One of the very difficult concepts in the history
of Jewish theology is that of Tzimtzum.
And with me to explore it
and how it's influencing
her own research is
Professor Agata Bielik-Robson. Agata,
it's one of those really dreadful concepts
to try and describe.
But I'm going to ask you
>>Even pronounce. Even pronounce. Okay
Tzimtzum... is the term
which seems obscure because it belongs
to a philosophic tradition
Jewish thought most of
all Kabbalah although it has
earlier antecedents already in Midrash's.
But it's actually incredibly important,
because it was the seemingly obscure concept
that arose within the lore
of Palestinian Kabbalah in
the sort of Isaac Luria in 16th century.
Subsequently to
influence practically the whole of
modern thought... and now at the point of
completion of the anthology of
texts which are all
devoted to the aftermath or
afterlives of the concept
of Tzimtzum. in modernity.
And basically show that
this seemingly very obscure
and enigmatic notion creates
is by Isaac Luria can be found
everywhere, in Isaac Newton
in Leibnitz in German idealism in
Schelling, in Hegel in Christian Kabbalah, in
the pyre tests in German mistakes... >>okay okay
up to the usual suspects
of the Jewish thought in the 20th century
obviously Derrida, Hans Jonas, Adore
Bloch etc >>let's do is let's start with.
Let's let's try and just
get the influence in three.
Tzimtzum is actually
sometimes called neureanic mysticsm...
>>Yes because that's
another bit of jargon out there
and we'll just try and tie it down.
Okay, how about
Newton, the Pietas and say Hans Jonas.
Because we don't think of we don't
think of Isaac Newton as...
we think of as a scientist
not a religious thinker. We think of
the Pietas as characteristically Christian.
And then Hans Jonas
as a modern Jewish thinker.
So Tzimtzum in
and it's influence on Newton.
Well first of all the definition of Tzimtzum
it means in Hebrew 'God's contraction'
withdrawal, retreat.
It sometimes points to a voluntary action
in which God retreats into
his second parents in order to make
a room within himself for something else.
The best way to approach
Tzimtzum is to quote Sholom who
basically paraphrases the barra sheet,
the first lines of the Hebrew Bible
by saying a Luria
In the beginning God creates nothing.
So God does not create
the world directly out of himself out
of the simple presence of
the substance which is in him, he
first creates nothingness in order to
make an empty room a space that is marked by
a radical separation between
it and the God and only into
this emptiness sends the raise of
emanation which then formed
the bad of the future world.
But the story is actually
even more traumatic because
these rays of emanation
emanating strong divine light
they meet the forms
that are prepared for them there.
The so-called vessels
but because there is
already a separation between God and
this emptiness they're tinged with nothingness.
So they cannot withstand
the force of the slide so they break.
So we have this moment of Shevat are
killing the breaking of the vessels.
And the issuing world is
actually kind of a chaos of mixture
of form and matter
of the spikes and the sharks.
But in the end what happens in the end of
this whole dramatic philosophic story is that
the world emerges as
something radically other to God
radically other. Sharing only elements of
the dispersed light but
absolutely discontinuous
with the divine origin.
And this has this idea sociologically new
innovative as strange that
actually proves to be
so attractive to
many modern thinkers eager to break
with the traditional idea
of the relationship between world and God -
that is God imagined as the absolute maintaining
the world continuously in
existence via cratsea continua.
Modernity wanted to break with this image of
the world as sustained within God's existence
and hence Isaac Newton
OK, get back to Newton, >>the first Deist.
Who basically says that
the world is the other is
the finished totality which has been given
everything it needs in order
to sustain itself in existence.
All the laws all the forces all the energies.
And the God who is
indeed a creator of all this
has withdrew from an active participation
In the world so
Diesm which talks about God's withdraw is
actually a kind of cooler less dramatic but
still a philosophical version
of of Isaac's Luria's vision of Tzimtzum.
So it's a little bit like
when Napoleon meets Laplace
and Napoleon asks
the question where is God in
this system >>and we don't
>>need this hypotheses. Exactly.
Well in a way we do.
And this is where
Hans Jonas comes in the picture.
Where he says that
this is a hypotheses of the Godhead.
He doesn't even call it a God in
a personal sense of the Godhead which in
times in Memorial...
...past immemorial.
Past has given itself
over to hazard and risk.
The process of becoming for
Jonas we still need this hypotheses.
But in a vestigial form that only
refers to this long gone origins
of the first withdrawl of
God that created the space of
a new kind of being called
becoming, that for Jonas
we still need this hypotheses because it
also orients us towards
the possible metaphysical
future of the world.
This is drawing on
Luria's mystical or Messianic idea
that the world is created as
radically other too God's mode of being but it
also is charged with
an application to put itself in order.
That is to recreate that divine phase.
But then within the imminence.
So it is somehow
a sacred obligation of
the wall the sacred moral
religious duty to pursue
the Messianic path of this
imminent as recreation of
God's face. You've shown us this...
you've shows this influence of Luria
on Isaac Newton and Jonas.
But in between you mentioned
the Pietas and why one would, can
expect it, to a certain extent
in someone like Isaac Newton and in
Jonas, it's seems.. >> Odd?
Odd, yes it's far less what we would expect.
So how is it present in
the Pietas? Indirectly via
the so-called Christian Kabbalah which
is a a wide phenomenon spreading in
the 17th century in Europe due to
the translations although they
were never really like translations.
But the translatory
modifications of
the parts of Lurianic doctrine
in a Raslan Kabbalah there are
... than in the so-called Kabbalah....
Kabbalah Luranic especially
via the the Italian School
of Luria's followers active in
in the time of
Renaissance there become, became
a very influential and important part of
the esoteric law of early modern Europe.
And quite a lot of
mystical, mystically minded or
philosophically minded Christians were
already steeped in it.
And the so-called Christian Kabbalah
modified the elements of
the Lurianic Kabbalah in
such a way so it fits
the the Christian doctrine. We have
instead of three parts so
seemed the personages of God.
We have simply three hypostasis
as in the Trinity.
We have got the Father we have logos as
the Son which is
responsible for the emanation.
And finally instead of Shaheen and
that is God's dwelling on
Earth we have Holy Spirit.
What is very interesting about
this reception of the Lurianic Kabbalah is
that it indeed paves
the way to the German idealism.
We know that Hegel read
the German pieties like Oettinger and
the phenomenology of the spirit is
in a way a philosophical sublation that
is a... translation of the philosophic doctrine
which we can call the Christianity
of the Spirit.
That is Christianity which
following Lord Yannick Messianism
sees the main activity
of of the divine already in the world
in the sort of scattered
dispersed forms of individual spirits.
So the Christianity of
the Spirit which becomes
a very important part
of the German pious
tradition is then picked
up by a German idealist and
hence geist hence the Spirit
as the main actor of human history.
Agata, thank you very much.