Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

ISBN-13: 9780199277797 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 400 str.

Elliot R. Wolfson

Opis

Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness.

Recenzje

Wolfson is an exciting and fecund contemporary writer on Jewish mysticism. He has a profound grasp of the breadth of this tradition and...achieves a distinctive and majestic prose which leads the reader on a valuable journey into the depths of mystical consciousness. He is to be congratulated for so doing.

O autorze

Elliot R. Wolfson is Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University.