Many years ago at my dissertation defense—a project on the writings of Emmanuel Levinas—one of my committee members asked me, “Is this Jewish philosophy?” I responded with a question: “What do you mean by Jewish philosophy?” Although he took my question as an attempt to evade his own, I thought my question completely appropriate. Defining terms is typically a good place to begin for clarification. A few months later when I interviewed for a joint position in philosophy and Jewish studies, I sought out my teacher, reminded him of the question and asked him, “What do I do if they ask me why Jewish philosophy is philosophy?” He replied: “You can simply ask them why any philosophy gets to count as philosophy. Since when has philosophy ever actually been universal and objective?” That was fifteen years ago and I have not forgotten those words or the conversation; indeed I consider them whenever I teach any course in philosophy.

Reading Aaron W. Hughes’s provocative new book, Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism, reminded me of this set of events. Struggling with similar questions, Hughes interrogates not only the categories of the universal and the particular, but also the categories of Judaism and philosophy. His aim, as he states in the preface, is “to arrive at a thinking that does not reify either Judaism or philosophy as stable or authentic.… My hope, in other words, is to rethink Jewish philosophy using a language that avoids stability, hegemony, and occupation” (xii). Hughes organizes his book into six chapters, each focusing on a specific theme that pertains to the construction of—not necessarily the study of—Jewish philosophy. Chapter 1 explores what Hughes calls the paradox of Jewish philosophy, which, simply put, deals with the relationship between the universal and particular. Within the context of Jewish philosophy, which is particularized by its modifier, to become philosophy, the particular must be universalized. Thus, the two words in this subfield become Othered when they are conjoined: the particular becomes universalized and the universal becomes particularized. In the second chapter, Hughes turns his attention to the inherent problem that one encounters at the intersection of the universal and the particular. If the universal is so defined because anyone, independent of characteristics that identify us in particular ways, can access it, then what does it mean to talk about a philosophy that is idiosyncratic in its identification with a particular group—in this case a religious/ethnic group? Is the study of this philosophy accessible to everyone? If it is, is what makes Judaism unique flattened or excised in order for it be accessible, thus eliminating precisely what made it particular in the first place?

Chapter 3, cleverly named “Kaddish,” seeks to remember—and mourn—the past in order to look forward to future possibilities. In an interesting twist, Hughes refocuses the “origin” of Jewish philosophy—or any religiously based philosophy—as beginning in “self-defense” rather than in a disinterested wonder. As a result, one necessarily asks after the integrity of the philosophy. For if the origin of the field is self-defense, then there is a vested interest in the construction of its identity and the formation of the arguments that circulate around it. Can a philosophy that begins as self-defense allow itself to be philosophically interrogated?

Chapter 4 begins the process of undoing the standard narrative that guides Jewish philosophy. Chapter 5, focusing on Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption, returns to the paradox of Jewish philosophy but in a different iteration: What does it mean to develop a philosophical system that is grounded in a view of a people as racially and religiously superior? Is this a philosophy of Judaism? Is it a Jewish philosophy—as in a philosophy that allows for universal access? Finally, chapter 6 considers how Jewish philosophy must grapple with diversity. Hughes argues that Jewish philosophy, rather than creating an authentic philosophy, must instead embrace its contradictions, paradoxes, and ambiguities, in order to reveal itself as such—as all of these things. That is, Jewish philosophy must present itself as the multitudes rather than the monolith. Hughes rightly asks, however, whether such a field will still deserve the name of philosophy if it successfully comes into being.

Hughes's book is both instructive and provocative. For scholars teaching or conducting research in the field of Jewish philosophy, the questions that Hughes raises cannot be ignored. His questions go straight to the heart of how the discipline not only defines itself via the juxtaposition of the universal and particular (125) but also how it will keep its integrity in light of that juxtaposition. He rightly ends his book by indicating that he hopes this is really the beginning—that where he leaves off, having exposed the problem throughout the construction of Jewish philosophy from the medieval through the modern period, will force a conversation among scholars in this area to rethink how Jewish philosophy is defined and, thus, how scholarship and teaching in Jewish studies is conducted. He acknowledges that Jewish philosophy cannot easily, if at all, be separated from the academy—and the academic study of this area. This of course means that disciplinary boundaries, even in an interdisciplinary field like Jewish studies, will necessarily be drawn, definitions of the field entrenched, and content areas defined and “stabilized” as canonical—leaving other texts and figures outside of the canon, occasionally peeking in, but never really invited to join the conversation.

Hughes's book speaks not only to the question of Jewish philosophy but also to many other areas that are interdisciplinary and have developed as a way to interrogate and critique various articulations of the universal. I realize that my defense of Jewish philosophy might differ from that which Hughes mentions, the defense that motivated the field in the first place. Nonetheless, the analyses in Hughes's book, for example its articulation of the paradox, the defense, the mythology of stable categories, could be applied to many other areas of teaching and research that in their origins responded to a myth of the universal, and yet in doing so revealed fundamental problems in their own identities. For example, what are the limits to accessing the epistemic, ontological, or even existential claims in feminist theory? Who does feminist theory include? Addressing precisely this question, the discipline turned to intersectionality to contend with the ways that oppression may have multiple factors that cannot be dealt with independently of each other.

I am not suggesting that the study of Jewish philosophy can be conflated with feminist theory. The concepts of revelation and tradition might limit the intersectional possibilities of Jewish philosophy and fields of inquiry that display surface similarities. Rather, many academic areas of study developed in response to a view of philosophy that had positioned itself as neutral—as universal. These areas are qualified as particular. But qualified as particular, they give truth to the myth of the universal, the neutral white, male, Protestant—or is this person actually a particular? If the latter, then who has epistemic access to the philosophy written by white men? The work of interdisciplinary units in the humanities renders access to outsiders possible. Hughes explicitly draws out this point and then interrogates the paradoxes and contradictions of Jewish philosophy. Influenced by a critique of positivism, the humanities have effectively—in some cases too effectively—destablized these categories of particular and universal, opening up the space for them to be rethought, not as opposites that are pure of each other but rather as categories that are necessarily implicated in one another's identities. Hughes has opened up an important discussion that cannot be dismissed; I look forward to the many discussions his book generates.