Rationalism

Dowsing is a customary means of finding hidden things – especially water and minerals – and is found across northern Europe and the Americas. It recently became the subject of some controversy after a scientist revealed that 10 out of the 12 British water companies stated on Twitter that they used the practice, despite a lack of scientific evidence for its efficacy. In this article, the author analyzes the contours of this controversy in order to identify underlying cultural attitudes towards knowledge and the landscape it reveals. He concludes by sounding two notes of caution regarding the critical posture adopted by scientists who are rushing to condemn this customary practice, stressing the importance of understanding the nature of dowsing as a cultural form regardless of its efficacy and the need for scientists to be mindful of their own biases and preconceptions.

C. S. Lewis, renowned Christian apologist and beloved author of children’s novels, is rarely thought of as a “philosopher” per se despite having both studied and taught philosophy for several years at Oxford. Moreover, Lewis’s long journey to Christianity was essentially philosophical — passing through seven different stages. This journey, as well as every philosophical topic Lewis discussed, including metaphysics, natural theology, epistemology, logic, psychology, ethics, socio-political philosophy, and aesthetics are explained here in detail. Barkman incorporates previously unexplored treasures from Lewis’s unpublished philosophy lecture notes, lost philosophical essays, and hand-written annotations from copies of his philosophical books, such as Aristotle’s Ethics and Augustine’s City of God

In 1899 the great exhibition devoted to Alessandro Volta was meant to open a new season of richness for Como and the Lake. Nonetheless, in 1927 the second exhibition organized for the centennial anniversary of Volta's death was promoted by city's institutions and local businessmen as moment of improvement in the fields of economics, culture and tourism. Around the 1927 exhibition new buildings and facilities were built redesigning the historical downtown and its surroundings, such as the Sinigaglia Stadium built in the 1899 exhibition site, the Faro Voltiano on the Brunate hill, in the place of an ephemeral tower. The paper aims to reconstruct some events in Como's urban history in the first three decades of 19 th century, following both stylistic and architectural issues and connections with municipal identity and then fascist propaganda.

Descartes’s belief in innate ideas still looms, in one form or another, over the history of philosophy today. In typical Early-Modern, Rationalist fashion, Descartes presents readers with main arguments for his belief in these pre-packaged ideas, via appeals to God and the application of logical thinking techniques. That is, Descartes asserts that the so-called inherent idea of God derives from God and that the mind can establish this notion as well as the surety of its supposed innate ideas of immortality and identity. However, such ideas may appear alien to some, and even unfounded upon critique. First, this essay will present Descartes’s philosophy of innate ideas by using his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Next, this piece will then describe the philosopher Hume’s Empiricist understanding of ideas and the problems of abstraction, and then challenge the Cartesian view that innate notions like God, immortality of the soul, and identity may not be so innate, or as precise as Descartes leads us to believe.

Der Text führt fünf Sternstunden der Metaphysik vor. Der Text ist für die Lehre geschrieben, und will darum verständlich sein. Trotzdem zeigt er einige neue Querverbindungen auf und gibt besonders bei Descartes Cogito-Arguement eine neue Analyse.

(I) Platon führte die Steigerbarkeit von Sein ein, musste aber eine unsterbliche Seele annehmen.
(II) Anselm nutzte die Steigerbarkeit für seinen Gottesbeweis aus.
(III) Descartes versuchte die unsterbliche Seele zu beweisen. Schaffte es aber nur bis zur Existenz einer denkenden Substanz.
(IV) Leibniz versuchte Einwände gegen den Gottesbeweis auszuräumen. Dazu musste er das Theodizeeproblem lösen. Seine Lösung führte zum Problem, wie man in einer vorherbestimmten Welt, frei sein kann.
(V) All diese Probleme sind aber letztlich mit einer Frage verknüpft, die Aristoteles formulierte: Ti to on?

In 1947, Sigfried Giedion held correspondence with the committee of the Triennale di Milano, in order to discuss the possibility of hosting the sixth meeting of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Milan, on the occasion of the eighth edition of the Triennale. The sixth meeting of the CIAM dedicated to the topic “Cities Reimagined” would eventually assemble in Bridgewater and the plan would never materialize. The main outcome of the eighth Triennale, however, the experimental district “Quartiere della Ottava Triennale,” or QT8, would emerge in the north-western periphery of the city of Milan in 1947 and would intersect with the international modernist discourse on architecture and urbanism in various ways. Not only was it presented as a case study of modern planning in the seventh meeting of the CIAM at Bergamo in 1949, but it also expressed a deep interest in cogent topics of house and town planning of those days, such as the expansion of the city, concepts of centrality and the multifaceted relationship between core and periphery.

Coordinated by the rationalist architect Piero Bottoni, the objective of the QT8 project was threefold. First, it aimed to address the dire housing conditions in Milan at the time, given that “Italy had lost six percent of its houses – over two million rooms – to war damage, and housing [was] quickly [becoming] the focus of the reconstruction debate” (Kirk 2005). Second, it offered a testing ground to foster and promote an in-depth and combined experimentation in house and town design, as well as in building construction, placing particular emphasis on processes of industrialization . Third, it was conceived as a permanent, living exhibition of modern architecture – a “spectacle, as in any case an exhibition ought to be” (Rogers 1947), according to Ernesto N. Rogers – that aimed to communicate “the best results achieved in the previous years in architecture and urbanism” (Brunetti 1986)  to a broader public. If the sixth meeting of the CIAM was dedicated to a rethinking of the cities, the eighth Triennale committed itself to a rethinking of dwelling in the suburbs. Despite the fact that the original QT8 project was never entirely realized, it “remains an important episode in [the postwar] Italian urban culture” (Tafuri 1972). Besides its historiographical significance, the project sparked off a dialogue on the multifaceted relationship between core and periphery which merits further research. This paper reflects on this particular dialogue, on the broader definition of this dichotomy, with regard to the “living manifesto within the city of Milan” (ibid.)  that the QT8 district came to be.

In this study Al-Faruqi presents the meaning and message of Islam to the wider world community. Key ‎elements of the faith are summarized and explained in an overall theme of seven parts consisting of 21 ‎chapters. Yet the chapters represent far more than a simple description of Muslim peoples and orthodox ‎practice. Al Faruqi was a great thinker, formidable in logic, and relished intellectual engagement on ‎every level, particularly when it came to Islam and other Faiths. And it is this unique reasoning process ‎that is reflected in this work, Al-Faruqi’s signature contribution, which not only expounds on Islam as ‎spiritual faith and action, but also on Islam the great experience.‎

This essay talks about the origins of mathematics. Is mathematics an innate skill people have always had? Did man create this discipline with the help of his senses?
This passage targets the folllowing debate. It offers a general overview about the topic.

In this paper I will analyse Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī’s (1703-1762) characterisation of the early divide in Islamic jurisprudence between the aṣḥāb al-raʾy, commonly translated as rationalists, and the ahl al-ḥadīth, the traditionalists who refused to engage in the sophisticated legal reasoning which the former had become famous for, instead vindicating the limitation of law to the evident implication of the scripture. For the sake of brevity, I will confine my analysis to the chapter “Causes of the disagreement between the ahl al-ḥadīth and the aṣḥāb al-raʾy” in al-Dihlawī’s “al-Inṣāf fī bayān asbāb al-ikhtilāf” (Fair Elucidation of the Causes of Disagreement)1. I will compare his portrayal of the conflict with present Islamicist research, examining harmony and variation. Specifically, the legal hermeneutics of both parties will be considered alongside underlying conceptions of the historical environment and course of development. As the chapter at hand further gives many clues about al-Dihlawī’s personal stance on the matter, I will review respective passages as part of the studies on the confluence and later legacy of these two parties. Considering that he is the principal figure of the traditionalist revival in 18th century India, his remarks are important to understand the link between modern Salafi literalism and the early traditionalists of the formation period. To which degree does Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī’s characterisation of the divide differ from the results of present Islamicist research, and how does his particular framing of the conflict relate to his revivalist thought?  / Term paper in "Hadith", B.A. Islamic Studies course by Olly Ackermann at FUB in winter 2019. Grade: 1,0.

