My favorite passage:
Homo sapiens, that unique synthesis of "dust of the earth" and breath of G-d, is unique among created beings in having no fixed essence: in being free to be what he or she chooses. Mirandola's Oration was a break with the two dominant traditions of the Middle Ages: the Christian doctrine that human beings are irretrievably corrupt, tainted by original sin, and the Platonic idea that humanity is bounded by fixed forms.Shabbat shalom!
It is also a strikingly Jewish account - almost identical with the one given by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in Halakhic Man: "The most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself. It is this idea that Judaism introduced into the world." It is therefore with a frisson of recognition that we discover that Mirandola had a Jewish teacher, Rabbi Elijah ben Moses Delmedigo (1460-1497).
1 comment:
Are we really free to be what we choose to be? If we were each created for a unique necessary purpose, as we are so often told, then before we took our first breathe of life did G-d perhaps, whisper that purpose into our being, which is why we each have our own distinct passions and desires calling to be brought forth from within us. Do we create ourselves from "having no fixed essence" or do we create ourselves from how we choose to respond to what life has preprogrammed our destinies to be?
Sometimes I find it all so confusing. Like, the statement from your link to Chief Rabbi, "This emphasis on choice, freedom and responsibility is one of the most distinctive features of Jewish thought". Judaism is chock full of laws, rules and regulations and disapproving looks if you should choose to not follow them. So where does ones choice, freedom and responsibility play into that?
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