A Look at Pluralism, Disagreement, and Truth — In Preparation for Shavuot

Table of Contents

• [0:03] Defining pluralism and the multiplicity of truths
• [3:43] Social pluralism versus philosophical pluralism
• [5:11] Philosophical pluralism and belief in multiple truths
• [7:08] The source of disputes in a monistic conception
• [8:11] Harmonism in the chocolate example
• [12:12] The elephant and contradiction: harmony versus contradiction
• [16:13] Discussion about a public garden and the agreement of the sides
• [18:33] The Talmudic text on weighing arguments in the Sanhedrin
• [22:39] Monistic truth as a weighted combination
• [24:39] Optional cinema versus classic Rashomon
• [27:47] The difference between harmonism and pluralism, and special testimony
• [29:01] Arguments in philosophy as a dialogue of the deaf
• [32:12] The story of the concubine at Gibeah — two aspects of truth
• [34:53] The giving of the Torah — representing ideas at Mount Sinai
• [38:00] Zen and the art of archery — abstract ideas in a variety of forms
• [39:42] Torah and model — mathematical models of a single idea
• [43:05] The perception of sound and color — sensory representations
• [48:03] Interest and pluralism in the dispute over color and sound
• [55:05] A parallel to Ecclesiastes — a look at vanity under the sun

Summary

General Overview

The text argues that pluralism in the philosophical sense of a “multiplicity of truths” is problematic and even self-contradictory, because the law of non-contradiction prevents a situation in which both X and not-X are true in the same sense. It distinguishes between philosophical pluralism and social pluralism, and argues that it is possible, and even proper, to allow different voices and positions in society without committing to the claim that all positions are correct. It proposes understanding many disputes instead as harmonism: one complex truth built from the combination of different angles, different projections, or different representations of the same matter. So the real argument is usually about weighting and deciding, not about the facts themselves. It illustrates this through chocolate, Maimonides’ parable of the elephant, Talmudic and aggadic examples, and the distinction between “Rashomon” as different angles on one truth and “optional cinema” as the presentation of contradictory options.

Defining Pluralism and the Logical Critique

Pluralism is defined as a multiplicity of truths, in the sense that both the person who claims X and the person who claims not-X are right, and this is presented as a problem in light of the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. The text argues that with regard to facts, this kind of pluralism seems strange, because one side is supposed to be right, or both may be wrong, but both cannot be right when their claims contradict each other. The text further argues that even with regard to values, pluralism of the sort “two contradictory values and both are right” undermines the meaning of belief in a value, because in the end there is still error and falsehood regarding the question of what is proper.

Dispute as Apparent Evidence for Pluralism

The text states that the mere existence of disputes or a multiplicity of opinions is not evidence that both positions are correct. It argues that there can certainly be one group that thinks X and another group that thinks not-X, while one is correct and the other is mistaken; therefore, a multiplicity of positions does not require a multiplicity of truths. The basic assumption laid down is that pluralism in the sense of multiple truths has no real meaning, even though social pluralism does have meaning.

Social Pluralism versus Philosophical Pluralism

The text defines social pluralism as a policy of allowing different groups to hold different positions, express them, and argue about them without suppression, even if some of the positions are not correct, or when there is no clear indication of what is correct. It argues that social pluralism does not require the claim that both sides are necessarily right, and it cannot rest on a contradictory philosophical pluralism. The text states that social pluralism is a moral-social value, whereas philosophical pluralism is an epistemological-logical worldview about the number of truths, and there is no connection between moral quality and the question of whether there is one truth or many.

The Source of Disputes and the Alternative: Harmonism

The text asks how disputes arise if there is one truth, and presents one simple possibility: error — though that is not the focus here. It proposes a second possibility, according to which two conceptions can appear contradictory and yet both be true without violating the law of non-contradiction, because they relate to different facets of the same topic / passage. The text calls this harmonism and emphasizes that this is not a compromise but the construction of one complex truth.

The Chocolate Example: Correct Reasons and Weighting

The text presents an argument over whether to eat chocolate, where one side says it is worthwhile because it tastes good and the other says it is not worthwhile because it is fattening, and it states that both reasons are correct. It argues that the real dispute is not whether chocolate is tasty or fattening, but how to weigh enjoyment against health and which consideration should prevail. The text states that it is worth listening to the other side’s reasons because they are usually correct, and that this makes the argument more intelligent and reduces the demonization of the opponent.

Maimonides’ Elephant Parable: Apparent Contradiction from Different Angles

The text brings Maimonides’ parable of the elephant, in which someone looking from the front describes two eyes and legs that are close together, while someone looking from the side describes one eye and legs that are far apart, and it stresses that here the claims appear factually contradictory. The text explains that both sides can be correct because each describes a different angle, so the law of non-contradiction is not violated, and the complete truth is the combination of the viewpoints. It adds that harmonization requires actually showing the different angles and not being satisfied with the slogan “everyone is right.”

Public Dispute: Garden Noise versus Children’s Needs

The text gives the example of a dispute over establishing a public garden, where the opponent points to the noise and the supporter points to the children’s need for it and the reduction of noise at home, and it states that both arguments are correct. It describes a situation in which a decision may have to be made according to who is harmed more and who benefits more, perhaps even by a vote, but the dispute is not about the truth of the claims but about the priority of interests and their weighting. The text concludes that this analysis shows that usually we are not dealing here with “complete idiots” or “complete villains,” but with different points of view.

Judgment and Complexity: Sanhedrin, the Maharal, and Beit Hillel

The text cites a Talmudic text about the condition for appointment to the Sanhedrin: the ability to provide “one hundred and fifty reasons by which one could declare a creeping thing pure,” even though the Torah states that a creeping thing is impure. Rabbeinu Tam asks why they test people on “empty sophistry,” and the Maharal explains that this is a test of complex thinking, which can identify reasons for both sides and weigh them. The text cites the Talmudic text saying that Jewish law was ruled in accordance with Beit Hillel because they would mention the words of Beit Shammai before their own, and it argues that the correct position comes from understanding the other side’s arguments and weighing them genuinely, not from presenting a black-and-white picture.

Complex Monism: One Truth as Projection and Coordinates

The text argues that in most significant arguments there are two true sides and two correct arguments, but this is not pluralism; it is monism, in which the truth is one and is the result of weighting. The text offers the image of a point in a two-dimensional coordinate system, where one side describes the X projection and the other side describes the Y projection, and the truth is the full coordinates. It emphasizes that even after weighting there may be one correct decision and the other may be mistaken, but the mistake may stem from a different weighting rather than from stupidity.

