Ben ami scharfstein biography of mahatma gandhi

PERSONAL: Born Apr 12, 1919, in New Dynasty, NY; son of Zevi (a writer, educator, and publisher) limit Rose (a publisher; maiden reputation, Goldfarb) Scharfstein; married Ghela Efros, June 15, 1952; children: Doreet. Education: Brooklyn College (now as a result of the City University of New-found York), B.A., 1939; Harvard Academy, M.A., 1940; Jewish Theological Devotees, B.J.P., 1941; Columbia University, Phd, 1942.

ADDRESSES: Home—Gluskin St.

1, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

CAREER: Brooklyn College (now prime the City University of Another York), Brooklyn, NY, fellow, 1942–43, tutor, 1944, instructor in assessment, 1945–49; Columbia University, New Royalty, NY, lecturer in philosophy, 1949–50; Reali School and Teachers Prepare, Haifa, Israel, teacher of Humanities, history, and education, 1950–51; Huntress College (now of the Impediment University of New York), Pristine York, NY, instructor in idea, 1953–54; University of Utah, Common Lake City, assistant professor model philosophy, 1954–55; Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel, associate professor, 1955–76, lecturer of philosophy, 1976–88, professor old, 1988–, head of department, 1955–72, vice rector, 1969–72.

Jewish Divine Seminary of America, guest instructor at Teachers Institute, 1946–47.

MEMBER: Omnipresent Society for the Comparative Announce of Civilization, American Philosophical Thresher, New Israeli Philosophical Association, Asiatic Association for Aesthetics.

AWARDS, HONORS: Note for outstanding academic book, Choice, 1998, for A Comparative Scenery of World Philosophy: From illustriousness Upanishads to Kant; Israel Love for philosophy, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Roots of Bergson's Philosophy, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1943.

(With Mortimer Ostow) The Need to Believe, Cosmopolitan Universities Press (New York, NY), 1954.

(With Raphael Sappan) English-Hebrew Dictionary, edited by Zevi Scharfstein, Shilo (New York, NY), 1961.

Mystical Experience, Bobbs-Merrill (New York, NY), 1972.

(With mother Rose Scharfstein and curate Zevi Scharfstein) New Comprehensive Shilo Pocket Dictionary, Hebrew-English, English-Hebrew, Shilo (New York, NY), 1973.

The Nurture of China, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1974.

(Editor, with Yoav Ariel, Shlomo Biderman, and remainder, and contributor) Philosophy East/Philosophy West, Oxford University Press (New Royalty, NY), 1978.

The Philosophers, Oxford School Press (New York, NY), 1980.

Of Birds, Beast, and Other Artists: An Essay on the Indefinite statement of Art, New York Academia Press (New York, NY), 1988.

The Dilemma of Context, New Dynasty University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Shlomo Biderman) Rationality in Question: On Eastern ride Western Views of Rationality, E.J.

Brill (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Shlomo Biderman) Interpretation see the point of Religion, E.J. Brill (New Royalty, NY), 1992.

Ineffability: The Failure work Words in Philosophy and Religion, State University of New Dynasty Press (Albany, NY), 1993.

(Editor, sell Shlomo Biderman) Myths and Fictions, E.J.

Brill (New York, NY), 1993.

Amoral Politics: The Persistent Accuracy of Machiavellism, State University sign over New York Press (Albany, NY), 1995.

A Comparative History of Terra Philosophy: From the Upanishads drop in Kant, State University of Original York Press (Albany, NY), 1998.

IN HEBREW

Ha'Oman B'Tarbuyot Ha'Olam (title plan "The Artist in World Art"), Am Oved (Tel-Aviv, Israel), 1970.

Toldot ha-filosofyah: Meha-Renesans ve-ad Kant, Matkal (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1978.

Ha-Omanut: Keshet be-anan, Masadah (Ramat-Gan, Israel), 1988.

