Jewish Studies Program, Neusner Memorial Lecture Fund, and Philosophy Program Presents
Acosmism: Hassidism’s Gift to the Jews… and the World
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Bard Graduate Center Lecture Hall, NYC
4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Professor Yitzhak Melamed, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University
Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He works on Early Modern Philosophy, German Idealism, Medieval Philosophy, and some issues in contemporary metaphysics, and is the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford 2013), and Spinoza’s Labyrinths (Oxford, forthcoming). Currently, he is working on the completion of a book on Spinoza and German Idealism, and on an introduction to Spinoza’s philosophy. His research has been featured in BBC (The World Tonight), LeMond, Ha’aretz, Kan Tarbut (Israeli Cultural Radio).This paper argues that the most significant Jewish contribution to modern Western philosophy - the notion of acosmism, according to which only God truly and fully exists - originated in early Hassidism. I will show that through the mediation of Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) this bold notion was adopted from the school of the Maggid of Mezhrich and introduced into the systems of German Idealism.
The Bard Graduate Center is located at 38 West 86 street, New York, NY, 10024.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Bard Graduate Center Lecture Hall, NYC