Review of Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania , New York: Fordham University Press, 2014. 547 pages
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Elliot Wolfson's latest publication in the history of philosophy makes a formidable contribution to the contemporary discourse of apophatic theology, and it does so in two ways.Firstly, in a discourse typically focused upon the Christian tradition, Wolfson leads us expertly into somewhat less-explored territory in his engagement of seminal twentieth century Jewish thinkers ¾Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Levinas, Derrida, and Wyschogrod¾as well as the tradition of Kabbalah.Secondly, Wolfson takes on the discourse's prominent themes¾namely, 'transcendence,' 'immanence,' 'absence,' the 'gift'¾with a penetrating and relentless spirit of deconstructive vigilance, pushing the language of the discourse to new reaches of phenomenological probity.The core impetus of the book, the author tells us, is "the belief that a theolatrous impulse lingers in the very heart of monotheism" (xiv), and indeed that "the postmodern apophatic theologies that have dominated the marketplace of ideas within the academy [are] still guilty of theomania" (xxiv).His point is that the 'unseen,' the 'inapparent,' the 'invisibility' of God or the divine has become itself a new 'visible' or 'presence' by virtue of that very absence¾or rather, by virtue of a theolatrous phenomenological focusing upon that absence.His intricately close analyses of the work of the thinkers as named above¾which are not only readings of those thinkers, but critical readings of the readings of others of those thinkers, as well as juxtapositions of certain strains of their thought with many others' from this century as well as past centuries¾explores to what extent each one has fallen headlong into theolatry, even in their valiant attempts to avoid it, or else, at best, remained vigilant to the end without yet ceasing to address the question of 'transcendence' altogether.Chapters 1 and 2 largely focus upon the work of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber (Wolfson being particularly displeased with the personalizing language of the latter two); chapter 3 is devoted to Levinas, with a sizable helping of the later Heidegger contributing to the analysis; chapter 4 highlights Derrida, and especially the influence of the Kabbalistic tradition upon his thinking; chapter 5 engages Edith Wyschogrod, significantly appreciating her "philosophy of deep
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.019 | 0.018 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".