Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
Professor of Philosophy, Emerita
Research Area
Professor Dobbs-Weinstein's research areas include: Aristotle, Medieval Jewish, Arabic and Christian Philosophy, Spinoza, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of History, and Critical Theory (especially Adorno and Benjamin)
Current Research
Professor Dobbs-Weinstein's current project involves the critical examination of dominant modes of interpreting Aristotle's De Anima and Metaphysics and the recovery of an alternate materialist Aristotelian tradition occluded by them.
Recent Courses
Professor Dobbs-Weinstein regularly teaches courses in Aristotle, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Medieval Philosophy, and Critical Theory.
Click here for an interview with Prof. Dobbs-Weinstein.
Specializations
Aristotle, Medieval, Spinoza, Contemporary Continental, Critical Theory
Representative Publications
Books
Maimonides and his Heritage, co-edited with Lenn Goodman and James Allen Grady, SUNY Press, 2009.
Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason, SUNY Press, 1995
Articles and Book Chapters
"Trauma and the possibility of Experience," Trauma:Reflections on Experience and Its Other, Bergo, Brown, Nelson, eds., (SUNY, 2009)
"Exclusiveness and Exclusion: Spinoza and Marx on 'the jewish question,'" Spinoza as Social and Political Thinker, (Spinoza by 2000: The Jerusalem Conferences, volume 6), Y. Yovel and G. Segal, eds. (2009).
"The Ambiguity of the Imagination and the Ambivalence of Language," Maimonides and his Heritage, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn Goodman and James Allen Grady, eds. (SUNY Press, 2009).
"Belief, Knowledge, and Certainty," Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, S. Nadler and T. Rudavsky, eds. (Cambridge University Press 2009).
"Tensions Within and Between Maimonides' and Gersonides' Accounts of Prophecy," Ecriture et reecriture des textes philosophiques medievaux, Jacqueline Hamesse and O. Weijers, eds. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006).
"Thinking Desire in Gersonides and Spinoza," Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, Hava Samuelson, ed. (Indiana University Press, Spring 2004).
"Whose History? Spinoza's Critique of Religion as an Other Modernity." Idealistic Studies, vol. 33 nos. 2-3, (Summer-Fall 2003).
"Necessity Revisited: Spinoza as a Radical Aristotelian," Spinoza by 2000, Yirmiyahu Yovel, ed. (Forthcoming).
"Jewish Philosophy," Chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, Steven McGrade, ed. 2003.
"Maimonides' Reticence toward Ibn-Sina," Avicenna and His Heritage, Jules Janessens, ed. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002).
"The Power of Prejudice and the Force of Law: Spinoza’s Critique of Religion and Its Heirs," EPOCHÉ, Îπoχή a journal for the history of philosophy, Vol. 7:1 (2002): 51-70.
"Gersonides, the Supercommentator on Aristotle: A Decisive Forgotten Link Between Averroes and Spinoza," Problems in Arabic Philosophy, Maroth Miklos, ed. (2001)
"Rereading the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in Light of Benjamin's 'Theologico-Politico Fragment'" in Piety, Peace, and the Freedom to Philosophize, Paul Begley, ed. (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999)
"Gersonides' Radically Modern Understanding of the Agent Intellect," Meeting of the Minds: The Relations Between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, Stephen F. Brown, ed. Brepols, 1998 Moses Maimonides and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, audio tape series The World of Philosophy, Knowledge Products, 1996
"Maimonides Aspects in Spinoza's Thought," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Vol. 17, Nos. 1&2 (1994): 153-174.
"Between Natural Inclination and Convention," Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, 1993.
"The Concurrence of necessity and Freedom In Spinoza's Thought," Freedom and Responsibility: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Daniel Frank, ed. 1994
"The Existential Dimension of Providence in the Thought of Gersonides," inGersonide en son Temps: science et philosophie medievales, Gilbert Dahan et Charles Touati, eds. (E. Peters, Louvain-Paris, 1991)
"Medieval Biblical Commentary and Philosophical Inquiry as Exemplified in the Thought of Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas," in Maimonides and His Times, E. Ormsby, ed. (Catholic University of America Press: 1989)