Jewish Philosophy Research Articles

Fourth Maccabees and the Promotion of the Jewish Philosophy: Rhetoric, Intertexture, and Reception by David A. Desilva

Fourth Maccabees and the Promotion of the Jewish Philosophy: Rhetoric, Intertexture, and Reception by David A. Desilva

„Kötelékek köteléke” Azonosságok Moses Hess és Karl Marx korai filozófiai munkásságában, különös tekintettel a pénz gazdaságfilozófiai értelmezésére

Szűcs, Balázs: “The bond of bonds” – Identities in the early philosophical eork of Moses Hess and Karl Marx, with special reference to the economic philosophical interpretation of money In my essay, I attempted to demonstrate the similarities between the two philosophers, Hess and Marx, especially regarding the essence of money. I present the effect of Hess on the young Marx. In the first section of the essay, a short biography of the French Jewish philosopher, Moses Hess is presented and a brief analysis of the most important works of Hess, like European Triarchy (1841), The Philosophy of Action (1843) and Rome and Jerusalem (1862) is given. In these works, there are a number of philosophical categories and definitions that appear in Marx’s works in similar formulation, for instance the determinism of activity, raw possession and the concept of an authority based (Autoritaten) and repressive state, which is the greatest barrier to free self-accomplishment (Selbstbestimmung). But another striking similarity is that Prometheus is regarded, by both philosophers, as the personification of freedom. The second part of the essay provides a detailed analysis of On the Essence of Money (1845). In this work, Hess gives a unique perspective on human history from its beginning to his own age, with many sharp and prophetic philosophical conclusions. Money has entered this system of philosophy, of history as a necessary evil and by staying for too long in the system, it causes alienation. At the end of the study, there is a comparison of the categories and their explanations that can be found in both philosophers’ works. Comparison of On the Essence of Money and Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, where Hess’s influence on Marx is most evident.

Fourth Maccabees and the Promotion of the Jewish Philosophy: Rhetoric, Intertexture, and Reception, written by David A. deSilva

Fourth Maccabees and the Promotion of the Jewish Philosophy: Rhetoric, Intertexture, and Reception, written by David A. deSilva

Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Politics

Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Politics

Dialogic Interactions: Communication between Human Being and God according to the Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig

Abstract This article examines the communication between human being and God in the Jewish philosophy of the German-Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). It observes Rosenzweig’s Jewish philosophy in light of communication theories and wishes to use the theoretical wealth of this relatively new discipline—communication—in order to deepen the philosophical discussion. The encounter described in this article is not an encounter that takes place in Rosenzweig’s writings, but rather an attempt to bring Rosenzweig into dialogue with modern theories of communication. This new perspective can enrich our view of philosophy of religion and to offer a new perception of communication.

Contempt for the Whos? or: How to Read Nietzsche Autobiographically after the Death of the Bios

This paper examines French philosopher Sarah Kofman’s fractured relationships to her identities as Jew and woman. Active participant in postwar debates surrounding deconstruction and psychoanalysis, acclaimed reader of Freud and Nietzsche, and interlocutor of Derrida, Kofman is today most widely remembered for her autobiographical writings about her childhood as a young Orthodox Jewish girl during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Kofman’s mother sent her to pretend to be the daughter of a Christian woman, which both ensured Kofman’s physical survival and led to an uncanny Freudian doubling of the maternal figure, such that both “Jew” and “Christian” became unstable, mimetic identity categories which Kofman could never again fully inhabit. The paper examines Kofman’s writings on Nietzsche, suggesting that her attempt to absolve the German philosopher of the charges of antisemitism oft leveled against him functioned as a similarly failed and incomplete means of asserting control over her personal identity. If Kofman could demonstrate that Nietzsche was not in fact an antisemite, then she could write herself into the lineage of Continental philosophy and reclaim the stable ancestry she lost during the war. Yet the paper concludes that a counter-narrative running throughout Kofman’s writings suggests an awareness that she could never fully absolve Nietzsche, and therefore that her attempt to claim Nietzsche as a father figure would always fail. The paper thus suggests that the illusion of control and stability epitomized by Kofman’s reading of Nietzsche provides an interpretive thematic to understand the unstable figure of the post-Holocaust Jewish philosopher.

