Tag Archives: Foucault

Foucault & Maimonides (Coronavirus)

Posted on April 24, 2020 by zjb

The Coronovirus pandemic keeps bringing me back as a go-to to Foucault (always under the influence of colleague and friend Gail Hamner) and to Maimonides (at the suggestion of colleague and friend Bill Plevan who recommended reading Hilkhot Deot). Foucault … Continue reading →

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(Foucault) The Birth of The Clinic (Reading Notes)

Posted on April 21, 2020 by zjb

In the spirit of the day I’m including text on epidemic consciousness, medical fields, the medical gaze, death and the human. Below are more or less chapter by chapter reading-notes cribbing directly from the primary text, Foucault’s The Birth of … Continue reading →

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(Knowledge/Power) Maimonides (Art of Reason)  

Posted on April 20, 2020 by zjb

Maimonidean reason has in common with Foucault a basic correlation between knowledge and power. It pops up in the introduction to Commentary on the Mishnah. Wisdom adds to the inner power of a person which is the actualization of human … Continue reading →

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(Modern) Plague Doctor

Posted on April 5, 2020 by zjb

[[from Wikipedia: Copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel (i.e., Dr. Beak), a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, circa 1656]] He’s modern, not medieval, this bird-like figure. Of particular interest is the protective mask and costume dating to the early 17th C. … Continue reading →

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Plague Discipline & Dance of Death (Foucault)

Posted on April 3, 2020 by zjb

Throwing up my hands, re-reading after many years the famous chapter on Panopticism in Foucault’s classic study Discipline and Punish, first published in France in 1975. Readers today, responding to the Coronavirus, have already noted that plague quarantines and other … Continue reading →

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(Foucault) Inside (Mishkan)

Posted on March 26, 2020 by zjb

Deep inside a chapter on the Beit Ha’Mikdash in the Bavli, I found this little gem on a Coronavirus detour through Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic. It speaks as well to the rabbinic gaze, to “powers of truth” in a … Continue reading →

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(Jewish Mysticism) The Non-Existence of Jewish Ethics (Joseph Dan)

Posted on August 19, 2016 by zjb

Is there such a thing as Jewish ethics? Does it even exist? What if anything do Jewish mysticism and Jewish ethics have to do with each other? Does the one complement or submerge the other? In search of answers to … Continue reading →

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