Papers by sergey dolgopolski
Religion, 2021
Where does the archive of the Rabbinic Rhetorical Schools in Sepphoris, Caesarea and Tiberias bel... more Where does the archive of the Rabbinic Rhetorical Schools in Sepphoris, Caesarea and Tiberias belong in the formation of modern subjectivity and humanity? In his archeology of modern subjectivity, Alain de Libera answers a similar question about Church Fathers to locate the beginnings of both (1) a modern human as a willing and thinking subject and of (2) Heidegger’s critique thereof in the philosophical horizons of Western and Eastern patristics. In this context, the essay examines a fragment of the archive in juxtaposition with de Libera’s discovery of the patristic horizon of Heidegger’s thought. The essay builds upon and reconsiders the method of philosophical archeology as a self-critical “method” of examining the “beginnings” as retro-projections of repetition in both Heidegger’s (eschatological) and de Libera’s (post-theological) versions of philosophical archeology. The results are a comparative reading of the two parallel, never-intersecting but ever commensurable figures o...
This chapter addresses an early modern instantiation of the effacement of the interpersonal polit... more This chapter addresses an early modern instantiation of the effacement of the interpersonal political in the Talmud by conceptions of universal (inter)subjectivity and logical-apodictic reasoning. This process first tacitly erases the interpersonal political in the late ancient Talmud by reducing it to dialectical irony. In a second step, the erasure advances from irony, a Platonic concept, to logical-apodictic reading of it in the Aristotelian tradition. Only when viewed through a post-Kantian lens could it become clear that this was not merely a Platonic interpretation of the late ancient Talmud in early modernity, followed by an Aristotelian interpretation, but rather a complex and multistep process of the effacement of the interpersonal at the advent of intersubjective. The chapter arrives to that result through a case-study of staging and analyzing of a fourteenth century logical commentary on the thirteenth century rhetorical interpretation of a discussion in a late ancient text in the Talmud.
Religions, 2021
Asking the question of the emergence of the modern other, the paper explores the inversion of rel... more Asking the question of the emergence of the modern other, the paper explores the inversion of relationships between wife and woman, husband and man in an archeological analysis of a Talmudic reading by Emmanuel Levinas “And God Created Woman.” The theoretical framework of inquiry focuses on the development of relationships between the human on the one hand and the thinking and acting subject on the other. The guiding question is that of defining modern subjectivity by the disappearance of rabbinic discourse from its horizon.
Jewish Studies
“Talmud” means in Tannaitic Hebrew “learning,” “study,” or more precisely “expounding.” From the ... more “Talmud” means in Tannaitic Hebrew “learning,” “study,” or more precisely “expounding.” From the Middle Ages and on, the term came to refer to two corpora of rabbinic literature from Late Antiquity, called, respectively, Palestinian Talmud, or “Yerushalmi,” and Babylonian Talmud, or “Bavli.” Even broader, the term can mean rabbinic literature in Late Antiquity in general to include corpora of the Mishnah, Midrash, and other genres of late ancient rabbinic literature as well. There traditionally has been an incongruity in thinking about “Talmud and philosophy.” Philosophy was always understood as a discipline of thinking that has developed historically from Antiquity on. However, “Talmud” has been predominantly understood as an object, a book, “the Talmud” as opposed to “Talmud” as an intellectual discipline. That understanding leads to the first rubric in this article: the Talmud as an Object of Philosophical or Theoretical Inquiry: Comparative Study. The rubric embraces synchronic and diachronic comparative studies of the Talmud (as an object) in its relationship to philosophy as a discipline at various stages of its development. Yet beginning from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the Talmud acquired a new understanding. Now, like philosophy, it has come to be understood as a discipline of thinking (which renders in English as Talmud, without the “the”). Not totally unlike how the discipline of rhetoric has been classified by different authors as either a part of philosophy or the philosophy’s most significant other, Talmud also has been placed differently in relation to philosophy. Different authors understand it either as one among other philosophical disciplines or, alternatively, as a discipline of its own, distinct from philosophy. That translates into the second rubric of this article, Talmud as a Discipline of Thinking at different periods of its evolution from Late Antiquity to modern times. The third major rubric is thematic; it includes works in which Talmud and philosophy is a theme (“(The) Talmud and Philosophy” as a Theme). As is true for all schematic divisions, a specific work, author, or line of thinking can defy this partition. Focused as it is on relationships between Talmud and philosophy, this article does not address a related but radically different field of philosophy, that of halakhah (Jewish Law), for the latter treats the Talmud as neither an object nor a discipline, but rather as a source of law; this is a radically different pursuit belonging to a bibliography on law and philosophy, which is not treated in this article. This selected bibliography focuses primarily on individual monographs published in the last ten years, with an even more selective mention of what has proved to be influential works in this category published earlier. The compilers of this bibliography envision it as a node and invite additional entries accompanied by original bibliographic descriptions, which will be credited to the name of their authors. Rather than providing general bibliographic descriptions available elsewhere, the annotations of entries focus on the relation of each monograph to the theme of this particular article.
