Description
The materials consist of
correspondence, research files and teaching materials, and texts of the Nicomachean Ethics
that have been collected in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. Also included is his 1959 Ph.D.
thesis "Ibn Bajjah and Maimonides: A Chapter in the History of Political Philosophy" (in
Hebrew with English summary).
Background
Lawrence B. Berman was the first Stanford University professor to specialize in Jewish
Studies. After earning undergraduate degrees at the College of Jewish Studies in Chicago and
the University of Chicago, he did graduate work at Brandeis University (M.A. 1954) and the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Ph.D. 1960). He joined the Stanford faculty in 1967.
Berman's particular interest was the effect of the translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics on the transmittal of its philosophical concepts. He taught courses in both Judaism
and Islam, and at the time of his death in 1988 was developing a course on the Abrahamic
tradition, attempting to compare the Jewish tradition with Christianity and Islam.