Faith, Reason, and Politics

The past decade has witnessed renewed interest in the faith-reason debate. But all too often the debate is treated in generic terms, without paying attention either to differences between religious traditions or to the historical development of these traditions. Judaism, with its emphasis on religious law yields insights into the political ramifications of the problem that differ greatly from Christian approaches. In Faith, Reason, and Politics, Michah Gottlieb explores Jewish approaches to the faith-reason debate through detailed analyses of Jewish thinkers from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries including Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Leo Strauss, This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in the problem of faith versus reason and in the relationship between religion and politics.

Michah Gottlieb (PhD Indiana University) is assistant professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. Previously he taught at Brown University. He had held fellowships at Princeton University, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Humanities Initiative at NYU. He is author of Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2011) and editor of Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism, Christianity and the Bible (University Press of New England, 2011).