This study of the concept of glory across four different religions begins with Christianity. There the term 'glory' translates Greek doxa, a word which, deriving from a root meaning 'to seem', denotes 'outward appearance', and has in secular Greek the basic meaning 'opinion'. The New Testament, however, not only omits this connotation but gives doxa an entirely new one (radiance, divine Presence). Given that symbols are rooted in the experiential well-springs of a people, why did the Christian experience not bring a totally new symbol to birth. The answer is two-fold: (a) Christians took the word from the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible wherein it was used to translate Kavodh (glory) and (b) the meaning of doxa resonated with the Christian Encounter. It had first resonated with the Hebrew experience. It is this thesis that doxa was used by Christians and Greek-speaking Jews precisely because of its root meanings ('to seem' 'outward appearance' 'manifestation') and that these meanings, resonating also with the experience of Zoroastrians and Buddhists, are reflected in their ideas of glory, albeit within their different conceptual frameworks. 'Glory' in all four religions is related to man's experience of polarities: Immanence/Transcendence, Manifestation/Hiddenness, Presence/Absence, and it speaks of a Reality beyond appearance. Man longs for the Real; he seeks Self-transcendence. In the measure that he becomes 'selfless' he comes closer to that which he seeks and sees things as they really are. He grows from glory to glory until he becomes what he is. In Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism man is of the essence of glory.

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This dissertation examines the ethical systems created in response to the crisis of the Holocaust by Emmanuel Levinas, Elie Wiesel and Richard Rubenstein. Prior to the Holocaust, European Jewish philosophers grounded ethics in traditional metaphysics. Unlike their predecessors, Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein all make ethics "first philosophy" by grounding ethics in the temporal experience of suffering rather than ontology or theology, deliberately rejecting ethical views rooted in traditional metaphysical claims. With varying degrees of success, they all employ Jewish texts and traditions to do so. Their applications of Jewish sources are both orthodox and innovative, and show how philosophical approaches to ethics can benefit from religion. Suffering becomes not only the first priority of ethics, but an experience that simultaneously necessitates and activates ethical response. According to this view, human beings are not blank slates whose values are informed exclusively by culture and moral instruction alone; nor is human consciousness awakened or even primarily constituted by reason, as argued by deontologists. Rather, consciousness is characterized by affectivity and sensibility as interconnected faculties working in concert to create ethical response. This dissertation argues that if what makes ethical response possible is located in human consciousness rather than in metaphysics or culture, a re-orientation of philosophy toward the investigation of human affectivity and its role in ethical response is in order. All three thinkers examined actively resist categorization and repudiate claims that a single philosophical system can be successfully applied to all aspects of life, and this dissertation does not choose one of the three projects examined here as the most persuasive or significant. Instead, it explores how the work of Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein might be combined, built upon and expanded to form an ethics that is deeply informed by human experience and makes human and non-human suffering our greatest priorities.

This thesis deals with the double truth concept in Maimonides and Averroes, particularly in The Guide for the Perplexed and in The Decisive Treatise. At first the thesis will try to determine the terminological and methodological frame of this topic and to deal with the commentary tradition regarding this topic. While doing this, it will deal with the use of the term "truth" in Aristotle and in The Scripture and it will also ask what sentences can or cannot be deemed true or false according to Aristotelian logic. The thesis will further try to sketch the outlines of different aspects and types of double truth concept, which we can find in the authors of the primary literature. In its second part, the thesis deals with the nature of the primary literature and then with the relevant text passages, which serve to demonstrate the previously outlined double truth concept

