The PI’s research project about “the making of a philosophical textbook” [WP2] is progressing satisfactorily and a complete manuscript draft should be ready in Summer 2025. Several aspects of this project were presented in the following workshops: “Hebrew Philosophical Manuscripts (on Logic) as Sites of Engagement.” Workshop Medieval Manuscripts of Logic. Hamburg, May 2023; (with Michael Engel), “The Textual Tradition of Averroes’s Metaphysics Epitome on the Arabic-Hebrew-Latin Continuum.” Jacob Mantino: Translator, Physician and First Jewish Teacher at Sapienza. Rome, May 2023; “The ‘In-Betweens’: Supplementary Materials in Hebrew Manuscripts of Averroes’s Epitomes.” New Perspectives on Averroes. Cologne, September 2023; “Presence, Absence, and the Presence of Absence: Geometrical Diagrams in the Manuscript Tradition of the Hebrew Translation of Averroes’s Meteorology Epitome.” Workshop Medieval Manuscripts of Natural Philosophy. Hamburg, May 2024.
Other side projects, connected to WP1 (case studies), were presented in the following workshops: “A Philosopher Hiding in the Margins.” 12th EAJS Congress, Frankfurt, July 2023; “A Hebrew scribe’s note about infinite power and eternal motion.” Truth & Time in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, March 2023. One finding has been published, and others will be published in the second half of 2025. Interesting short texts, when possible, are published in the Mahadurot.com website.
Lucas Oro Hershtein joined in November 2022, working on the Hebrew tradition of al-Batalyawsi’s “Book of Imaginary circles.” The project consists of three papers: one was published, the second is under review in Aleph (it received the Wolfson award for Early career scholars papers about pre-modern Hebrew philosophy and sciences), and a third will be finished by the end of his tenure. In March 2025 he will move to Madrid for as an MCSA fellow. Lucas presented the paper “A Unique Blend: Merging Two Hebrew Versions of al-Baṭalyawsī” in the EAJS congress, Frankfurt, July 2024. He also co-organized two workshops hosted in Hamburg.
Hanna Paulmann joined as a Phd student in August 2023 with a project about Aristotelian psychology in Hebrew manuscripts. After consolidating her project, she completed a draft of her first paper and presented in internal venues of the University of Hamburg. She is halfway through her second paper.
Hanna Gentili joined the team in January 2024 with a two-part project: the first part is 2 case studies concerning practical philosophy in Hebrew manuscripts. Her second project is natural philosophy in Hebrew manuscripts and on the intersection between Hebrew and Latin and manuscript and print. She was invited to deliver the “Graduate Student Invitation Series Lecture” in the Medieval Institute in the University of Notre Dame in the US (November 2024). Hanna is also the co-convener of our lecture series “Philosophy by Hand.”
All members contribute to the project’s datasets, which are divided into three layers. The first is a critical list of the medieval philosophical Hebrew corpus, the first version of which will be made available in 2025. The second layer is a documentation/verification of metadata concerning philosophical codices, per members’ research project. This is for internal purposes, though the raw data will be made available. The final layer is a repository of marginalia (as was intended in WP3), to which our student assistant is feeding information. So far, she focused on the corpus of codices that I am using for my monograph.
We organized two workshops: Medieval manuscripts of Logic (May 2023) and of Natural Philosophy (May 2024). More workshops are planned on manuscripts of metaphysics and of practical philosophy. They explore different philosophical genres across different linguistic areas with focus on joint methodologies and finding connections. The first workshop will result in a publication in a special issue of the journal Manuscript Cultures, co-edited by the PI, Jose Maksimczuk (CSMC Hamburg) and Caterina Tarlazzi (PI of the ERC project “Polyphonic Philosophy”).
The project is hosting, in cooperation with the CSMC, the lecture series “Philosophy by Hand.” The first lecture was delivered by the PI in October 2024. Talks by leading and emerging scholars are scheduled until July 2025. It should continue throughout the project’s remaining duration. All lectures will be streamed live and then uploaded to the lecture2go system of Hamburg University.
We participated in the EAJS congress, Frankfurt (July 2023) with the panel “New Discoveries in Hebrew Philosophical Manuscripts of Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology”. It was awarded a “distinguished panel” label by the organizing committee.
