Post-Enlightenment of Leibowitz and al-Jaberi: Philosophy and Religion

The issue of the relation between religion and philosophy has re-surfaced in modern Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Muslim philosophical discourses. Facing unprecedented waves of re-traditionalisation and radicalisation in both Israel and Arab-Muslim societies this issue has become a privileged terrain upon which many ideological, cultural and political “wars” have been waged. In this paper, I shall focus on how two prominent philosophers and public thinkers, Leibowitz (d. 1994) and al-Jaberi (d. 2010), have brought the issue of the relation between faith and reason – and with it critical thinking – back to centre stage by engaging both their own philosophical and theological traditions and European philosophical thought.