The Return of Biblical Theology: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and the Theological-Literary Movement

Abstract Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, is probably the most important and well-known Jewish theologian of the twenty-first century. He believed passionately that Jewish values have relevance for all of mankind. What is somewhat surprising is the source of R. Sacks's theology. Orthodox Jewish theology has traditionally been anchored in either the perspective of Talmudic Rabbis as transmitted through the halacha and the aggadda, or based on the works of the great medieval Jewish philosophers such as the Rambam, Crescas and Yehuda Halevi. In contradistinction to these approaches, R. Sacks turned to the Bible as the primary source of his theology. This “returning to the bible” is consistent with other trends in orthodox Jewish scholarship which also emphasizes a return to intensive study of the biblical text using modern methodologies. However, since biblical theology is open to a myriad of differing and even contradictory opinions, the role of rabbinic tradition is of utmost importance. Thus, for Rabbi Sacks's theology to have lasting impact it needs to be based on, and a natural extension of, the timeless Jewish tradition. This essay will explore these issues.

Teleios in the Epistle of James

Teleios is an Hellenistic Greek term which refers to an end, goal, purpose or aim, and it means complete, mature, or fully developed, finished. Teleios signifies consummate soundness, and it includes the idea of being whole. In its numerous forms the term teleios arises 100 times in the Greek New Testament. The term was frequently used in the Epistle of James — τέλειον (James 1:4); τέλειον (James 1:17); τέλειον (James 1:25); τελεῖτε (James 2:8); ἐτελειώθη (James 2:22); τέλειος (James 3:2). The frequent use of teleios makes it possible to know that the author clearly expressed his perspective through this word. In the previous research on teleios, Patrick J. Hartin argues that the use of teleios in the Epistle of James is rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures and the LXX as a Jewish coloured term. Hartin’s view is fair to illuminate that teleios is based on the concept of state of the completeness and whole - hearted mental state. Yet, considering that teleios (James 3:2) is used for explaining the process into completeness, called, maturity, such a view of the author of James’ Epistle is closer to the view of the Classical Greek Philosopher, Plato, or the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. In addition, teleios (James 1:17) which can be regarded as one of the divine attributes, might be traced back to Platonic or Philonic thinking. Thus, James’ author might be considered as a Hellenised Jew who combined a Jewish concept with a Hellenistic perspective through the term, teleios.

Dialogical Theology and Dialogical Practice

This article focuses on the relationship between religions and dialogue, considering its current relevance. It shows how interreligious dialogue forms the basis for a pluralised theology. Against the backdrop of the established research project ‘Religions and Dialogue in Modern Societies’ (ReDi), we find an integrative approach to interreligious dialogue desirable, as it offers a means of linking three different research strands: religious studies, social sciences and education. In explaining their concept of a Dialogical Theology, the authors offer an answer to developments of global religious pluralisation. An important impulse of this approach lies in the concept of “trans-difference”, anchored in Jewish philosophy. Dialogical Theology requires the counterbalance of analyses related to interreligious dialogue at the grassroot level. This endeavour, carried out with sociological methods, is called “Dialogical Practice”. The article relates general ideas of a Dialogical Theology to concrete analyses of Dialogical Practice. In an imagined interreligious dialogue between the activists Abraham Joshua Heschel and Mahatma Gandhi, it shows how interreligious dialogue can contribute to a practice-oriented Dialogical Theology. Concluding remarks point to perspectives that underscore the need for further development of a Dialogical Theology with reference to Dialogical Practice. Keywords: Dialogical Theology, Trans-difference, Dialogical Practice, Interreligious Dialogue, Heschel, Gandhi

