for Advanced Studies
Simone Luzzatto's Scepticism in the Context of Early Modern Thought
23 September 2019

Photo: UHH/M. Schwarz
This conference aims to call attention to the sceptical thought of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto (ca. 1583–1663) and its value within seventeenth-century philosophy and political thought. It will take place between September 23 and 25, 2019 at MCAS.
Abstract
This conference aims to call attention to the sceptical thought of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto (ca. 1583–1663) and its value within seventeenth-century philosophy and political thought. The three-day conference will take place at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at Universität Hamburg and will bring together established scholars and young researchers working in the field of the intellectual history of Judaism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The lectures will offer the opportunity to explore the philosophical sources and strategies of Luzzatto’s scepticism, his intense dialogue with Christian philosophy, and his relationship to Judaism.
The discussion of Luzzatto will provide the chance to investigate the role of scepticism within an era marked by paradoxes and contrasts between religious devotion and scientific rationalism, between rabbinical-biblical Jewish tradition and the open tendency towards engagement with non-Jewish philosophical, literary, scientific, and theological culture.
The conference’s programme will include a round table on Rabbi Simone Luzzatto’s newly published works, Discourse on the State of the Jews (1638) and Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge (1651) to be discussed with the authors and translators.