Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503635309
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 612
Book Description
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering between the poles of nihilism and hope. By placing Susan Taubes in dialogue with a host of other seminal thinkers, Wolfson illumines how she presciently explored the hypernomian status of Jewish ritual and belief after the Holocaust; the theopolitical challenges of Zionism and the dangers of ethnonationalism; the antitheological theology and gnostic repercussions of Heideggerian thought; the mystical atheism and apophaticism of tragedy in Simone Weil; and the understanding of poetry as the means to face the faceless and to confront the silence of death in the temporal overcoming of time through time. Wolfson delves into the abyss that molded Susan Taubes's mytheological thinking, making a powerful case for the continued relevance of her work to the study of philosophy and religion today.
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503635309
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 612
Book Description
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering between the poles of nihilism and hope. By placing Susan Taubes in dialogue with a host of other seminal thinkers, Wolfson illumines how she presciently explored the hypernomian status of Jewish ritual and belief after the Holocaust; the theopolitical challenges of Zionism and the dangers of ethnonationalism; the antitheological theology and gnostic repercussions of Heideggerian thought; the mystical atheism and apophaticism of tragedy in Simone Weil; and the understanding of poetry as the means to face the faceless and to confront the silence of death in the temporal overcoming of time through time. Wolfson delves into the abyss that molded Susan Taubes's mytheological thinking, making a powerful case for the continued relevance of her work to the study of philosophy and religion today.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503635309
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 612
Book Description
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering between the poles of nihilism and hope. By placing Susan Taubes in dialogue with a host of other seminal thinkers, Wolfson illumines how she presciently explored the hypernomian status of Jewish ritual and belief after the Holocaust; the theopolitical challenges of Zionism and the dangers of ethnonationalism; the antitheological theology and gnostic repercussions of Heideggerian thought; the mystical atheism and apophaticism of tragedy in Simone Weil; and the understanding of poetry as the means to face the faceless and to confront the silence of death in the temporal overcoming of time through time. Wolfson delves into the abyss that molded Susan Taubes's mytheological thinking, making a powerful case for the continued relevance of her work to the study of philosophy and religion today.
Nocturnal Seeing
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503640973
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
In this erudite new work, Elliot R. Wolfson explores philosophical gnosis in the writings of Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod. The juxtaposition of these three extraordinary, albeit relatively neglected, philosophers provides a prism through which Wolfson scrutinizes the interplay of ethics, politics, and theology. The bond that ties together the diverse and multifaceted worldviews promulgated by Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod is the mutual recognition of the need to enunciate a response to the calamities of the twentieth century based on an incontrovertible acknowledgment of the decadence and malevolence of human beings, without, however, succumbing to acrimony and despair. The speculation of each of these philosophers on melancholia and the tragicomedy of being is unquestionably intricate, exhibiting subtle variations and idiosyncrasies, but we can nevertheless identify a common denominator in their attempt to find the midpoint positioned between hope and hopelessness. As Wolfson articulates, Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod exemplify a philosophical sensibility informed by a nocturnal seeing, which is not merely a seeing in the night but rather a seeing of the night. Ultimately, the book reveals the potential for these thinkers' ideas to enhance our moral sensitivity and to encourage participation in the ongoing struggle for meaning and decency in the present.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503640973
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
In this erudite new work, Elliot R. Wolfson explores philosophical gnosis in the writings of Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod. The juxtaposition of these three extraordinary, albeit relatively neglected, philosophers provides a prism through which Wolfson scrutinizes the interplay of ethics, politics, and theology. The bond that ties together the diverse and multifaceted worldviews promulgated by Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod is the mutual recognition of the need to enunciate a response to the calamities of the twentieth century based on an incontrovertible acknowledgment of the decadence and malevolence of human beings, without, however, succumbing to acrimony and despair. The speculation of each of these philosophers on melancholia and the tragicomedy of being is unquestionably intricate, exhibiting subtle variations and idiosyncrasies, but we can nevertheless identify a common denominator in their attempt to find the midpoint positioned between hope and hopelessness. As Wolfson articulates, Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod exemplify a philosophical sensibility informed by a nocturnal seeing, which is not merely a seeing in the night but rather a seeing of the night. Ultimately, the book reveals the potential for these thinkers' ideas to enhance our moral sensitivity and to encourage participation in the ongoing struggle for meaning and decency in the present.