O objetivo deste trabalho é abordar a produção intelectual de um médico judeu português, Manoel Bocarro Francês/Jacob Rosales. Personagem pouco estudado, não se inclui entre as figuras centrais no pensamento judaico, nem na medicina e nem na ciência de seu tempo. Mas é um personagem que uniu em sua vida intelectual uma adesão ao judaísmo ao lado de vasta produção e atuação no movimento sebastianista, sendo o único caso conhecido de um judeu que professava sua crença na volta do Encoberto Conviveu e partilhou sua atividade intelectual com grandes figuras de seu tempo, como Galileu Galilei, o famoso médico Zacuto Lusitano e o rabino Menashe ben Israel. Seus escritos eram conhecidos pelo padre Antônio Vieira e a influência dos mesmos no sebastianismo se fizeram sentir em Portugal até o século XIX. Trazer um retrato vivo deste personagem, de suas ideias, contradições e discutir seu lugar na vida intelectual, quer do mundo judaico de sua época quer na história da medicina e do pensamento científico do século XVII, é o objetivo deste trabalho. / This study aims to discuss a Jewish-Portuguese physician, Manoel Bocarro Frances / Jacob Rosales. A figure who has not been much studied, he is not included among the central characters of the Jewish thinking and neither of the medicine or the science of his time. However, he is a figure that gathered in his intellectual life an adherence to the Judaism and a large production and participation in the Sebastian Moviment, being the only known Jewish man who professed his belief in the return of \"The Hidden One\". He shared his intelectual activity with great figures of his time, like Galileu Galilei, the famous physician Zacuto Lusitano and the rabbi Menashe Ben Israel. His writings were known by priest Antonio Vieira, and their influence was felt in Portugal until the XIX century. Bringing a live portrait of this figure, his ideias, his contradicitons, and discussing his role in the intellectual life, being that in the Jewish world of his time, or in the history of the XVII century medicine and scientific thinking, is the goal of this research.

In this study of the nineteenth-century German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen, I argue that Cohen’s revision of Kantian ethics and moral theology is permeated with concepts drawn from and logically contoured by his interpretation of Maimonidean rationalism and Jewish sources, more generally. Through an idealizing hermeneutic, Cohen normativizes certain philosophical problems in post-Kantian philosophy and addresses them under the title of "pantheism" and "positivism". Between both pantheism and positivism, Cohen’s idealism presents a middle path, which I describe as "prophetic idealism", or a philosophy of time and ideality that interprets history, law, and ethical normativity as future-oriented. In other words, "prophecy" intimates a methodological role for temporality in practical philosophy and introduces a new meaning for legality in ethics. Cohen therefore offers a philosophy of Judaism, as a philosophy of religion, by normativizing the idea of prophecy and making it a conceptual model for reason-giving, agency, legal norms and ethical action. By focusing upon the critique of both pantheism and positivism, this dissertation therefore argues that Cohen’s negotiations of nineteenth-century philosophical problems introduces a normative role for Judaism as a public philosophy and the argument concludes by suggesting that Cohen’s philosophy of Judaism is instructive for contemporary public philosophy.

In this study of the nineteenth-century German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen, I argue that Cohen’s revision of Kantian ethics and moral theology is permeated with concepts drawn from and logically contoured by his interpretation of Maimonidean rationalism and Jewish sources, more generally. Through an idealizing hermeneutic, Cohen normativizes certain philosophical problems in post-Kantian philosophy and addresses them under the title of "pantheism" and "positivism". Between both pantheism and positivism, Cohen’s idealism presents a middle path, which I describe as "prophetic idealism", or a philosophy of time and ideality that interprets history, law, and ethical normativity as future-oriented. In other words, "prophecy" intimates a methodological role for temporality in practical philosophy and introduces a new meaning for legality in ethics. Cohen therefore offers a philosophy of Judaism, as a philosophy of religion, by normativizing the idea of prophecy and making it a conceptual model for reason-giving, agency, legal norms and ethical action. By focusing upon the critique of both pantheism and positivism, this dissertation therefore argues that Cohen’s negotiations of nineteenth-century philosophical problems introduces a normative role for Judaism as a public philosophy and the argument concludes by suggesting that Cohen’s philosophy of Judaism is instructive for contemporary public philosophy.

