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What does it mean to be truly happy? In Philosophies of Happiness, Diana Lobel provides a rich spectrum of arguments for a theory of happiness as flourishing or well-being, offering a global, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary perspective on how to create a vital, fulfilling, and significant life. Drawing upon perspectives from a broad range of philosophical traditions—Eastern and Western, ancient and contemporary—the book suggests that just as physical health is the well-being of the body, happiness is the healthy and flourishing condition of the whole human being, and we experience the most complete happiness when we realize our potential through creative engagement. Lobel shows tha...
Lobel crosses Eastern and Western philosophical and religious traditions to discover a beauty and purpose at the heart of reality that makes life worth living. This title does not treat philosophy as an abstract, theoretical discipline but as living experience.
Judah Ha-Levi (1075–1141), a medieval Jewish poet, mystic, and sophisticated critic of the rationalistic tradition in Judaism, is the focus of this ground-breaking study. Diana Lobel examines his influential philosophical dialogue, Sefer ha-Kuzari, written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew, which broke religious and philosophical convention by infusing Sufi terms for religious experience with a new Jewish theological vision. Intellectually engaging, clear, and accessible, Between Mysticism and Philosophy is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the intertwined worlds of Jewish and Islamic philosophy, religion, and culture.
This broad-ranging study, the first full-length investigation of conceptions of faith and trust in the Judeo-Arabic tradition, explores a family of related concepts--faith (imān, emunah), conviction (i'tiqād), and trust/reliance (tawakkul/ittikāl)--in Saadya, Baḥya, Halevi, Maimonides, Abraham Maimonides, and the Egyptian pietist circle of Abraham he-Ḥasid. The work points to a rich spectrum of conceptions of faith and trust--from the purely cognitive to the experiential and affective. What emerges are themes of faithfulness, loyalty, experiential certainty, and trustworthiness, expressed in devotion to a way of life that embodies these ideals. The virtue of trust expresses steadfast commitment to the truth.
Written in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence to the present day. Readers who know the book primarily in its Hebrew version have likely lost sight of the work's original Arabic context and its immersion in Islamic mystical literature. In A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, Diana Lobel explores the full extent to which Duties of the Heart marks the flowering of the "Jewish-Arab symbiosis," the interpenetration of Islamic and Jewish civilizations. Lobel reveals Bahya as a maverick who integrates abstract negative theology,...
Breaking with strictly historical or textual perspectives, this book explores Jewish philosophy as philosophy. Often regarded as too technical for Judaic studies and too religious for philosophy departments, Jewish philosophy has had an ambiguous position in the academy. These provocative essays propose new models for the study of Jewish philosophy that embrace wider intellectual arenas—including linguistics, poetics, aesthetics, and visual culture—as a path toward understanding the particular philosophic concerns of Judaism. As they reread classic Jewish texts, the essays articulate a new set of questions and demonstrate the vitality and originality of Jewish philosophy.
Diana Lobel takes readers on a journey across Eastern and Western philosophical and religious traditions to discover a beauty and purpose at the heart of reality that makes life worth living. Guided by the ideas of ancient thinkers and the insight of the philosophical historian Pierre Hadot, The Quest for God and the Good treats philosophy not as an abstract, theoretical discipline, but as a living experience. For centuries, human beings have struggled to know why we are here, whether a higher being or dimension exists, and whether our existence is fundamentally good. Above all, we want to know whether the search for God and the good will bring happiness. Following in the path of the ancient...
In Israel there are Jews and Muslims who practice Sufism together. The Sufi’ activities that they take part in together create pathways of engagement between two faith traditions in a geographical area beset by conflict. Sufism and Jewish Muslim Relations investigates this practice of Sufism among Jews and Muslims in Israel and examines their potential to contribute to peace in the area. It is an original approach to the study of reconciliation, situating the activities of groups that are not explicitly acting for peace within the wider context of grass-roots peace initiatives. The author conducted in-depth interviews with those practicing Sufism in Israel, and these are both collected in ...
The love of God is perhaps the most essential element in Judaism—but also one of the most confounding. In biblical and rabbinic literature, the obligation to love God appears as a formal commandment. Yet most people today think of love as a feeling. How can an emotion be commanded? How could one ever fulfill such a requirement? The Love of God places these scholarly and existential questions in a new light. Jon Levenson traces the origins of the concept to the ancient institution of covenant, showing how covenantal love is a matter neither of sentiment nor of dry legalism. The love of God is instead a deeply personal two-way relationship that finds expression in God's mysterious love for t...
This volume offers an account of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) as a rational theologian who created a symbiosis of philosophy and theology and infused rationality into Sufism. The majority of the papers herein deal with important topics of al-Ghazālī’s work, which demonstrate his rational treatment of the Qurʾān and major subjects of Islamic theology and everyday life of Muslims. Some other contributions address al-Ghazālī’s sources and how his intellectual endeavors were later received by scholars who had the same concern of reconciling religion and rationality within Islam, Christianity and Judaism. With contributions by Binyamin Abrahamov, Hans Daiber, Ken Garden, Avner Giladi, Scott Girdner, Frank Griffel, Steven Harvey, Alfred Ivry, Jules Janssens, Taneli Kukkonen, Luis Xavier López-Farjeat, Wilferd Madelung, Yahya M. Michot, Yasien Mohamed, Eric Ormsby, M. Sait Özervarlı, and Hidemi Takahashi.