Moses Maimonides and Chaim Volozhiner

Aryeh Botwinick is Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at Temple University. His most prominent research interests are negative theology and its relationship to skepticism, and Maimonidean Studies. His most important publications are Skepticism, Belief, and the Modern: Maimonides to Nietzsche (1997), and Michael Oakeshott’s Skepticism (2011).

• Introduction 1. The Simultaneous Genesis of Monotheism and Skepticism in Jewish Religion 2. Divine Unknowability versus Divine Non-Existence 3. Maimonides’ Theorizing of the Monotheistic God 4. Maimonides’ Ideal-Typological Portrait of the Judge 5. Maimonides on Prophecy 6. Avicenna: Negative Theology, Skepticism, and Mysticism 7. Rabbinic Genealogy: Rabbi Akiva as a Precursor of Maimonides’ Negative Theology 8. The West’s Stationary Metaphysical Moment: St Anselm's Ontological Argument 9. Reb Chaim Volozhiner as Rooted in Maimonides’ Negative Theology 10. Weak Messianism as the Good: A Classical Liberal Translation of Negative Theology 11. Horizontality vs. Verticality: New Readings in the Understanding of Religion and the Organizing of Politics 12. The Case for a Negative Theological Hermeneutic of the Biblical Text 13. Maimonides' Philosophy of Prayer: The Impact of Negative Theology in Reconceiving the Nature and Role of Prayer