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In this entry for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I analyze various elements of Islamic philosophical influence on the works of Moses Maimonides; the entry, published in May 2014, is a substantive revision of my earlier entry of the same name.

Pessin, Sarah, "The Influence of Islamic Thought on Maimonides", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/maimonides-islamic/>.

pessin_SEP_maimonides-islamic2014.pdf

This essay asks us to consider the possibility that chapters in the history of philosophy have been told through tacitly Christian lenses with problematic implications for the way we have learned to understand important elements of Jewish (as well as Greek and Islamic) thought. In this study in particular, I examine a case in point, viz. the popular and canonical misreading of Ibn Gabirol's notion of 'Divine Irada' in incorrectly Augustinian terms of a "Doctrine of Divine Will" that opposes Greek emanation. In contrast to this popular misreading, I argue that Ibn Gabirol's Divine Irada marks the very downward flow of divine emanation. Concluding that Jerusalem = Athens  in the case of Ibn Gabirol's Divine Irada (viz. Ibn Gabirol's idea is identical with Plotinus' Greek idea of emanation) I explore some reasons for demarcating Jerusalem from Athens in a host of Christian -- not Jewish (or Islamic or Greek) -- philosophical contexts.

Pessin, Sarah. “On the Possibility of a Hidden Christian Will: Methodological Pitfalls in the Study of Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” in Encountering the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought, edited by Aaron Hughes and James Diamond (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2012), pp. 52-94

Pessin_Hidden_Christian_Will_offprint.pdf

In this essay, I explore the extent to which Maimonides' "negative theology" has a decidedly positive aspect. After providing a close reading of Maimonides on Exodus 33-34 (the locus classicus for God's "13 attributes of mercy"), I consider philosophical wonder as divine encounter, and I recommend replacing the idea of "via negativa" in a reading of Maimonides with "hylomorphic apophasis," a description of the world in which God is at once manifest (in forms) and hidden (in matter) in the world around us. I end with a reading of Maimonides on the divine prayer shawl as a reflection on the compresent presence and hiddenness of God in nature.

Pessin, Sarah. “On Glimpsing the Face of God in Maimonides: Wonder, ‘Hylomorphic Apophasis’, and the Divine Prayer Shawl,” Tópicos 42 (2012): 75-105

Glimpsing_Face_of_God_Maimonides_Prayer_Shawl_To

Following on my earlier work (see Pessin 2003) in which I read  Israeli's notion of creation as conceptually identical to Greek (and Islamic) Neoplatonic emanation, in this essay I go on to explain how an appreciation for Israeli's use of a Neoplatonic dialectic of oppositions helps us correctly understand (a) his view of creation as identical with Neoplatonic emanation, and (b) his mindfully dual talk of God's immediate and intermediated presence/absence in the emanated world.

Pessin, Sarah. "Divine Presence, Divine Absence and the Plotinian Apophatic Dialectic: Reinterpreting “Creation and Emanation” in Isaac Israeli,” in Religion and Philosophy in the Platonic and Neoplatonic Traditions: from Antiquity to the Early Medieval Period, edited by Kevin Corrigan, John D. Turner and Peter Wakefield (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), pp. 133-149

Pessin_Divine_Presence_Absence_Israeli_2012.pdf

In my essay for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I provide a philosophical analysis of Ibn Gabirol's key ideas in comparison and contrast with ideas in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. I address my original theses of "Divine Desire" (vs. "Divine Will") and "Grounding Element" (vs. "Prime Matter") in Ibn Gabirol's thought (ideas upon which I elaborate in my 2013 book, Ibn Gabirol's Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013))

Pessin, Sarah, "Solomon Ibn Gabirol [Avicebron]", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/ibn-gabirol/>.

pessin_SEP_ibn-gabirol2010.pdf

In this essay, I provide an overview of views of matter, form and the corporeal world in a range of Jewish texts; my strategy is to highlight three overarching categories, viz. (1) matter as something neutral, (2) matter as something negative, and (3) matter as something positive.

Pessin, Sarah. “Matter, Form and the Corporeal World,” in The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (Vol. 1), edited by Tamar Rudavsky and Steven Nadler (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 269-301

Pessin_Matter_Form_Corporeal_World_2009.pdf

Pessin_Manifest_Image_2005.pdf

In this essay I draw out feminist implications from Ibn Gabirol's 11th century positive sensibilities about matter and receptivity.

Pessin, Sarah. “Loss, Presence, and Gabirol’s Desire: Medieval Jewish Philosophy and the Possibility of a Feminist Ground,” in Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 27-50

Pessin_Loss_Presence_Gabirol_Desire_Feminist_Gro

In this 2003 essay, I begin to help expose the conceptual identies between "Athens and Jerusalem" in the cases of Ibn Gabirol and Israeli; I argue (as I continue to argue in greater detail in more recent work) that it is unnecessary to conceptually distinguish between Plotinus' Greek Neoplatonic sense that God is "above being" and Ibn Gabirol's Jewish Neoplatonic sense that God "is being," just as it is unnecesssary to conceptually distinguish between Plotinus' Greek Neoplatonic sense that God "emanates" and Israeli's Jewish Neoplatonic sense that God "creates." I argue that in spite of surface linguistic differences from Plotinus, it makes the most sense to read these Jewish thinkers as essentially Plotinian.