Occidental Eschatology
Author: Jacob Taubes
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804760284
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Occidental Eschatology is a study of apocalypticism and its effects on Western philosophy. One of the great Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, Taubes published only this one book during his life, and here the English translation finally becomes available.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804760284
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Occidental Eschatology is a study of apocalypticism and its effects on Western philosophy. One of the great Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, Taubes published only this one book during his life, and here the English translation finally becomes available.
New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies
Author: Glenn Dynner
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1612499244
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 569
Book Description
The work of Elliot R. Wolfson has profoundly influenced the fields of Jewish studies as well as philosophy and religion more broadly. His radically new approaches have created pioneering ways of analyzing texts and thinking about religion through the lens of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory. The contributors to New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars, hearken from diverse fields. Each has learned from and collaborated with Wolfson as student or colleague, and each has expanded the new scholarly directions initiated by Wolfson’s groundbreaking work. Wolfson’s scholarship gives us innovative ways to think about Judaism and a fresh understanding of religion. Not only a scholar, Wolfson is one of the most important Jewish thinkers of our day. Chapters are grouped according to the categories of religion, Jewish thought and philosophy, and a focused section on Kabbalah, Wolfson’s primary specialization. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Wolfson’s published work and a selection of his poetry.
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1612499244
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 569
Book Description
The work of Elliot R. Wolfson has profoundly influenced the fields of Jewish studies as well as philosophy and religion more broadly. His radically new approaches have created pioneering ways of analyzing texts and thinking about religion through the lens of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory. The contributors to New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars, hearken from diverse fields. Each has learned from and collaborated with Wolfson as student or colleague, and each has expanded the new scholarly directions initiated by Wolfson’s groundbreaking work. Wolfson’s scholarship gives us innovative ways to think about Judaism and a fresh understanding of religion. Not only a scholar, Wolfson is one of the most important Jewish thinkers of our day. Chapters are grouped according to the categories of religion, Jewish thought and philosophy, and a focused section on Kabbalah, Wolfson’s primary specialization. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Wolfson’s published work and a selection of his poetry.
Kabbalah and Catastrophe
Author: Hartley Lachter
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503640906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
While premodern kabbalistic texts were not chronicles of historical events, they provided elaborate models for understanding the secret divine plan guiding human affairs. Hartley Lachter analyzes innovative kabbalistic doctrines, such as the idea of reincarnation and the notion of multiple successive universes, through which Jewish mystics sought to demonstrate that the misfortunes of Jewish history were in fact necessary steps toward redemption. Lachter argues that these works, mostly composed between the early 14th century and the generation affected by the Spanish expulsion in the early 16th century, enabled Jewish readers to make sense of the troubling misfortunes of their own time. Kabbalah and Catastrophe uncovers the remarkable variety of ways that kabbalists deployed esoteric tradition to argue that God had not abandoned the Jews to the inscrutable forces of history. Instead, they suggested to readers that Jews are history's primary actors, and that despite their small numbers and lack of military power, Jews nonetheless secretly push history forward. For scholars of Jewish mysticism and medieval Jewish history, Lachter articulates how premodern mystical texts can be crucial sources of insight into how Jews understood the meaning of history.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503640906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
While premodern kabbalistic texts were not chronicles of historical events, they provided elaborate models for understanding the secret divine plan guiding human affairs. Hartley Lachter analyzes innovative kabbalistic doctrines, such as the idea of reincarnation and the notion of multiple successive universes, through which Jewish mystics sought to demonstrate that the misfortunes of Jewish history were in fact necessary steps toward redemption. Lachter argues that these works, mostly composed between the early 14th century and the generation affected by the Spanish expulsion in the early 16th century, enabled Jewish readers to make sense of the troubling misfortunes of their own time. Kabbalah and Catastrophe uncovers the remarkable variety of ways that kabbalists deployed esoteric tradition to argue that God had not abandoned the Jews to the inscrutable forces of history. Instead, they suggested to readers that Jews are history's primary actors, and that despite their small numbers and lack of military power, Jews nonetheless secretly push history forward. For scholars of Jewish mysticism and medieval Jewish history, Lachter articulates how premodern mystical texts can be crucial sources of insight into how Jews understood the meaning of history.
