Primacies
Experience, Expression, and the Jewish Imagination
Published on 20. August 2025
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-226-84211-0 (ISBN)
Description
A powerful exploration of how literature expresses and transforms our earliest preverbal experiences.
Primacies begins with the assertion that our earliest preverbal experiences are accompanied by a primary language-a universal expression of tears, cries, and laughter offered long before we learn our distinctive, ordinary languages. For Michael Fishbane, these "primacies" release the raw feelings of our existential condition and catalyze our most powerful literary expressions of sorrow, joy, and fulfillment.
In this book, Fishbane explores how ancient, medieval, and modern literature and poetry express and transform these primal sensations. Building on his theological project begun in Sacred Attunement and Fragile Finitude, Fishbane offers here a radically new lived hermeneutics that seeks to do nothing less than redefine the relationship between experience and language.
Primacies begins with the assertion that our earliest preverbal experiences are accompanied by a primary language-a universal expression of tears, cries, and laughter offered long before we learn our distinctive, ordinary languages. For Michael Fishbane, these "primacies" release the raw feelings of our existential condition and catalyze our most powerful literary expressions of sorrow, joy, and fulfillment.
In this book, Fishbane explores how ancient, medieval, and modern literature and poetry express and transform these primal sensations. Building on his theological project begun in Sacred Attunement and Fragile Finitude, Fishbane offers here a radically new lived hermeneutics that seeks to do nothing less than redefine the relationship between experience and language.
Reviews / Votes
"At the threshold of speech, Fishbane traces the primacies of experience-those silent stirrings that give rise to expression before words appear. Through a luminous engagement with diverse Jewish literary genres, he explores how the Jewish imagination is rooted in these preverbal depths. In an age of linguistic saturation and spiritual distraction, this book offers a contemplative return to the spaces between feeling and form, self and language-an invitation to dwell with the mysteries that underlie expression and animate our encounters with the world, texts, others, and ourselves." -- Elie Holzer, Bar-Ilan University "Fishbane's Primacies is an extraordinary meditation on how meaning emerges through a dynamic encounter with primordial elements-at once foundational and abyssal. Interweaving philosophy, hermeneutics, and a masterful curation and interpretation of Jewish sources from antiquity to the present, Fishbane offers profound insights into cultural renewal and human creativity. With poetic clarity, he guides readers through the perpetual human task of forging sense amid life's depths and upheavals, revealing vital pathways for individual and communal regeneration." -- Omer Michaelis, Tel Aviv UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
458 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-84211-0 (9780226842110)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Michael Fishbane is the Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology and Fragile Finitude: A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Content
Introduction
Part I
1. Lamentation and Loss: The Poetics of Anguish
2. Making "Sense" of Things: Searching High and Low
3. Correlations and the Imaginal Between
4. The World, Numina, and the Challenge of Theology
5. The Inner Point: Spiritual Consciousness and Attentive Regard
Part II
6. Tears and Testimony: A Literary Meditation
7. Poetic Longing, Mysticism, and the Ontology of Language
8. "The Between": Spaces of Meeting, Language, and the Abyss
9. Alone-Together: Contemplation and Community as Intersecting Values
10. Spiritual Hermeneutics and Appropriation: The ?asidic Sermon
Conclusion: Forms of Presence
Acknowledgments
Index
Part I
1. Lamentation and Loss: The Poetics of Anguish
2. Making "Sense" of Things: Searching High and Low
3. Correlations and the Imaginal Between
4. The World, Numina, and the Challenge of Theology
5. The Inner Point: Spiritual Consciousness and Attentive Regard
Part II
6. Tears and Testimony: A Literary Meditation
7. Poetic Longing, Mysticism, and the Ontology of Language
8. "The Between": Spaces of Meeting, Language, and the Abyss
9. Alone-Together: Contemplation and Community as Intersecting Values
10. Spiritual Hermeneutics and Appropriation: The ?asidic Sermon
Conclusion: Forms of Presence
Acknowledgments
Index