Pessin, Sarah. “Jewish Neoplatonism: Being Above Being and Divine Emanation in Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Isaac Israeli,” in Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by Dan Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 91-110

Pessin_Jewish_Neoplatonism_Being_Emanation_Ibn_G

This study shows how, in its overall ability to shed light on the vexing complexity of human being, Maimonides’ discourse on matter—treated via metaphors or seen as itself a metaphor—emerges as a venerable guide, pointing the careful reader to the most important truths about perfected humanity within the Guide of the Perplexed. After examining and harmonizing Maimonides’ dual metaphors of matter (matter as the married harlot and the woman of valor) in this way, I show how metaphor as a literary form is itself an illustration of matter’s positive role in the life of the soul. Following upon this consideration of the importance of metaphorical discourse, I end by briefly suggesting how the metaphysics of matter may itself quite generally be characterized as a kind of metaphor.

Pessin, Sarah. “Matter, Metaphor, and Privative Pointing: Maimonides on the Complexity of Human Being,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76:1 (2002): 75-88

Pessin_Matter_Metaphor_Privative_Pointing_ACPQ_2

In this essay, I unpack various Pythagorean philosophical and theological resonances in the terms 'Hebdomads' that seem to fit metaphysically with--and as such, help us better understand--what Boethius is up to in his short--and vexing--treatise of that name.

Pessin, Sarah. “Hebdomads: Boethius Meets the Neopythagoreans,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 37:1 (1999): 29-48

Pessin_Hebdomads_JHP_1999

For updated information, please visit my main website:

sarahpessin.myportfolio.com

“Kenosis, Emancipation, Pastness: Reflections from a Jew,” The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) (Spring 2019) 18:2: 214-223; access here: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/18.2/Pessin.pdf

“America’s Love Problem: How Oprah’s Call to Friendship Feeds Bannon’s Call to Racism (or: On Three Strains of Liberal Lovesickness),” Political Theology Network, August 13, 2018; see full symposium at [https://politicaltheology.com/symposium/love-and-politics/]; access my essay directly at [https://politicaltheology.com/americas-love-problem/]

“Kenosis, Charity, Love: On the Mystical Element in Greco-Judeo-Islamic Thought,” English Language Notes (special issue on mysticism, edited by Nan Goodman), 56 (1), April 2018: 139-152.

“Khoric Apophasis: Matter and Messianicity in Islamo-Judeo-Greek Neoplatonism,” in Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity, ed. Michael Fagenblat, 180-197. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

“From Mystery to Laughter to Trembling Generosity: Agono-Pluralistic Ethics in Connolly v. Levinas (& the Possibilities for Atheist-Theist Respect),” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Nov. 2016, DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2016.1248128 / access here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2016.1248128

In this study (part of a collection of self-reflective, autobiographical writings on the future of Jewish Philosophy), I point to a 'Jewish Philosophy of Shadowed Light' as a theme within Jewish philosophy from the pages of Isaac Israeli's 9th century metaphysics to Soloveitchik's and Levinas' respective (and I argue, inter-related) concerns with immature living and idolatrous totalization.

Pessin, Sarah. “A Shadowed Light: Continuity and New Directions in Jewish Philosophy,” in Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 319-342

Final_Print_21st_Century-Pessin.pdf

In this essay, I explore a Levinas-inspired approach to Holocaust memorialization through a contrast of two images of stone in Levinas' own writing: the totalizing stone-swallowing of Cronos on the one hand and the infinitizing stone of the tablets of law on the other.

Pessin, Sarah. “Cronos Swallows a Stone: From Calcified History to Hineni, "Enlivening Memory" and the Call to Justice (On Creating a Levinasian Holocaust Memorial),” feature article in The University of Toronto’s Journal for Jewish Thought, Volume 2, 2011 (was published online at http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt/node/28; PDF can now be found here and at main Portflio tab at: http://portfolio.du.edu/spessin)

Pessin_Cronos_Levinas_Toronto_Journal_for_Jewish

• On the feminist implications of Ibn Gabirol's 11th century view of materiality and receptivity, see PDF in 'Medieval Philosophy & Methodology' column under 'Loss, Presence, Gabirol's Desire 2004'

• For initial considerations of Ibn Gabirol's Neoplatonic method in relation to transcendental and phenomenological methods (including Levinasian phenomenology), see chapters 8-9 of my book, Ibn Gabirol's Theology of Desire (CUP 2013)

• For consideration of Ibn Gabirol's method in dialogue with Heschel, Corbin, Hadot, Fishbane, Wolfson, Hughes, Rappe, Corrigan, and other later and contemporary theorists, see chapters 8-9 of my book, Ibn Gabirol's Theology of Desire (CUP 2013)