On Monday, October 26, 2026, Sergey Dolgopolski (SUNY Buffalo) and I will present “The Question of the ‘Legal Self’ in Rabbinic and Shiʿi Traditions: A Non-Comparativist Essay” at Shia Islamic–Jewish Legal Reasoning in Dialogue, a two-day colloquium at Duke University. The paper is part of an ongoing Shia–Jewish research project led by Ezra Tzfadya.
The paper begins by suspending a question that usually sounds self-evident. Rather than asking what the legal self is in each tradition, we ask what must already have been stabilized for such a question to appear obvious, and what forms of individuation emerge in rabbinic and Shiʿi legal-theological thought once the “self” is no longer assumed. On the Islamic side, the argument proceeds from fiṭra, the primordial disposition that revelation addresses and recalls, and from the Qurʾānic distinction among islām, īmān, and nifāq, where outward belonging and inward faith do not necessarily coincide.
Daniel Herskowitz and Bruce Lawrence (Duke University) are the respondents. The colloquium is sponsored by the Duke Middle East Studies Center, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Office of the Provost, the Department of Religious Studies, and the Sperling Center for Jewish Studies.
Session 6: Monday, October 26, 10:30 am–12:15 pm
Alumni Memorial Common Room, Langford 152, Duke University
Full program: https://jewishstudies.duke.edu/shia-islamic-jewish-legal-reasoning-dialogue