The Political Theology of Paul
Author: Jacob Taubes
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804733458
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
This highly original interpretation of Paul by the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes was presented in a number of lectures held in Heidelberg toward the end of his life, and was regarded by him as his "spiritual testament. Taubes engages with classic Paul commentators, including Karl Barth, but also situates the Pauline text in the context of Freud, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem, and Rosenzweig. In his distinctive argument for the apocalyptic-revolutionary potential of Romans, Taubes also takes issue with the "political theology advanced by the conservative Catholic jurist Carl Schmitt. Taubess reading has been crucial for a number of interpretations of political theology and of Paul--including those of Jan Assmann and Giorgio Agamben--and it belongs to a wave of fresh considerations of Pauls legacy (Boyarin, Lyotard, Badiou, Zîzêk). Finally, Taubess far-ranging lectures provide important insights into the singular experiences and views of this unconventional Jewish intellectual living in post-Holocaust Germany.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804733458
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
This highly original interpretation of Paul by the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes was presented in a number of lectures held in Heidelberg toward the end of his life, and was regarded by him as his "spiritual testament. Taubes engages with classic Paul commentators, including Karl Barth, but also situates the Pauline text in the context of Freud, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem, and Rosenzweig. In his distinctive argument for the apocalyptic-revolutionary potential of Romans, Taubes also takes issue with the "political theology advanced by the conservative Catholic jurist Carl Schmitt. Taubess reading has been crucial for a number of interpretations of political theology and of Paul--including those of Jan Assmann and Giorgio Agamben--and it belongs to a wave of fresh considerations of Pauls legacy (Boyarin, Lyotard, Badiou, Zîzêk). Finally, Taubess far-ranging lectures provide important insights into the singular experiences and views of this unconventional Jewish intellectual living in post-Holocaust Germany.
The Andalusi Literary and Intellectual Tradition
Author: Sarah J. Pearce
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253026016
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Beginning in 1172, Judah ibn Tibbon, who was called the father of Hebrew translators, wrote a letter to his son that was full of personal and professional guidance. The detailed letter, described as an ethical will, was revised through the years and offered a vivid picture of intellectual life among Andalusi elites exiled in the south of France after 1148. S. J. Pearce sets this letter into broader context and reads it as a document of literary practice and intellectual values. She reveals how ibn Tibbon, as a translator of philosophical and religious texts, explains how his son should make his way in the family business and how to operate, textually, within Arabic literary models even when writing for a non-Arabic audience. While the letter is also full of personal criticism and admonitions, Pearce shows ibn Tibbon making a powerful argument in favor of the continuation of Arabic as a prestige language for Andalusi Jewish readers and writers, even in exile outside of the Islamic world.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253026016
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Beginning in 1172, Judah ibn Tibbon, who was called the father of Hebrew translators, wrote a letter to his son that was full of personal and professional guidance. The detailed letter, described as an ethical will, was revised through the years and offered a vivid picture of intellectual life among Andalusi elites exiled in the south of France after 1148. S. J. Pearce sets this letter into broader context and reads it as a document of literary practice and intellectual values. She reveals how ibn Tibbon, as a translator of philosophical and religious texts, explains how his son should make his way in the family business and how to operate, textually, within Arabic literary models even when writing for a non-Arabic audience. While the letter is also full of personal criticism and admonitions, Pearce shows ibn Tibbon making a powerful argument in favor of the continuation of Arabic as a prestige language for Andalusi Jewish readers and writers, even in exile outside of the Islamic world.
