For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about Jewish philosophy.
When philosophers Aaron Segal and Sam Lebens set out to compile a comprehensive list of philosophical treatments of religious worship, they were surprised at just how little they found. “If you compile a bibliography on nearly any other concept in the philosophy of religion, it’ll have hundreds or thousands of entries,” Segal says. Their bibliography on the philosophy of worship turned up a mere 13 entries. “You just have a dearth of material, but it’s not for want of interesting questions. It’s just something that seems to be crying out for philosophical investigation.”
Over the course of two years, Segal and Lebens hope to do their part to advance that discussion significantly by convening a pair of summer workshops in Israel, gathering senior and junior scholars from a variety of disciplines and religious backgrounds to investigate the nature and function of worship from philosophical, scientific, and theological viewpoints.