Ethics, Jewish

Abstract

In the Aristotelian schema of the sciences, ethics and politics were closely intertwined: ethics had social dimensions, even though it studied the individual, and politics was ethical, even though it focused on society and the state. In medieval Islam and Christendom, Jewish ethics evolved through the interaction with non-Jewish philosophy. The goal of Jewish ethics was to produce the virtuous individual who possesses the character traits necessary for the attainment of wisdom that culminates in the knowledge of God. Jewish ethics posited a dialectical relationship between religion and philosophy: the cultivation of the virtuous character was a rational project predicated on the study of philosophy and the employment of reason, but the goal of this endeavor was the knowledge of God to the extent this is feasible for humans. The knowledge of God, in turn, was expressed in actions that imitated God’s perfection in the socio-political sphere. The dominant theme of medieval Jewish philosophical ethics was the meaning of happiness and the ways to attain it. Within the discourse on happiness, Jewish philosophers reflected on the meaning of being human, the relationship between body and soul, the conditioning of character through acquisition of virtues, desirable virtues and undesirable vices, the human propensity to sin, and God’s rewards and punishments in his works and in the afterlife. These themes were discussed in diverse literary genres, such as self-standing philosophical treatise, commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics, super-commentaries on Averroes’ commentaries on the Ethics, biblical commentaries, and ethical wills. The major contributor to Jewish philosophical ethics was Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) who effected the most extensive integration of Aristotelianism and rabbinic Judaism. Post-Maimonidean Jewish philosophical ethics in Christendom was framed in the context of the interreligious debate on the salvation of the individual soul, a contested terrain between Judaism and Christianity.