Just an update. The Kabbalism book is excellent. It really does focus on philosophy quite adeptly while keeping the various hermeneutic and symbolic aspects of Kabbalism in clearly in sight. While it makes use of all the standard academic oriented texts (Tishby, Idel, Scholem, etc.) it does try to bring various philosophical issues to the fore. For those only vaguely familiar with Kabbalism but with a philosophical background it is an excellent book. It doesn't really get into much postmodern philosophy beyond Nozick (at least thus far) but those familiar with Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas or others will quickly see the implications. The author uses languages which will invoke those philosophers without requiring familiarity with them by those reading the book.
One such as how the En-Sof parallels Derrida's notion of differánce. Drob never really focuses in on these interesting modern parallels, mainly just discussing Hegel when such topics come up. (And thereby unfortunately neglecting thus far the significant difference between postmodernism and 19th century German idealism influenced by Kabbalism thorugh Schelling).
I've only read a bit on the Scottish Enlightenment. Thus far not that much interesting except that Hume was historically a side player at the time, despite the place he has in modern thought. However Hume then gets the majority of the discussion.
Well it's my first Christmas while married. Pretty exciting. Couldn't wait to go down to the tree and see what Santa brought. And what did he bring? Well other than XMen2 and Two Towers he brought books! (And a bookshelf) So I thought for a change of pace I'd give a rundown on the books my library has received.
The first two were The Scottish Enlightenment by Alexander Broadie and then The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment edited by Broadie. Why'd I ask Santa for that? Well someone mentioned to me on LDS-Phil that Pratt was highly influenced by Scottish realism. Further they had a profound impact on the development of science. Since I knew relatively little about them, I thought I better fill in the gaps in my knowledge. That Scottish realism had some interesting ways of reconciling religion and science adds a bit to my curiosity as well.
Next up was Neusner's Confronting Creation which is a fairly good anthology of selections from the Genesis Rabbah. That's an important text as it is often considered to be a strong influence on later Merkabah and early Kabbalism texts like the Midrash Alpha Beta, the Sefer ha-Bahir and from there into later Kabbalism. It is also of interest to Mormons as it offers numerous profound parallels to some of Joseph's thought - especially in the Nauvoo era with texts like the King Follet Discourse. I've only read the introduction but it is very interesting, both for the hermeneutics used by these early rabbis along with the ideas as well.
I got Drob's Symbols of the Kabbalah as well. I've heard some good things about it, but we'll see if it actually discusses anything in a manner I've not read before. I've not had a chance to glance through that one yet. (I've been up since 5:00 so my eyes are a little glazed over.
I'd read a good review of Widmer's Mormonism and the Nature of God. It is supposed to be an analysis of the evolution of God in Mormon thought. I'm very curious to see if it avoids the pitfalls of most previous articles and books discussing this subject. Most of them tend to try to read the theology in overly simple terms and force it into the categories of the main ideas (and heresies) in the history of Catholicism. They also tend to engage in overly simple exegesis, missing a lot of important philosophical and theological points. (Blake Ostler has written on a few of these issue relative to Mosiah 15 — although I'm not sure I agree with everything he says. I think that the tradition of Metatron in merkabah literature such as 3 Enoch or even some things in the Midrash Alpha Beta can't be overlooked.
The point is that most books on the subject simultaneously consider Joseph Smith amazingly naive with respect to a theology of God while simultaneously forcing his thought into traditional categories from the history of Catholic theological development. They tend to completely ignore a Jewish tradition far more interesting than most realize. Even if they are going to start from the naturalistic position that Joseph took all his ideas from his environment, books like Mormonism and the Magic World View by Quinn or The Refiner's Fire by Brookes ties elements of Hermeticism, neoPlatonism and perhaps Kabbalism to Joseph Smith. Any analysis of his thoughts on God that don't take this larger context into consideration really are being extremely neglectful. Harold Bloom even has Joseph recreating a lot of this Jewish conceptions of God from his "religious genius." The fact that historians of this sort have neglected these approaches is rather embarrassing. Even if they disagree with those conclusions they ought to discuss them so as to explain why they don't fit. As you can tell I'm going into this book with a fair bit of skepticism. This whole area of research has been ill studied in the past. We'll see if this book surprises me.
Last up is Sklar's The Philosophy of Physics. Sklar's written two of the best books on the epistemology and metaphysics of two significant aspects of physics: space-time and then statistical mechanics. He really did an amazing job on those, combing sophisticated but fair historical analysis with very good philosophical critiques. (His argument for why General Relativity likely requires a substantial space time, unlike most interpretations, was very enlightening and unexpected, as were his discussions of Leibniz' approaches to spacetime)
I'm really excited to read this one and see what he says. Two of the chapters look like summaries of the work in his other two books: spacetime and statistics. His third major chapter is on quantum mechanics and I am interested to see how he deals with it.
Probably as I read all these I'll be making comments here.
