Jewish philosophy

Jewish philosophy is philosophical inquiry informed by the texts, traditions and experiences of the Jewish people. Its concerns range from the farthest reaches of cosmological speculation to the most intimate theatres of ethical choice and the most exigent fora of political debate. What distinguishes it as Jewish is the confidence of its practitioners that the literary catena of Jewish tradition contains insights and articulates values of lasting philosophical import. One mark of the enduring import of these ideas and values is their articulation in a variety of idioms, from the mythic and archetypal discourse of the Book of Genesis to the ethical and legislative prescriptions of the Pentateuch at large, to the admonitions of the Prophets, the juridical and allegorical midrash and dialectics of the Rabbis, and to the systematic demonstrations, flights of imagination, existential declarations and apercus of philosophers in the modern or the medieval mode.