***

Şah Veliyyullah ed-Dihlevi'nin erken dönem ehli rey ve ehli hadis tartışmalarını değerlendirişi.

وصف شاه ولي الله الدهلوي للنزاع التاريخي بين مدرستي الرأي والحديث

One of the most distinguishing features of J. M. Coetzee's novels is their pervasive and intensive critique of Cartesian rationalism, specifically, its valorisation of the abstract mind at the expense of the physical ('animal’) body. As Coetzee recognises in his fictional and non-fictional works, such
glorification of the thinking mind and its equally abstract capacities inevitably leads to a mechanical philosophy that culminates in the devaluation and exploitation not only of nonhuman animals but also of those human beings who are denied any serious consideration because of their perceived animality. Therefore, Coetzee's narratives resist this mechanical philosophy of Cartesian metaphysics by celebrating and destigmatising the embodiedness of both animals and humans, an embodiedness attested by the corporeal body's capacity for pain and pleasure, a capacity that in turn challenges the autonomy of the Cartesian cogito. As according to the rationalist discourse nonhuman animals are marked by their corporeality, nonrationality and nonduality, and as relinquishing the Cartesian duality and rationality is considered a step towards becoming animal-like, Coetzee's novels advance this particular mode of becoming-animal as the most effective way of resisting this discourse.

Los "Prolegómenos " de la Aesthetica (1750-1758) de Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten se ofrecen aquí en latín y español.  Primera traducción parcial de esta obra capital de la filosofía moderna, que define y fundamenta el campo de esta disciplina, recogida luego en Estética breve (prólogo, selección, traducción y notas de Ricardo Ibarlucía, Buenos Aires, Excursus, 2014).

Albert Camus, despite presenting Lev Shestov in his book ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ as a herald who made a significant contribution to the existential project of the absurd, criticized him for ‘eluding’ the absurd due to the religious nature of his philosophy. As Camus sees it, Shestov betrayed his initial insight by seeking to appeal to something beyond the limits of reason. He deifies what crushes him and finds reason to hope in what impoverishes him. Even though Shestov’s philosophy lies at the foundation of Camus’s entire project, it seems that Camus failed to understand the final and possibly most misleading step of his philosophy. As we will see, not only does the criticism Camus directs at Shestov not do the philosopher justice but, according to the categories which Shestov outlined when he redefined the limits of religious thought, this criticism should be directed at Camus himself.

Dans cet ouvrage appuyé de nombreux interviews de personnalités du monde de l'entreprise, le leadership apparaît comme une force d’inspiration et d’entrainement du collectif à tous les niveaux de l’entreprise dans le but d’atteindre un objectif estimable et ambitieux. Le Génie du leadership s’adresse donc à tous les passionnés de la chose collective, désireux d’explorer les ressorts et les nouveaux défis de l’action managériale à l’ère de la mondialisation.

Ilya Somin effectively exposes the extent of public ignorance and the ways in which such ignorance may damage democratic outcomes. This underpins his case for a more streamlined state, leaving more to individual “foot voting”—where citizens are better incentivized to choose knowledgeably and rationally. One cannot dispute the fact of deep public ignorance. However, one can question the widespread assumption that ignorance is necessarily ethically significant, always productive of undesirable outcomes, or otherwise implicitly dangerous for democracy. The sheer lack of individual efficacy in mass democracies not only incentivizes ignorance, but also creates conditions wherein such ignorance is individually harmless, and unlikely in the aggregate to greatly contribute to one or another outcome. Beyond this, there may be no way to attain meaningful knowledge in the areas where democratic decision making is most fraught. Indeed, ignorance may at times lead to better outcomes than would knowledge. The seemingly unassailable status of democracy itself, and the valuable institutional stability that this status ensures, seem to be founded upon a bedrock of public ignorance as to the real nature of democracy.

