Sam Lebens has written a richly inventive and thought-provoking book that contributes greatly to ... more Sam Lebens has written a richly inventive and thought-provoking book that contributes greatly to philosophy of religion and to contemporary Jewish philosophy. While there is much that merits response, I will focus here on one central theme of the book: the doctrine, dubbed (Extreme) Hasidic Idealism by Lebens, that we exist only in God's imagination-accordingly that we are nothing but divine ideas. I will also argue that the book exceeds its self-presentation as a work in the "analytic style" and illustrates the need to overcome the analytic/Continental divide.
Karin de Boer has given the best account so far of the reform of Wolffian metaphysics that Kant p... more Karin de Boer has given the best account so far of the reform of Wolffian metaphysics that Kant promised. But does such a reform cohere with the revolutionary goal that Kant also affirmed? Standpoint is singled out as the central meta-concept of Kant's revolutionary goal, and it is argued that, in the second and third critiques, Kant himself developed his revolutionary insight into the perspectival character of both concept and judgement in ways that he did not anticipate at the time of the first critique, when his promise to reform metaphysics was made. The question is raised what room Kant's revolution leaves for doctrinal and not merely disciplinary judgements in both general and special metaphysics, and also whether the opening of new vistas may have drained metaphysical reform of its interest.
On the Rosenzweigian view that I advocate here, redemption is neither a humanly attainable ideal,... more On the Rosenzweigian view that I advocate here, redemption is neither a humanly attainable ideal, nor a regulative ideal, nor a solely critical ideal. Redemption is rather a human actualization whose full realization depends on God. In the course of explicating this claim I explore the rabbinic and kabbalistic background to Rosenzweig's position.
Tsimtsum and Modernity, eds. Daniel Weiss and Agata Bielik-Robson, 2020
The concept of tsimtsum is the most significant concept of recent Jewish thought, both within lit... more The concept of tsimtsum is the most significant concept of recent Jewish thought, both within literature addressed to Jews and within philosophy more generally conceived. Yet it is all too often construed in contemporary work in a misleading way because of the influence of Gershom Scholem. I argue that Scholem’s proposal that “tsimtsum” be translated as “withdrawal” and that the kabbalists inverted the meaning of the term in its midrashic use is tendentious. There is no reason to abandon the standard translation of “tsimtsum” as “contraction” in the sense of concentration, and the scriptural-midrashic tradition remains essential background for understanding the concept. To accept Scholem’s translation proposal is to close oneself to much of the concept’s significance, and to close oneself, not only to the mainstream of Jewish thought over the last four centuries, but also to the most explicit version of tsimtsum in the post-Kantian tradition, which is to be found in the work of Schelling.
Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism... more Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism and the limits of cognition, discovered when criticism is pursued methodically, that are due to the perspectival character of the human standpoint. After a period of disparagement, these Kantian insights have been sympathetically construed and are now discussed within contemporary analytic philosophy. However, if Kant's assumption of a single, immutable, human framework is jettisoned, then the rationality of historical succession is called into question. Moreover, if the revolutionary character of framework transitions is acknowledged, then reason is historicized and even its character as reason is threatened. I argue that Menachem Fisch's approach to criticism and rationality offers an escape from this post-Kantian predicament that acknowledges revolutionary framework transitions and that draws upon the dialogical traditions of Jewish thought, and I also argue that Fisch's approach should be seen as thematizing, to use the terms of Kant's aesthetics and of Fichte's account of natural right, the reflecting rather than determining status of critical judgement, which involves second-personal address.
"From World-Soul to Universal Organism: Maimon's Hypothesis and Schelling's Physicalization of a Platonic-Kabbalistic Concept" from G. Anthony Bruno, ed., Schelling's Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity, Cambridge University Press, 2020
Habermas explained the attraction of German Idealism to twentieth century Jewish philosophers by ... more Habermas explained the attraction of German Idealism to twentieth century Jewish philosophers by appealing to the impact of kabbalah on the German Idealists. Schelling was his principal example. In this article, I trace two lines of Jewish reception of Schelling in the nineteenth century. Among German-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of his philosophy of mythology, not because of his relation to kabbalah. Among Galician-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of what they took to be his non-mythological version of kabbalah. In both cases, Schelling offered a middle road between, on the one hand, traditionalist rejection of modernity and non-Jewish philosophy and, on the other, varieties of antinomianism.
Beinhaltet der Deutsche Idealismus einen " heimlichen Antisemitismus " , wie Michael Mack behaupt... more Beinhaltet der Deutsche Idealismus einen " heimlichen Antisemitismus " , wie Michael Mack behauptet, oder ist er einem kabbalistischen Erbe verpflichtet, wie Jürgen Habermas meint? Beide Behauptungen enthalten ein Körnchen Wahrheit. Vom christlichen Anti-Judaismus übernehmen Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Gebrauch des Begriffs " Judaismus " , um zunächst einen maximalen Span-nungsmoment der Dialektik zu bezeichnen – dem geschichtlichen Gipfelpunkt verlockend nahe, aber zugleich frustrierend fern. Erst in zweiter Linie bezeichnet " Judaismus " eine lebendige post-biblische Religion. Solche Urteile über den Judaismus können einzig und allein auf das Alte Testament gegründet und unmit-telbar auf zeitgenössische Juden angewendet werden. Somit interpretieren auch Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Judaismus mit Hilfe ihres spezifischen Kon-zepts von Dialektik. Während Schelling und Hegel einen Augustinischen, relativ milden Anti-Judaismus vertreten, ermöglicht Kant eine neo-markionistische Eli-minierung des Judaismus – eine Möglichkeit, die Fichte, den Antisemitismus vor-wegnehmend, dann realisiert. Eine aufmerksame Betrachtung des rabbinischen Judaismus lässt die Kritik der Deutschen Idealisten indessen als fragwürdig erscheinen. Ihre Ansicht des Absoluten als einer selbstverneinenden Negativität ist der lurianischen Kabbala verpflichtet. Allerdings werden kabbalistische Ideen in der christlichen Kabbalistik üblicherweise entweder ins biblische Altertum zurück-versetzt oder als christlich vereinnahmt. Philosophen, die sich mit der Tradition des Deutschen Idealismus befassen, sollten auf die Notwendigkeit einer Revision sol-cher Urteile reflektieren, um die Fallstricke des Anti-Judaismus zu vermeiden und die fruchtbare Beziehung der Philosophie zum Judaismus anerkennen.
The Spinozism controversy remains one of the formative disputes of late modernity. It has decisiv... more The Spinozism controversy remains one of the formative disputes of late modernity. It has decisively shaped both the development of post-Kantian philosophy in general and the development of Jewish philosophy in particular. Yet Mendelssohn and Jacobi, its principal protagonists, talk almost entirely past one another. Mendelssohn readily confesses that he does not understand Jacobi. Meanwhile, Jacobi could hardly be accused of attempting a sympathetic interpretation of Mendelssohn. He treats Spinoza and Lessing with great respect, but Mendelssohn -along with the Berlin Enlightenment, with which he is so closely associated -is the main target of his attack and the object of his condescension.
How does Spinoza’s passing statement in a letter that “determination is negation” become central ... more How does Spinoza’s passing statement in a letter that “determination is negation” become central to Hegel’s Spinoza interpretation? The background is a tradition that negotiates Spinoza’s Jewishness by means of another epistolary statement: that “nothing comes from nothing.” More made this Kabbalah’s first principle, while Bayle associated it with Spinoza and the Orient. Wachter and Basnage then interpreted Spinoza as philosophical Kabbalah’s main exponent. Jacobi construed the principle as a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, identifying Spinozistic rationalism with philosophical Kabbalah. The consequence was a negative view of determinacy and, indeed, nihilism. Hegel drew on this tradition but argued that Spinoza’s Jewishness consisted in a static nihilism lacking the dialectical self-negating found only in Trinitarian thinkers such as Boehme and himself. Yet, in an irony typical of German idealist discussions of Judaism, self-negating negativity is central to the Lurianic Kabbalah discussed in the tradition on which Hegel draws
Peirce remarks on several occasions in the 1890s on affinities between his evolutionary metaphysi... more Peirce remarks on several occasions in the 1890s on affinities between his evolutionary metaphysics and Schelling’s Idealism, behind which, he avers, lies ‘the monstrous mysticism of the East’. What are these affinities? Why are they affinities with Schelling rather than with Hegel? And what is the mysticism in question? I argue that Schelling, like Peirce but unlike Hegel, is committed to evolution, not only across species boundaries, but also across the boundary between the inorganic and the organic. Moreover, Schelling, like Peirce but unlike Hegel, embeds this account of evolution in an account of the evolution of God through love. The monstrous mysticism of the East, I argue, is Lurianic kabbalah, to which Schelling is demonstrably indebted, and which is committed to an evolutionary theism on which is based, if not an account of natural evolution, an account of reincarnation as a mechanism by which life-forms progress from inorganic to organic bodies as they develop their consciousness. Publicized by Christian kabbalists such as Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, incarnationism prepared the way for evolutionism. Peirce’s remarks show his awareness, not only of his debt to Schelling’s Idealism, but also of Idealism’s debt to kabbalah.
