Kabbalah and Eros
Kabbalah and Eros
复制标题
卡巴拉与爱欲
DOI：
10.1017/s0364009407000359
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发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
H. Tirosh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
H. Tirosh
ogy makes that a difficult burden to shoulder without even entering the farther reaches of Maimonidean esotericism. First, we have the claim made at Guide 2:48 that speaking of God’s willful action is simply shorthand for speaking of the entire causal chain for which he is ultimately responsible as First Cause, which seems to reduce the distinction between volitional and natural explanation. Although the distinction between willing change and changing one’s will safeguards divine immutability—Seeskin argues that the appeal to will also allows for the explanation of problematic features of the world without implying any resemblance between “cause” and “effect”—the very ideas of will and choice as genuine explanations of anything inevitably lead us to give them a content, however limited, that might be difficult to reconcile with Maimonides’ negative theology. Seeskin readily admits, however, that the arguments for creation ex nihilo leave us, at best, in the position of having “grounds for believing that it occurred even though we cannot say how” (33). Regardless of whether one agrees with Seeskin’s conclusions—and to his great credit, a lack of certainty is an explicit theme throughout the book—students and scholars alike will benefit enormously from his presentation, which is as welcome in its philosophical focus as it is impressive. In a scholarly climate that is often focused on the study of Maimonides’ esotericism, readers who do take Maimonides at his word on creation now have a suitably sophisticated basis on which to build their case.
