This entry represents a short, but meaningful detour into the ostensibly separate, but by no means irrelevant subject of pantheism, and its remarkable treatment by the Kabbalah.
Perhaps, the most famous Jewish name associated with pantheism is that of Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza. He is also suspected of being strongly influenced by the Kabbalah, apparently on the presumption that because of his Jewish heritage he could not possibly escape such an influence.
My understanding of Spinoza’s pantheism as a search for the omnipresence of the Absolute is a subject in another section. However, a partial answer to the question of influence, or rather, philosophical affinity, can be obtained just by scratching the surface, once we know where to scratch.
His magnum opus Ethica opens with the principal distinction of substance, attributes, and modes. Because substance cannot be explained by anything else, it has to be its own causa prima, and as such is equated to God, who is also equated to Nature. The fact of such equation denies God the power of transcendence. In other words, it can be said that Spinoza’s philosophy teaches that God is all Substance, and consequently (?!) all Substance is God.
In identifying God with Substance, I see Spinoza’s philosophical affinity with the pantheism of Giordano Bruno, the Italian maverick philosopher burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600. Here is the proper passage from Bruno’s Summa Terminorum Metaphysicorum, whose bright light was a presage of the fire that was to consume him ten years after its publication:
"God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is."
In my own evaluation of pantheism as-such (as opposed to a philosophical search for pantheistic ethics), I am in full agreement with Schopenhauer’s A Few Words on Pantheism, 1851, where his view is succinctly expressed in the following brilliantly literate summary:
“The chief objection I have to pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word world.”
It is therefore with great amazement that, while familiarizing myself with the teachings of the Kabbalah, I discovered a profound formula for the relationship between God and the world, which, even though it may be found objectionable to most theologians in principle, yet legitimizes the crucial pantheistic premise that God is Everything, and particularly immunizes it against the valid criticism of Schopenhauer.
This Kabalistic formula belongs to another genius of Jewish mysticism, Moses Cordovero (1522-1570), a contemporary of Isaac Luria, their two names competing in fame for epitomizing the phenomenon that we know as Kabbalah. So, here is the Cordovero formula, magnificent in its simplicity and profundity:
In mathematical terms we cannot unfortunately express this astonishing blow to conventional wisdom as:
Perhaps, the most famous Jewish name associated with pantheism is that of Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza. He is also suspected of being strongly influenced by the Kabbalah, apparently on the presumption that because of his Jewish heritage he could not possibly escape such an influence.
My understanding of Spinoza’s pantheism as a search for the omnipresence of the Absolute is a subject in another section. However, a partial answer to the question of influence, or rather, philosophical affinity, can be obtained just by scratching the surface, once we know where to scratch.
His magnum opus Ethica opens with the principal distinction of substance, attributes, and modes. Because substance cannot be explained by anything else, it has to be its own causa prima, and as such is equated to God, who is also equated to Nature. The fact of such equation denies God the power of transcendence. In other words, it can be said that Spinoza’s philosophy teaches that God is all Substance, and consequently (?!) all Substance is God.
In identifying God with Substance, I see Spinoza’s philosophical affinity with the pantheism of Giordano Bruno, the Italian maverick philosopher burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600. Here is the proper passage from Bruno’s Summa Terminorum Metaphysicorum, whose bright light was a presage of the fire that was to consume him ten years after its publication:
"God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is."
In my own evaluation of pantheism as-such (as opposed to a philosophical search for pantheistic ethics), I am in full agreement with Schopenhauer’s A Few Words on Pantheism, 1851, where his view is succinctly expressed in the following brilliantly literate summary:
“The chief objection I have to pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word world.”
It is therefore with great amazement that, while familiarizing myself with the teachings of the Kabbalah, I discovered a profound formula for the relationship between God and the world, which, even though it may be found objectionable to most theologians in principle, yet legitimizes the crucial pantheistic premise that God is Everything, and particularly immunizes it against the valid criticism of Schopenhauer.
This Kabalistic formula belongs to another genius of Jewish mysticism, Moses Cordovero (1522-1570), a contemporary of Isaac Luria, their two names competing in fame for epitomizing the phenomenon that we know as Kabbalah. So, here is the Cordovero formula, magnificent in its simplicity and profundity:
“God is Everything, but Everything isn’t God.”
In mathematical terms we cannot unfortunately express this astonishing blow to conventional wisdom as:
(a=b)^(b¹ a)
The reason why we can’t do it is because not only is this conventional wisdom, but the symbols = and ¹ are too conventional themselves, to allow such a bold abuse of elementary logic. That’s why we must do better than that, and fortunately we can, revolutionizing the pantheistic formula in the process:
(aÞ b)^(b¹ a)
Whether the great Spinoza, who lived a full century after Moses Cordovero, was totally unfamiliar with his predecessor’s intellectual discovery, and thus could not profit from it, is beside the point. The fact remains that in all history of human thought there does not exist a better embodiment of the pantheistic conception of GodÞEverything, yet unburdened by its self-defeating flaw, that is, of Everything=God, than the great two-part formula of Moses Cordovero.
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