Rashomon and Optional Cinema: Gabi Barzilai

The text cites Gabi Barzilai’s book “Optional Cinema” and draws a distinction between two kinds of Rashomon. It describes classic Rashomon, in which different witnesses see the same event from different angles without lying and without error, similar to the elephant parable, and identifies this with harmonism as one truth containing all the angles. It describes “optional cinema” as the presentation of contradictory versions of the same situation, not because of angle but because the things are described as different options, and identifies this with pluralism when one adds the claim that all the options are correct.

Special Testimony in Jewish Law

The text presents the rule of “special testimony,” in which two witnesses see an event from different windows and therefore do not combine as testimony in capital cases, though they do in monetary cases. It explains that the reason is that the picture seen from each window is a different description of the situation, so this is not “two witnesses to the whole truth” but one witness to each facet. The text uses this to emphasize that the angle changes the representation of reality.

Philosophy as a Dialogue of the Deaf and Harmonism

The text argues that many philosophical disputes look like a dialogue of the deaf, and it presents the common criticism that this proves there is no way to decide things there as in science, and that it is all just “gut speculation.” The text accepts the description but rejects the criticism, arguing that this expresses harmonism: each position rests on correct arguments about a certain angle of the topic / passage, and the positions are talking about different aspects under the same name. The text states that the habit of identifying the angles reduces emotional charge and helps both in decision-making and in improving the quality of the argument.

“These and those are the words of the living God”: The Concubine at Gibeah (Gittin)

The text cites a Talmudic text in tractate Gittin about a dispute among the tannaim over what sparked the story of the concubine at Gibeah: “he found a fly” versus “he found a hair.” It describes how one of the sages asks Elijah the Prophet what the Holy One, blessed be He, is doing, and is answered that “My son Yonatan says this, and My son Evyatar says that,” and when asked, “Can there be doubt before Heaven?” the answer is: “These and those are the words of the living God,” with the explanation: “He found a fly and was not particular; he found a hair and was particular.” The text argues that this is a harmonistic explanation in which the truth includes both elements, and it emphasizes that this is one of only two places where the expression appears in the Talmudic text, and here it is explicitly explained not as pluralism but as a combination of components.

Torah as Representation: Moses, the Angels, and the Giving of the Torah

The text cites an aggadah about Moshe Rabbenu ascending on high to receive the Torah, and the angels objecting, “What is one born of woman doing among us?” Moshe replies that the Torah is full of commandments that do not apply to angels, such as “Honor your father and your mother,” “You shall not murder,” and Sabbath. The text argues that the aggadah teaches that what was given to human beings is not “the Torah itself” but a representation of abstract ideas clothed in human garb within our world, whereas in the world of the angels those same ideas would take on a different expression. The text states that halakhic / of Jewish law disputes are not always a case where one side is right and the other wrong, because in different circumstances the same principle can take on different forms — and that is harmonism, not pluralism.

Zen, Torah and Model, and the Garments of Torah (Tanya)

The text cites the book “Zen in the Art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel and describes how in Zen one learns the same thing through different practices, such as archery or flower arranging, because the same abstract idea is expressed in different realizations. It compares this to mathematics as a relation between an abstract Torah and different models that realize it, illustrating this with a logical form that can be filled in with variables in different domains. The text cites the book Tanya, which speaks of Torah as garments, and connects this to the idea that “Honor your father and your mother” and “You shall not murder” are particular garments of abstract ideas in the human world.

Noumenon and Phenomenon, Sound and a Tree Falling in the Forest

The text presents a Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing as it appears to us, illustrating it with a chair and the question of whether the chair is a collection of properties or the bearer of properties. It argues that a tree that falls in the forest with no one there to hear it does not “make a sound,” but only moves air, and sound is a phenomenon in consciousness created when air waves strike a sensory mechanism. The text explains that the same physical event could be represented for another creature as video rather than audio, and links this to “seeing the sounds” at Mount Sinai and to the example of an oscilloscope as “seeing sounds.”

Color, the Philosophers’ Palace, and Double Representation

The text presents the problem of “the philosophers’ palace” regarding the question whether, when two people say “red,” they experience the same inner experience, and it emphasizes that there is no way to synchronize inner experiences, only speech. It argues that the perception of color and sound includes a double representation: from the physical stimulus to a subjective phenomenon, and from the phenomenon to speech. The text says that in this context it is hard to make progress toward a decision, and so a reality is created in which there are outlooks between which there is no way to decide, something that in practice comes close to a pluralistic feeling and requires, at the very least, social pluralism.

The Lesson of the Giving of the Torah and the Warning Against Using Torah for Closed-Mindedness

The text argues that the giving of the Torah is described as a process of projection and representation, not as the transfer of information. Therefore, what is called “Torah” as it is grasped in the human world is a representation determined by circumstances and by the tools of perception. The text concludes that even with regard to the Torah itself, there is no justification for a point of view that is unwilling to recognize the possibility of another way of looking, because Torah in this world is already a garment and a projection. The text ends with the phrase “Happy holiday,” and then moves on to questions.

A New Opening: Ecclesiastes Chapter 4

The text moves on to the study of Ecclesiastes and notes: “We are in chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes, and we are at verse 7.” It quotes, “And I returned and saw vanity under the sun,” and explains that King Solomon in this chapter deals with observations about the world and analyzes them. Rashi says: “I returned and looked again, and behold, there was another vanity.”

