Menachem Fisch
Menachem Fisch is Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor of History and Philosophy of Science Emeritus, and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University, and Senior Fellow of the Goethe University Frankfurt's Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg.
He is former President of the Israel Society for History and Philosophy of Science, and former Chair of the National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science at the Israel Academy of Science.
He has held visiting research positions at Queen’s College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Dibner Institute for Advanced Study in the History of Science and Technology, MIT, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Collegium Budapest, and the Frankfurt University, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at Bad Homburg.
He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation theory and rationality, on the theology of the talmudic literature, and the philosophy of talmudic legal reasoning. In recent work he explores the limits of normative self-criticism, the Talmud's dispute of religiosity, the historiography and narratology of scientific framework transitions, political emotions, the possibility of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions of halakhic Judaism, and the theo-political roots of Israel's retreat from the values of political Zionism.
He is author of: William Whewell Philosopher of Science (Oxford, 1991); Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Indiana, 1997); “A Modest Proposal: Toward a Religious Politics of Epistemic Humility”, Journal of Human Rights (2003); “Canon, controverse et réforme; une réflexion sur l'autre voix du judaisme talmudique”, Les Cahiers du judaisme (2005); “Diversity, Tolerance, Sovereignty”, in M. Walzer (ed.), Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (Princeton, 2006); "Taking the Linguistic Turn Seriously", The European Legacy (2008); "Judaism, and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science", in J.M. van der Meer and S. Mandelbrote (eds.), Nature & Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700-Present, (Brill, 2008); "Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency", The Monist (2010); The View from Within: Normativity and the Limits of Self-Criticism (with Y. Benbaji), (Notre Dame, 2011); “Babbage’s Two Lives”, The British for the History of Science (2013); “Science, Religion, and Rationality – A Neo-Hegelian Approach”, The Toronto Journal of Theology (2013); “How and Why I Write History of Science”, Science in Context, (2013); “Judaism and the Religious Value of Diversity and Dialogue: Drafting a Jewish Response to Nostra Aetate”, in S. Alkier, M. Schneider, Ch. Wiese (eds.), Diversität - Differenz - Dialogoizität: Religion in Pluralen Kontexten (de Gruyter, 2014); Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency (Chicago, 2017), Covenant of Confrontation: A Study of Non-Submissive Religiosity in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew), Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2019 (Hebrew), (Bar Ilan, 2019), “Job and the Bible’s Theo-Poliical Divide”, Religions (2019), 40. “Bossy Matrons and Forced Marriages: Talmudic Confrontationalism and its Philosophical Significance, Open Philosophy, 2020, and The Enemy Within: Political Zionism and its Faithful Adversaries (Hebrew), Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2021
In 2016 a volume dedicated to his work, entitled Menachem Fisch: The Rationality of Religious Dispute, was published by Brill as Vol. 18 of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, (eds. H. Samuelson-Tiroshi and A. W. Hughes), and in 2020, a collection of engagements with his work entitled: Changing One's Mind: Philosophy, Religion And Science, (eds. Y. Schwartz, P. Franks and C. Wiese), was published as a special issue of Open Philosophy (3, 2020)..
He was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize in October 2016
And an Honorary Doctorate by the Goethe University, Frankfurt in 2017
He is former President of the Israel Society for History and Philosophy of Science, and former Chair of the National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science at the Israel Academy of Science.
He has held visiting research positions at Queen’s College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Dibner Institute for Advanced Study in the History of Science and Technology, MIT, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Collegium Budapest, and the Frankfurt University, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at Bad Homburg.
He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation theory and rationality, on the theology of the talmudic literature, and the philosophy of talmudic legal reasoning. In recent work he explores the limits of normative self-criticism, the Talmud's dispute of religiosity, the historiography and narratology of scientific framework transitions, political emotions, the possibility of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions of halakhic Judaism, and the theo-political roots of Israel's retreat from the values of political Zionism.
