Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Etz Chayim
Vital's 'Etz Chayim' — the central systematic record of Lurianic Kabbalah: tzimtzum, shevirat ha-kelim, tikkun olam
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Etz Chayim (Posthumous (transmission)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | not engaged |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Non-local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Revelation |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Variable |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Etz Chayim
Luria's oral teaching 1570-72 in Safed; Vital's redaction c. 1572-1620; first printing 1782 in Korets.
Space
Etz Chayim
Safed (the Galilean mystical centre that flourished in the late sixteenth century — Joseph Karo, Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria all worked there); subsequent transmission through the Polish-Eastern-European Hasidic communities of the eighteenth century.
Matter
Etz Chayim
Systematic Kabbalistic treatise in 8 gates. The literary form is distinctive: Vital recorded Luria's oral teachings in a quasi-systematic order that Luria himself never produced.
Observer
Etz Chayim
Luria via Vital. The complex transmission means that 'Etz Chayim' is at once Luria's teaching and Vital's compositional achievement.
Energy
Etz Chayim
Sixteenth-century mystical-systematic energies. The Lurianic moment at Safed (1570-72) was extraordinarily condensed: Luria taught for only two years before his death, but his teachings reshaped Jewish mysticism for centuries.
Information
Etz Chayim
Single large work (with Vital's many subsidiary works — Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim, Sha'ar ha-Pesukim, etc. — together constituting the larger Lurianic corpus).
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Principal record of Lurianic Kabbalah; reshaped Jewish mysticism and Hasidism. The contemporary use of 'tikkun olam' as a Jewish social-political slogan is a distant descendant of the Lurianic doctrine; modern Jewish theology (especially Buber, Scholem, Heschel) engages the Lurianic system continuously.