I fully admit that the philosophy of ethics or politics has never been something that interests me that much. I suppose this, in part, arises out of my basic skepticism towards such things as being more than a little too much a justification for ones established principles. It all too often seems to descend to relativism. I'm sure all my friends who study such things will strenuously object. But that's what it always seems. Further it always seems to me to lead to abuses. From a Mormon perspective I suppose I rather embrace a kind of negative theology towards ethics. I know there is something real that determines "the Good." Yet it is unexpressible and perhaps even unknowable. Further I tend to take the position that it is a real in some sense independent of God. That is God follows the good because it is the good. It isn't good because of God.
I suppose that ultimately this position finds its expression in terms of Mormon epistemology. We may know what is good in some particular instance without knowing why it is good. Ethics attempts to find out why it is good. What I worry about is that in doing so it confuses the general with the universal. (Or at least many people doing ethical speculation get confused in that way) A "general principle" is one that is usually true but which is largely indeterminate and for which there is a reasonable amount of fallibilism. For instance it is generally true that active Mormons go to church. However clearly there are many active Mormons who won't be at church this Sunday. The "universal principle" is something always at play in some class of existing things. A good example is the color red. It is a universal in that it is "in" all red things. There still is some degree of fallibilism (what counts as a "red thing" is partially indeterminate, given the fact not all cultures agree on what the meaning of red is). But clearly there is a significant difference between the two.
The danger in ethics is in treating the general as an universal. Consider the law, "thou shalt not kill." Yet the same God who commanded that commands people to kill in many instances. Even reducing "thou shalt not kill" to "thou shalt not murder" doesn't resolve the problem, since it begs the question of when killing is lawful. (As we see with Nephi, a rather interesting example of this conundrum) I think that Joseph Smith saw this distinction when he talked about God commanding one thing at one time and an other thing at an other time.
"That which is wrong under one circumstance may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill.' At another time he said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted -- by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith p.256)
Exactly what the universal principle behind all this can't been discerned from merely looking at the general case. After all, the general case can in certain circumstances be wrong.
Where does this put us? Well it forces us to rely on God rather than necessarily our minds to discern what is right. Certainly we can rely of the "general case" when we are unsure of what God wants. (And generally we will be right) But for those of us who believe there is a real "truth" regarding what is right or wrong in any situation, then we must be careful.
A common issue related not only to Mormonism but Christianity in general concerns the nature of those historical events which a text is about. I put it that way since what one writes about and how one writes about it are quite different. The old story of four blind men describing an elephant is quite apt. We sometimes give the text so much privilege that we forget that the authors are actually writing about something outside of their thoughts.
Mormon apologetics have tended to focus on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, for understandable reasons. However in Christianity in general, there has been a lot of similar focus on both the New Testament and Old Testaments. Many more liberal scholars have tended to discount a lot of the "history" as pure fable. Most of the narrative of the Jews prior to Solomon (and sometimes including Solomon) is largely cast aside to varying degrees. Likewise the history of Jesus is similarly "demythologized." I don't really want to get into that issue, especially since a lot of the argument is largely from silence. I do want to get into the issue of the narrative of miracles. How are they to be dealt with?
Now clearly stories grow in the telling. Further when a story becomes third hand, the understanding of those telling the story are lost. Different people also have different ways of expressing themselves. For some people what is important is conveying the feeling of the experience more than the facts. For others trying to get an agreed upon factual history is most important. Add into that the notorious problem of narratives from any witness and things can get messy. When the events in question are miraculous you can probably understand why unbelievers get a little skeptical.
Even in our own history we see this. The transformation of Brigham Young into Joseph Smith during a sermon is now told as if it ended the succession crisis and was widespread. However only a few tell of experiencing this directly and then often well after the fact. This doesn't mean it didn't happen as some claim. It does suggest it probably wasn't as widespread a phenomena as it is often portrayed. Likewise the story of the seagulls and the Mormon crickets is a favorite story of Mormons. Yet it appears that things weren't quite as miraculous as the story would have it. Once again it is understandable that many critics see the whole narrative as modern mythmaking.
I suspect even we believers ought to be cautious with some events. That is not to suggest there aren't miracles. However sometimes, when reading of a miracle, some assume that the miracle comes as conceived of by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I always find 1 Kings 19:11-12 a suitable antidote for such exuberant readings. If we perhaps read too much into narratives at times, we must also recognize that many skeptics, having little experience with real spiritual manifestations, are too quick to deny too much. The farther removed from multiple, independent contemporary accounts any event is, the easier it is to conceive of the event on our own terms - whether it be the skeptic or the naive exciting readings of the believer. (Mormons are lucky in that we have modern prophets and modern miracles so as to perhaps temper and make more realistic our assumptions of how scriptural narratives proceeded.)
To conclude, I really ought to include an interesting article over at Physics Web reconsidering the miracle of the crossing the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites. It illustrates, I think both the history of how miracle narratives are considered, and also how modern questions can often provide fruitful new considerations that allow the miracles to remain. It also offers notable parallels to how Mormon scholars consider the Book of Mormon geography. Those considerations and methods are all too often derided by some skeptics of the Mormon perspective.
and Theology
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Blogged by Clark Goble