Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

In this paper, I seek to present the range of issues involved in the efforts of sixteenth‐century kabbalists to understand the nature of selfhood, and the paths prescribed for the formation of an ideal life. I reflect on the mystical writings of Moshe Cordovero, Eliyahu de Vidas, andayyim Vital—probing their conceptions of core identity, the polarity between body and soul, and the ethical guidance for a life well lived. In so doing, I consider the following additional themes, and their relation (...) to the matrix of self‐formation and religious identity: reincarnation and rebirth; the virtue of humility and self‐effacement; the cultivation of wisdom; ideals of piety and prophetic experience; asceticism; and the spiritual transcendence of desire. In presenting this wide range of constituent themes, I argue that sixteenth‐century kabbalists understood the soul to be the ultimate marker of personal identity (nuanced and complicated by the doctrine of reincarnation), and that they formulated a vision of an ideal ethics in which the human being functions as an earthly vessel for the divine presence. What is more, the preparation of that vessel required a degree of humility so extreme that the attainment of ideal personhood ultimately involved the effacement of that very identity. (shrink)

Based on historical comparisons among master-pupil chains and other aspects of social networks among philosophers, some prmciples are suggested regarding long-term intellectual change. The higher the eminence ofphilosophers, the more tightly they are connected to mtergenerational chains of other eminent philosophers, and to horizontal circles of the intellectual community. Intellectual creativity proceeds through the contemporaneous development of rival positions, dividing up the available attention space in the intellectual community. Strong thought-communities, those that have strong external support for their institutional base, (...) subdivide to maximize internal distinctiveness; weakly supported thought-communities disappear or amalgamate by syncretism. External conditions thus affect the content of ideas indirectly by affecting the space available in the mternal field of the intellectual community. The content of philosophies, the degree of abstraction and self-conscious reflection upon intellectual operations, depends on how many generations intellectual networks maintain continuity under conditions of creative rivalry. New positions are produced by competitive appropriation of prior ideas and by negation of preexisting positions along the lines of greatest organizational rivalry. (shrink)

Comparing people to trees is a customary and common practice in Jewish tradition. The current article examines the roots and the development of the image of people as trees in Jewish sources, from biblical times to recent generations, as related to the prohibition against destroying fruit trees. The similarity between humans and trees in the Jewish religion and culture was firstly suggested in biblical literature as a conceptual-symbolic element. However, since the Amoraic period, this similarity was transformed to a resemblance (...) bearing mystical and Halakhic implications. Various sources in rabbinical literature describe trees as humans that may be spoken to or yelled at to produce fruit. Cutting down a tree was perceived by the rabbis of the Talmud not only as an unethical act or vandalism, but also as a hazard: the death of the tree corresponds to the death of the person who resembles it. All societies, cultures and religions have a system of values and practices that are aimed at shaping people, society and the environment according to a certain worldview.Contribution: The discussion in this article on the relationship between religion-culture and nature indicates how the Jewish religion shaped believers’ attitude to the world of flora over the generations by transforming the man-tree comparison into one with binding and even threatening practical religious meaning. (shrink)

I draw a phenomenological approach to religious violence by using as an example the terror apparatus called Daesh. After a brief reminder of my method, I analyze the schemas that underlie this apparatus, especially the schemas of the messiah and the Apocalypse, and the affects that the apparatus manages to capture. I show that messianic hope can be associated with hate through the figure of the anti-messiah—Christian Antichrist, the Dajjal of Muslims—which allows messianism to be tied to the schema of (...) the “evil conspiracy.” I finally suggest that it is possible to understand messianism differently by dissociating it from these other schemas. (shrink)

The essay offers a Jewish account of education in nonviolence by examining the first of Emmanuel Levinas' Talmudic readings ‘Toward the Other.’ I begin by exploring Levinas' unique philosophy of religious education, which nurtures responsibility for the other, as part of an alternative to enlightenment-orientated modern Jewish thought pioneered by the likes of Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig. I then consider a question raised by Yusef Waghid and Zehavit Gross at the 2012 meeting of the Philosophy of Education (...) Society of Great Britain in Oxford concerning whether one must forget in order to forgive great wrong doing such as South African Apartheid or the Holocaust of European Jewry. Through an examination of Levinas' treatment of several Talmudic passages, I argue that the Jewish tradition takes a paradoxical approach to this question. We should forget in order to remember wrong doing. The spiritual process that both perpetrators and victims must undergo in order to embrace this paradox, I contend, is a genuine education in nonviolence. (shrink)

