| Description |
1 online resource |
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text file |
| Summary |
"Drawing on Arabic passages from Ibn Gabirol's original Fons Vitae text, and highlighting philosophical insights from his Hebrew poetry, Sarah Pessin develops a "Theology of Desire" at the heart of Ibn Gabirol's eleventh-century cosmo-ontology. She challenges centuries of received scholarship on his work, including his so-called Doctrine of Divine Will. Pessin rejects voluntarist readings of the Fons Vitae as opposing divine emanation. She also emphasizes Pseudo-Empedoclean notions of "Divine Desire" and "Grounding Element" alongside Ibn Gabirol's use of a particularly Neoplatonic method with apophatic (and what she terms "doubly apophatic") implications. In this way, Pessin reads claims about matter and God as insights about love, desire, and the receptive, dependent, and fragile nature of human being. Pessin reenvisions the entire spirit of Ibn Gabirol's philosophy, moving us from a set of doctrines to a fluid inquiry into the nature of God and human being - and the bond between God and human being in desire"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
List of Figures; 1 Introduction; 1.1 Discovering Ibn Gabirol: The Aims and Goals of This Project; 1.2 Chapter Guide; 2 Text in Context; 2.1 First Unfoldings; 2.2 Background; 2.3 Desire and Love: Terminological Preamble I; 2.3.1 Desire as God-Born and God-Directed; 2.3.2 Desire as Love; 2.4 From Divine Will to Divine-Irda-as-Desire: Terminological Preamble II; 2.5 From Prime Matter to Grounding Element: Terminological Preamble III; 2.5.1 Matter Terminology in Ibn Gabirols Milieu; 2.5.2 Ibn Gabirols al-'unur al-awwal. |
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3 From Human Being to Discourse on Matter? The Threefold Quest for Wisdom, Goodness, and God -- and the Root of Life in Desire3.1 The Epistemological, Ethical, and Theological Context; 3.1.1 The Epistemological Call; 3.1.2 The Ethico-Theological Call; 3.2 Metaphysics of Matter and Desire at the Core of All; 3.3 Positive Valuations of Matter: A Reversal of Intuitions; 4 Root Desire and the Pseudo-Empedoclean Grounding Element as Love; 4.1 Desire at the Core of Being; 4.2 Love Makes the World Go Round: Some Greek and Arabic Sources; 4.2.1 Aristotle; 4.2.2 The Theology of Aristotle. |
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4.2.3 Avicennas "Rislah fi'l-'ishq"4.2.4 Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonized Aristotelianism; 4.3 A Pseudo-Empedoclean Love Story: Unspecified Being, Matter over Form, and the Kernel of Desire; 4.4 In the Illuminating Shadow: Ibn Gabirols Pseudo-Empedoclean Revision of the Neoplatonic Return; 5 From Divine Will to Divine Irda: On the Mistaken Scholarly Rejection of Ibn Gabirols Emanationism; 5.0 "Divine Will" and the Mistaken Scholarly Rejection of Ibn Gabirols Emanationism. |
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5.1 Trying to Make Sense of Scholarship on Ibn Gabirols So-Called Anti-Emanation Voluntarism: The Rejection of Divine Emanation in a Limited Emanation Framework?5.2 Problems with the Limited Emanation Framework Reading: Free Choice, Mediated versus Unmediated Will, and Three Varieties of Voluntarism; 5.3 Divine Will versus Divine Emanation? Casting More Doubt on the Canonical Voluntarist Reading of Ibn Gabirol; 5.4 Rethinking Will and Emanation. |
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5.4.1 Emanation and Will I: Since When Does "Divine Will" Mean "No Divine Emanation" in a Neoplatonic Context? (Considering Divine Will in Plotinus and the Theology of Aristotle)5.4.2 Emanation and Will II: Is the Term "Will" Leading Some to Mistaken Conclusions? (Considering the Possibility of Augustinian Overtones); 5.5 Rethinking "Intermediating between the Extremes": Two Competing Views; 5.5.1 Intermediation I: Brunners Horizontal Intuitions, Divine Will in Opposition to Divine Emanation, and an Occasionalist God? |
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5.5.2 Intermediation II: On the Vertical Image of Intermediation in Ibn Gabirol -- Toward a New Reading of Divine Irda as Divine Emanation. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Ibn Gabirol, active 11th century. Yanbūʻ al-ḥayāh.
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Yanbūʻ al-ḥayāh (Ibn Gabirol) |
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Neoplatonism.
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Neoplatonism. |
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Jewish philosophy.
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Jewish philosophy. |
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Philosophy, Medieval.
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Philosophy, Medieval. |
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Islamic philosophy.
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Islamic philosophy. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: 9781107032217 1107032210 (DLC) 2012037619 |
| ISBN |
1139424750 (electronic book) |
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9781139424752 (electronic book) |
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9781107250369 (electronic book) |
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1107250366 (electronic book) |
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9781107032217 (hardback) |
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1107032210 (hardback) |
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