How the Wise Men Got to Chelm
Author: Ruth von Bernuth
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479886653
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
How the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first in-depth study of Chelm literature and its relationship to its literary precursors. When God created the world, so it is said, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls with instructions to distribute them equally all over the world—one fool per town. But the angel’s bag broke and all the souls spilled out onto the same spot. They built a settlement where they landed: the town is known as Chelm. The collected tales of these fools, or “wise men,” of Chelm constitute the best-known folktale tradition of the Jews of eastern Europe. This tradition includes a sprawling repertoire of stories about the alleged intellectual limitations of the members of this old and important Jewish community. Chelm did not make its debut in the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence until late in the nineteenth century. Since then, however, the town has led a double life—as a real city in eastern Poland and as an imaginary place onto which questions of Jewish identity, community, and history have been projected. By placing literary Chelm and its “foolish” antecedents in a broader historical context, it shows how they have functioned for over three hundred years as models of society, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. These imaginary foolish towns have enabled writers both to entertain and highlight a variety of societal problems, a function that literary Chelm continues to fulfill in Jewish literature to this day.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479886653
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
How the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first in-depth study of Chelm literature and its relationship to its literary precursors. When God created the world, so it is said, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls with instructions to distribute them equally all over the world—one fool per town. But the angel’s bag broke and all the souls spilled out onto the same spot. They built a settlement where they landed: the town is known as Chelm. The collected tales of these fools, or “wise men,” of Chelm constitute the best-known folktale tradition of the Jews of eastern Europe. This tradition includes a sprawling repertoire of stories about the alleged intellectual limitations of the members of this old and important Jewish community. Chelm did not make its debut in the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence until late in the nineteenth century. Since then, however, the town has led a double life—as a real city in eastern Poland and as an imaginary place onto which questions of Jewish identity, community, and history have been projected. By placing literary Chelm and its “foolish” antecedents in a broader historical context, it shows how they have functioned for over three hundred years as models of society, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. These imaginary foolish towns have enabled writers both to entertain and highlight a variety of societal problems, a function that literary Chelm continues to fulfill in Jewish literature to this day.
From Cult to Culture
Author: Jacob Taubes
Publisher: Cultural Memory in the Present
ISBN: 9780804739832
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 397
Book Description
The book is the English edition of a collection of essays by Jacob Taubes, one of the most creative and idiosyncratic philosophers of religion in Germany of the second half of the twentieth century.
Publisher: Cultural Memory in the Present
ISBN: 9780804739832
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 397
Book Description
The book is the English edition of a collection of essays by Jacob Taubes, one of the most creative and idiosyncratic philosophers of religion in Germany of the second half of the twentieth century.
Divorcing
Author: Susan Taubes
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681374951
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Now back in print for the first time since 1969, a stunning novel about childhood, marriage, and divorce by one of the most interesting minds of the twentieth century. Dream and reality overlap in Divorcing, a book in which divorce is not just a question of a broken marriage but names a rift that runs right through the inner and outer worlds of Sophie Blind, its brilliant but desperate protagonist. Can the rift be mended? Perhaps in the form of a novel, one that goes back from present-day New York to Sophie’s childhood in pre–World War II Budapest, that revisits the divorce between her Freudian father and her fickle mother, and finds a place for a host of further tensions and contradictions in her present life. The question that haunts Divorcing, however, is whether any novel can be fleet and bitter and true and light enough to gather up all the darkness of a given life. Susan Taubes’s startlingly original novel was published in 1969 but largely ignored at the time; after the author’s tragic early death, it was forgotten. Its republication presents a chance to discover a splintered, glancing, caustic, and lyrical work by a dazzlingly intense and inventive writer.
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681374951
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Now back in print for the first time since 1969, a stunning novel about childhood, marriage, and divorce by one of the most interesting minds of the twentieth century. Dream and reality overlap in Divorcing, a book in which divorce is not just a question of a broken marriage but names a rift that runs right through the inner and outer worlds of Sophie Blind, its brilliant but desperate protagonist. Can the rift be mended? Perhaps in the form of a novel, one that goes back from present-day New York to Sophie’s childhood in pre–World War II Budapest, that revisits the divorce between her Freudian father and her fickle mother, and finds a place for a host of further tensions and contradictions in her present life. The question that haunts Divorcing, however, is whether any novel can be fleet and bitter and true and light enough to gather up all the darkness of a given life. Susan Taubes’s startlingly original novel was published in 1969 but largely ignored at the time; after the author’s tragic early death, it was forgotten. Its republication presents a chance to discover a splintered, glancing, caustic, and lyrical work by a dazzlingly intense and inventive writer.