Okay, so our topic is basically dispute, truth, pluralism, and all sorts of other unpleasant things. When we talk about pluralism, the word pluralism, from the word plural, means multiplicity, and the simple definition is a multiplicity of truths. Yes, pluralism is a multiplicity of truths. Now, a multiplicity of truths, right, that’s like the judge’s wife: he’s right and she’s right, he’s right and he’s right and she’s right too, everybody’s right. Pluralism in that sense seems very problematic to me personally. It seems very problematic to me because what does it mean that both the person who claims X and the person who claims not-X are right? There is, after all, the law of non-contradiction. We are not free from logical constraints. So that’s why it seems to me that pluralism in that sense is very problematic. Of course, one can distinguish between positions that concern facts, where it seems very strange to hold a pluralistic position, that both the one who says the fact is X and the one who says the fact is not-X are right. One of them is right and the other is wrong, or both of them are wrong, I don’t know, that already gets into the law of the excluded middle. But one can speak about pluralism with respect to values, not facts. There, let’s say, it’s no longer logically contradictory, but in my view it is still very problematic, because once you say that the one who holds value X and the one who holds value not-X are both right, then in what sense do you hold that value? You can say, okay, I conduct myself according to this value, but to say that I believe in it or advocate it… it seems to me that even if we’re talking about values, it still means that the person who holds another value is mistaken. He may not always be evil, but mistaken. Okay, there it already depends on his motives, depends on why he holds the other value and so on. Therefore it seems to me that even with respect to values, or with respect to morality, pluralism in this sense of a multiplicity of truths is a contradictory conception, or at least problematic if not outright contradictory. On the other hand, a great many people feel that the world conveys some kind of pluralism. Because, after all, there are different opinions, different people, you can’t ignore the fact that there are disputes about values, there are different outlooks, and of course even with respect to facts, but certainly with respect to values. And very often people think that the existence of disputes or of different positions is evidence for pluralism. And that of course cannot be right. It cannot be right because if pluralism is contradictory, then there cannot be any evidence for it. But it’s also not true in itself, because the fact that opposing opinions exist does not mean that both opposing opinions are right. Those are two completely different statements. It is entirely possible that there is one group that thinks X and another group that thinks not-X; one of them is right and the other is wrong. In other words, the mere fact that two groups or two people hold positions does not mean that those two positions are valid or legitimate, depending on the context—facts, values, and so forth. Therefore it seems to me, or at least this is the starting point from which I’m going to proceed here, that there is no place for, no real meaning to, pluralism in this sense, the sense of a multiplicity of truths. There is social pluralism. And social pluralism means: I want to allow different groups in the population to hold different positions, to express different positions, to argue; that is perfectly fine. But that does not mean that everyone is right. It only means that my social policy—by “my” I mean society’s—is such that we do not want to suppress anyone even if he holds an incorrect position, and certainly if we do not have some very clear indication of what the correct position is. And that does not require us—and that’s a good thing—to hold the view that both sides are necessarily right. That does not follow from it, it also cannot be true, and it is not a condition for the existence of social pluralism. Therefore one can certainly believe in, and uphold, social pluralism in that sense. In the sense that there is a multiplicity of truths, we need to allow it, we need to let every group or every person hold his own position and not impose one position on everyone else. Even if I am convinced that I am right, or he is convinced that he is right, or the majority is convinced that it is right, or the minority is convinced that it is right, there is value in different voices being heard. But to mix that up with a philosophical conception of pluralism—that is mistaken and problematic. Okay, so that’s the point of departure. Just on the perhaps even conceptual level, social pluralism is a value. Philosophical pluralism, what I spoke about before, is a philosophical worldview; it does not belong to values. If you think there are many truths, then that is what you think—that is your philosophy. Okay? It has nothing to do with values. Someone who thinks otherwise is not morally flawed; he simply holds a different philosophy from yours. What does this have to do with good and evil? The question whether you think there is one truth or many truths is a question of what your philosophy is. By contrast, allowing different voices to be heard, or different people, or different groups, to conduct themselves as they understand things, belongs to the world of values. Because I believe, as a matter of value, that this is how one ought to act. Therefore it belongs to the semantic field, let’s say, of values, of morality, or something like that, whereas philosophical pluralism belongs to the philosophical, epistemological, logical world—whatever—how many truths there are. There is no connection whatsoever between your moral quality and the question of how many truths you think there are. That is a matter of philosophical outlook. Therefore it seems to me that this is a very strong distinction, to detach these two claims from one another, even though both are sheltered under the title of pluralism. Good. So if I come back to this: I’m not dealing with morality at the moment, we’re dealing with philosophy. So what nevertheless is there to say about pluralism after we’ve already shown that it doesn’t exist? I think that very often there are conceptions that advocate pluralism as a result of—that is, they arrive at this problematic or even contradictory conception as a result of misunderstanding the relation between the different positions they encounter. Sometimes there is some feeling that both are really right, and people don’t always understand what that means. So it is easy to slap the title “pluralism” on top of that and get away with it, even come out enlightened. So I want to begin with the question whether we really do hold a monistic conception, whether there is one truth. If someone says X is right, then someone who says not-X is wrong. That’s the ABCs of logic. So how do disputes arise nevertheless, because factually there are disputes. Different people or groups think differently—that’s obvious. The question is how such disputes arise. I said that this does not necessarily mean that everyone is right, so the first possibility is of course simply that one side is wrong. Okay, it happens; people make mistakes, as they say. In other words, there is the possibility of error. That is the simple possibility, and therefore it is not interesting. The second possibility, which is what I want to focus on today, is the possibility that we are really talking about two conceptions that can even be contradictory, even though both are correct, and this does not violate the principle of non-contradiction. But it’s also not genuine pluralism. Let’s perhaps call it harmonism. I’ll give two examples. Those who have heard me before already know at least one of them. The first example is the chocolate example, yes, my good old favorite. What is the chocolate example? Two people argue about whether one should eat chocolate. One says yes, one should eat chocolate because it tastes good. The other says no, one should not eat chocolate because it is fattening. Who is right? Both are right, correct? It both tastes good and is fattening. So where is the argument? The argument is in the bottom line: whether to eat it. In other words, on the level of the reasons, both are right. It both tastes good and is fattening. The question is what I do with these reasons. First of all, step one, which is worth paying attention to—in a dispute like this, and here it may be simple, but in more charged disputes it is less simple, though it is usually still true there as well—it is worth listening to the other side’s argument; he is usually right just like you. I say that even though I said before that pluralism is contradictory. He is right just like you because these two reasons do not contradict one another. Chocolate is both fattening and tasty, to begin with. Now you can start asking, okay, should one eat it? The argument now looks different, because now the argument is not about whether it is fattening or tasty; the argument