Attentive ears and forward-looking eyes: disciplining the senses and forming the self in the book of Proverbs
Ancient Israelite sages recognized a dilemma regarding sensory perception: the senses are vehicles for acquiring wisdom, yet they are also channels of temptation. The sages responded to this dilemma by devising strategies for disciplining vision and audition. These strategies - which may be understo...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Centre
[2015]
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| In: |
The journal of Jewish studies
Year: 2015, Volume: 66, Issue: 2, Pages: 242-264 |
| RelBib Classification: | HB Old Testament HD Early Judaism NBE Anthropology |
| Further subjects: | B
SENSES & sensation
Religious aspects
B Wisdom B Jewish literature B Temptation B Perception B Early Judaism B Proverbs B Book of Proverbs, The (Book) B Identity B Temptation Social aspects B Auditory perception |
| Summary: | Ancient Israelite sages recognized a dilemma regarding sensory perception: the senses are vehicles for acquiring wisdom, yet they are also channels of temptation. The sages responded to this dilemma by devising strategies for disciplining vision and audition. These strategies - which may be understood as Foucauldian technologies of the self - were designed to train sensory attention. Through these techniques of the self, the sages aimed to develop in students what Bourdieu terms practical mastery over eyes and ears, inscribing the wisdom tradition"s values in the bodies of students and preparing them to navigate the broader social world. My study thus suggests that one goal of Jewish wisdom literature was to cultivate a regime of perception that facilitated the construction of the human self. Recovering this specifically Jewish self in antiquity augments and complicates traditional modern Western histories of the self. |
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| ISSN: | 0022-2097 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of Jewish studies
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