Living Law

Living Law Eugene Avrutin and Bruce Rosenstock (bio) Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt By Miguel Vatter. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 348 pp. IN MEMORIAM Professor Bruce Rosenstock (1951–2023), passed away on the morning of January 5, 2023 after a long battle with cancer. A passionate activist for justice, equality, and pluralism, Professor Rosenstock taught at the University of California, Davis and at Stanford University before joining the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty in 2002. Professor Rosenstock was the author of numerous well-received books on political theology and modern Jewish philosophy, including New Men: Conversos, Christian Theology, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Castile (2002), Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond (2010), and Transfinite Life: Oskar Goldberg and the Vitalist Imagination (2017). Most recently, Rosenstock was at work on a book titled "Hegel and the Holocaust," an exploration of four thinkers who have attempted to respond to the Holocaust in the terms of Hegel's philosophy. An inspiring teacher, Rosenstock was a longtime member of the Executive Committee in the Program in Jewish Culture and Society and served as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Religion. [End Page 213] _______ Over the last couple of decades, miguel vatter has established him-self as one of the most original and penetrating scholars of Continental political thought working today. Since 2014, he has published three monographs that cover the most significant themes in the field, from biopolitics, the constitutional basis of state sovereignty and international law, to human rights and political theology (Republic of the Living: Biopolitics and the Critique of Civil Society, Fordham University Press, 2014; Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt, Oxford University Pres, 2020; and the volume under review). In his always illuminating and thought-provoking close readings of the major figures of modern political philosophy, Vatter returns again and again to a set of fundamental claims around which his argument is structured: the ontological grounding of human rights in the unique emergent property (my phrasing) of humanness; state sovereignty as the usurpation of the power residing in humanness; republican democracy as the political expression of humanness; and Jewish and Christian political theology as competing discourses about the divinity of humanness versus the divinity of sovereignty. I read Vatter's work as being squarely located within the tradition of Ludwig Feuerbach and the early Marx of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and their concern to liberate humanness (they call it the human "species being") from its political-theological alienation. For Vatter, the deification the human sovereign is the quintessential alienation of humanness, whereas the "living law" that vests humanity with inalienable dignity restores humanness to its rightful place in the scheme of creation. What makes Vatter's work so richly rewarding is that his engagement with his chosen themes is always mediated through deep and erudite readings of the primary sources of modern political thought. The book under review here is a tour de force exposition of the major Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, from Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig to Leo Strauss, Gershom Scholem, and Hannah Arendt (with [End Page 214] a brief discussion of Martin Buber and his influence on Arendt). Vatter's stress on the centrality of the category of Creation as the ground of human dignity makes his book a fitting complement to Benjamin Lazier's treatment of the anti-Gnostic tendency of these thinkers in God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton University Press, 2008). Each of Vatter's chapters builds toward a synthetic understanding of modern Jewish political theology as founded on the principle that divine sovereignty is revealed in the power of the human to freely form republican communal life under an egalitarian legal order grounded in dignity as a natal property of every human. In the book's epilogue, Vatter argues that, with the creation of the human, the "Throne of God" is emptied of its glory and transferred to the human being. Each new human birth inaugurates a new rights-bearing creature who is the only sovereign power on earth. In a synoptic statement near the conclusion of...

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theopolitical Problem

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theopolitical Problem

Герман Коген об отношениях иудаизма и христианства

The article presents an analysis of the religious and philosophical views of Hermann Cohen, one of the most prominent German and Jewish philosophers of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, the founder of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. The author substantiates certain changes in these views, characteristic of two periods of his work, in the second of which, in contrast to the first, religious issues become decisive. In the first of the highlighted periods, the Marburg philosopher substantiates the idea that Judaism is a part of German culture, rejects any form of not only anti-Semitism, but also Zionism, strives to point out the obvious difference between cultural and religious assimilation, emphasizing the possibility of the existence of a single German nation based on religious differences between Christians and Jews. Cohen defends his conviction that the German spirit is strengthened precisely through the religious originality of Judaism, by the Jews defending their religious uniqueness. In the second period of his work, that is, since 1912, the Marburg philosopher is making more and more efforts to propose rational grounds for distinguishing Judaism from Christianity and to substantiate here the greater contribution of the religion of Judaism to the cultural progress of mankind. The author emphasizes that with all the features and changes in Cohen’s attitude to religion and in his assessment of the nature of the interaction between Judaism and Christianity, two main features remained dominant and unchanged. Firstly, it is devotion to one’s religious beliefs and upholding their uniqueness and dignity, and, secondly, it is the confidence in the need to unite the efforts of Judaism and Christianity in the social transformation of society on the basis of morality. The Marburg philosopher saw no contradiction between the desire for recognition of Jewish religious identity and the striving for a harmonious relationship between Judaism and Christianity.

