Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity

In this monograph, two of the most complicated theoretical topics confronting the scholar of mysticism (apophasis and infinity) are tackled. Writing about apophasis presents a unique dilemma as the term itself connotes the inability of language to name the namelessness of ultimate reality. The exploration of infinity presents an equally daunting demand as the intellect embarking on this path is summoned to circumscribe the uncircumscribable. The two subjects thus intersect at the vanishing point where the human mind reaches its limit by confronting the limitlessness that can be described only as indescribable.

Elliot R. Wolfson, is Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many publications including most recently The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish Other (2018); Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (2019); Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality (2021); The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes: Between Nihilism and Hope (2023); and Nocturnal Seeing: Hopelessness of Hope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod (2025).