Rationalism refers to a mode of theorizing that sees in universal reason the right tool to apprehend politics. It affirms that everything needs to be grounded in reason and it is optimistic that reason has the power to set all social and political institutions and practices on firm rational foundations. In this paper, I argue that this mode of theorizing is a source of epistemic violence in that it silences and distorts the voices of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. I firstly explain what this mode of theorizing is in greater detail. I secondly provide an account of the ways in which it is generally applied to the theorization of Indigenous peoples and to their political claims. Thirdly and fourthly, I explain how this rationalist mode of theorizing both silences and distorts the voices of Indigenous peoples. Finally, I explain what is entailed in opposing rationalism so as to hear Indigenous peoples in their own voices. I discuss two considerations about politics and political theory that should be kept in mind so as to avoid masking domination under the guise of reason and ignoring people’s agency in determining the right structure of society.

There are people who have impeccable skills in bringing others to agree with them by the sole use of reason. There are also people who have impeccable skills in bringing others to agree with them by the sole use of faith. If we looked back in history we can find that those who have agreed by the terms of reason, and not only scientific reason, have done so with no less strength than those who have agreed by the terms of faith, and not only religious faith. It wouldn't be hard to agree that there is something of a rational effort in any religious faith. It wouldn't be also hard to agree that there is something of faith in any rational endeavor. The difference being, religion, for the most part, is based on a static way of thinking. It makes faith metaphysical and ancestral. Science, in contrast, is based on a dynamic way of thinking. It makes reason oscillating and unfixed. Yet, we also know that science can set reason in stones and deviate towards metaphysics and dogmatism. The interwoven connections between science and religion is far tighter than they both have been willing to admit. Reason and faith have a common origin: They both started as a way to figure out the meaning and purpose of life. They also have a fair share in how they operate. They both tell us rules to follow and they both aim to be impartial in their own terms even at the expense of their own biases. Science has not a monopoly on reason. Science is just a stewardess of reason. Religion has not a monopoly on faith, religion is just one of faith's crew members. You might rightly think that all this dialectical relationship between science and religion, reason and faith is just another gimmick of reason patronizing faith. But if so, we could also say the reverse. Dialectics would be a gimmick of faith patronizing reason. Reason loves dialectics not less than it loves facts and proof validation. Faith cannot be based on dialectical reason not even on his criticism via negative dialectic in the style of Kierkegaard, Sartre or Adorno.

Through investigating the ontological question, “what is a body?” in the context of people who claim to live on light after an initiation at Lotus Health Care, Denmark, this project explores if and how anthropologists can take claims seriously, which contradict our own rationality.

One of the most controversial issues in second language acquisition (SLA) seems to be the issue of theory construction. There are mainly two opposing views considering the SLA theory construction namely the Rationalist view and the Relativist view. The former tries to reasons that there should be a few theories of SLA at work while the latter favors as many theories as possible. However, the present paper tries to take a supportive stance with regard to the rationalism reasoning that the rationalist view seems to be more fruitful, practical, and above all beneficial considering theory construction in SLA.

An introduction to Descartes' theory of knowledge (again, designed for those with little previous familiarity with  the history of epistemology).  The stage is then set to teach them in subsequent classes about Peirce's critique of Descartes, and Dewey's of Plato.

Publisher's abstract:
Experimental philosophy is one of the most exciting and controversial philosophical movements today. This book explores how it is reshaping thought about philosophical method. Experimental philosophy imports experimental methods and findings from psychology into philosophy. These fresh resources can be used to develop and defend both armchair methods and naturalist approaches, on an empirical basis. This outstanding collection brings together leading proponents of this new meta-philosophical naturalism, from within and beyond experimental philosophy. They explore how the empirical study of philosophically relevant intuition and cognition transforms traditional philosophical approaches and facilitates fresh ones.

Part One examines important uses of traditional "armchair" methods which are not threatened by experimental work and develops empirically informed accounts of such methods that can potentially stand up to experimental scrutiny. Part Two analyses different uses and rationales of experimental methods in several areas of philosophy and addresses the key methodological challenges to experimental philosophy: Do its experiments target the intuitions that matter in philosophy? And how can they support conclusions about the rights and wrongs of philosophical views?

