Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Albo, Joseph

Albo comes late in the history of Jewish dogmatics. His contribution lies in the architectonic he constructs for Jewish faith and practice. Maimonides and others present the principles of Judaism on an equal footing. Albo offers a hierarchically graded, logically structured schematization. The structure is designed both for internal strength and for defence against external attack. The scheme allows Albo to contextualize Judaism generically as a divine law but also to render less vexed the internal debates over the niceties of those beliefs that are distinctive to Judaism. Albo's treatment of core beliefs not as axioms but more as themes whose appeal is traditional, but whose nexus to the canonical axioms is not one of entailment, is appreciated by contemporary students of Judaism for fostering a certain openness with respect to belief without departing from the larger axiomatic structure that Albo used in helping to define his faith and to defend it.