Ibn Gabirol's Theology of Desire
Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism

The first full-length treatment of Ibn Gabirol's philosophy in English, providing a new approach to the philosophy of the Fons Vitae.

Sarah Pessin (Author)

9781107032217, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 July 2013

280 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

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 beings. 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.

1. Introduction
2. Text in context
3. From human being to discourse on matter?: The threefold quest for wisdom, goodness, and God – and the root of life in desire
4. Root desire and the Empedoclean grounding element as love
5. From Divine Will to divine Ir?da: on the mistaken scholarly rejection of Ibn Gabirol's emanation
6. Ir?dic unfoldings: Ibn Gabirol's hylomorphic emanationism and the Neoplatonic tripart analysis
7. Matter revisited
8. Neoplatonic cosmo-ontology as apophatic response and as prescription for human living (methodological reappraisal, 1)
9. Transcendental grounding, mytho-poetic and symbolic transformation, and the creation of new worlds with words (methodological reappraisal, 2)
10. Embroidering the hidden.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600 [HPCB], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP]