An Ideology for Dependence? The Public Dimension of Astrology in the Jewish Middle Ages

The identification of astrology with an ideology for dependence, proposed by Adorno in a 1975 essay, which was apparently eccentric compared to the rest of his production, offers an opportunity to discuss the (far from unequivocal) approach to political astrology in the philosophical-scientific literature of the Jewish Middle Ages. Reviewing some of the main positions in this respect, it will turn out that, beyond Adorno’s reductive interpretation, the public dimension of astrology instead testifies to the independence of the Land of Israel from all that is not God or – in a diametrically opposite perspective, which links the Jewish people to the most general and powerful astral determinations – their absolute independence from the accidental processes of time.