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Kabbalistic Panpsychism: The Enigma of Consciousness in Jewish Mystical Thought
From a scientific and philosophical point of view, there is arguably no phenomenon as intractable as the origin and nature of consciousness. This volume provides a comprehensive account of the Kabbalistic understanding of consciousness adduced from ancient Jewish mystical texts and the writings of key sixteenth-twentieth century Kabbalistic and Chassidic luminaries.
- GenresPhilosophy
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2021
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August 9, 2022
This book covers a great deal of technical kabbalistic ground while avoiding any explanatory claims regarding the hard questions of consciousness. Due to the length and complexity of the areas covered, it's probably not a good introduction to kabbalah. The author shows that many current theories of consciousness can find potentially productive mappings within the sephiroth and their hierarchies, while assuming that a distributed panpsychical model of consciousness provides the best mappings.
Since reductionism is pretty much roundly dismissed, the theorizing often has the feeling of preaching to the choir. Does that invalidate the book? I would say no. The richness of kabbalistic systems may yet provide a fertile ground for future speculation. As consciousness in kaballah must originate in the highest three sephiroth whose workings lie forever concealed from human knowledge and experience, speculation may represent the limit of what we can know about the ultimate nature and origin of conscious phenomena. No other analytical approach to consciousness has been able to get beyond the most rudimentary speculation, so there seems to be broad agreement on that score. The reduction argument appears to have long since buckled under the weight of its own contradictions. If indeed we must accept speculation is the best we can hope for where consciousness is concerned-- and this book makes a strong case that it must be -- then this book's overall approach would appear to be sound.
Since reductionism is pretty much roundly dismissed, the theorizing often has the feeling of preaching to the choir. Does that invalidate the book? I would say no. The richness of kabbalistic systems may yet provide a fertile ground for future speculation. As consciousness in kaballah must originate in the highest three sephiroth whose workings lie forever concealed from human knowledge and experience, speculation may represent the limit of what we can know about the ultimate nature and origin of conscious phenomena. No other analytical approach to consciousness has been able to get beyond the most rudimentary speculation, so there seems to be broad agreement on that score. The reduction argument appears to have long since buckled under the weight of its own contradictions. If indeed we must accept speculation is the best we can hope for where consciousness is concerned-- and this book makes a strong case that it must be -- then this book's overall approach would appear to be sound.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review