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Notes
1. Of the Jewish philosophers studied here, only Levinas described his thought as meontological. I do, however, apply the term to all three cases, because the role of nonbeing in ontological inquiry is emphasised in each respectively.
2. Brann (169) defines “nothing” as the negation of a real thing, although she determines that “nothing” is inarticulable. This is inconsistent with Jewish thought, in which “nothing” is also an intelligible form – Brann ascribes this privilege to nonbeing.
3. Poetic language is not constrained conceptually the way the philosophical one is; see Mehtonen.
4. The same themes persist also in neoplatonism. The neoplatonic and Jewish traditions are connected, but it is impossible to track here how they intertwine. See Goodman for further discussion.
5. The importance of messianism in Jewish thought is emphasised by the parodies of it in East European Jewish folklore (Handelman 43). It must have become conventional in order to have been ridiculed.
6. Isou spoke of his intellectual solidarity with the medieval kabbalists (Isou, Agrégation 283, 355).
7. Bloch understands the hollow space as the “space” left empty by the death of God.
8. The postulation of nothingness as some kind of spatiality causes its quasi-presence, because in that case it is treated in relation to thingness.
9. Rien is more common and colloquial than néant, which is a philosophical and theological concept. It is, however, problematic that the German das Nichts can be translated as either rien or néant. In German, Franz Rosenzweig's term Ichts (from ich, me, and Nichts) is structurally somewhat closer to the Levinasian application of rien.
10. Isou's critique of phenomenology is not directed against Levinas, but Hegel and Heidegger.
11. This conception probably emerged in Isou due to Abulafia, who adopted Maimonidean thinking infested with Greek and neoplatonic influences (such as Aristotle and Plotinus), although Maimonides was anti-Aristotelian with respect to the idea of human perfection (Kavka 75).
12. All translations by the author.
13. For example, Abulafia and Isou both considered letter permutations essential for the mystical progress towards a union with divinity.
14. This article is a part of the “Literature, Transcendence, Avant-Garde” project, funded by the Academy of Finland (1121211).