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If the question of right action is viewed as the object of ethics in general, the term “Jewish ethics” designates first of all those norms and ideals by which human action is organized, or should be organized, in the context of Jewish culture and religion. Concretely, widely different historical, cultural, and religious phenomena of Judaism could be included in this concept, which overlap only partially with comparable manifestations in other cultures. In the modern period, alongside traditional…

Modernity’s release from the dominant influence of theology has enabled the emergence within philosophy of an independent discipline, the philosophy of religion, in which religion becomes the subject of philosophical reflection. In this larger framework, the Jewish religion as a concrete historical phenomenon also became the subject of genuine philosophical reflection, interpretation, and evaluation. Aside from Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), modern Jewish philosoph…