Department of Philosophy: People: Core Faculty: Charles Manekin

Charles H. Manekin (PhD, Columbia) is Associate Professor of Philosophy. He specializes in the history of philosophy, specifically medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy. He is also interested in the history of science among Muslims and Jews. The focus of Manekin's research has been Aristotelian and humanist logic in Hebrew, the philosophy of Levi Gersonides, and the free will problem in Jewish philosophy. He has written books on Gersonides and Maimonides and has edited a collection of articles on general and Jewish perspectives on freedom and moral responsibility. He has also edited collections of Jewish philosophy for Routledge and Cambridge. Manekin received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985), the Yad Hanadiv Foundation (1991-1992), and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (1999-2000). He was recently awarded a three-year Collaboration Grant from the NEH to prepare a web-based translation and revision of the standard reference work on medieval Hebrew translations from the Arabic and the Latin. He has taught at Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, and has been an occasional Visiting Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University since 1993. His most recent book is On Maimonides (Wadsworth, 2004).

E-mail: manekinc@umd.edu

Personal Webpage (with information about courses, advising, publications, etc)

Representative Publications

Manekin, Charles H, "Scholastic Logic and the Jews," Bulletin de l'étude de la philosophie médievale.

Manekin, Charles H  (2003). "Conservative Tendencies in Gersonides' Religious Philosophy" The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 301-345.

Manekin, Charles H  (2002). "Maimonides on God's Knowledge — Moses of Narbonne's Averroist Reading, " American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76: 51-74.

Manekin, Charles H  (2000), "Revising Die Hebräischen Übersetzungen - the Steinschneider Bibliographical Database Project," Jewish Studies Quarterly 7: 141-159.

Manekin, Charles H (2000), "The Logic of the Hebrew Encyclopedias" in Steven Harvey (ed.). Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought. Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishers.

Manekin, Charles H. (1998), "On the Limited-Omniscience Interpretation of Gersonides' Theory of Divine Knowledge," in A. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A. Arkush (eds.), Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism. Reading, Harwood Academic Publishers. Pp. 135-170.

Manekin, Charles H. (1998), "On Moses Hayyim Luzzatto's Logic, and on Ramist Influence in His Writings," Daat: A Journal of Jewish Thought 4: 5-27.

Manekin, Charles H. (1997), "When the Jews learned Logic from the Pope: Three Hebrew Versions of the Tractatus of Peter of Spain," Science in Context 10: 395-430.

Manekin, Charles H. (1997), "Freedom Within Reason?: Gersonides on Human Choice," in Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives. College Park: University Press of Maryland.

Manekin, Charles H. (1996) "Some Aspects of the Syllogism in Medieval Hebrew Logic," History and Philosophy of Logic 17: 49-71.

Manekin, Charles H. (1993) "Modal Logic and the Theory of Modality in Gersonides" (1993), Iyyun: The Jerusalem Journal of Philosophy 42: 347-381.

Manekin, Charles H. (1990), "Belief, Certainty, and Divine Attributes in the Guide of the Perplexed," Maimonidean Studies 1 (Fall, 1990): 117-141.

Manekin, Charles H. and S. Rosenberg (1988), "Themistius on Modal Logic: Excerpts of a Lost Commentary on the Prior Analytic, " Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 11: 83-103.

Manekin, Charles H. (1986), "Gersonides' Logical Writings: Preliminary Observations," Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research, vol 52: 85-113.

Manekin, Charles H. (2004), On Maimonides. Wadsworth: Wadsworth Publishers.

Manekin, Charles H. (1997), Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives. College Park: University Press of Maryland.

Manekin, Charles (1992), The Logic of Gersonides: A translation of "Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-Yashar" (The Book of the Correct Syllogism) of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom, with Introduction, Commentary, and Analytical Glossary. New Synthèse Historical Library Series, ed. N. Kretzmann. Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishers.