"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Elliot Wolfson's new volume is massive in every respect: it is massive in
scope, in intellectual reach, in methodological range, and in thematic sweep.
Readers will be especially interested in his formulation of a poetics of Jewish
mystical language, and in the new and strong articulation of his insights into
the topics of gender and the dialectics of absence and presence in the
sources. This is a major work that will certainly stimulate much discussion
and interest.
Elliot R. Wolfson's _Language, Eros, and Being_ is a prodigy of scholarship. From the book's core, the construction of sexuality in religious consciousness and practice, three voices radiate: Continental
philosophy and psychoanalysis; mysticism in Hellenistic, Christian; Islamic, and Buddhist traditions; and the esoteric dimension within Judaism known as Kabbalah. Because of the artful way in which Wolfson orchestrates the polyphony of their fugue-like conversation, the voices converge, dissolving into concord, without ever losing their definitive particularity. Read one way, Wolfson allows Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Maurice Blanchot to introduce and clarify the poetics of Sufi or Kabbalistic thought. Read another way, Wolfson allows Zen masters, Gnostic myths, Ibn al-Arabi,
Rabbi Hayyim Vital and authors of the Zohar to introduce and clarify poststructuralism. Throughout the conversation, Wolfson never indulges in apologetics or New Age gobbledygook. He never stumbles into the trap of ahistorical, apolitical, disembodying "mystocentrism." He never loses sight of his polemical focus on Judaism's lamentable androcentrism. He never compromises the most rigorous demands of historical-philological
argumentation. Making the opposites of diverse discourses to coincide, Wolfson has rendered Kabbalah intelligible and useful to the
world of critical learning.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. This item is printed on demand. Seller Inventory # 9780823224180
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Brand New. 4th edition. 792 pages. 10.25x7.50x1.75 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # x-082322418X
Book Description Condition: New. 2004. Hardback. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780823224180
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. This long-awaited, magisterial study - an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology - draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely become a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole. Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature. Focusing on the nexus of asceticism and eroticism, he seeks to define the role of symbolic and poetically charged language in the erotically configured visionary imagination of the medieval Kabbalists. He demonstrates that the traditional Kabbalistic view of gender was a monolithic and androcentric one, in which the feminine was conceived as being derived from the masculine. He does not shrink from the negative implications of this doctrine, but seeks to make an honest acknowledgment of the first step toward the redemption of an ancient wisdom.Comparisons with other mystical traditions - including those in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam - are a remarkable feature throughout the book. They will make it important well beyond Jewish studies, indeed, a must for historians of comparative religion, in particular of comparative mysticism. This study - a blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology - draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings , Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to explore Kabbalah. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780823224180
Book Description Condition: New. 2004. Hardback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780823224180