Did Neoplatonism influence Kabbalah? Exploring the reception of Neoplatonism in Early Kabbalah via three themes: Negative Theology, Unio Mystica and Emanationism.
Part 3: Plato, Kabbalah and the Italian Renaissance
https://youtu.be/Fi3VDfkTELQ
If you missed the intro: From Neoplatonism to Kabbalah: A Mystical Exploration https://youtu.be/UmkZ383LcW8
Check out the rest of our wonderful collaborators:
@LetsTalkReligion What is Neoplatonism: https://youtu.be/vZEUo_sHoBw
Neoplatonism and Islam:
@TheEsotericaChannel The Neoplatonic Attack on Gnosticism, Plotinus vs the Gnostics: https://youtu.be/ZV5ubPPzT7U
@drangelapuca Plotinus and Iamblichus on Theurgy and Magic: https://youtu.be/lNqnNjsGExM
@TheModernHermeticist The Platonic Philosophers' Creed: https://youtu.be/Wzd98YSG6Hs
@johnvervaeke Neoplatonism & 4E Cognitive Science: https://youtu.be/Lbk3lA6zCic
00:00 Three Themes from Neoplatonism to Kabbalah
00:37 Collab shout out
01:01 What is Emanationism & the Theory of the Forms?
05:12 What is Unio Mystica?
05:56 What is Negative Theology?
06:45 Disclaimers: Pitfalls of Comparison
08:09 The Jewish Neoplatonists
12:44 Mystical Union in Early Kabbalah
17:02 Philo tho…
21:19 Negative Theology in Early Kabbalah
28:29 The Tension
33:43 An Esoteric En Sof
36:51 Sefirot & Emanation in Early Kabbalah
45:36 Exogenous vs Endogenous
47:22 A Human Question
52:10 Summary
53:28 Shout out and Thank you
Sources and Further Reading
• Adam Afterman, “And They Shall Be One Flesh,” On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism, BRILL (2016), pp. 25-7, 79-101, 130-50
• Daniel Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Mystical Judaism,” in The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy by Robert Forman (ed.), New York, 1990, pp. 121-159
• Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), p. 88
• Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 1950, pp. 265-71, 431-45
• Moshe Idel, “Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance” in Lenn Goodman, Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, State University of New York Press, 1992, pp. 325-27, 338-340
• Moshe Idel, Metamorphoses of a Platonic Theme in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 67-8
• Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 239–49
• Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 1988, pp. 31-2
• Sarah Pessin, “Jewish Neoplatonism: Being above Being and Divine Emanation in Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Isaac Israeli” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 91–110
• Raphael Jospe, "Chapter Three. Jewish Neoplatonism: Isaac Israeli and Solomon ibn Gabirol". Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Boston, USA: Academic Studies Press, 2009, pp. 79-131
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