Andalus And Sefarad: On Philosophy and its History in Islamic Spain by Sarah Stroumsa

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 47, 3, 2022 © The Maghreb Review 2022 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU Books reviewed in The Maghreb Review can be ordered from The Maghreb Bookshop. Our catalogue is also available on our website: www.maghrebbookshop.com SARAH STROUMSA, ANDALUS AND SEFARAD: ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS HISTORY IN ISLAMIC SPAIN (PRINCETON, NJ; OXFORD: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2019) The traditional account of the history of philosophy in Muslim Spain begins in the late tenth century. According to the eleventh-century chronicler Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī, it was then that the Umayyad Emir of Cordoba al-Ḥakam II ordered that books on ‘the ancient sciences as well as the modern ones’ be brought from Baghdad, Egypt, ‘and other places in the East’, in the hope of reaping the fruits of the ‘Abbasid-sponsored translation movement for Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. This well-known episode from Islamic history, Sarah Stroumsa reveals in Andalus and Sefarad, her recent study of philosophy in Muslim Spain, has a lesser known yet equally important Jewish coda. When the prominent Jewish physician and political advisor Ḥasday ibn Shaprut ‘attached himself to al- Ḥakam’, the same Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī wrote, ‘he used his good offices to bring whatever he wanted of the writings of the Jews in the Orient’. As Stroumsa observes, ‘It requires little imagination to appreciate that the same ships that brought the books ordered by the caliph also carried those ordered by his vizier, and that when the ships arrived at the docks, for example in Seville, their literary cargo was not divided strictly according to religious affiliation.’ Stroumsa sees this story as emblematic of the history of Andalusian philosophy. Jewish and Muslim philosophy and theology in the Iberian Peninsula, she proposes, ought to be viewed ‘as components of a common intellectual history and as stages in a continuous trajectory’. Written with a clarity befitting a scholar of Stroumsa’s expertise, Andalus and Sefarad is a masterful demonstration of how to think about the history of Andalusian philosophy in this ‘integrative’ way. The influence of Islamic traditions on medieval Jewish thinkers living under Muslim rule and writing in Arabic is well-known. It has long been accepted, for instance, that Judah Halevi, the greatest Hebrew poet of medieval times and author of the famous Arabic theological treatise known as the Kuzari, drew on the Sunni Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī’s critique of Aristotelian philosophy and the Neoplatonic ideas of the Ismaili Shia. In her previous book, Maimonides and His World (2009), Stroumsa herself demonstrated that the 316 BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU great Jewish philosopher and legal authority Moses Maimonides, author of the Judeo-Arabic classic The Guide of the Perplexed, was influenced by the ideas of the Almohad dynasty that ruled North Africa and Spain in the twelfth century. If ‘Islamicate’ Jewish thought is fairly well-known (to use the concept coined by Marshall Hodgson for that which is culturally if not religiously Islamic), far less so is the impact of Jewish thought on Islamic philosophy, and it is here that Andalus and Sefarad comes into its own. In chapter one we learn that the tenthcentury Muslim Neoplatonist of Cordoba Ibn Masarra, the first Andalusian philosopher of note, was influenced by Jewish speculation on the mystical significance of the letters of the alphabet and the symbolism of the divine throne. In the following chapter, we discover that the books and ideas of the rationalist Mu‘tazilite school of Islamic theology were introduced into alAndalus by Jewish Karaites, scripturalists who rejected rabbinic authority, and who, unlike their opponents the Rabbanites, usually wrote their Arabic works in Arabic, rather than Hebrew, characters, making them accessible to Muslims as well as Jews. While this is all very interesting, Stroumsa’s aim is not merely to show that the direction of influence went from Jews to Muslims as well as Muslims to Jews. Nor is it to substantiate the romantic if rather anachronistic notion of medieval al-Andalus as a site of interfaith convivencia. Rather, Stroumsa aims to demonstrate how the same philosophical traditions and ideas continuously circulated among adherents of the two religions in what...

