In this groundbreaking study Avi Sagi outlines a broad spectrum of answers to important questions presented in Jewish literature, covering theological issues bearing on the meaning of the Torah and of revelation, as well as hermeneutical questions regarding understanding of the halakhic text.
This is the first volume to attempt to provide a comprehensive map of the available views and theories concerning the theological, hermeneutical, and ontological meaning of dispute as a constitutive element of Halakhah. It offers an attentive reading of the texts and strives to present, clearly and exhaustively, the conscious account of Jewish tradition in general and of halakhic tradition in particular concerning the meaning of halakhic discourse.
Avi Sagi is Professor of Philosophy, and Founder and Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies, at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Israel. He has written and edited numerous books and articles in Jewish and general philosophy, among them Religion and Morality (with Daniel Statman, New York: 1995) and the recently released Judaism: Between Religion and Morality (Tel Aviv: 1998) and Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (New York: 2002).