Almost
Behind this worldview one can sense a slight glimmer of the Renaissance, which was arising in the West at that time. While medieval thought was defined by a dualism of above and below, by a vertical hierarchy in which there was only a descent—from God to the lowest level of matter—now, coming out of classical traditions, there arose the awareness of the raising up of that which was below: the individual. Being is no longer felt as vertical, like a process in which the infinite flows into the finite, but rather like a cycle: the infinite, the spirit that flows from above to below into matter, flows upward again. The ascent follows upon the descent. That humans are “the end and the pinnacle of all sensate creatures, through whom the remanation of things into God takes place” is something that Nicholas of Cusa53 (1401–64), whose writing Abravanel can hardly have known, also teaches.
-In This Hour Heschel’s Writings in Nazi Germany and London Exile Abraham Joshua Heschel Foreword by Susannah Heschel (Essay On Don Yitzhak Abravanel)
Almost
Behind this worldview one can sense a slight glimmer of the Renaissance, which was arising in the West at that time. While medieval thought was defined by a dualism of above and below, by a vertical hierarchy in which there was only a descent—from God to the lowest level of matter—now, coming out of classical traditions, there arose the awareness of the raising up of that which was below: the individual. Being is no longer felt as vertical, like a process in which the infinite flows into the finite, but rather like a cycle: the infinite, the spirit that flows from above to below into matter, flows upward again. The ascent follows upon the descent. That humans are “the end and the pinnacle of all sensate creatures, through whom the remanation of things into God takes place” is something that Nicholas of Cusa53 (1401–64), whose writing Abravanel can hardly have known, also teaches.
-In This Hour Heschel’s Writings in Nazi Germany and London Exile Abraham Joshua Heschel Foreword by Susannah Heschel (Essay On Don Yitzhak Abravanel)