Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death

University of California Press (2006)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, William Blake, Julia Kristeva, Friedrich Schelling, and a host of kabbalistic figures into deep conversation with one another. _Alef, Mem, Tau _also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time. The framework for Wolfson’s examination is the rabbinic teaching that the word _emet, _“truth,” comprises the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, _alef, mem,_ and _tau,_ which serve, in turn, as semiotic signposts for the three tenses of time—past, present, and future. By heeding the letters of _emet _we discern the truth of time manifestly concealed in the time of truth, the beginning that cannot begin if it is to be the beginning, the middle that re/marks the place of origin and destiny, and the end that is the figuration of the impossible disclosing the impossibility of figuration, the finitude of death that facilitates the possibility of rebirth. The time of death does not mark the death of time, but time immortal, the moment of truth that bestows on the truth of the moment an endless beginning of a beginningless end, the truth of death encountered incessantly in retracing steps of time yet to be taken—between, before, beyond.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 99,462

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Logic: The Question of Truth.Thomas Sheehan (ed.) - 2010 - Indiana University Press.
A Regional Thanatology: Hegel, Heidegger, and Death.Brent Allen Adkins - 2002 - Dissertation, Loyola University of Chicago
Negative Philosophy: Time, Death and Nothingness.Françoise Dastur - 2020 - Research in Phenomenology 50 (3):317-332.
Time and Eternity.Erich Frank - 1948 - Review of Metaphysics 2 (5):39 - 52.
Truth and Truth at a Time.Michael Tooley - 1997 - In Time, Tense, and Causation. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-08-22

Downloads
12 (#1,300,263)

6 months
3 (#1,428,956)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references