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12Brokenness of Being and Errancy of Ontological Untruth: Susan Taubes’s Criticism of Heidegger’s SeinsdenkenJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 32 (1): 83-132. 2024.In this study, I examine Susan Taubes’s criticism of Heidegger’s Seinsdenken that pivots around her contention that he absolutized the nothingness of being in a manner that is analogous to but yet significantly different than the role assigned to the Godhead on the part of many mystical visionaries. The common denominator is in Heidegger’s insistence on being to the neglect of fully engaging with the rhythms of life. As a consequence, there is no purchase on the chaotic, which falls outside the …Read more
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6Nocturnal seeing: hopelessness of hope and philosophical gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith WyschogrodStanford University Press. 2024.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 re…Read more
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4Temporal Diremption and the Novelty of Genuine RepetitionIn Lissa McCullough & Elliot R. Wolfson (eds.), D. G. Leahy and the thinking now occurring, State University of New York Press. pp. 53-96. 2021.
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13D. G. Leahy and the thinking now occurring (edited book)State University of New York Press. 2021.This book offers a critical introduction to the work of American philosopher D. G. Leahy (1937-2014). Leahy's fundamental thinking can be characterized as an absolute creativity in which all creating is 'live' -- a happening occurring now that manifests a supersaturated polyontological actuality that is essentially created by the logic that characterizes it. Leahy leaves behind the categorial presuppositions of modern thought, eclipsing both Cartesian and Hegelian subjectivities and introducing …Read more
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8Tsimtsum, Lichtung, and the Leap of Bestowing Refusal: Kabbalistic and Heideggerian Metaontology in DialogueIn Agata Bielik-Robson & Daniel H. Weiss (eds.), Tsimtsum and Modernity: Lurianic Heritage in Modern Philosophy and Theology, De Gruyter. pp. 141-190. 2020.
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Structure, innovation, and diremptive temporality: the use of models to study continuity and discontinuity in Kabbalistic traditionIn Moshe Idel, Sandu Frunză & Mihaela Frunză (eds.), Essays in honor of Moshe Idel, Provo Press. 2008.
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16Elliot R. Wolfson: poetic thinkingBrill. 2015.Elliot R. Wolfson is Professor of Religious Studies and the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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10The duplicity of philosophy's shadow: Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish otherColumbia University Press. 2018.Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in the debate over Martin Heidegger and Nazism from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work. He reveals crucial aspects of Heidegger's thinking that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought.
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8Heidegger and Kabbalah: hidden gnosis and the path of poiesisIndiana University Press, Office of Scholarly Publishing, Herman B Wells Library. 2019.Belonging together of the foreign -- Hermeneutic circularity: tradition as genuine repetition of futural past -- Inceptual thinking and nonsystematic atonality -- Heidegger's Seyn/Nichts and Kabbalistic Ein Sof -- Simsum, Lichtung, and bestowing refusal -- Autogenesis, nihilating leap, and otherness of the not-other -- Temporalizing and granting time-space -- Disclosive language: poiesis and apophatic occlusion of occlusion -- Ethnolinguistic enrootedness and invocation of historical destiny.
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Gnosis and the Covert Theology of Antitheology : Heidegger, Apocalypticism, and Gnosticism in Susan and Jacob TaubesIn Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink & Hartmut von Sass (eds.), Depeche mode: Jacob Taubes between politics, philosophy, and religion, Brill. 2022.
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17The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes: Between Nihilism and HopeStanford Studies in Jewish Mys. 2023.Introduction : memory and heeding the murmuring of the Israelites -- Ghosts of Judaism and the serpent devouring its own tale -- Zionism and the sacramental danger of nationalism -- Gnosis and the covert theology of antitheology : Heidegger, apocalypticism, and Gnosticism -- Tragedy, mystical atheism, and the apophaticism of Simone Weil -- Facing the faceless : poetic truth, temporal oblivion, and the silence of death.