is about what outweighs what. Taste versus health or aesthetics, it doesn’t matter, whatever bothers each person about gaining weight; or whether gaining weight is worse and therefore is a stronger consideration than pleasure, than taste. That is already a more intelligent argument. Because in this argument it really is an argument of balancing. In other words, the question is how to balance taste against pleasure. One person may weigh pleasure more heavily, the other may weigh taste better—stronger—and therefore they argue about the bottom line. But here the argument becomes, as I said before, first of all much more intelligent, much less blunt, and each side understands that the other is not an idiot and probably not evil either. Of course the chocolate example is only an example; we have more heated arguments these days, everyone can choose for himself whatever he wants. In all these arguments, by the way, this is the situation. In all arguments—now almost without exception—the reasons of both sides are usually correct. The question is how to weigh the reasons on both sides. What weighs more—that is the real argument. And usually the arguments are conducted as though the argument were whether the chocolate tastes good or whether it is fattening. That is a stupid argument. But people feel that they must draw some very simple and unequivocal picture in favor of their own side. You are unwilling to raise a conception that leads to the opposite conclusion, and then afterward you can also say, okay, but in my view this weighs more than that, and therefore I still think one should not eat the chocolate or that one should eat the chocolate. But you need to understand that on both sides there are correct reasons. These are reasons that do not contradict one another. Each one of them in fact captures some part of the overall truth. The overall truth is that the chocolate is both fattening and tasty, but neither of them is wrong. Neither of them is fully right either. The complete truth is the combination of the two. Here I call this harmonism. I create harmony between these two conceptions, but harmony not in the sense that both say the same thing or that we compromise in the middle. No—go all the way. Chocolate is completely fattening and chocolate is completely tasty. We are not talking here about compromise; we are talking about harmony. There are two aspects here, both of which are correct, and the full truth is both aspects together. And there is no logical problem in this whatsoever—no contradiction and nothing like that. You understand that to say such a thing you do not have to be a pluralist. It is not that there is a multiplicity of truths; there is one truth made up of these two aspects together. This is not really pluralism. You can call it pluralism if you like—definitions of terms, everyone can define for himself—but it is not pluralism in the substantial philosophical sense I described earlier. Perhaps I’ll give another example, an example from Maimonides, the parable of the elephant that he brings. Someone looking at an elephant from the front says: the elephant is an animal with a long nose, two eyes, and two legs very close to one another. Someone looking at the elephant from the side says: the elephant is an animal with a long nose, one eye, and two legs far apart—when you look at it from the side and when you look at it from the front. Right? Now here too—notice—these statements in themselves are contradictory statements. Legs close together or far apart, one eye or two eyes. This is already not like tasty and fattening. With tasty and fattening they simply are not talking past one another; there isn’t even any apparent contradiction. The conclusion comes out opposite, but there is no contradiction between the claims themselves. Tasty and fattening is perfectly fine; it is both tasty and fattening. With the elephant there is apparently a contradiction. One says the legs are close and the other says they are far; one says it has two eyes and the other says it has one eye. Can both be right here too? Of course they can. These are even factual, not value, claims. Here the dispute has a frontal contradiction. One says it has two close legs and the other says it has two far-apart legs; that is X and not-X. One says it has one eye and the other says it has two eyes. Where is the law of non-contradiction? How can one maintain that both X and not-X are true? The answer lies in how you are looking at different aspects of the issue. The elephant, of course—the parable, not the issue. You look at different aspects of the issue, and then you can arrive at conclusions which, unlike tasty and fattening, in this case really look contradictory, and still the overall truth is the combination of both. The claim is that even with claims not like tasty and fattening—that’s why I brought two examples—but with claims that appear contradictory, there too very often there is room for harmonization. Not always, but often. If, for example, both were standing in front of the elephant and looking at it from the front, and one says its two legs are close and the other says they are far, well, I might say maybe the question is what counts as close and what counts as far. But if one says it has two eyes and the other says it has one eye, it seems to me that the one who says it has one eye probably himself has only one eye. There it is obvious that one is right and the other is wrong. But in order to create harmonization, it is not enough to say everyone is right. That is easy pluralism. Everyone is right, everything is fine, the wolf will dwell with the lamb and all will be excellent, nobody will fight anyone else—except those who do not accept pluralism, they’ll kill everyone else, and everything is fine. How do you get out of this intelligently? You simply show that these are two different angles. If you can explain to both sides: notice, you are looking at the elephant from the side; now look at it from the front for a moment and see that what I am saying is also correct—or the other way around. Then you can in fact show him that although the claims are contradictory claims. In this optimistic sense, in this optimistic sense, when we are talking about people who are not complete idiots or complete villains—and I’m somewhat optimistic on this point; I don’t think there are complete idiots or complete villains—so if that is the assumption, then very often it is worth thinking, when we are in an argument, even if it is more heated than how many legs the elephant has or whether the chocolate tastes good, it is worth thinking about it through these lenses. Because when we hear—okay. No. Let’s unpack this a bit. In other words, first of all, if you are talking about values, then this is what I said earlier. About values one can say that they are something more subjective—I do not accept that. I think values are not something subjective, but they are something that simple observation cannot confirm or refute. There is nothing you can observe in order to discover whether a certain value is correct or not. And that still does not mean that it is subjective. If you say it is subjective, then you are basically saying there is no real value here. I go this way, you go that way, but we have no real dispute because it is in any case a subjective matter. The very fact that there is a dispute means that there probably is, yes, something real here that we both agree exists. We just disagree about what the truth is; otherwise there is no dispute. Beyond that, even on the level of the public garden that you described earlier—listen, both sides can listen to one another, and you can ask me: why are you opposed to building the public garden? So he says: because it makes noise. Do you disagree with him? Obviously it makes noise, right? He’s right. Now he asks you: why do you want to build the public garden anyway? Because I have no solution for the children; the children make even more noise for me at home, so let them make the noise outside. Is he right? He’s right too. And the judge’s wife is also right. Everyone is right. True, in the end one has to decide what outweighs what, and sometimes one has to decide, listen, the person who is close by is disturbed more, and the one who is farther away is disturbed less. So there you have the different angles of vision from which different statements emerge. And that is fine; it may be that in the end we will have a dispute and need to hold a vote. But once you analyze it this way, suddenly you see that nobody is a complete idiot and nobody is a complete villain. And everyone has a valid argument. Fine—now we have to see what outweighs what, like the pleasure and taste of—the pleasure and health considerations of chocolate. And therefore I think that even on that level, always, always, I think this is a habit that if I can succeed in advancing—some kind of habit whereby when you enter some argument on any subject, or look at an argument on any subject, listen carefully to the arguments. Listen carefully to the arguments and try to examine them on their own terms, even though this can be an own goal. Suddenly you may discover that the other side’s argument makes sense; it’s not as idiotic as I thought. That does not automatically mean that you will change your position too, because it may be that the argument you hold is stronger in your eyes than that argument, and that is fine. But you understand that the other person standing opposite you is not a complete villain and not a complete idiot. There is a Talmudic text that says that when we want to appoint someone to the Sanhedrin, he must bring one hundred and fifty reasons by which one can declare the creeping creature pure. The Torah determines that the creeping creature is impure. Okay, but he must bring one hundred and fifty arguments—it’s like a metaphor, doesn’t matter, many arguments—to prove that the creeping creature is pure even though the Torah says that it is impure. Rabbeinu Tam, yes, one of the greatest medieval authorities (Rishonim), asks there: what is the point? Are we testing him on empty pilpul? Purim Torah? He has to give us a Purim Torah in order to get appointed? So the Maharal says no, this is not a Purim Torah. When a person approaches the Sanhedrin we want to check whether, when a topic comes before him, he knows how to think about it in a complex way. Even if the Torah says the creeping creature is impure, that does not mean there are no reasons to declare it pure. Of course there are reasons to declare it pure. People are not idiots. Whoever thought that the creeping creature was pure had reasons; whoever thought that the creeping creature was impure also had reasons; and the judge’s wife does too. The Torah in the end weighs things, and it decided that the reasons to declare the creeping creature impure outweigh the reasons to declare it pure, and therefore it is impure. But that does not mean there are no reasons to declare it pure. And it does not mean that in another situation where this comes up in a somewhat different way, if I am aware that there are also aspects that support declaring the creeping creature pure, it is entirely possible that I will issue a halakhic ruling that the creeping creature is pure. There are suddenly other aspects there, and suddenly something else receives a different weight; maybe that is not what the Torah was speaking about, whatever. Suddenly the picture becomes more complex, more dynamic, and less unequivocal. And if they say that this is a condition for being appointed to the Sanhedrin, that means something. And it also means that a judge, who in the end, in the end, must very importantly arrive at a bottom line—but not at the price of a complex perspective, in other words not at the price of understanding both sides. Otherwise you do not arrive at the correct bottom line; you arrive at the bottom line you wanted from the outset. Then you harness everything in favor of the thought you had in advance. If you seriously weigh both sides, the Talmudic text says that the reason Jewish law was ruled according to Beit Hillel is that they stated the words of Beit Shammai before their own. What does that mean? Beit Shammai were sharper, the Talmudic text says. In other words, sharper—they knew that they were great sages, brilliant, incisive. What they say is surely correct; Beit Hillel—there is no point taking seriously what they say. Beit Hillel understood that Beit Shammai were sharper; apparently they agreed with that too. They said, fine, if they are saying something, it is worth considering. So first of all they considered the position of Beit Shammai and then weighed it together with their own positions, one hundred and fifty reasons this way, one hundred and fifty reasons that way, and in the end they reached a conclusion. Or they were persuaded; sometimes, by the way, Beit Hillel later returned to rule in accordance with the words of Beit Shammai, and sometimes not. And sometimes they remained with their own position, but they understood that there were arguments for the other side; it was just that in the final weighing it came out in favor of the other side. And therefore the Talmudic text says that Jewish law was ruled in accordance with them. Since someone who really works in that way will arrive, with a higher probability, at the correct conclusion, not with a lower one. People think that if you harness all the—everything, all the tools, in one direction, if you see a black-and-white picture, then you will be more right. No, you will be less right. Maybe an example—not an example—what I actually want to argue is that in almost every significant dispute, by definition, a significant dispute is a dispute that has two sides. There are disputes where there is one idiot versus someone who knows, but significant disputes have two real sides. And every significant dispute has two sides, has—has two arguments; one needs to get used to this. Does this mean pluralism? The answer is no, no; it means harmonism. It means that the one and only truth is the weighted composition of all the reasons, and in the end, in the end, one must reach a conclusion. And at the level of the conclusion there may be only one correct conclusion. And the one who gives more weight to pleasure and less to health may in fact be wrong. And the one who gives more weight to health and less to pleasure may be right, just as an example. No problem. But you understand that the picture is already more complex. I am not claiming there is no truth; there is truth, and for the sake of the discussion there is only one. Okay? There may be questions in which it is not unique, but there is yes… no, no, that is what I am saying. No, I’m talking about truth. That is exactly the point. I want to argue that such a picture is a monistic picture. In other words, I want to argue that the decision about what weighs more, health or taste, the reasons to declare pure or the reasons to declare impure—that is a decision about which too there is truth and falsehood. There is right and wrong. It is not just a random decision like tossing a coin. That is the point. I am not claiming that if there are one hundred and fifty reasons this way and one hundred and fifty reasons that way then we have a tie. And if we have a tie, let’s toss a coin because we do not know, there is no way to decide because no one is right and no one is wrong. That is pluralism. I want to argue no—even if you are a monist and think there is one truth, that truth is a truth composed of a weighing of different arguments that go in two directions. And after the weighing, it may be that only one is right and the other is wrong. But still, still, you understand that the other may be wrong but not an idiot; he weighs things differently from you. Okay, so that already colors the whole argument in a completely different shade. One might say that each aspect in this picture is some sort of—sort of projection. Truth—if you think of truth as some point in a two-dimensional coordinate system, then it has a projection on the X-axis and a projection on the Y-axis. You say that point has X equal to two; he says that point has Y equal to three. Do you have a dispute? No. You are talking about one projection of the issue and he is talking about another projection of the issue. What is the truth about that point? That in two-dimensional space it is two comma three; those are its coordinates. Okay. In other words, one can really see this as some sort of projection. Therefore I argue that it is not—it is not pluralism. It is monism. There is one truth here, but one complex truth. A few years ago I received a book by a film lecturer named Gabi Barzilai. He sent me his book; afterward we had quite a long exchange. We wanted maybe to do some work together. He wanted to interest me in some philosophical question in the field of cinema. There is, as you know, a famous film from the 1950s called Rashomon, by a Japanese director, and that film basically presents a picture, some event, from different viewpoints. Different witnesses see the event in different ways. Since then it has already become a concept. Rashomon is essentially a description, from many angles, of the same situation, which can sometimes be very different. Just like the elephant, basically. The elephant too is Rashomon. Okay? Now, he argued—his book is called Optional Cinema. And in that book he wants to argue that people mix up two kinds of Rashomons. There is Rashomon that is like the elephant. In other words, you look from this angle, so you see that the legs are far apart and there is one eye. You look from that angle and say there are two eyes and the legs are close. That is classic Rashomon. In other words, you simply see the same picture; no one is lying, no one is mistaken; you see the same picture from different angles and it really does look different. But there are Rashomons where the pictures are contradictory. In other words, different people see the same situation in different ways not because they are looking at it from different angles, but because they really do see it differently. One is right and the other is wrong, ostensibly. And yet one describes it this way and the other describes it that way. He calls that optional cinema. There is some German film called Run Lola Run, meaning Lola runs, Lola. There are several films he brings there in which the film presents a situation, and after a few minutes of following this line as a complete line that presents the situation, suddenly a different line begins. At first I did not understand what he meant, but I watched the film after he pointed me to it, and then I understood what he wanted. In other words, afterwards they present the same events in a completely different way—not from a different angle as in Rashomon, but because someone else thinks it happened differently. From his angle it looks different. Not from his angle—in his eyes it looks different, from the same angle; both of them looked at the elephant from the front. Okay? And there is a dispute. This is not Rashomon; this is something else. In other words, here this is already pluralism. This really is pluralism. Rashomon is harmonism. Rashomon says, okay, notice that each one saw it from a different angle, so in fact there is one truth which is a harmony among all the angles of observation. And so too with intellectual issues: there are different angles from which to look at them, and therefore the disputes are really pseudo-disputes. Each one sees part of the picture, and the truth is the combination of all these parts together. But optional cinema, or an optional film, is a film that offers several options for the same truth. Several options for seeing the elephant from the front. Here there are no several options. In other words, one of the sides is wrong, lying, whatever—it depends on the context—but not everyone is right. That is basically the difference between harmonism and pluralism. Pluralism is optional cinema. Optional cinema plus the claim that all the options are correct—that is called pluralism. Okay? By contrast, Rashomon is harmonism, because there is no contradiction. If you had looked from this window, you too would have seen the picture he saw. If you look from that window, you see the other picture. Separate testimony in Jewish law, yes? One person sees a murder from this window, one person sees a murder from that window; their testimonies do not combine. You cannot combine them into testimony; this is called separate testimony. In monetary cases yes, but in capital cases no. Why not? Because from different windows one really sees different pictures. You are not describing the same thing, and not because you are lying; you simply see the situation differently. I want two witnesses who saw the same situation. One witness is not sufficient testimony for me. One witness from each window—in fact you have one witness, because for the overall picture, which is the combination of the two windows, for each aspect you have only one witness. If you want two witnesses in order to convict, then you need two witnesses for the whole truth. Here there are not two witnesses for the whole truth, and therefore the testimony is invalid, at least in capital cases. One of the implications of this perspective, from already quite a few years of experience as an amateur philosopher, for quite a number of years, and the cumulative impression I’ve had over many years, and in recent years even more, is that it is usually a dialogue of the deaf. Philosophical arguments are a dialogue of the deaf. Now, people often disparage philosophy and say, fine, this one says this, that one says that, after all you cannot observe and decide, it is not science, okay? So why deal with it? It is just everyone and his gut feeling. I disagree with that criticism. I accept this description of philosophy; that is a fact. But I disagree with the criticism. That criticism looks at this—at this picture—as expressing pluralism. And I claim that it expresses harmonism. What do I mean? I claim that in most issues, when you look at a philosophical dispute, every philosophical position is based on correct arguments and therefore its conclusion is also correct—but with respect to a certain angle of the issue. And someone else who disagrees is simply talking about another angle of the issue. He calls it by the same name because it is the same issue, but he is talking about the side of the elephant and he is talking about the front of the elephant. And here sometimes it is very easy to show this. I see people bringing theoretical discussions: this one says this and that one says that and that one says that, these philosophical surveys of one kind or another. And you say to yourself: good Lord, these people are not even arguing. They are simply talking about different aspects of the issue. I won’t get into examples and details here; there are many because that is not our subject here, but I’m saying that if you get used to looking at things this way, it seems to me that, first of all, one becomes more optimistic—there are fewer stupid people around us. And second, the argument becomes a bit more—the despair becomes more comfortable, as they say. In other words, you are less emotionally charged in the argument. You understand that there is another side too. Okay, you weigh things differently and he weighs things differently, and you understand that there is also a side in favor of what he said. And therefore I think that this can definitely improve our decision-making, the quality of our arguments, and even the way we look at our surroundings. Now, the root of the matter—why is it that in arguments, not about elephants, but in arguments about intellectual issues, why do these harmonious perspectives really arise? In other words, why does each person see things from a different angle? Where does that come from? As I said earlier, almost every issue has projections. An issue is a complex thing. It has facets, it has different aspects, and therefore it has different projections. And one can see this either as a projection or—it’s not exactly the same thing, but there is a similarity—as types of representation, different types of representation. In other words, there is—I’ll perhaps give another example. The Talmudic text in tractate Gittin says that there is a dispute among the tannaim about what happened in the story of the concubine in Gibeah. In the story of the concubine in Gibeah there was something absolutely dreadful—they cut a woman there into twelve parts, scattered her body parts all over the—anyway, a horror story, not recommended for children before bedtime. And there is an argument there about what exactly lit the fuse there—of the husband there. He found a fly with his wife, he found a hair with his wife. There is some dispute there. So one of the sages meets Elijah the prophet and says to him: what is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing now? An aggadic story of course, but what is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing now? He is occupied with the topic of the concubine in Gibeah. Incredible as it sounds, exactly the issue they were dealing with there. Very good; now we will know the truth. So what does he say? He says to him: My son Yonatan says thus, and My son Evyatar says thus. He said to him: Heaven forbid—can there be doubt before Heaven? What, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the truth? What is this, Evyatar says this and Yonatan says that? Rabbi Evyatar and Rabbi Yonatan were the two tannaim who disagreed there. And the Holy One, blessed be He, said: My son Evyatar says thus and My son Yonatan says thus. He said to him: what, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know what happened there? So he says to him: both these and those are the words of the living God. He found a fly and did not mind it; he found a hair and minded it. You can say they were both right; you can say they were both wrong. But clearly the picture in the end is a combination of the two statements of the two sides. He found a fly—that is true. And he also found a hair—that is true. And his fuse was lit by the accumulation of both these things together. In other words, each one in fact grasped some particular aspect of what happened there. And that is interesting because the expression “both these and those are the words of the living God” appears in the Talmudic text in only two places. In one of them it is not explained—that is with regard to Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel in tractate Eruvin. And the one place where it is explained is tractate Gittin, here. And the explanation there is not a pluralistic explanation, contrary to what people think—that “both these and those are the words of the living God” is pluralism. No. The explanation is harmonistic. In other words, in the end the truth was that there was a fly there and there was a hair there, and the accumulation of both things is what caused the whole mess. Okay. So that is basically another example of this idea. Now I want to talk—I began talking about representation. Very often certain ideas are represented differently, and therefore we are not really dealing with the thing itself but with its representation. I’ll perhaps start with a famous Talmudic text. The Talmudic text tells about Moses our teacher ascending on high to receive the Torah. Yes? This is timely. The giving of the Torah. Moses our teacher ascends on high to receive the Torah, and the angels say to the Holy One, blessed be He: what is one born of woman doing among us? What, the Torah does not belong to human beings. Why are You giving the Torah to human beings? Leave it with us; we want to engage in it. Fine. So the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Moses our teacher: hold on to My throne of glory and answer them. Answer them; they are making a good argument, answer them. So he says to them: do you have a father and mother, that you need “Honor your father and your mother”? The angels have no father and mother, it seems. Okay? Do you have murder among you, that “Do not murder” would apply to a murderer? Do you have theft among you? Do you have workdays such that you need the Sabbath? What does this have to do with you at all? And that’s it—knockout, he won, received the Torah, and the rest is history. Okay. What were the angels thinking? Really, it is a stupid argument. What would they do with the Torah if it says “Honor your father and your mother,” “Do not murder”? It is such a simple argument that after we finish applauding Moses our teacher we should ask ourselves: what, are the angels idiots? Again, of course this story did not happen; it is an aggadic tale. But the question is what the aggadah is trying to say. I think that what the angels want to say, what the aggadah wants to say, what the Talmudic text wants to say—the Talmudic text wrote this aggadah—and what the Talmudic text wants to say is that what we actually receive at Mount Sinai is not the Torah; it is a representation of the Torah. The Torah is a collection of abstract ideas. When it is found within the human medium of the world we know, it takes on a certain form: “Honor your father and your mother,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” prohibited foods, it doesn’t matter, impurity and purity, all these things. In the world of the angels all this does not exist. So what did they learn? Apparently there it had some other kind of form, some other expression, of these same ideas themselves, because otherwise what is the argument? You do what you want and we’ll do what we want—what is the problem? They grasped, just as we think the Torah is “Honor your father and your mother” or “Do not murder”—that is a mistake. The Torah is not that. It is a certain representation of the collection of these abstract ideas in our human circumstances. In these circumstances it takes on this garb; in the circumstances of angels it takes on a different garb. By the way, even in different human circumstances it can take on different garbs. That is why people think that when there is a halakhic dispute it automatically means one side is right and one is wrong. Not true. Sometimes under certain circumstances the same Torah says one thing, and under other circumstances the same Torah says something else. And again, this is not pluralism; it is harmonism, because the circumstances are really a kind of perspective. In these circumstances the same thing itself takes on a certain form. Let me perhaps give you an example. I once read a book called Zen in the Art of Archery by some German professor of philosophy named Eugen Herrigel. At the beginning of the twentieth century he went on sabbatical in Japan; he had a friend there at the University of Tokyo, also a jurist, and he asked him to study Zen. And the book Zen in the Art of Archery is meant to describe what Zen is to a Western ear. Since then many such works have come out, but this was one of the first, and it came to describe what he encountered there. And it really was a fascinating description. He arrived there, and his friend connected him with some Zen master, and he came to him and asked to study Zen. He said to him: very good, so tell me what you want to study—archery, flower arranging, dance? I no longer remember; there were four or five options there. He said: no, no, I want to study Zen. He said: yes, yes—but flower arranging, archery, dance, fencing, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. Slowly it took him time to understand that it made no difference whatsoever what he chose. He could choose flower arranging, he could choose archery—it made no difference; he was learning the same thing. He was learning the same thing, only that this collection of abstract ideas—which it is not even clear to what extent they can be formulated and conceptualized—can come to a certain expression in archery, can come to another expression when you arrange flowers, but it is the same thing itself. The same issue itself, in different circumstances, can take on a form that looks completely different. But it is basically what in mathematics they call a theory and a model. There are different models that behave according to one abstract mathematical theory. Yes, say in logic, you say: every X is Y, A is X, therefore A is Y. Okay, now what is A, what is X, and what is Y? In legal data. And in philosophy they will say, or in zoology, they’ll say: all frogs have four legs. Yankele is a frog, therefore Yankele has four legs. That is the zoologist. They say something else, but the pattern is the same pattern. It is realized differently or appears within a different medium, but in essence the same thing itself appears in the different media. In the different media—with a “d” and “k,” yes, not that it matters. In the different media, the same thing itself appears. And this is exactly like the thing he tried to describe regarding Zen and the different forms of its appearance. In the book Tanya he speaks about the Torah as a sort of garments of the Holy One, blessed be He, that these ideas are clothed in different garments, and these garments are connected to thought, speech, and action. But all these things are garments. They are not the thing itself. There is—if I tie this back to that midrash about Moses our teacher ascending to receive the Torah—basically one could say that “Honor your father and your mother” and “Do not murder” are certain garments of this collection of abstract ideas when they come to expression in our world; we shoot arrows. The angels arrange flowers; they do not shoot arrows. So for them the same collection of ideas can come to expression in that you have to flap one wing every odd-numbered day—you have two wings as an angel, I don’t know—something else. Okay, so there it will appear in another form, but it is the same collection of ideas itself. Only in a different medium it can appear differently. And once again you see that this is really the same logic I talked about earlier. Now there one may ask who is right? So should one flap one wing or keep the Sabbath? They are both right. In these circumstances, or within this medium, these ideas say this. This medium consists of different projections or different representations of the same matter. Do you understand? That is what he says to them. He says to them: what do you want? Exactly—that is what he says to them. What do you want? I receive only what is relevant to the world I come from. Your Torah will remain with you. What are you babbling about? You do not understand the issue correctly. By the way, maybe in another second I’ll come back to this. There is, in general—and this too is often brought as a basis for pluralism—a very common Kantian distinction between the thing in itself and the thing as perceived by us, the noumenon and the phenomenon. The thing itself—I don’t know—something in the world itself. As it appears to us, it is a collection of characteristics, properties that we perceive in it. Say, this chair here: it has four metal legs, some wicker seat, all kinds of things of this sort, rectangular, or some such form or another. All these are the characteristics I perceive in the chair. The question is: what is the chair itself? Is the chair itself this collection of characteristics? I think not. The chair is the bearer of these characteristics, not the collection of characteristics. These characteristics are characteristics of the chair, not the chair itself. I’ll perhaps illustrate this. You know the well-known riddle, or saying: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? For some reason many people laugh and say of course it does; what difference does it make whether someone is there or not. The answer is of course not. Yes, exactly. The answer to this is that of course not. A tree that falls in the forest and no one is there does not make a sound. What it does is move air. If there is an eardrum there, a body, whatever, that this air strikes, then in our consciousness the phenomenon of sound is produced. Sound does not exist in the world; sound exists in us. When there are sensory mechanisms that translate what happens in the world into phenomena we experience—sound, hearing, sight, smell, and so on, touch, all our senses. So in fact when I say there is sound and he says there is no sound, we are not talking about the world at all; we are talking about a representation. If there is someone who—no, he doesn’t have ears like ours, he is built differently. Those acoustic waves that are created when the tree falls strike his eyes, and there there is some piezoelectric crystal that creates electricity that in the end gives him video, not audio. And he sees it. Yes, that is what the midrash says—they saw the sounds at Mount Sinai. Again we are at the giving of the Torah, at Mount Sinai, where it says they saw the sounds. What does it mean that they saw the sounds? Today we understand very simply—not that this is necessarily what happened there—but today one can understand very simply what it means to see sounds. Connect sounds to the eyes in some way and you will see sounds. An oscilloscope is seeing sounds. And you see the sounds on the oscilloscope, right? In other words, when someone says he sees sounds, he is not wrong as opposed to someone who says he hears sounds. He is simply built differently. What does that mean? That the sounds, or the acoustic wave—which is what really exists in the world, assuming physics is not mistaken—but if the acoustic wave really exists in the world, the projection it creates is a function of the tools of perception or of the angle from which I observe it. Therefore if I say I see some wave here that looks like this, and someone else says I hear a kind of beep, there is no dispute. You are talking about the same thing, only this is archery and that is flower arranging. There is not—there is no real dispute here because we are talking about representations. And therefore very often the different representations cause us to think that we have some sort of dispute, but it is not necessarily really a dispute. Rather, we have some way of looking that leads us to a certain conclusion which appears opposite to someone else’s conclusion, but this is simply because our perspective is different. There is no real dispute here. Then we need to understand, okay, what to do now in the end. But again, in the end one has to decide what to do, but the dispute has to be understood correctly. And the dispute has to be understood as really dealing with projections or realizations, representations, or I don’t know what to call it, and not with the thing itself. Yes, in this context you know there is the problem sometimes called the philosophers’ castle. The question is whether, when I speak about the color red and you speak about the color red, we are talking about the same color. There is no way to test this. Yes, it could be that what you see when you say red is what I call yellow. That is what you see; you just always got used to calling that red, that is how you learned it from the start. And I too got used to calling that red. So we are perfectly synchronized in speech, we will always agree that we are seeing the color red, but the image we are seeing is completely different. Completely. It could be that he is hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and not seeing a color at all—he doesn’t see color at all. For him, that color or that electromagnetic wave, which is basically color, is translated in him not into video but into audio. He hears the Ninth Symphony, but he is used to saying that when one hears the Ninth Symphony that is called “I see the color red.” Anything is possible. There is absolutely no way to test it. The only way to test it is to ask—but you cannot ask him, in what language would you ask him? You cannot show him what you call the color yellow and ask whether that is what he sees. There is no way to synchronize the subjective perspective within us. We can synchronize the speech, but not the subjective thing within us. When we speak about color or sound, notice that this has gone through a double process of representation. First of all there is an electromagnetic wave. That electromagnetic wave undergoes a certain process, a projection or representation, and appears to us as color—usually, for those built like us, it appears as color. Okay? After that I translate what appears in me into speech; I say I saw the color red. That is another translation. And my translation is not always like his. The difference between us could be in the first translation process, and it could be in the second translation process. Now here, apart from being aware of this, it is not all that constructive because there is no way to proceed. Fine, you see it this way, I see it another way. And in this sense one can hear the pluralistic claims. This is not really pluralism at the philosophical level, but it is de facto pluralism, because there is not really a way to move forward. I cannot convince you that you are seeing yellow rather than red. There is no way to do that, and who says you are even right? Maybe he is right, maybe there is no one who is right, I don’t know. In this context I really think we come very close to pluralism in its essential sense. And if I just finish in the context of Mount Sinai, I think it is no accident that when the Torah is given, we are told that the children of Israel saw the sounds. And it is no accident that the giving of the Torah is described in the midrash as a sort of argument between Moses and the angels that says exactly the same thing. Because what they want to tell us is that the Torah that came down to earth is only some kind of representation. And that representation too, when we grasp it, passes through a process of double representation. Now, that is what came down. Now the question is what we understand in it. That, again, can vary. First of all what came down, and after that how we perceive what came down—exactly like with the elephant. And that is how disputes arise. Now sometimes I can show a person: look, you are looking at the elephant from the side and I am looking at the elephant from the front. And then we can indeed create the harmonious truth, the truth that combines all these viewpoints. Sometimes not. But even if not, one has to know that sometimes this is the reality, even if we cannot verify it or understand it or persuade the other of it: that we have different viewpoints, and therefore we arrive at different conclusions. This is not pluralism in its philosophical-ontological sense. It is not that everyone is right, but there are indeed forms of perspective between which there is no way to decide. That is true. And in that sense sometimes one has to adopt at least social pluralism. I think the giving of the Torah is enlightening: when the Torah is given, the message that accompanies this process of the giving of the Torah is this message. Because very often people take the Torah and on its basis create precisely a point of view that is unwilling to recognize any other perspective. And what they are telling us here is that the Torah itself—what you think is Torah—you are not at all necessarily right; it is not at all certain that this is the only way to see it. First of all, it is not even really Torah. The Torah is some—I don’t know—some abstract thing located somewhere. What you see is a kind of representation in your world, through your eyes, and it may be that someone else will see it differently. Therefore the perspective—the lesson learned from bringing the Torah down to earth—bringing the Torah down to earth is not transferring information from here to there. Bringing the Torah down to earth is a process of projection. “And truth will be cast to the ground,” as the verse says. I project the Torah into certain circumstances and create a representation, or many representations. People in this world create very many representations. And I think this gives some perspective on the Torah first of all, but also on disputes in general in other areas. Good, may we have a happy festival. Now you can ask questions, comment, whatever you want. Psychology. A subset of these values. Okay. Oh, he has one, he has one. He is looking from some angle where you don’t see an elephant, you see only the ground the elephant is standing on. Fine, that too is an angle of vision. Again, not that he is right in the same way as someone else, but one must understand that this is a different point of view. And by the way, there definitely are such statements from the psychological side as well. Here I think, if we go with this example, then it is obvious that for the person who is close, the noise made by the garden outweighs the value it provides, and he is right. And from the perspective of the person who is far away, he too is right, because from his perspective the benefit it provides bothers him less than the noise does. Now the whole question is whose interest will determine things. There is no question here of who is right; they are both really right because there is no contradiction. Now the question is whose interest will determine things. And here society has to decide. The majority decides; it depends what gardens there are in other places; it is a more complex kind of consideration. But as for the question of who is right here, there is no dispute at all; both are completely right. It is not a dispute. The whole question is simply whose interest gets to decide, that is all. I also agree that if I lived next to the garden like you do, I too would not want it to be there. There is no dispute here at all. Anyone else? Okay, may it be a happy festival.