He is author of: William Whewell Philosopher of Science (Oxford, 1991); Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Indiana, 1997); “A Modest Proposal: Toward a Religious Politics of Epistemic Humility”, Journal of Human Rights (2003); “Canon, controverse et réforme; une réflexion sur l'autre voix du judaisme talmudique”, Les Cahiers du judaisme (2005); “Diversity, Tolerance, Sovereignty”, in M. Walzer (ed.), Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (Princeton, 2006); "Taking the Linguistic Turn Seriously", The European Legacy (2008); "Judaism, and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science", in J.M. van der Meer and S. Mandelbrote (eds.), Nature & Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700-Present, (Brill, 2008); "Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency", The Monist (2010); The View from Within: Normativity and the Limits of Self-Criticism (with Y. Benbaji), (Notre Dame, 2011); “Babbage’s Two Lives”, The British for the History of Science (2013); “Science, Religion, and Rationality – A Neo-Hegelian Approach”, The Toronto Journal of Theology (2013); “How and Why I Write History of Science”, Science in Context, (2013); “Judaism and the Religious Value of Diversity and Dialogue: Drafting a Jewish Response to Nostra Aetate”, in S. Alkier, M. Schneider, Ch. Wiese (eds.), Diversität - Differenz - Dialogoizität: Religion in Pluralen Kontexten (de Gruyter, 2014); Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency (Chicago, 2017), Covenant of Confrontation: A Study of Non-Submissive Religiosity in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew), Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2019 (Hebrew), (Bar Ilan, 2019), “Job and the Bible’s Theo-Poliical Divide”, Religions (2019), 40. “Bossy Matrons and Forced Marriages: Talmudic Confrontationalism and its Philosophical Significance, Open Philosophy, 2020, and The Enemy Within: Political Zionism and its Faithful Adversaries (Hebrew), Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2021
In 2016 a volume dedicated to his work, entitled Menachem Fisch: The Rationality of Religious Dispute, was published by Brill as Vol. 18 of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, (eds. H. Samuelson-Tiroshi and A. W. Hughes), and in 2020, a collection of engagements with his work entitled: Changing One's Mind: Philosophy, Religion And Science, (eds. Y. Schwartz, P. Franks and C. Wiese), was published as a special issue of Open Philosophy (3, 2020)..
He was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize in October 2016
And an Honorary Doctorate by the Goethe University, Frankfurt in 2017
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Books by Menachem Fisch
In addition to jointly delineating agency, sapience, normativity, rationality, and the ability to critically self-reflect, this book further demonstrates the inevitable role of the we in the I (to paraphrase Axel Honneth), namely, how realizing one’s full human potential necessarily requires engaging others. This book appeals to students as well as researchers and looks closely at how these three reflexive emotions bestow categorical value on otherness, rendering normative diversity not merely something to be tolerated or rationally overcome, but a rare and necessary blessing.
את הריאקציה נגד הציונות הפוליטית, טוען מנחם פיש, מובילים אלה הנחשבים לציונים האדוקים ביותר, ובראשם אנשי הציונות הדתית. פיש חושף את שורשי פרשנותה המסולפת של קבוצה זו לחזון הציוני. הוא עוקב אחרי תהליך התקבעותה של תמונת עולם קסנופובית ואנטי-פוליטית ומצביע על התפקיד המרכזי שמילאו בתהליך קריאה סלקטיבית של המקורות ושהתקבעה בסידור התפילה. המחבר מצביע על מסורת יהודית אחרת, מסורת הנטועה עמוק בשכבת היסוד של הקנון היהודי. תפיסת העולם הזאת, הוא טוען, מעניקה לציונות הפוליטית עיגון תרבותי עמוק בהרבה מן ההגות המדינית המערבית שבה דבקו מחוללי התנועה.
Articles by Menachem Fisch
oneself to the normative critique of interlocutors with different commitments. It
further argues that such exposure is the only way in which one can achieve critical
distance from one's own commitments. It goes on to explore the epistemic and political
virtues of this form of dialogue.
In addition to jointly delineating agency, sapience, normativity, rationality, and the ability to critically self-reflect, this book further demonstrates the inevitable role of the we in the I (to paraphrase Axel Honneth), namely, how realizing one’s full human potential necessarily requires engaging others. This book appeals to students as well as researchers and looks closely at how these three reflexive emotions bestow categorical value on otherness, rendering normative diversity not merely something to be tolerated or rationally overcome, but a rare and necessary blessing.
