Concept

Rabbi Akiva

Overview

Akiva ben Joseph (Mishnaic Hebrew: עֲקִיבָא בֶּן יוֹסֵף, ʿĂqīḇāʾ ben Yōsēp̄; c. 50 – 28 September 135 CE), also known as Rabbi Akiva (רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא), was a leading Jewish scholar and sage and a tanna of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second. Rabbi Akiva was a leading contributor to the Mishnah and to Midrash Halakha. He is referred to in Tosafot as Rosh la-Hakhamim ("Chief of the Sages"). He was executed by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. He has also been described as a philosopher.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

2, n. 6) that men, conceiving of freedom as they do, establish a dominion within God's dominion, has [349] gone too far. The dominion of God is with Spinoza nothing but the dominion of necessity, and of a blind necessity (as with Strato), whereby everything emanates from the divine nature, while no choice is left to God, and man's choice does not exempt him from necessity. He adds that men, in order to establish…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
States what Rabbi Akiva is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
He devoted himself with great zeal and brilliant success to rhetorical and philosophical studies. In the reign of Claudius he attained the office of quaestor and subsequently rose to the rank of senator. In the year 41 he was banished to the island of Corsica on a charge that is admitted to have been false, but the nature of which is not clearly understood. In this barren and inhospitable island he was compelled to…
Charles William Super, Between Heathenism and Christianity
Close in meaning to Rabbi Akiva; the term itself is not named.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
The ethical norm was not, at the outset, religious in sanction, as is usually believed; it acquired this character only through the medium of the world-ruling divine personality. Nevertheless, the union of the ethical and the religious gradually caused the idea of retribution, which originally had no ethical significance whatsoever, to force its way into the conceptions of the beyond. It was essentially in this way…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Rabbi Akiva; the term itself is not named.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Rabbi Akiva

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition

Part of Jewish philosophy.

Explore Rabbi Akiva in the interactive graph →