and intellectual traditions of Western and ...

Rising calls in both the United States and abroad for theologizing national agendas have renewed examinations about whether liberal states can accommodate such programs without either endangering citizens' rights or trivializing religious concerns. Conventional wisdom suggests that theology is necessarily unfriendly to the liberal state, but neither philosophical analysis nor empirical argument has convincingly established that conclusion. Examining the problem from a variety of perspectiv...

Judaism and Christianity are religions bound together by their claims to the same biblical covenant initiated by God with Abraham and his descendants. Yet, despite the inseparable connection between the election of Israel and that of the church, between the 'old' and the 'new' covenant, this shared spiritual patrimony has been the source of a type of violent sibling rivalry competing for the same paternal love and inherited entitlement. God, it seemed, had but one blessing to bestow. It co...

Negative theology is the attempt to describe God by speaking in terms of what God is not. Historical affinities between Jewish modernity and negative theology indicate new directions for thematizing the modern Jewish experience. Questions such as, What are the limits of Jewish modernity in terms of negativity? Has this creative tradition exhausted itself? and How might Jewish thought go forward? anchor these original essays. Taken together they explore the roots and legacies of negative th...

In this volume, noted philosopher Lenn E. Goodman shares the insights gained over a lifetime of pondering the meaning and purpose of Maimonides' celebrated Guide to the Perplexed. Written in the late twelfth century, Maimonides' Guide aims to help religiously committed readers who are alive to the challenges posed by reason and the natural sciences to biblical and rabbinic tradition. Keyed to the new translation and commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman, ...