Filosofia e qabbalah. Elia Benamozegh (1823-1900), un pensatore inattuale

Elia Benamozegh (Livorno 1823, ivi 1900), philosopher, biblical exegete, teacher at the Rabbinical College, was an original and prolific thinker. At the time the qabbalah or esoteric Jewish tradition was commonly considered as the result of an era of intellectual and religious decadence by the protagonists of Jewish studies, but Benamozegh interpreted it as the authentic theology of Judaism. In several works of various kinds, written in French, Hebrew and Italian, he studied the qabbalah through a comparison with Spinoza’s thought, German idealism (Hegel in particular), and – at a later stage – positivism and evolutionism. Referring constantly to the first phase of Vico’s historicist philosophy and, especially, to the work of Vincenzo Gioberti, Benamozegh elaborated a pluralist religious philosophy with an emphasis on progress.