את הריאקציה נגד הציונות הפוליטית, טוען מנחם פיש, מובילים אלה הנחשבים לציונים האדוקים ביותר, ובראשם אנשי הציונות הדתית. פיש חושף את שורשי פרשנותה המסולפת של קבוצה זו לחזון הציוני. הוא עוקב אחרי תהליך התקבעותה של תמונת עולם קסנופובית ואנטי-פוליטית ומצביע על התפקיד המרכזי שמילאו בתהליך קריאה סלקטיבית של המקורות ושהתקבעה בסידור התפילה. המחבר מצביע על מסורת יהודית אחרת, מסורת הנטועה עמוק בשכבת היסוד של הקנון היהודי. תפיסת העולם הזאת, הוא טוען, מעניקה לציונות הפוליטית עיגון תרבותי עמוק בהרבה מן ההגות המדינית המערבית שבה דבקו מחוללי התנועה.
oneself to the normative critique of interlocutors with different commitments. It
further argues that such exposure is the only way in which one can achieve critical
distance from one's own commitments. It goes on to explore the epistemic and political
virtues of this form of dialogue.
However, the establishment of Jewish statehood raises a different halakhic problem, which in light of the alarming surge of anti-Christian rhetoric in religious Zionist rabbinic circles, demands urgent attention. The type of modern Western state Israel aspires to be is obligated not merely to tolerate the presence of its various communities, but to assume responsibility for their safety and right to flourish. However, although halakha comes reasonably well-equipped to tolerate the presence of religiously inappropriate forms of life, there exist no halakhic resource to allow representatives of the state to act as their active enablers – which, in the case of Israel’s Christian communities, for example, is precisely the responsibility of, say, the ministries of religious affairs and education! Today, Maimonides (who famously deemed Christianity idolatrous) is read in the heartland of religious Zionism as licensing theologically justified institutional and legal abuse of the rights of Israeli Christians to their property, their livelihood, their institutions and very way of life. Nowhere else in the world does the problem of idolatry raise its head for Jews as it is beginning to do here.
A solution, the paper argues, can be found in the Talmudic literature’s profoundly significant normative discourse with pagan, and later Christian Rome, which it envisaged at once as a wholly religiously inappropriate form of life, yet as offering rabbinic Judaism a highly valued normative civilizing challenge.
Here, in our unique and general capacity to be knowingly motivated to respond to perceived failings and self-failings, lie, I shall argue, the rudimentary universal elements of human sapience, and hence, coupled to our linguistic capacity, the basis for a generative account of human rationality. However, the fundamental coupling of rationality and criticism is an empty formal shell as it stands, that aquires its motivating force and content from the radically diverse normative systems by which variously committed individuals and societies judge particular situations to be at odds.
As with language and human anthropology more generally, the universally shared, potentially generative thin “grammar” of human rationality can only be actualized through the refracting lens of the specifically thick normative vocabularies it meets.
However, and this will be the talk’s main claim, human rationality harbors an additional and essentially second-order shared deep-structure that pertains to a different dimension of human sapience. Unlike the linguistic and social realities studied by generative anthropology, human rationality, I shall argue, is not only actualized in and by the normative vocabularies it meets, it is uniquely constrained by them. This is because the norms by which we rationally act would themselves seem immune to rational assessment, for the simple reason that it is by means of them that one rationally assesses! – a problem that has virtually stumped the entire philosophical community.
The way out, I shall argue, is to appreciate the potentially transformative force of external criticism. In the normatively ambivalating capacity of discursive engagement with trusted critics committed differently from ourselves, I locate the second-order, potentially generative universal of human rationality at it utmost, intriguingly embodied, not in what we linguistically share, but in the very cultural diversity of our normative vocabularies and ability to converse with others.
To this end, the three religions must be studied and taught side by side by experts in each collaborating closely across the three interreligious divides. Such an undertaking requires an integrated effort involving the full range of the human and social sciences. And given its sheer scope and complexity, no university can hope to accomplish it alone.