Philosophy and Kabbalah: Elijah Benamozegh and the Reconciliation of Western Thought and Jewish Esotericism

by Guetta, Alessandro; Kahan, Helena

• ISBN13: 9780791475768
• ISBN10: 079147576X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Philosophy and Kabbalah offers an analysis of the life and work of Elijah Benamozegh (1823–1900), an Italian Kabbalist and philosopher of Moroccan origins. Although the relationship between Kabbalah and philosophy has always been problematic, Benamozegh considered Kabbalah to be the true dogmatic and rational tradition of Judaism. In his numerous books and articles in Hebrew, Italian, and French, he constantly integrated this Jewish esoteric tradition into the currents of Western European philosophy, particularly Hegelian idealism and positivism, as well as the philosophy of the unconscious that would later develop into psychoanalysis. Benamozegh’s inspired reading of Spinoza, his grand project of a universal religion, his feminization” of Jewish thought, and his ability to excel simultaneously as a rabbi, an Italian patriot, a citizen of the République des Lettres, and a proud representative of an ancient Sephardic culture make him one of the most outstanding and original figures of the nineteenth-century Jewish culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
A Few Biographical Pointers	p. 3
Philosophy and Kabbalah
Kabbalah and Progress	p. 9
Theology and the Discovery of the Unconscious	p. 11
The Universal Relationship	p. 15
Conditioned Progress	p. 17
History and Truth	p. 21
"Pantheism: The Great Error Of Our Age"	p. 27
Moderate Idealism: A Tendency Toward Union	p. 31
Distinctions Preserved	p. 35
The Philosophical Context	p. 35
Spinoza's Error: Downward Union	p. 37
Christianity's Error: Upward Union	p. 39
The Metaphysical Flaws of Christian Morality	p. 39
The Historical Jesus	p. 45
Reconciliation: Immanentist Monotheism	p. 47
The Triumph of the Occident and Thoughts on Difference	p. 47
Plurality within Unity	p. 52
Hidden Anthropomorphism: Feuerbach's Reasons	p. 61
From Lamentations of Exile To A Sense of Mission	p. 65
Philology and Philosophy	p. 71
Hebrew: A Perfect Language?	p. 71
Hebrew: A Dead Language? The Possibility of Modem Hebraic Poetry	p. 74
Vico and the Zohar	p. 77
The Inevitable Choices of Nineteenth-Century Biblical Commentary	p. 83
An Eloquent Incipit	p. 85
Condemnation from the Oriental Rabbis	p. 88
Israel Moshe Hazan: Fundamentalism and Moderation	p. 90
"As though hanging in air"	p. 91
The Omissions of Em La-Miqra: The Conjunction of Kabbalah and Modernity	p. 92
The Positive Hermeneutics	p. 94
Comparativism	p. 95
Concordism and Tradition	p. 97
Erudition and Philosophy	p. 98
The Notes on the Zohar	p. 101
Tradition, Orality, and Text
Issues In Play	p. 105
Tradition and Text: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism	p. 107
Tradition and Texts For The "Science of Judaism"	p. 113
In Defense of Tradition	p. 117
Definitions	p. 118
The Written and the Spoken Word	p. 123
Polemical Context	p. 127
Tradition versus Subjectivity	p. 127
Criticism of Modernity and a New Apologia	p. 130
The Danger of Individualism	p. 133
Jewish Reformers and Traditionalists	p. 135
Defense of Kabbalah	p. 141
Polemic in Italian Judaism: S. D. Luzzatto's Dialogues on the Kabbalah	p. 141
The Inadequacy of Literal Interpretation	p. 149
Kabbalah and Philology	p. 152
Reason and Divine Tradition	p. 154
Science, Method, and Transmission	p. 159
Religion in the Feminine Declension	p. 163
Style as Witness
The Orient, "To Orient Oneself"	p. 171
Solitude: "I Live in the Boeotia of Judaism"	p. 175
The Need to Speak	p. 176
The Imaginary Library	p. 177
From Orient to Occident	p. 178
Notes	p. 181
Index	p. 225
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