Essential reading for students of experimental philosophy and metaphilosophy, Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism, and Naturalism will also interest students and researchers in related areas such as epistemology and the philosophies of language, perception, mind and action, science and psychology.

Contents and Contributors:
Introduction: Rationalism and Naturalism in the Age of Experimental Philosophy – An Introduction Eugen Fischer and John Collins The Volume: Synopsis Eugen Fischer and John Collins Part 1: The Armchair and Naturalism 1. The Nature of A Priori Intuitions: Analytic or Synthetic? David Papineau 2. Understanding the Question: Philosophy and its History Tim Crane 3. Two Kinds of Naturalism John Collins 4. Philosophical Insights and Modal Cognition Mikkel Gerken 5. Thought Experiments, Concepts, and Conceptions Daniele Sgaravatti 6. Against Naturalistic Defences of Intuition Hilary Kornblith Part 2: Varieties of Experimental Philosophy 7. Humans as Instruments: Or, the Inevitability of Experimental Philosophy Jonathan M. Weinberg 8. The Illusion of Expertise Edouard Machery 9. Intuition, Philosophical Theorising, and the Threat of Scepticism Jennifer Nado 10. Experimental Philosophy and Naturalism Bence Nanay 11. Experimental Philosophical Semantics and the Real Reference of 'Gödel' Amir Horowitz 12. Intuitions and Illusions: From Explanation and Experiment to Assessment Eugen Fischer, Paul E. Engelhardt and Aurelie Herbelot. Index

How is an Invisible, Intangible and eternally elusive entity different from an imagined entity or from no entity at all? What is the relation between the two words that have the world divided into two halves, Faith and Reasoning? Can Rationalism and Fideism work together or does religious arguments based on faith have no influence on our lives whatsoever. These are the many questions that arise when we read and analyze any assumptions made solely on faith. My paper deals solely on the relation between faith and reasoning also spinning an interesting parable in the process.

The purpose of this study is to explore how artists are able to expose secular audiences who inhabit the ‘immanent frame’ to the plausibility of transcendence while avoiding the pitfalls of propaganda. To combat the Western church’s unprecedented cultural disdain, it needs a convincing re-articulation of the faith, for which Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age provides essential insights. The arts have a crucial role to play in this, but the church has a poor record of harnessing them well.
This study employed a basic qualitative research design, using semi-structured interviews to gather data. Eight creative professionals from a range of artistic fields were interviewed, focusing on four areas: their personal experiences of secularism; their view of the arts’ potential for communicating transcendence; their creative processes; their navigation of the problems of propaganda.

The literature review focused on four key areas: biblical narratives of a transcendent God’s involvement within the immanent frame; how the arts challenge and change worldviews; the relationship between the arts and the reality of transcendence; how propaganda exploits and abuses the arts.

This study concluded that the arts’ apologetic importance derives from their ability to be truth-bearing outside rationalism. They provide the means for helping people of faith to subvert the norms of prevailing secularism while drawing outsiders to consider a reality beyond closed immanence. Artefacts result from a process of creative exploration driven by an innate curiosity. This penetrates facades and superficiality, with the best of the arts resisting the propagandist’s instinct for assertion and manipulation.

If the church is to harness the arts, it must learn to avoid the propagandist’s easy answers and controlling assertions. At the local church level, this will entail leaders listening to and learning from creative professionals to understand how they work and how they can contribute to the life and witness of the people of God.

