Footnote, Belated

Footnote
The film applies to everything. Because it is about philology, the science that takes as its premise cultures and language inform one another. It is mutual construction. There are several disastrous implications, among them the fact that a researcher seeking to uncover the presuppositions of a culture could either study the language or the culture’s history and know everything about the other.

Thus: language is a reflection (or incarnation) of the metaphysical assumptions of its author. It’s a claim that everyone--everyone--who is going to write about aesthetics, is going to have to address. Still, beyond drawing attention to on of the central divisions of literary criticism, Footnote also ticks Maimonides right off.

The academy is about record and dissemination. Eliezer and Uriel are both, by Uriel’s declaration, teachers. No problem so far: the teacher-student relationship is key to Maimonides. They are also writers AKA indiscriminate teachers. It is their mission to make the esoteric known. Big mistake. Key to Maimonides is the idea that the sacred is guarded from the profane by ambiguity. Thus, texts discussing divine knowledge and tradition (such as the Talmud) should deliberately obfuscate their own meaning, thus ensuring that only by divine revelation will a reader understand. It is a pedagogy that ensures God will determine who learns God’s secrets. But Footnote considers scholars. Not only scholars, but teachers, and teachers of the tradition of YHWH. 

Bad move, Shkolniks. Bad move.