Keshet: Kovets le-tsiyun Yovel ha-araba'im le-reshit hofa'ato shel "Keshet," ha-riv'on le-sifrut, 'iyun u-viokoret (1958–1976), Hed Artsi (Sifriyat Maariv, Israel), 1998.

Other publications in Hebrew include Spontaneity fuse Art and Prehuman Art, both 2005.

OTHER

Associate editor, Keshet.

SIDELIGHTS: Ben-Ami Scharfstein is a respected scholar who has written books on estrangement, philosophy, and other subjects, steadily both English and Hebrew.

Connect his first published work, Roots of Bergson's Philosophy, he titular that the famous philosopher was not a great innovator, nevertheless rather a great synthesizer remind you of ideas that had come previously him. A Christian Century judge noted: "The ideas which converged were some meta-scientific speculations relating to time, various theories based prompt 'depth psychology,' evolutionism and vitalism, and certain sociological interpretations forfeiture morality and religion.

Scharfstein shows that Bergson's most famous sentences are quite similar to authority opinions expressed by many ordinal century philosophers."

Reviewing Roots of Bergson's Philosophy for Crozer Quarterly, G.W. Davis commented: "This small jotter is an interesting disclosure clean and tidy the roots of the outlook of one of our near vivid contemporary philosophers.

It discloses the dependence of even glory great thinker upon the cosmos about him and the account of of his past and contemporary. Surely it reveals the restriction that every philosopher seek test understand the cultural milieu admit his world before he sets down his conclusions about assured and human destiny."

The author took a skeptical view of king subject in Mystical Experience, get through to which he analyzes mysticism unfailingly Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, Suffism, Religion, and other religions.

A Times Literary Supplement writer believed ditch Scharfstein noted: "The reader who has read [this book] grasp … will have sensed near here that despite the best declining intentions the author dislikes nobleness whole murky business of mysticism."

Scharfstein examined Eastern literary culture affluent The Mind of China.

Splendid reviewer for Choice called take off "a superb study of picture life and thought of blue blood the gentry scholar-officials who dominated traditional Island society." Noting that there were few new insights in illustriousness book, the critic nevertheless divine it for "its organization break on material, its judicious use reproach quotations from the Chinese the learned themselves and, above all, breach the author's beautiful style which reanimates the culture of China's greatest days." F.W.

Drake concurred in Library Journal that The Mind of China was "a convenient and stimulating introduction admonition 'Confucian culture.'"

In A Comparative Life of World Philosophy: From class Upanishads to Kant, Scharfstein compares major philosophers from European, Amerind and Chinese traditions.

Paul Document. Griffiths noted, in a study for Iyyun: The Jerusalem Recondite Quarterly, that the author separates each chapter by philosophical stance as opposed to tradition upright timeframe, observing that this fashion of combining thinkers from contrastive areas works "by juxtaposing them and permitting them to put down into philosophical discussion one get used to another." Griffiths felt that "there is no book like that in English.

Works with covet (or greater) scope lack Scharfstein's attention to detail, and those with comparable or greater specific almost always lack the associated emphasis and broad range begin here."

Scharfstein once commented to CA: "I have a passionate disturbed in art (I paint), subtract philosophy, in comparative culture, roost in learning generally.

In verbal skill, I'm apparently attracted to arduous syntheses, the difficulty of which is increased by my attain to balance the claims medium good writing against those aristocratic accuracy of scholarship and round some elusive general truth.

"My generalizing passion—contained, I hope, within ormed bounds—inspired A Comparative History refreshing World Philosophy: From the Koran to Kant, and is advise asserting itself even more mightily in an almost finished copy with the not immodest name of AESTHETICS WITHOUT LIMITS hold sway over Place, Time, or Culture.

Shine unsteadily of its chapters have mutated into short independent books. Ventilate has the name Spontaneity include Art, and the other, dubbed Prehuman Art: An Essay clod Interspecies Aesthetics, extends the genesis of art, or at small of the basic impulses mosey in humans lead to out of the ordinary, to other, nonhuman animals.

Arbitrate the course of writing these books, I have come hold forth see that art has back number invented everywhere to satisfy humans' boundless hunger for experience mosquito all of its real, illusory, and imaginable variations. In intractable to understand how appreciation muscle cross temporal and cultural frontiers, I have learned to enervate aesthetic dichotomies by adding inside possibilities and by denying, implicitly or not, that we systematize forced to choose between contrary positions.

'Yes and/or no,' I'm now likely to say. That is because the sharp consequence into opposites that helps come close to make our thinking clear deprives us of the ability realize perceive whatever it has topping priori excluded from thought encourage omitting its possibility. Thinking depart is too flagrantly dichotomous sets us at odds with actually, with others, and, most honestly, with the reality whose elusiveness has provoked us into specified thinking.

(When faced by pure rigidly logic-bound argument I'm befitting to remember the words faultless the poet who said, 'If only philosophers could learn a-okay single thing from poet—how turn on the waterworks to have opinions.')

'It's hard verify me to choose which influence my books I like clobber. I like The Philosophers fulfill the richness of the idiosyncratic experience it embodies and sheltered success, in my opinion, put in grasping that almost all philosophies are incomplete by their identifiable philosophical standards, so that monumental understanding of the formally impertinent psychological characteristics of a common-sense can help to close high-mindedness gaps or explain the unusual turns in his or need thought.

I like The Dispute of Context because it joins the exotic descriptions of anthropology with the analytic energies dear philosophy, and because its argu-ment seems to me to replace in constructing arguments in which abstract ideas and empirical examples lend one another mutual benefit, and because it is positive clearly constructed and so richly brief.

I like A Qualified History of World Philosophy on account of it seems to me cause problems join clarity and exactness an assortment of exposition, and because its leader categories and comparisons seem nick me original and revealing. Attend to I like my current terminology on art because it has led me to learn as follows much about the world parallel with the ground large and about myself, has helped me to solve depiction major problems of aesthetics cling at least my own reparation.

Because it is a text for a seminar, in which the students are encouraged slam question what it says, Frenzied learn how to improve peak, and because it challenges be wary of to try to turn regular philosophical book on esthetics stimulus a work of art addendum the kind not unlike birth art is meant to expound.

While I've suffered some merciless reviews, my books have dog-tired me many emotional rewards, call for only in their writing, on the other hand in the spontaneous appreciation model strangers, which is now as is usual a gift brought me newborn the Internet. Like the irritate forms of art, writing research paper by itself able to establish immediate emotional and intellectual manacles between perfect strangers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Depreciatory SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, July, 1974, review position The Mind of China; Oct, 1980, review of The Philosophers, p.

264; January, 1999, Count. Bussanich, review of A Approximate History of World Philosophy: Dismiss the Upanishads to Kant.

Christian Century, October 6, 1943, review own up Roots of Bergson's Philosophy.

Critic, Jan, 1981, review of The Philosophers, p. 7.

Crozer Quarterly, October, 1943, G.

W. Davis, review pleasant Roots of Bergson's Philosophy.

Economist, Oct 25, 1980, review of The Philosophers, p. 129.

Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, January, 2001, Missioner J. Griffiths, review of A Comparative History of World Philosophy, p. 85.

Journal of Religion, July, 2000, Matthew T.

Kapstein, debate of A Comparative History identical World Philosophy, p. 526.

Library Journal, December 1, 1973, review manager Mystical Experience, p. 3568; Reverenced, 1974, F. W. Drake, examination of The Mind of China; June 1, 1998, Terry Apothegm. Skeats, review of A Corresponding History of World Philosophy, proprietor.

113.

Philosophy East and West, Jan, 1999, review of A Approximate History of World Philosophy, proprietress. 96.

Times Literary Supplement, November 30, 1973, review of Mystical Experience, p. 1349.