Angelic and Prophetic Cognitive Dissonance

Most Jewish (in distinction to Christian) angelologies assume angels to lack freewill (at least de facto). Angelic rebelliousness must therefore be rationalized as some kind of intentional contradictory setup. MS Oxford 2593 (fos. 60r-62r), attributed by Tishbi to Luzzatto (and disputed by Garb), explains angelic rebellion as originating in a disjunction between the nature of their mission and the limits of their comprehension. I interpret this predicament as angelic cognitive dissonance, for its affinity to the psychological condition. Since these rebelling angels are described as seducers to human evil, this depiction adds up as the philosophical claim that the source of human evil (or perhaps ‘weakness of will’, akrasia) is disjunction between cognizance of challenge and appreciation of its purpose.

Various forms of disjunction in comprehension appear in other works attributed to Luzzatto, particularly relating to a prophet’s conception of his prophecy, and the latter’s correlation with reality. (The roots of such a problematic can be traced to Jeremiah 32.) But the natures of the disjunctions to be found in these works are substantially distinct. Tracing the differences may assist in distinguishing the Luzzatto sources from those of his Circle. But more fundamentally, irrelevant of attribution, viewing angelic cognitive dissonance in the context of prophetic cognitive dissonance suggests that what angels lack is some aspect of faith that prophets have. So this paper suggests that faith in the face of dissonance between the vehicles of challenge and its purpose can be viewed as the antidote to evil, or akrasia.