desdemona's lie: nihilism, Perfectionism, historicism Paul Franks abstract: does the eighteenth-c... more desdemona's lie: nihilism, Perfectionism, historicism Paul Franks abstract: does the eighteenth-century spinozism debate, in which Jacobi popularized the term "nihilism," illuminate nietzsche's conceptions of nihilism and genealogy? frederick Beiser interprets Jacobian nihilism as radicalized cartesian skepticism, according to which even the subject of ideas is unknowable. Bernard reginster distinguishes two senses of nietzschean nihilism: a metaethical antirealism about our highest values and an ethical despair arising from the sense that our highest values are unrealizable. if both are correct, then juxtaposition is unilluminating. i argue that Jacobi and nietzsche understand nihilism as a disruption of the formation of the subject capable of epistemic or ethical agency, operating in the dimension that stanley cavell calls moral perfectionism. Jacobi's alternative to nihilism is lived historicity. the young nietzsche realizes that critical historiography undermines this alternative and celebrates the annihilation of personal subjecthood in his inaugural lecture. in the Genealogy, nietzsche seeks to develop a historiography empowering his readers to avoid nihilism by actively forming personal subjects. Genealogy's effectiveness does not require truthfulness. emilia: o, who hath done this deed? desdemona: nobody; i myself.
Sam Lebens has written a richly inventive and thought-provoking book that contributes greatly to ... more Sam Lebens has written a richly inventive and thought-provoking book that contributes greatly to philosophy of religion and to contemporary Jewish philosophy. While there is much that merits response, I will focus here on one central theme of the book: the doctrine, dubbed (Extreme) Hasidic Idealism by Lebens, that we exist only in God's imagination-accordingly that we are nothing but divine ideas. I will also argue that the book exceeds its self-presentation as a work in the "analytic style" and illustrates the need to overcome the analytic/Continental divide.
Karin de Boer has given the best account so far of the reform of Wolffian metaphysics that Kant p... more Karin de Boer has given the best account so far of the reform of Wolffian metaphysics that Kant promised. But does such a reform cohere with the revolutionary goal that Kant also affirmed? Standpoint is singled out as the central meta-concept of Kant's revolutionary goal, and it is argued that, in the second and third critiques, Kant himself developed his revolutionary insight into the perspectival character of both concept and judgement in ways that he did not anticipate at the time of the first critique, when his promise to reform metaphysics was made. The question is raised what room Kant's revolution leaves for doctrinal and not merely disciplinary judgements in both general and special metaphysics, and also whether the opening of new vistas may have drained metaphysical reform of its interest.
On the Rosenzweigian view that I advocate here, redemption is neither a humanly attainable ideal,... more On the Rosenzweigian view that I advocate here, redemption is neither a humanly attainable ideal, nor a regulative ideal, nor a solely critical ideal. Redemption is rather a human actualization whose full realization depends on God. In the course of explicating this claim I explore the rabbinic and kabbalistic background to Rosenzweig's position.
Tsimtsum and Modernity, eds. Daniel Weiss and Agata Bielik-Robson, 2020
The concept of tsimtsum is the most significant concept of recent Jewish thought, both within lit... more The concept of tsimtsum is the most significant concept of recent Jewish thought, both within literature addressed to Jews and within philosophy more generally conceived. Yet it is all too often construed in contemporary work in a misleading way because of the influence of Gershom Scholem. I argue that Scholem’s proposal that “tsimtsum” be translated as “withdrawal” and that the kabbalists inverted the meaning of the term in its midrashic use is tendentious. There is no reason to abandon the standard translation of “tsimtsum” as “contraction” in the sense of concentration, and the scriptural-midrashic tradition remains essential background for understanding the concept. To accept Scholem’s translation proposal is to close oneself to much of the concept’s significance, and to close oneself, not only to the mainstream of Jewish thought over the last four centuries, but also to the most explicit version of tsimtsum in the post-Kantian tradition, which is to be found in the work of Schelling.
Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism... more Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism and the limits of cognition, discovered when criticism is pursued methodically, that are due to the perspectival character of the human standpoint. After a period of disparagement, these Kantian insights have been sympathetically construed and are now discussed within contemporary analytic philosophy. However, if Kant's assumption of a single, immutable, human framework is jettisoned, then the rationality of historical succession is called into question. Moreover, if the revolutionary character of framework transitions is acknowledged, then reason is historicized and even its character as reason is threatened. I argue that Menachem Fisch's approach to criticism and rationality offers an escape from this post-Kantian predicament that acknowledges revolutionary framework transitions and that draws upon the dialogical traditions of Jewish thought, and I also argue that Fisch's approach should be seen as thematizing, to use the terms of Kant's aesthetics and of Fichte's account of natural right, the reflecting rather than determining status of critical judgement, which involves second-personal address.
"From World-Soul to Universal Organism: Maimon's Hypothesis and Schelling's Physicalization of a Platonic-Kabbalistic Concept" from G. Anthony Bruno, ed., Schelling's Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity, Cambridge University Press, 2020
Habermas explained the attraction of German Idealism to twentieth century Jewish philosophers by ... more Habermas explained the attraction of German Idealism to twentieth century Jewish philosophers by appealing to the impact of kabbalah on the German Idealists. Schelling was his principal example. In this article, I trace two lines of Jewish reception of Schelling in the nineteenth century. Among German-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of his philosophy of mythology, not because of his relation to kabbalah. Among Galician-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of what they took to be his non-mythological version of kabbalah. In both cases, Schelling offered a middle road between, on the one hand, traditionalist rejection of modernity and non-Jewish philosophy and, on the other, varieties of antinomianism.
Beinhaltet der Deutsche Idealismus einen " heimlichen Antisemitismus " , wie Michael Mack behaupt... more Beinhaltet der Deutsche Idealismus einen " heimlichen Antisemitismus " , wie Michael Mack behauptet, oder ist er einem kabbalistischen Erbe verpflichtet, wie Jürgen Habermas meint? Beide Behauptungen enthalten ein Körnchen Wahrheit. Vom christlichen Anti-Judaismus übernehmen Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Gebrauch des Begriffs " Judaismus " , um zunächst einen maximalen Span-nungsmoment der Dialektik zu bezeichnen – dem geschichtlichen Gipfelpunkt verlockend nahe, aber zugleich frustrierend fern. Erst in zweiter Linie bezeichnet " Judaismus " eine lebendige post-biblische Religion. Solche Urteile über den Judaismus können einzig und allein auf das Alte Testament gegründet und unmit-telbar auf zeitgenössische Juden angewendet werden. Somit interpretieren auch Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Judaismus mit Hilfe ihres spezifischen Kon-zepts von Dialektik. Während Schelling und Hegel einen Augustinischen, relativ milden Anti-Judaismus vertreten, ermöglicht Kant eine neo-markionistische Eli-minierung des Judaismus – eine Möglichkeit, die Fichte, den Antisemitismus vor-wegnehmend, dann realisiert. Eine aufmerksame Betrachtung des rabbinischen Judaismus lässt die Kritik der Deutschen Idealisten indessen als fragwürdig erscheinen. Ihre Ansicht des Absoluten als einer selbstverneinenden Negativität ist der lurianischen Kabbala verpflichtet. Allerdings werden kabbalistische Ideen in der christlichen Kabbalistik üblicherweise entweder ins biblische Altertum zurück-versetzt oder als christlich vereinnahmt. Philosophen, die sich mit der Tradition des Deutschen Idealismus befassen, sollten auf die Notwendigkeit einer Revision sol-cher Urteile reflektieren, um die Fallstricke des Anti-Judaismus zu vermeiden und die fruchtbare Beziehung der Philosophie zum Judaismus anerkennen.
The Spinozism controversy remains one of the formative disputes of late modernity. It has decisiv... more The Spinozism controversy remains one of the formative disputes of late modernity. It has decisively shaped both the development of post-Kantian philosophy in general and the development of Jewish philosophy in particular. Yet Mendelssohn and Jacobi, its principal protagonists, talk almost entirely past one another. Mendelssohn readily confesses that he does not understand Jacobi. Meanwhile, Jacobi could hardly be accused of attempting a sympathetic interpretation of Mendelssohn. He treats Spinoza and Lessing with great respect, but Mendelssohn -along with the Berlin Enlightenment, with which he is so closely associated -is the main target of his attack and the object of his condescension.
How does Spinoza’s passing statement in a letter that “determination is negation” become central ... more How does Spinoza’s passing statement in a letter that “determination is negation” become central to Hegel’s Spinoza interpretation? The background is a tradition that negotiates Spinoza’s Jewishness by means of another epistolary statement: that “nothing comes from nothing.” More made this Kabbalah’s first principle, while Bayle associated it with Spinoza and the Orient. Wachter and Basnage then interpreted Spinoza as philosophical Kabbalah’s main exponent. Jacobi construed the principle as a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, identifying Spinozistic rationalism with philosophical Kabbalah. The consequence was a negative view of determinacy and, indeed, nihilism. Hegel drew on this tradition but argued that Spinoza’s Jewishness consisted in a static nihilism lacking the dialectical self-negating found only in Trinitarian thinkers such as Boehme and himself. Yet, in an irony typical of German idealist discussions of Judaism, self-negating negativity is central to the Lurianic Kabbalah discussed in the tradition on which Hegel draws
Peirce remarks on several occasions in the 1890s on affinities between his evolutionary metaphysi... more Peirce remarks on several occasions in the 1890s on affinities between his evolutionary metaphysics and Schelling’s Idealism, behind which, he avers, lies ‘the monstrous mysticism of the East’. What are these affinities? Why are they affinities with Schelling rather than with Hegel? And what is the mysticism in question? I argue that Schelling, like Peirce but unlike Hegel, is committed to evolution, not only across species boundaries, but also across the boundary between the inorganic and the organic. Moreover, Schelling, like Peirce but unlike Hegel, embeds this account of evolution in an account of the evolution of God through love. The monstrous mysticism of the East, I argue, is Lurianic kabbalah, to which Schelling is demonstrably indebted, and which is committed to an evolutionary theism on which is based, if not an account of natural evolution, an account of reincarnation as a mechanism by which life-forms progress from inorganic to organic bodies as they develop their consciousness. Publicized by Christian kabbalists such as Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, incarnationism prepared the way for evolutionism. Peirce’s remarks show his awareness, not only of his debt to Schelling’s Idealism, but also of Idealism’s debt to kabbalah.
desdemona's lie: nihilism, Perfectionism, historicism Paul Franks abstract: does the eighteenth-c... more desdemona's lie: nihilism, Perfectionism, historicism Paul Franks abstract: does the eighteenth-century spinozism debate, in which Jacobi popularized the term "nihilism," illuminate nietzsche's conceptions of nihilism and genealogy? frederick Beiser interprets Jacobian nihilism as radicalized cartesian skepticism, according to which even the subject of ideas is unknowable. Bernard reginster distinguishes two senses of nietzschean nihilism: a metaethical antirealism about our highest values and an ethical despair arising from the sense that our highest values are unrealizable. if both are correct, then juxtaposition is unilluminating. i argue that Jacobi and nietzsche understand nihilism as a disruption of the formation of the subject capable of epistemic or ethical agency, operating in the dimension that stanley cavell calls moral perfectionism. Jacobi's alternative to nihilism is lived historicity. the young nietzsche realizes that critical historiography undermines this alternative and celebrates the annihilation of personal subjecthood in his inaugural lecture. in the Genealogy, nietzsche seeks to develop a historiography empowering his readers to avoid nihilism by actively forming personal subjects. Genealogy's effectiveness does not require truthfulness. emilia: o, who hath done this deed? desdemona: nobody; i myself.
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evolution of God through love. The monstrous mysticism of the East, I argue, is Lurianic kabbalah, to which Schelling is demonstrably indebted, and which is committed to an evolutionary theism on which is based, if not an account of natural evolution, an account of reincarnation as a mechanism by which life-forms progress from inorganic to organic bodies as they develop their consciousness. Publicized by Christian kabbalists such as Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, incarnationism prepared the way for evolutionism. Peirce’s remarks show his awareness, not only of his debt to Schelling’s
Idealism, but also of Idealism’s debt to kabbalah.
evolution of God through love. The monstrous mysticism of the East, I argue, is Lurianic kabbalah, to which Schelling is demonstrably indebted, and which is committed to an evolutionary theism on which is based, if not an account of natural evolution, an account of reincarnation as a mechanism by which life-forms progress from inorganic to organic bodies as they develop their consciousness. Publicized by Christian kabbalists such as Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, incarnationism prepared the way for evolutionism. Peirce’s remarks show his awareness, not only of his debt to Schelling’s
Idealism, but also of Idealism’s debt to kabbalah.