Iyyun was established in 1945 as a Hebrew philosophical periodical by Martin Buber, S. H. Bergman and Julius Guttmann and is published by the S. H. Bergman Center for Philosophical Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Iyyun has been rebranded, and as part of this renewal a number of thematic issues are published, aiming to advance contemporary philosophical discourse, primarily in Hebrew, to indicate new paths of thought and lines of original research, and to build bridges between academia and the broader public.‍ Iyyun seeks to give expression to a wide spectrum of writers, and is committed to cultural and ideological pluralism, scholarly excellence, high quality writing, and vitality of thought. This in the belief that philosophical thought has a formative role in local culture, and could be influential in shaping the sociopolitical sphere. The articles in this volume: On the Possibility of Universal Love | Sharon Krishek The Creative Force of Desire in Classical Indian Thought | Nir Feinberg Modality and the Limits of Sense in Spinoza’s Metaphysics | Yogev Zusman A Kantian Approach to Aesthetic Methodology: 'Manner' instead of 'Method' | Moran Godess-Riccitelli Finding One’s Way in Language in Wittgenstein’s Later Thought | Oren Roz Film and the Flow of Life: Toward the Non-Human | Orna Raviv Naïveté and Liberation in the Philosophy of Education: A Conversation with Zeev Degani | Ori Rotlevy Review Probing the Discontents of Identity On Jacob Golomb’s Identity and Its Discontents | Warren Zev Harvey Notes on Contributors

A Ramble in the Hive is an eco-philosophical text that deals with the relationship between humans and honeybees from the dawn of humanity to the present day, interlinking mythology, folklore, literature, art and science from different historical periods. A Ramble in the Hive works as both popular science and philosophy, combining a study of the history of beekeeping and its multitude of inventions, with a philosophical and poetic view of the human encounter with honeybees as reflected in the imagination of our culture. It suggests approaching the hive as an archetype of living mythology that works on our collective imagination. A Ramble in the Hive presents the planetary honeybee crisis as a fascinating window through which to observe wide-ranging ecological issues. How did the honeybee get such a lofty and critical role – holding responsibility for both the future of humanity and the earth? What do the bees tell us in their current state? This book is an attempt to answer these questions.

In the 1940s, Erwin Schrödinger attempted to tackle the eternal question "What is Life?" from the perspective of the "naïve physicist." The result is this short book, which has influenced generations of scientists, sparked much controversy and become a classic. What Is Life? appears in Hebrew for the first time, accompanied by an epilogue by Prof. Avshalom Elitzur, who demonstrates to what extent Schrödinger's insights are relevant eighty years after the first publication of the essay.

Against the backdrop of war and the political crisis in Israel, volume 73 of Iyyun turns a philosophical spotlight on the concept of law, which has become acute in contemporary Israeli discourse. The articles in this volume deal with a variety of systems of laws, which stress the fundamental difference between theoretical and normative laws, and the understanding that the validity of the law and its compulsory nature are heterogenic by nature.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a polymath of Renaissance culture. His 1710 Essais de Théodicée , the longest work published in his lifetime, was a final and concluding phase in his life-long theological-philosophical journey. It constituted a milestone in the diplomatic and intellectual effort to restore the religious and political peace in Europe, and is, above all, a key philosophical work.

In 1980, the Italian publisher Einaudi wanted to publish a series of personal anthologies of its authors. Primo Levi quickly arose to the challenge and submitted La ricerca delle radici ( The Search for Roots ): thirty excerpts from thirty masterpieces of world literature, accompanied by thirty short introductions he wrote. Every such introduction is a brilliant commentary on the work, and a reflection of Primo Levi himself - as a kind of self-portrait, in which the painter produces his collage from materials created by others. These excepts - published for the first time in Hebrew - reveal some of the important ethical and aesthetic influences on Primo Levi and his work. Levi quotes from Job, Lucretius, Rabelais‏, Babel, Shalom Aleichem, de Saint-Exupéry and more, but also from Darwin's On Origin of Species and even from Practical Organic Chemistry. Thus, it is possible to trace his extensive and diverse, humanistic and scientific education, the roots from which his unique literary work grew.

In his two masterworks, Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides explicitly articulates a dual crisis: the disintegration of the Halakhic tradition and the erosion of the esoteric knowledge of the Torah. This study presents a novel interpretation of Maimonides’ crisis proclamations and the narratives linked to them. It primarily analyzes how Maimonides crafted a discourse of crisis, illuminating this through a comparison with earlier discourses in the Jewish canon and parallel crisis narratives in Islamic sources. The key question it seeks to answer is: why did Maimonides prominently employ this discourse in his works? The exploration of crisis discourse in Maimonides’ work reveals how he introduces a marked internal tension in each of his two major works. On the one hand, he declares his commitment to both the halakhic tradition and the esoteric knowledge tradition, even as he retrospectively reshapes them. On the other hand, he emphasizes the urgent need for reforming these traditions to confront the rupture they have undergone. This study demonstrates that in both Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides portrays the process of breaking and refashioning tradition as an act of loyalty to these traditions during a time of crisis.

The "Possibility of Dialogue" issue was originally designed as a tribute to the dialogic philosophy of Martin Buber on the centenary of his groundbreaking book I and Thou ( Ich und Du 1923). Since the planning of the issue, Israeli society has gone through dramatic upheavals, and most recently, on October 7th, a brutal massacre of many Israeli citizens by Hamas, followed by a bitter war whose end is still not in sight. The 72 issue (Fall 2023) of Iyyun is now published in a painful, violent and bloody country. At a time when the possibilities of dialogue have collapsed and disappeared almost entirely from the public sphere, the necessity of philosophical discussion is essential and urgent. The title "Possibility of Dialogue" reminds us that the existence of dialogue is not a matter of course. Dialogue is a type of human possibility, a certain form of conduct - of speaking and listening, of living together - in the linguistic space, which can be realized in different contexts and in different ways; However, there is no necessity for its realization. The fact that through the common language we communicate with others, say things, convey messages, achieve achievements, is not a sufficient condition for the realization of the dialogical possibility. But, if communicative success is not the criterion for dialogue, what is its meaning? How do we approach this inquiry? A subscription can be purchesed through this link or use the online form .