Abstract

The beginning of a universal culture of rationality in Judaism did not begin in the so called »Medieval Jewish philosophy« but had its precedents in the Biblical Wisdom Literature and in Rabbinic legal rationality. The Medieval Jewish authors, therefore, did not regard the medieval Philosophy propounded by Jewish authors as »Jewish philosophy« but as a participation of Jews in just another specific phase of universal rationalism. The reason why Jewish authors in the 19th century nevertheless alleged that there existed a specific »Jewish philosophy« at the side of a German, Christian or English philosophy had its reason in the exclusion of Jewish thought from the new leading science of interpretation of human existence in Europe, namely philosophy, by German intellectuals and universities. If we despite this want to retain the term of »Jewish philosophy« we should be aware that there cannot be an essential difference to general philosophy but merely a heuristic pragmatism.