Talmudic Transgressions, 2017
Tosafot Gornish (TG)1 is a fourteenth-century commentary on the Tosafists, the thirteenth-century... more Tosafot Gornish (TG)1 is a fourteenth-century commentary on the Tosafists, the thirteenth-century commentators on the Talmud, which in turn is a fourthto eighth-century commentary on third-century texts (the Mishnah and its parallel traditions). Preserved only in fragments, and written in the margins of Talmudic manuscripts, TG has been marginalized by the history of Talmud interpretation as well. This is because the latter has been understood primarily in legalist terms, not in terms of philosophical or intellectual innovation, let alone in terms of political thought. Otherwise, TG would be one of the central elements in the history of Talmud interpretation, one in which Aristotelian logic and Talmudic rhetoric come together to shape a version of Talmudic rationalism in contradistinction from Maimonides's philosophical rationalism, which denied the rationality of the Talmud. As Israel Ta-Shma puts it,2 TG is distinct in its way of approaching every argument in the Talmud or in the Tosafists; TG constantly asks why an argument was carried out in this particular way as opposed to another possible way. This characteristic is both necessary and insufficient for understanding the role of TG in the bi-directional inquiry about the political this essay conducts. There is more: TG makes previous interpretations of the Talmud look either underestimated or unsatisfactory, unless they are explained according to a new criterion, that of logical necessity. TG privileges Aristotelian logic in the same way in which Maimonides privileged it in his early work Milot ha-higayon,3 and in the same way in which Maimonides continued
Jews and the Ends of Theory
This intriguing volume collects a wide array of essays that are held together by the common threa... more This intriguing volume collects a wide array of essays that are held together by the common thread of how the figure of "the Jew" is inscribed in the ephemeral notion of "theory" and how this figure upends binary distinctions and unearths different meanings from familiar concepts found throughout Jewish intellectual history and philosophy. By combining personal reflection with academic treatise and taking a cue from intellectual history, comparative literature, and philosophy, the volume inspects a myriad of aspects: language and translation; the state and violence; the political and theological; the ancient and modern; and the past, present, and future. New air is breathed on these big issues-as the editors argue in their introduction by approaching them from the margins, where "the figure of the Jew" has long been positioned (p. 2). The distinctive roster of authors manages to accomplish this, each in their own way. In their illuminative introduction (itself a highly sophisticated short essay and research agenda) on "Jews," theory, and spectral reading, the three editors invoke Critical Theory (writ large) and the Frankfurt school as a historical and theoretical starting point, moving from there to a new approach called "spectral reading," which seeks to find the figure of "the Jew" or "the Jewish" in texts and theories that are often understood as (almost) non-Jewish (p. 3). At the same time, the editors want to preserve (or revive) the critical edge of theory, and further, to suggest that highlighting this somewhat undefined Jewishness will accomplish exactly that. They acknowledge that "theory" and "critical theory" are often used interchangeably nowadays, and this is apparent throughout the volume. What remains of Critical Theory can be boiled down to the following: deploying theory critically means using it "oppositional[y], in relation to traditional theory as well as to hegemonic cultural and political establishments" (p. 2). This is a rather flat definition given that Critical Theory in the sense of the Frankfurt school had a more precise (that is, sharper) goal, namely, to criticize "bourgeois science" (bürgerliche Wissenschaft), or bourgeois-capitalist society, mostly through Marx-ist and Freudian insights.
Studia Humana
The paper explores the role of competing notions of what does it mean to have a testament of the ... more The paper explores the role of competing notions of what does it mean to have a testament of the law of the past in Christian and Rabbinic corpora of text and thought. The argument probes and renegotiates the complex relationships of the Christian suspension of Old Testament by the New Testament and the Rabbinic suspension of (any) new testament in the two Talmudim. It consequently draws implications of that analysis for understanding the relationships of the two Talmudim to the tradition of hermeneutics of texts, as influenced as the latter has been by theological and literary approaches of various Christian theologies of the two Testaments. As a part of that analysis the articles justifies the task of advancing and providing a critique of political theology and political philology as modes of thought and investigation. That provides a way to ask anew the question about relationships between theology, literary theory, and political thought.
Other Others
The chapter works through the emerging and disappearing notion of the political in the Talmud, wi... more The chapter works through the emerging and disappearing notion of the political in the Talmud, with the notion and practice of refuting, and the underlying notion of interpersonality rather than intersubjectivity at the center. The analysis in the chapter advances through a case study of a particular notion of refuting in the Talmud, the notion of self-refuting or proving that an argument of one’s conversant is refuting itself. The chapter argues how neither political theology of Schmitt nor political ontology of Rancière suffice to account for interpersonal political relationships in self-refuting. In that venue, the notion of interpersonality emerges as essential for articulating the Talmudic political. That notion emerges by contrast with the intersubjectivity as the foundation of thinking the political in the modern political theory, implying as it does a fundamental loneliness of the subject, both of an individual subject and of a nation as a subject, as well.
Philosophy & Rhetoric, 2015
Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud, 2012
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Papers by sergey dolgopolski