Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania

More about the book

Exploring the tension between scriptural theism and the representation of transcendence, the book examines the thoughts of key twentieth-century Jewish thinkers who grappled with personifying the divine. While Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas acknowledged the risks, Derrida and Wyschogrod advanced the concept of denegation, ultimately challenging the foundations of devotional piety. The text advocates for a deeper apophasis, emphasizing an acceptance of absolute nothingness that transcends theism, shifting from the metaphor of the gift to a more neutral understanding of unconditional givenness.