Joshua Parens received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. His research interests include Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophy, early modern philosophy, and political philosophy.
Islamic and Jewish Medieval Philosophy
Early Modern Philosophy
Metaphysics
Political Philosophy
Spinoza
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1992
M.A., University of Chicago, 1988
B.A., St. John's College, 1984
Books
Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy. Rochester: University of Rochester, 2016.
Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
(Edited in collaboration with Joseph C. Macfarland:) Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook. 2nd edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011.
An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Introducing Alfarabi. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2006.
Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi's "Summary of Plato's Laws." Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Articles
“Strauss on Maimonides’s Secretive Political Science,” in Leo Strauss’s Defense of the Philosophic Life: Reading “What Is Political Philosophy?”, Rafe Major, ed., 116–36 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
“Leaving the Garden: Maimonides and Spinoza on the Imagination and Practical Intellect Revisited,” Philosophy & Theology 18:2 (2006): 219–246.
"Maimonidean Ethics Revisited: Development and Asceticism in Maimonides?" Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12:3 (2003): 33–62.
"Multiculturalism and the Problem of Particularism," American Political Science Review 88:1 (1994): 169–181.
"Theory and Practice in Medieval Aristotelianism," Polity 26 (1993): 317–330.