non-jewish jew

Always wish I'd read Freud. The uncanny was brilliant, civilisation and its discontents good, and Adam Phillips, a writer you like a lot, always points you there as well. And, of course, Said's great little book on Freud and the non-European is full of insightful thoughts. Something to be said for someone making the case for civility and rationality. Perhaps 'reason' is a better word, since rationality seems too narrow a concept.

Re-reading the collection on mass psychology and religion (unfinished first time round, of course. Yes, I know!). Good stuff. Makes me want to pick up Edmundson's book on Freud's death.

The prohibition against making an image of God — the compulsion to worship a

God whom one cannot see,” he says, meant that in Judaism “a sensory

perception was given second place to what may be called an abstract idea

— a triumph of intellectuality over sensuality.”

---from 'Defender of the Faith'.

Hmm. Didn't George Steiner make the same point? More interestingly, what does that say about aniconism in Islam? And then there's Hans Jonas's brilliant essay on cave paintings which is pretty similar: presence and absence, abstraction...Most intriguingly: the possibilities of thinking about being religious without being 'religious'. No, not 'thinking about', but being.