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502Melancholic Redemption and the Hopelessness of HopeJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 30 (1): 130-171. 2022.Since late antiquity, a connection was made between Jews and the psychological state of despondency based, in part, on the link between melancholy and Saturn, and the further association of the Hebrew name of that planet, Shabbetai, and the Sabbath. The melancholic predisposition has had important anthropological, cosmological, and theological repercussions. In this essay, I focus on various perspectives on melancholia in thinkers as diverse as Kafka, Levinas, Blanchot, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Blo…Read more
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12Revisioning the Body Apophatically: Incarnation and the Acosmic Naturalism of Habad HasidismIn Chris Boesel (ed.), Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality, Fordham University Press. pp. 147-199. 2022.
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7No one theory of time is pursued in the essays of this volume, but a major theme that threads them together is Wolfson’s signature idea of the timeswerve as a linear circularity or a circular linearity, expressions that are meant to avoid the conventional split between the two temporal modalities of the line and the circle.
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18Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming TheomaniaFordham University Press. 2014.Introduction: imagination and the prism of the inapparent -- 1. Via negativa and the imaginal configuring of God -- 2. Apophatic vision and overcoming the dialogical -- 3. Echo of the otherwise and the lure of theolatry -- 4. Secrecy of the gift and the gift of secrecy -- 5. Immanent atheology and the trace of transcendence -- 6. Undoing (k)not of apophaticism: a Heideggerian afterthought.
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346Theolatry and the Making-Present of the NonrepresentableJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 25 (1): 5-35. 2017._ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 5 - 35 In this essay, I place Buber’s thought in dialogue with Eckhart. Each understood that the theopoetic propensity to imagine the transcendent in images is no more than a projection of our will to impute form to the formless. The presence of God is made present through imaging the real, but imaging the real implies that the nonrepresentable presence can only be made present through the absence of representation. The goal of the journey is to venture beyond t…Read more
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3Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic MysticysmOxford University Press UK. 2006.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 mysticis…Read more
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Traces of Philonic Doctrine in Medieval Jewish Mysticism: A Preliminary NoteThe Studia Philonica Annual 8 99-106. 1996.
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66Secrecy, modesty, and the feminine : kabbalistic traces in the thought of LevinasJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 14 (1): 193-224. 2010.A number of scholars have discussed the possible affinities between Levinas and the kabbalah. In this essay, I explore the nexus between eros, secrecy, modesty, and the feminine in the thought of Levinas compared to a similar complex of ideas elicited from kabbalistic speculation. In addition to the likelihood that Levinas may have been influenced by the interrelatedness of these motifs in kabbalistic lore, I argue that he proffers an anti-theosophic interpretation of kabbalah, which accords wit…Read more
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13Perspectives on Jewish Thought and MysticismTaylor & Francis. 1998.First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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6The Unknown, Remembered Gate: Religious Experience and Hermeneutical Reflection in the History of ReligionsChatham House Publishers. 2002.This collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in religion in North America explores the complex relationship between the academic study of religion and personal religious experience. Each volume in this new series explores a central theme or topic that has informed the religious experiences of humanity throughout history. Each theme is discussed from a comparative perspective using a variety of methodological approaches.
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256Facing the Effaced: Mystical Eschatology and the Idealistic Orientation in the Thought of Franz RosenzweigJournal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 4 (1): 39-81. 1997.
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178Text, Context, and Pretext: Review Essay of Yehuda Liebes's Ars Poetica in Sefer YetsiraThe Studia Philonica Annual 16 218-228. 2004.
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6Suffering Religion (edited book)Routledge. 2002.In a diverse and innovative selection of new essays by cutting-edge theologians and philosophers, _Suffering Religion_ examines one of the most primitive but challenging questions to define human experience - why do we suffer? As a theme uniting very different religious and cultural traditions, the problem of suffering addresses issues of passivity, the vulnerability of embodiment, the generosity of love and the complexity of gendered desire. Interdisciplinary studies bring different kinds of in…Read more