Еврей-философ из литовских лесов: о Соломоне Маймоне и его «Автобиографии»

Solomon Maimon (1753–1800), one of the most significant Jewish philosophers of modern times, in his writings tried to critically approach the tradition of Jewish thought and compare its teachings with the views of European philosophers. In re­cent decades, he and his views have attracted close attention of historians of phi­losophy. Recently, seven volumes of his works were published in Russia, translated from German and Hebrew. One of his most famous books is his Lebensgeschichte (Autobiography), an autobiography written by him in the 1790s and revealing both the stages of his life path and spiritual development, as well as his understanding of various problems of philosophy, religion, ethics and mysticism. This book has en­joyed a reputation as a classic in the genre of “intellectual biography” for two cen­turies. The article discusses the main features of this book, as well as its perception in the 19th – early 20th centuries. The stereotypical image of Maimon as a free­thinker Jew, a fighter against religious superstitions and social inequality, almost overshadowed his significance as an original philosopher, whose views were ap­preciated by I. Kant and J.G. Fichte. This attitude towards Maimon was fully re­flected in the translations of his Autobiography. Our article pays special attention to the Russian translations of this book. We are publishing for the first time docu­ments related to an attempt to publish in the 1930s a complete commented transla­tion of Maimon’s book. Famous Soviet philosophers and translators participated in the preparation of this translation (Boris G. Stolpner, Isaak M. Alter, and others), but the book was never published for political reasons.

“The Bush Burned with Fire and the Bush Was Not Consumed”

Abstract This paper explores the post-metaphysical theology of Richard Kearney (1954–) from a Jewish theological perspective. It seeks to provide an original analysis of his project “anatheism,” considering the prominence of Jewish texts in the development of the concept of anatheism. Rooted in deconstructionist and Continental philosophical discourses, Jewish hermeneutics also plays a central role in anatheism. This discursive intersection has received scarce scholarly attention to date. Biblical and other texts which he interprets, include the rabbinic exegesis of Rashi and of modern Jewish hermeneutical philosophy notably of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas. I analyse elements of Kearney’s interpretation primarily of the “Burning Bush” biblical narrative as a test case for anatheistic reading of Jewish texts as they appear in one particular text “I Am Who May Be” in The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001). Kearney’s textual reading of the Burning Bush offers an unusual example of a Christian engagement with Jewish interpretations of the biblical parable as well as of Levinas, Derrida, and others. Kearney’s effort highlights an approach of a mutual search for ways of interpreting texts not “of” the other, but “with” the other, in a mutual engagement of post-metaphysical theology. More broadly, this examination offers an important contribution to the developing field of post-metaphysical theology in the Jewish and Christian traditions, ultimately posing questions as to how and whether elements of Jewish scriptural interpretative techniques might or can imbue contemporary Christian post-metaphysical theologies. Conversely, the question can be asked as to what a Jewish version of anatheism might look like. This examination presents a test case for possibilities of reading and learning from discourses across different religions.

From Medical Halakha to Jewish Bioethics

ABSTRACT Scholars of applied Jewish ethics often describe the 1959 publication of Jewish Medical Ethics, by Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, as the birth of Jewish bioethics. The decades following its publication saw prolific scholarship, predominantly by Orthodox rabbis, that examined questions about medical practice and technology through the lens of halakha, or Jewish law. This article offers an alternative genealogy of Jewish bioethics, proposing that the field actually emerged around the 1990s, when academic ethics scholars began offering critiques of the earlier scholarship, which is better understood as medical halakha. This article outlines key features of medical halakha as compared with Jewish bioethics, clarifies differences between the two, and argues that drawing a distinction between these two genres will enable greater diversity and creativity in Jewish bioethics discourse. The article closes by discussing ways to incorporate Jewish philosophy into Jewish bioethics under this new framework.

