Recensire la filosofia ebraica nella Germania dell’età moderna: il caso di Johann Franz Budde

The article examines Johann Franz Budde’s ambitious attempt to integrate Jewish philosophy – particularly the Kabbalistic tradition – into the historiography of philosophy within the intellectual landscape of the German Protestant world between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through a reconstruction of Budde’s work, from his early contributions to the Observationes Literariae to the Introductio ad historiam philosophiae Hebraicae, the study highlights how he positioned ancient Jewish wisdom as the original source of true philosophical knowledge and as a corrective to the perceived corruptions of Aristotelian scholasticism. Central to the article is the analysis of three major contemporary reviews, published in Amsterdam, Hannover, and Leipzig, which evaluate, distort, or neutralize Budde’s project. These reviews illuminate how early modern philosophical criticism functioned as an instrument of canon formation, contributing to the subsequent marginalization of Jewish thought in European intellectual history and shaping the boundaries of what counted as “philosophy.”