For the last few years, thanks to the Leverhulme Trust, I've been largely absent from my department, working on the late antique philosopher Plotinus. To speak personally – it's been a difficult few years, since my youngest daughter has been afflicted with anorexia during this period, and my own bowel cancer was discovered, serendipitously, and removed, at the end of 2005. Since then I've had ample occasion to consider the importance – and the difficulty – of the practice of detachment, (...) and also to worry about the moral some have drawn from Plotinian and similar philosophies, namely that the things of this world really do not matter much, and that we should withdraw ourselves from them. Maybe it is true, as Plotinus says, that ‘some troubles are profitable to the sufferers themselves, poverty and sickness for example’. But this is not an altogether helpful message for those afflicted by the bundle of disorders that lead to anorexia. It's difficult not to suspect, for example, that Simone Weil would have lived longer but for her Neo-Platonism. It has also been made obvious to me that we are much less in control of our own mental and emotional states even than I had thought before. None of this, of course, should have been any surprise: I have frequently pointed out – to myself and others – the importance of distinguishing between one's self and the states one finds oneself in, and the extreme difficulty of controlling the thoughts we say are ours. Any delusion that my knowledge of these facts is of itself enough to render me immune to them has been – at least for the moment – thoroughly debunked – though the facts themselves are such that this disillusionment, so to call it, is probably both temporary and almost entirely insincere! (shrink)

The discussion of animal mind in this paper is based on an idealist philosophy contending that only conscious experience is real, based on the transpersonal notion of collective conscious experience. The latter has earlier been explained by the author as experience referred to a group of humans as the subject, the We. Here it is contended that also a group of humans and animals can be seen as the subject of collective conscious experiences. The author argues that the notion of (...) collective conscious experience provides a possibility for studying the problems of animal mind and the related human problem of “other minds” in a detailed and rational way. (shrink)

Debates concerning causal explanations of the universe tend to be based on a priori propositions . The present paper, however, addresses the metaphysical question, “Why does the universe exist?” from the perspective of a school of Hindu philosophy referred to as advaita vedanta and two of its a posteriori derived creation theories: the theory of simultaneous creation and the theory of non-causality . Objections to advaita vedanta are also discussed. It is concluded that advaita vedanta has the potential to make (...) a significant contribution to contemporary metaphysical debate in general and our understanding of the question, “Why does the universe exist?” in particular. (shrink)

This article opens with a brief phenomenological comparison between Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives. Scholem’s book is diachronic or historical in approach while Idel’s is primarily synchronistic, focusing on devekut (devotion) in Jewish Mysticism, the concept of Unio Mystica, a variety of mystical techniques, Kabbalistic theosophy, theurgy, and Kabbalistic hermeneutics. The author concentrates on four characteristics of Idel’s studies in Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism: ecstatic Kabbalah, the definition of Jewish mysticism, Hasidism as (...) a spiritual movement and the study of Jewish magic. In addition he discusses key criticisms leveled at Idel’s treatment of these subjects. (shrink)

In this paper I look at a specific Hebrew religious term, Tikkun Olam, to examine the manner in which it signifies differently in two specific cases. While we understand that meaning is carried in both denotation and connotation, and while a genealogy of meaning is often useful to understand the manner in which meaning has changed across time, this paper recounts the manner in which a single word may signify differently synchronically, at a single point in history.

