religions Article Where Is the Palestinian Talmud Going? Sergey Dolgopolski   Citation: Dolgopolski, Sergey. 2021. Where Is the Palestinian Talmud Going? Religions 12: 409. https:// doi.org/10.3390/rel12060409 Academic Editor: Elliot Wolfson Received: 15 April 2021 Accepted: 24 May 2021 Published: 3 June 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Departments of Jewish Thought and Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA; sergey@buffalo.edu Abstract: Where does the archive of the Rabbinic Rhetorical Schools in Sepphoris, Caesarea and Tiberias belong in the formation of modern subjectivity and humanity? In his archeology of modern subjectivity, Alain de Libera answers a similar question about Church Fathers to locate the beginnings of both (1) a modern human as a willing and thinking subject and of (2) Heidegger’s critique thereof in the philosophical horizons of Western and Eastern patristics. In this context, the essay examines a fragment of the archive in juxtaposition with de Libera’s discovery of the patristic horizon of Heidegger’s thought. The essay builds upon and reconsiders the method of philosophical archeology as a self-critical “method” of examining the “beginnings” as retro-projections of repetition in both Heidegger’s (eschatological) and de Libera’s (post-theological) versions of philosophical archeology. The results are a comparative reading of the two parallel, never-intersecting but ever commensurable figures of the relationships between G-d and Israel in the Rabbinic and Patristic horizons of thought and a requalification of the scope and task of archeology of modern subjectivity in de Libera’s and Heidegger’s work. Keywords: Heidegger; Palestinian Talmud; Rabbinic Rhetoric; philosophical archeology; modern subjectivity; “other beginning” and “new beginning”; memory of the present; unforgettable past; evolution of subjectivity 1. Introduction The 2014 Alain de Libera’s inaugural lecture in College de France, Where is the Mediaeval Philosophy Going? 1 omitted an implied qualifier “Christian.” His preceding work on archeology of thinking subject 2 and consequent research and teaching in 2014 to 2019 reclaims theology of Church Fathers as the true place where “the Medieval [Christian] philosophy” was developing. That view opposes a conventional localization of medieval philosophy in the predominantly “Aristotelian” (to include “Platonic”) philosophy and its themes. “Where is the medieval philosophy going?” is a carefully formulated question. It asks about moving forward but also about disappearing from the view. What follows responds with a question about this question: where is the Palestinian Talmud going? The remainder of this essay is to articulate this response. De Libera reclaims Church Fathers as an underrecognized (“colonized”) site of philo- sophic achievement, which continues to inform the true scope of discussions about modern rational human beings as subject-agents of their own thinking, willing, and speaking. What is more, for De Libera, Heidegger’s vigorous critique of modern rational humanity was a version of “colonization” of Church Fathers; what Heidegger ascribed to the “Greeks” stems from the Church Father’s philosophical work, as unnoticed as this connection re- mained for Heidegger in his 1930s revisitation of the history of philosophy. In short, what for Heidegger was a straight line of development (and decline) from pre-Socratics via Plato and Aristotle to Hegel is for de Libera a curve tacitly inflected by the mighty magnet of the Church Fathers philosophical work. Heidegger, on that view, is an heir of the late ancient, not to mention medieval philosophical work of patristics and scholastics, if that work is approached within but independent from the dogmas of Church. Key themes of this philosophical work were Religions 2021, 12, 409. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12060409 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions