Q&A: Certainty Under Attack
Certainty Under Attack
Question
Hello and blessings.
For a very long time now—about three years—I’ve been trying to understand and present to myself and to others some sort of barrier that has thrown my life into constant turmoil.
I very much hope that in the lines that follow I’ll succeed in laying out what’s in my heart as clearly as possible. And perhaps this is the place to apologize for the somewhat winding style of what follows. It takes great genius and talent to identify, consciously and clearly, the shape of the content hidden deep in the recesses of the soul, and from there translate it into words and sentences. That is apparently a talent I lack, so please forgive me.
So—
I don’t understand where my rabbis draw this certainty from about the rightness of our path—in general, and of their particular path in particular.
More than once I’ve been present at a class given to us in the yeshiva where things were said that truly elevated the soul, instilled certainty in my heart about our faith, and planted joy there that comes from the resolution of doubts. But at the very same time that these pleasant feelings began to arise within me, and for just a brief moment I could delight in the sense of general stability that came over my soul, I would imagine a gathering of far-left organizations, for example, whose members and supporters derive great satisfaction and identification from it, a flourishing sense of certainty, and reinforcement of the attitude they already hold toward those who disagree with them, while their reserves of zeal and determination to realize their end-of-days vision become filled to overflowing.
If truth is one, then how are there disputes in the world? Why does each person identify a different truth?
And if that is the situation, from where do we draw our certainty in the justice of our path? By what right do we decide about everyone else that they are holding on to falsehood, and that our attitude toward them is one of criticism and accusation?
And if we prove things to ourselves by means of reason—well, our reason too, like all human reason, is shaped by the whole fabric of our lives, so surely we will say about our own view, just as others say about theirs, that it is the correct one.
What value is there in this feeling of certainty in our hearts if we too, like everyone else, say that truth is embraced in our arms?
Of course, this criticism is not directed only at us, but at anyone who gets up and says anything at all about any subject or issue.
What troubles me is the very real fact that it is highly likely that if I had been born into a family living a few hundred kilometers away from my area, among people who at this very moment are rioting at the fence and carrying out attacks against my country, my whole structure of thought about the world and its details would have been completely different, and everything I now call truth, there I would certainly denounce and pray to destroy.
When I hear my teachers speaking and trying to shape my soul to look at the world in a certain way, I push them away inside myself and cannot receive Torah from them or love of the Jewish people, because I say to myself: of course that’s how he thinks—he was educated to speak and think that way.
If everything is subjective, then the thinkers of the postmodern approach are right that everything is legitimate, and when someone comes and tries to demand truth within our lives, if he is honest enough and sharp-minded enough, he simply won’t be able to say a word. Or think any thought at all.
Obviously you can’t live life this way, and indeed it seems that today’s culture no longer cares about truth and absolutes, but rather each person does whatever seems right in his own eyes.
But from my soul’s current position—I am filled with silence. Truly, I can’t get a single word out of my mouth. Truly, it’s impossible to know what is right and what is imagination. And the fact that you can’t live this way doesn’t mean it isn’t true. (I’m aware of the internal contradiction screaming out from these words—that if I say the truth is that it’s impossible to determine what the truth is, then I’ve contradicted my opening claim. And from here the loop goes on forever.)
As I’m sure is evident from the style of what I’ve written here—I’m very confused and very troubled. The truth is that I’m not really living. I’m standing in place and sinking slowly. Please help me understand. Thank you very much.
Answer
Hello Yehuda.
I think I understood the problem well, and I’ve devoted several books to it—especially Two Carts and Truth and Not Stable. It would be worthwhile for you to read the introduction to the latter, since it touches exactly on this point. In brief, I would say this: indeed, a feeling of certainty has no basis whatsoever, and anyone who talks about certainty is deceiving either you or perhaps himself as well. A person is a person, and as such can always be mistaken. On the other hand, the postmodern mistake is to jump from here to the conclusion that there is no truth and everything is relative—narratives and so on. They mistakenly identify truth with certainty, but that is not so. True, there is no certainty, but that does not mean there is no truth. There is truth, and I have tools to try to approach it and even to reach it, although I can never have certainty that I am right.
From my perspective, specifically someone who is aware of the difficulties you described can come closer to the truth, because he examines his positions and does not automatically follow the group and personal enthusiasms you described. He weighs other positions and tries to understand what underlies them and whether that is relevant for him. And in the end he forms a position of his own while trying to understand which of his considerations are subjective and what has real validity. And of course, after all that, he understands that there is no certainty and does not expect certainty. The Torah was not given to ministering angels.
By the way, for this reason I also assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to relate this way to people of different religions and groups and outlooks, because He too understands that we have no way of reaching the truth with certainty, and people arrive at conclusions according to their understanding. Anyone who truly thinks what he thinks—even if he is mistaken—is under compulsion.
As for the question of the influence of education and one’s upbringing on our outlooks, it has been discussed here several times in the past. Here is one example I found just now, and there are several other places as well:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%A7%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8-%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%AA-%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%91%E2%80%8E
Discussion on Answer
I don’t wait for proof in order to accept my sensations, and I also don’t expect such proof, because there cannot be any. And still, the question is why to accept them. So as a skeptic, I do not assume the superiority of reason over cognition. I doubt both. Especially in light of what I know about the arbitrary way the senses and cognition came into being and how they function—evolution.
The question of how we in fact live is not relevant to the discussion. The question is how it is right to live.
“I don’t understand where my rabbis draw this certainty from about the rightness of our path”—what is there to understand? It’s believers’ selection bias: those who don’t have that certainty could never have become your rabbis in the first place. As for where they draw it from, that’s already a question for psychology.
It is written, “You shall not follow the majority to do evil,” meaning that every person is commanded to weigh and examine, before doing what others do, whether it is a bad act or a good one.
And some have interpreted: do not read “the majority” but “the rabbis.” And the rest—go and learn.
The only source for the fact that you do know things beyond just some random guess is the fact that your brain is the product of many tens of millions of years of evolution and adaptation to the environment. Creatures, including human beings, that do not know their environment well enough will not survive. But by the same token it is also clear that this familiarity with the environment does not belong to the categories of “truth and falsehood,” because it is a familiarity shaped to be sufficient for coping with the everyday reality around you, just as it is for any other living creature. For example, in this biological reality you are not required to deal with electrons, and therefore you are not aware of their existence.
Yehuda.
Hello, and thank you for the quick response.
I understand that it is more accurate to say that there is no certainty, but rather a reasonable probability that something is true. And so too regarding this very statement itself: it is not certain with certainty, but it is close to being so.
But what about sensory perception?
For example, right here in front of me on the table in my room stands a large flowerpot with blooming flowers in different colors giving off a pleasant fragrance.
It is true that from the perspective of rational reflection this is not a certain reality. Maybe I’m dreaming, or imagining, and so on.
And yet there is another axis within the powers of the soul that determines that I am allowed to be sure that this is certain.
Isn’t it foolish to say, “Yes, I see that there’s a flowerpot here. But you haven’t proven it to me”?
Why should one rely only on reason in order to know what is true and what is not?
I agree that the senses can mislead and deceive us.
But it is clear to me that there are cases in which the demand to establish something with conclusive rational proof is foolish and detached from the way we human beings live.