Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy

ONE: Loss, Presence, and Gabirol’s Desire: Medieval Jewish Philosophy and the Possibility of a Feminist Ground

O N E ‰ Sarah Pessin Loss, Presence, and Gabirol’s Desire: Medieval Jewish Philosophy and the Possibility of a Feminist Ground dew drops ambiguously withering saplings adrift opening mouths asunder (reception in revelation [receive / reveal]) (conception in concealment [conceive / conceal]) outpouring and indwelling the pooling tears of eros1 ‰ Introduction As placeholder for the secondary, the subordinate, and the recalcitrant, the feminine survives ancient and medieval philosophy, Jewish medieval philosophy notwithstanding, under a suppressive stronghold. Despite Dillon’s optimistic conclusion that “Chercher la femme can be a rewarding activity for the Platonic philosopher,”2 even the most well-intentioned glance at the Greek roots of medieval Jewish philosophy seems to suggest otherwise. Subjugating the feminine principle to the masculine from its very beginnings , and plotting a conceptual space in which the history of philosophy grows, there stands the well-known Pythagorean “Table of Opposites” in which the pair “male and female” is structurally correlated with the pair “good and bad.” As recounted by Aristotle at the very start of his Metaphysics, 28 sarah pessin [the Pythagoreans] say there are ten principles, which they arrange in two columns of cognates—limit (péras) and unlimited (ápeiron), odd (perritón) and even (ártion), one (hen) and plurality (pleithos), right (deksión) and left (aristerón), male (árren) and female (theilu), resting (eimeroun) and moving (kinoumenon), straight (euthú) and curved (kampúlon), light (phõs) and darkness (skótos), good (agathón) and bad (kakón), square (tetrágõnon) and oblong (heterómeikes).3 Translated also as “good and evil,” this agathón/kakón coupling sets a stage upon which the feminine signals the negation of goodness. Standing in her opposition to the árren, the masculine Strongman (árren from érrõmai, “to put forth strength”), the feminine theilu is the Nurturer (theilu from thaõ, “to suckle”). And yet, despite the positive connotations of nurturing, she is made to become the locus of loss. Here, theilu emerges under her de¤nition as “soft,” “yielding,” and “weak.” And so, the feminine lives on as correlate of evil on the Pythagorean table of opposites, as impotent mother and erratic nurse in Plato’s Timaeus, as obedient helper (and mother of recalcitrant temptation) in Philo, and as the imaginationary whore-of-matter in Maimonides. We have entered upon the “feminine-as-loss” dynamic. The main question of our study is whether the feminine can in any way be redeemed through an engagement with such texts. I suggest that in the philosophy of Solomon ibn Gabirol, especially his discourse on matter, we may uncover the possibility of a feminist ground. I will show how there emerges in Gabirol, rather unexpectedly, (a) a championing of materiality, (b) a conceptual coupling of material passivity with divine essentiality, and as such, (c) a positive valuation of passivity. In this way, while he himself does not draw out implications for the feminine, the very pages of Gabirol’s metaphysics can be shown to invite a reversal of the feminine-as-loss thematic . From marker of loss, the feminine as passive can be revaluated now as the locus of presence—as that which is most sacred, as the very mark of the Divine Essence itself. This reversal of passivity from loss to presence will be further linked to what I will argue is an existential stance of erotic receptivity in Gabirol’s philosophy, a stance in which the expectant potency of eros (signaled, I will suggest, by the feminine) replaces the active potency of power (or, the masculine stance) in the estimation of the highest existential possibility of human being. Through an engagement with the metaphysics of Gabirol in which we encounter a positive valuation of the material as the receptive mark of eros itself, I ¤nd the grounds for redeeming the feminine passive—from loss to presence. A brief word about my methodology and goals is in order. Except for a comment on Aristotle’s biological theory, this paper does not discuss actual 29 Loss, Presence, and Gabirol’s Desire remarks about women, nor does it impute misogynist assumptions—or conversely, feminist intents—to the authors in question. In ¤nding a feminist ground in Gabirol’s metaphysics, I am not suggesting that Gabirol was himself a feminist. Rather, I uncover a feminist ground by allowing the textual constructions—including the valuation of the feminine therein—to speak for themselves. Gabirol’s text is thus seen to signal a moment...