While Democratic Peace Theory (DPT) has long benefited from a robust debate focused on the empirical validity of its central claim that liberal states tend not to fight one another, this discussion has not translated into an equally vigorous consideration of the internal validity of the causal models proposed to explain this empirical regularity. In this paper, I examine two of the most persuasive explanatory models of the liberal peace, namely those presented by John Owen in his book Liberal Peace, Liberal War and Charles Lipson in his offering Reliable Partners. Based on a careful interrogation of these works and their internal logic, I argue that while quite different in the explanations they offer, both suffer from a similar flaw, namely, that both models implicitly rely on an under-theorized willingness of liberals to trust other liberals for their logical coherence. Having identified this flaw, I proceed to assess the extent to which the assumptions on which these models rest provide the basis for filling this aforementioned trust-shaped hole. In so doing, I engage with the limited scholarship on trust that already exists in IR. Finding neither model – nor existing IR scholarship on trust – capable of accommodating the form of trust needed to support the causal weight placed on it by its’ respective author’s theoretical architecture, I conclude by sketching the outlines of the type of trust required to play this role. In so doing, I mount an argument for re-conceiving DPT so as to include Constructivist and Psychological/Cognitivist insights.

With the 1641 publication of René Descartes’ Meditationes de Prima Philosophiae, in its inexorable movement toward the exclusion of dreams, modern philosophy reaches a moment in the ultimate paragraph of the sixth Meditation where at last it is able to sleep at night, unhindered by the disruptions of the dream, certain it has exceeded the bounds of the preceding philosophical epoch.

Should we choose to take Descartes at his word, modernity has arrived on the scene of philosophy in the guise of an awakening of philosophy’s reason from a long slumber of uncertain dreams. If any event in the history of modern philosophy should continue to concern us today, as philosophy rewrites its relation to modernity under the influence of postmodernism, it is the moment in the Meditations on First Philosophy when Cartesian reason, in order to become Cartesian reason, both encounters and overcomes the dream, the moment when modern philosophy awakens. Here, we are witness to the singular event of philosophy’s attempt to awaken itself as reason. At philosophy’s inception within and as the discourse of modernity, it has finally succeeded in excluding the dream from the reasonable discourse of philosophy, thereafter confining the metaphysical and epistemological problems of philosophy to the enclosed terrain of Reason. As if awaking from a dream, philosophy enters the modern age . . . .

Concerns, whether theoretical or practical, bothering on religion are often very sensitive ones. Such concerns can quickly become the rallying point around which alliances can easily built; alliances either for the promotion of a good course or for an adverse one. History is replete with events that assumed colossal magnitude because they had motivations that were based on religion. In this vein, we think of the Crusades of Western European Christians beginning in the 11th century; the Islamic invasions; the Inquisitions, and so on. In reviewing Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, the focus, it would seem, is the determination of the possibility of a religion that has universal appeal because it has Reason as its interpreter.

The objective of this paper is to explore howthe current interest in Business Ethics can be locatedwithin an analysis of contemporary society which takesinto account the prevalence of moral uncertainty along with the concomitant desire to(re)establish some form of normative order. As such,Business Ethics may be seen as a socially constructed“field” of study which reflects broaderchanges and controversies within society. Yet as a body of knowledge,Business Ethics articulates epistemological doubts. Twodistinctive themes in Business Ethics discourse areconsidered — the modernist/rationalist and thepostmodernist/relativist. It is argued that in different ways, each canbe seen as both an expression of, and a reaction to, theincreasing incidence of anomie in society. Theimplications for organizational practices are thenconsidered through the example of Corporate Codes ofEthics and the problem of establishing consensus wherethe grounds for any claim to moral authority areproblematic.

Criticisms of Karl Popper’s critical rationalist epistemology are often confused and misleading. In part that is due to Popper’s somewhat lax use of language, in which technical terms are used in more than one sense. I attempt to clarify Popper’s views by regimenting his terminology. The result is offered as a clear and concise exposition of the main points of Popper’s epistemology.

"Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), ed. Jonatan Meir, Three volumes, Mosad Bialik, Jerusalem

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.


The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.


Contents

Volume 1  - Critical Edition

Concerning this edition
Key personalities
Sefer Megale Temirin – Critical Edition


Volume 2 - Appendixes:
1. Glossary, Abbreviations, Acronyms
2. Explanation of the Speaking Names
3. Perl’s Hasidic Sources
4. Manuscripts of Sefer Megale Temirin
5. Yiddish Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin
Bibliographic Abbreviations

-------------------------------
Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl Blog, http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/