The question of the right labelling of the traditions in the pseudephigraphical Hekhalot literature has often been asked among researchers in Judaism. In this article I have tried to show that ‘mysticism’ is an adequate term of these traditions. My main concern is, however, to point to an interesting problem concerning two central figures in the Merkavah mysticism, i.e. God and Metatron, the “head” of angels. Saul Lieberman has shown that the name Metatron is probably derivated from two Greek words, (...) which brings us to the supposition that there exists an extraordinary close relation between the two characters. This supposition is confirmed, when we look at some sections of the manuscripts. Metatron is often called “Little JHVH” or “Little Lord”, and in the macroform Merkavah Rabba the climax is reached by the sentence “JHVH the God of Israel, and this is Metatron”. (shrink)

The potential for forging a valuable relationship between two transpersonal systems, Aikido, a Japanese martial art and spiritual tradition, and Kabbalah, a Jewish spiritual tradition, is explored. Aikido is not simply a martial art, rather it is also a way to achieve a sense of the spiritual. However, especially for Westerners, many of its spiritual tenets are elusive, based on abstruse Japanese cultural roots, whereas Kabbalah, as a spiritual tradition more fully explicated for Western audiences, can provide an accessible framework (...) for grasping some of Aikido’s deeper meanings. A blend of these traditions, called Sefirot Aikido, uses Kabbalah to understand, as well as to augment the practice of, Aikido. (shrink)

Erich Fromm and Gershom Scholem met each other in Frankfurt in the early 1920’s. Both were young, intelligent and ambitious and would later become famous celebrities, Fromm as a psychoanalyst and social critic, Scholem as a pioneering historian of Jewish mysticism. But they did not become friends. Rather the opposite, one can say that a certain animosity arose between the two. Scholem has published nasty comments on Fromm. In one Fromm was quite unjustly called a “psychoanalytical Bolshevik”. Scholem’s claim that (...) Fromm was an enthusiastic Trotskyist is not correct either, although Fromm expressed some admiration of Trotsky as a person. Fromm, on the other hand, did not publicly comment Scholem as a person, but criticized his theories on messianism on some points. The question why the two felt an antipathy towards each other is not easy to answer. On some issues they had different views, which of course is not a sufficient reason not to be friends. The fact that they developed along contrary lines might have been of importance. And finally, some reasons for the fact that certain persons just don’t fit together are not possibly to determinate. (shrink)

The subject of this article is the anthropology of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady. After an evaluation of past research into Hasidism and into Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady in particular it is argued that this research possesses a rather reductionistic character. The greater part of these studies deal with either the idea of devekut introduced by Gershom Scholem as the central theme or some kind of social crisis, a line of research initiated by Simon Dubnow. Contrary to these two (...) strands the author proposes to evaluate the emergence of Hasidism as an ideological break with the past caused by the introduction of a new episteme and discourse. This idea the author tries to describe using the texts of Rabbi Shneur Zalman as an example and his understanding of man as a theme, as it is there that this new episteme is most readily illustrated. In the analysis of the central themes in the writing of Rabbi Shneur Zalman it is argued that the point of view of the individual is a major element. His understanding of the relationship between man and God, his accounting for the soul and the value of divine worship are all viewed from this perspective. In all of the central themes of Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s theosophy it is shown that man’s perspective is dominant. And this, the author argues, constitutes a break with the tradition of former Jewish mysticism. It would, however, be premature to conclude on the basis of one author that this is a major characteristic of Hasidism. Therefore, the author closes with a call for more studies into the individualism of Hasidism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show how early Jewish mystics made a new interpretation of the tradition, i.e. the theology of their time and by doing so, they went far off their orthodox tradition. For many years the questions of when and from where did the Merkavah mysticism develop have been a subject of discussion among researchers in Rabbinic Judaism. In the main section of the article I focus on two of the so-called makroforms, i.e. longer rather homogenous (...) passages of texts, which are Hekhalot Zutarti and Ma’aseh Merkavah. In those texts we find a lot of magical statements and if we compare this to the traditional view of God at that time, we can hardly deny that at least some of the mystics moved behind the limit of orthodoxy, or should we say, the theology of tradition. But that does not necessarily force us to give up the view that at least some of the mystics could have belonged to rabbinic circles – this is still an open question. (shrink)

The paper discusses the use of Arabic script in Judeo-Arabic texts ca 900–1200. The point of departure is the observation that the use of the script for Arabic in the Islamic world was more or less determined by the religion of the writer. Arabic script was thus mainly used by Muslims. The Syrian Christians used Syriac script, while the Jews used Hebrew script. They even transliterated a great number of Arabic works into Hebrew script to make them available for Jewish (...) readers. The use of Arabic script among Jews writing for Jews is thus always noteworthy. Taken together the examples mirror the close relations with contemporary Arab culture among many groups within the Jewish community. (shrink)