DAVID NOVAK, NATURAL LAW, AND MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

ABSTRACTAmong contemporary philosophers and theologians of Judaism, David Novak is renowned for his groundbreaking work on Jewish ethics, conceptualizing a natural law ethic derived from the sources of the Jewish tradition. One area that has been underexplored in Novak’s writings is his interpretation of medieval Jewish philosophy. This article demonstrates that Novak’s understanding of medieval Jewish philosophy is based on the conviction that medieval thought was incorrect on theoretical reason (physics and metaphysics), but correct on practical reason (ethics and law). He argues that one can discern two different and competing models of natural law ethics in the medieval period: Nachmanides’ minimalist model and Maimonides’ metaphysical model. He suggests that there are dangers to imposing Maimonides’ model through war on people who do not share the same metaphysical views. This is partly because ethics imposed with too much military force can easily be corrupted, even if the motivation is initially pure. Thus, while Novak thinks that Maimonides’ metaphysical natural law ethic is often deeper, as necessary for a state and especially with regard to sexual ethics, Nachmanides’ more limited model is often more prudent regarding the limits of applying it universally.

From Neo-Kantianism to Durkheimian Sociology

The phenomenon of sacrifice was a major problem in nineteenth-century social thought about religion for a variety of reasons. These surfaced in a spectacular way in a German trial in which the most prominent Jewish philosopher of the century, the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen, was asked to be an expert witness. The text he produced on the nature of Judaism was widely circulated and influential. It presents what can be taken as the neo-Kantian approach to understanding ritual. But it also reveals the ways in which neo-Kantianism avoided becoming relativistic social science. In this case, it came to the edge and stopped. Cohen’s account is compared to the similar, but ‘empirical’, account of the same material in Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert, which completed the transition.

Nourishment in Paradise and After Resurrection: Double Creation According to Gregory of Nyssa

Abstract Gregory of Nyssa (cca 335–cca 395), one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, introduces the creation of human beings on the basis of Genesis 1:26–27 and interprets these two biblical verses as a ‘double creation’—the first of which is ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:26) and secondly as male or female (Genesis 1:27). His concept of ‘double creation’ is obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish philosopher, but Gregory points out the condition of human beings before and after committing the sin, in contrast to Philo’s conception. While Philo distinguishes between the first and the second creation of the entirety of nature, Gregory only relates the double creation to humans. Thus plants as nourishment for humans, according to Genesis, must be matched with the second creation of humans. In the resurrection, when the ‘first creation’ of human nature will be reached, human beings with their restored bodies will only feed on immaterial, spiritual food—the Word of God.

Reversing The “Eclipse of Relationality”

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber talked about, living under the shadow of Auschwitz, that humanity lived with the ‘eclipse of God’. I now wonder if we have moved beyond this ‘eclipse of God’ to a time of the ‘eclipse of relationality’. This article argues that the eclipse of relationality is enabled through a predominant worldview in which the world is understood as mechanical and dead – observed and experienced in increasingly abstract form. In this way of being, the world and the ‘other’, cannot be loved. In light of this eclipse, this article offers two pathways back to life, particularly for practitioners concerned with healing culture. The first is ontological – a new way of being that is experienced through a living polarity between the ideas enfolded within Jung’s theory of individuation and Buber’s dialogical theorising. The second is phenomenological – a new kind of social and ecological practice linked to a perceptivity of living process, traced from Carl Jung and James Hillman, to Mary Watkins, Henri Bortoft and Allan Kaplan. The key wisdom from this article, from travelling down these two pathways - the key theorising of a way forward for cultural healers - is that people increasingly spend so much of their life separated, a-part, lacking intimacy with another, or with the world, or the manifestations of the world that are all around them, and within them. Something is then missing – call it connection, which ensouls the world – the aliveness that invites an anticipatory and participatory relationship with the world, and importantly, a world experienced as both profound Otherness, as well as deeply Oneness. The consequences for people and the world are profound – for the experience of alienation enables abstractions to flourish, exclusions to expand, and rushed interventions to proliferate – the ‘eclipse of relationality’ beckons.