O objetivo deste trabalho é abordar a produção intelectual de um médico judeu português, Manoel Bocarro Francês/Jacob Rosales. Personagem pouco estudado, não se inclui entre as figuras centrais no pensamento judaico, nem na medicina e nem na ciência de seu tempo. Mas é um personagem que uniu em sua vida intelectual uma adesão ao judaísmo ao lado de vasta produção e atuação no movimento sebastianista, sendo o único caso conhecido de um judeu que professava sua crença na volta do Encoberto Conviveu e partilhou sua atividade intelectual com grandes figuras de seu tempo, como Galileu Galilei, o famoso médico Zacuto Lusitano e o rabino Menashe ben Israel. Seus escritos eram conhecidos pelo padre Antônio Vieira e a influência dos mesmos no sebastianismo se fizeram sentir em Portugal até o século XIX. Trazer um retrato vivo deste personagem, de suas ideias, contradições e discutir seu lugar na vida intelectual, quer do mundo judaico de sua época quer na história da medicina e do pensamento científico do século XVII, é o objetivo deste trabalho. / This study aims to discuss a Jewish-Portuguese physician, Manoel Bocarro Frances / Jacob Rosales. A figure who has not been much studied, he is not included among the central characters of the Jewish thinking and neither of the medicine or the science of his time. However, he is a figure that gathered in his intellectual life an adherence to the Judaism and a large production and participation in the Sebastian Moviment, being the only known Jewish man who professed his belief in the return of \"The Hidden One\". He shared his intelectual activity with great figures of his time, like Galileu Galilei, the famous physician Zacuto Lusitano and the rabbi Menashe Ben Israel. His writings were known by priest Antonio Vieira, and their influence was felt in Portugal until the XIX century. Bringing a live portrait of this figure, his ideias, his contradicitons, and discussing his role in the intellectual life, being that in the Jewish world of his time, or in the history of the XVII century medicine and scientific thinking, is the goal of this research.

This research project investigates Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (1724-1777) and Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906-1995) philosophical discourses on desire from a comparative perspective. First, I look at Dai Zhen and Levinas individually each in their own philosophical contexts, while framing my readings with parallel structure that pivots on a hermeneutic strategy to examine their ideas of desire within the larger prospect of the human relation with transcendence. Then, my inquiry leads to a critical analysis of several interesting issues yielded in my interpretive readings of the two thinkers as regards transcendence and immanence and the self-other relationship. Methodologically, my study combines careful textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and historical sensitivity. We might want to say that there is in fact no correlative of the Levinasian desire in Dai Zhen’s philosophy. Dai Zhen’s notion of desire perhaps comes closer to Levinas’s concept of need. However, the disparity of their conceptual formulations does not keep us from discerning their shared ethical concern for the other, the weak, marginalized, and underprivileged group of society, which provides me the very ground for a dialogical comparison between the two thinkers. Henceforth, my writing is hinged on a comprehension of their conception of desire as an articulation of human striving for what is lying beyond themselves, as a redefinition of the being or essence of humankind in relation to the transcendent which in both philosophers’ ethical thinking is translated into a sympathetic understanding of and care for the other, particularly the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the young, the weak and the like. Through the comparative study of the two thinkers’ ideas of desire, I want to argue that “desire,” which is most readily directed to human egoism and instinctive propensity in both Confucian and Western philosophical traditions, can be at once the very driving force to open us to the other beyond ourselves and an actual moral creativity to produce ethical being out of material existence.

This research project investigates Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (1724-1777) and Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906-1995) philosophical discourses on desire from a comparative perspective. First, I look at Dai Zhen and Levinas individually each in their own philosophical contexts, while framing my readings with parallel structure that pivots on a hermeneutic strategy to examine their ideas of desire within the larger prospect of the human relation with transcendence. Then, my inquiry leads to a critical analysis of several interesting issues yielded in my interpretive readings of the two thinkers as regards transcendence and immanence and the self-other relationship. Methodologically, my study combines careful textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and historical sensitivity. We might want to say that there is in fact no correlative of the Levinasian desire in Dai Zhen’s philosophy. Dai Zhen’s notion of desire perhaps comes closer to Levinas’s concept of need. However, the disparity of their conceptual formulations does not keep us from discerning their shared ethical concern for the other, the weak, marginalized, and underprivileged group of society, which provides me the very ground for a dialogical comparison between the two thinkers. Henceforth, my writing is hinged on a comprehension of their conception of desire as an articulation of human striving for what is lying beyond themselves, as a redefinition of the being or essence of humankind in relation to the transcendent which in both philosophers’ ethical thinking is translated into a sympathetic understanding of and care for the other, particularly the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the young, the weak and the like. Through the comparative study of the two thinkers’ ideas of desire, I want to argue that “desire,” which is most readily directed to human egoism and instinctive propensity in both Confucian and Western philosophical traditions, can be at once the very driving force to open us to the other beyond ourselves and an actual moral creativity to produce ethical being out of material existence.