Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 213 World War II or reject his philosophy of "symbolic forms" as Lipton claims he did (p. a7o).9 On the contrary, it became the base of his theory of totalitarianism and ethics, topics in Cassirer's late writing that have generally gone unrecognized in studies of his thought. Lipton's study does not succeed as a reconstruction of specific phases or turns in the development of Cassirer's thought; his evidence for such changes does not stand up upon closer examination because it is based upon superficial considerations and pays too little attention to the writings themselves. However, Lipton does show that there is a broad and general connection between Cassirer's thought and the problems of contemporary political life, a connection that has been unnoticed by most philosophers . The value of Lipton's study is that it is the first to draw attention to Cassirer's interest in politics as a means to investigate his thought as a whole. Since Cassirer has long been considered to have had little or nothing to say about problems with ethical or political content, Lipton's study can help to correct this mistaken view that Cassirer was only an epistemologist. JOHN MICHAEL KROIS Universitiit Trier David Baile. Gershom Scholera: Kabbalah and Counter-Hi.~to~. ('ambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979. Pp. viii + 279- $16.5o. Gershom Scholem, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is renowned by now for his many scholarly works on Jewish mysticism. He has practically created a scholarly field by himself. Prior to Scholem almost all Jewish scholars shied away from such dangerous topics as the cabala, the career of the pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Zevi in the seventeenth century, and the lingering effects of the Sabbatian movement in modern times. Now, in the second half of the twentieth century Scholem's monumental studies are recognized as of the greatest importance in the study of Jewish intellectual history. In addition there has been a gradual recognition that these studies are of genuine significance for the broader study of European ideas. The cabala, we are learning, influenced major Christian thinkers such as Leibniz and Newton as well as many of the Renaissance naturalists. In view of the great contribution of Scholem it is good to have this first-rate study of Scholem's theory of history that lies behind his particular studies. As far as I know, Baile's book is the first to deal with Scholem's place as a Jewish thinker and theologian . The author had the advantage of Scholem's comments on his work before he finished it. Part of the basic structure of Baile's interpretation is that he claims that Scholem has not changed his fundamental theory since he began his research into For example, Lipton sees Cassirer's authorship of An Essay on Man as a sign that he rejected his earlier Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, but Cassirer introduces that laler work with a statement to the reader indicating that it will be necessary to go back to that earlier work in order to understand the basis of what he has to say in the new one (An Essay on Man [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944], p. viii). 214 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the cabala about sixty years ago. (Before that Scholem had been a student of mathematics and philosophy.) Encouraged by Walter Benjamin and Martin Buber, Scholem did a dissertation on one of the main cabalistic texts and then commenced his scholarly publications on Jewish mysticism. Almost from the beginning of his career, he rebelled against Buber's mystical and ahistorical approach to Jewish sources (as in Buber's Talesfrom Hasidim). Instead Scholem insisted on approaching the material historically for what it represented in Judaism. He saw this task as leading to the discovery of the metaphysical truth involved in Jewish mysticism. In a fascinating autobiographical letter of Scholem's, written in 1937, entitled "A Candid Word about the True Motives of My Kabbalistic Studies" (published for the first time in Baile's study), Scholem shows that there is far more involved in his work than just academic curiosity or pedantry. Scholem was deliberately rejecting the rational Jewish philosophers, culminating in the neo...