DURING the first quarter of the twentieth century, shortly after the end of the First World War, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) - the world's leading kabbalist - believed that his people's tendency to concentrate almost exclusively on the mournful aspects of Jewish history and suppress the more 'magical' and 'demonic' aspects of their religion, was having a detrimental impact on the Jews as a whole.
Yes, Jung seems to offer some important resolution of the entirely spiritual and Dr Pangloss view and the complex mysticism of evil. I want to know more about Scholem and Benjamin and the rest of the circle. I was taught by Enrst Gombrich briefly in the mid 1960s, and what I absorbed from then was a kind of bland scientism that iugnored the extaraordinary connections between these people - Scholem, Buber, Landauer, Benjamin, Rosenszweig, Heidegger, Arendt, The rest of the Frankfurt School, etc. and Gombtich himself must have been aware of these people as refugee Jewish intrellectual of the 1930s
When I was required to read Benjamin's Essay on art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin was just another Marxist writer of the 1930s so revered by the embryonic Cultural Studies mob I was a part of.
But I had no idea he as a friend of Martin Buber, Arendt, Heidegger, and Scholem who brough ius the kabbalah. Buber I reached via RD Laing, and I remeber reading his I and Thou for the second time to get it - its language flummoxed me at first - in the tea rooms of Derry and Toms Department Store in High Street Kensington waiting for Janine to finish her shopping - or rather internal window shopping, she was a poor medical student. Janine was whip smart, teasing, born of an Irish dentist and Cockney sparrow and grew up in Ventnor Isle of Wight, going to medcial school at the age of 17, and complaining that medicine was a low level discipline, using the crudest of empirical methods. I loved her.
Had to wait until I ma 80 to make these connections. Thanks for this.
My pleasure, Moe, thanks for your interesting comments. I will be posting some material here on Scholem, Benjamin and Jewish mysticism in the future and hopefully you'll find it useful. It's a pity Gomrich was unable to perceive the esoteric dimension behind a lot of those philosophers you mention. I have a particular interest in the kabbalistic writings of Isaac Luria and will post something on him at some point as well.
Benjamin is very one-dimensional when viewed as just another Frankfurt School thinker, despite his useful critique of consumer society, but his close friendship with Scholem meant that he was always wavering between politics and mysticism. It seems everything caught up with him before he discovered his real destiny.
I haven't read I and Thou in its entirety, and would like to, but coming across Friedrich Schelling's destruction of 'subject' and 'object' sort of derailed that!
Thanks for sharing your memories. I stayed in Ventnor a week back in June 2013 - wonderful place!
Yes, Jung seems to offer some important resolution of the entirely spiritual and Dr Pangloss view and the complex mysticism of evil. I want to know more about Scholem and Benjamin and the rest of the circle. I was taught by Enrst Gombrich briefly in the mid 1960s, and what I absorbed from then was a kind of bland scientism that iugnored the extaraordinary connections between these people - Scholem, Buber, Landauer, Benjamin, Rosenszweig, Heidegger, Arendt, The rest of the Frankfurt School, etc. and Gombtich himself must have been aware of these people as refugee Jewish intrellectual of the 1930s
When I was required to read Benjamin's Essay on art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin was just another Marxist writer of the 1930s so revered by the embryonic Cultural Studies mob I was a part of.
But I had no idea he as a friend of Martin Buber, Arendt, Heidegger, and Scholem who brough ius the kabbalah. Buber I reached via RD Laing, and I remeber reading his I and Thou for the second time to get it - its language flummoxed me at first - in the tea rooms of Derry and Toms Department Store in High Street Kensington waiting for Janine to finish her shopping - or rather internal window shopping, she was a poor medical student. Janine was whip smart, teasing, born of an Irish dentist and Cockney sparrow and grew up in Ventnor Isle of Wight, going to medcial school at the age of 17, and complaining that medicine was a low level discipline, using the crudest of empirical methods. I loved her.
Had to wait until I ma 80 to make these connections. Thanks for this.
My pleasure, Moe, thanks for your interesting comments. I will be posting some material here on Scholem, Benjamin and Jewish mysticism in the future and hopefully you'll find it useful. It's a pity Gomrich was unable to perceive the esoteric dimension behind a lot of those philosophers you mention. I have a particular interest in the kabbalistic writings of Isaac Luria and will post something on him at some point as well.
Benjamin is very one-dimensional when viewed as just another Frankfurt School thinker, despite his useful critique of consumer society, but his close friendship with Scholem meant that he was always wavering between politics and mysticism. It seems everything caught up with him before he discovered his real destiny.
I haven't read I and Thou in its entirety, and would like to, but coming across Friedrich Schelling's destruction of 'subject' and 'object' sort of derailed that!
Thanks for sharing your memories. I stayed in Ventnor a week back in June 2013 - wonderful place!