Ethnocentrism in Esoteric Circles: On Political Gnoseology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay is dedicated to Elliot Wolfson’s new book on Heidegger and Kabbalah. Wolfson’s project is read here as a philosophical reflection and scholarly intervention on the “and,” that is, on pluralism in thought. Wolfson juxtaposes Heideggerian and kabbalistic corpora as expressing the same conception of non-totalitarian, plural thought, and criticizes both Heidegger and Kabbalah for betraying this pluralism in their ethnocentric tendencies. As a scholarly “ethical corrective,” Wolfson indicates in both corpora a countermeasure: A Gnostic disengagement of thought from politics, in favor of poetics. The essay critiques this corrective by pointing at the different constellations of Gnosis and politics in Heidegger and Kabbalah.