Gate Six: A New View of the Analytic and the Synthetic — Chesed and Din

From the book Like Grass by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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A New View of the Analytic and the Synthetic: Chesed and Din

Introduction

In this gate I would like to discuss briefly the pair of concepts chesed (grace, or overflowing giving) and din (judgment). We will try to see the deeper metaphysical meaning of chesed, and to understand why its opposite in Kabbalah is din, and not wickedness. In light of this, we will also try to understand the concept of din at a parallel depth. These understandings will present the analytic-synthetic dilemma in a somewhat different language, and may illuminate several of its aspects.

These concepts belong to the world of Kabbalah. A more detailed discussion of them would require a much deeper entry into that world, which is not possible here, both because of the framework of this book and because of the author’s own limits of knowledge. We will therefore deal with these topics only to the extent necessary for clarifying the discussion conducted throughout the trilogy thus far.

There is here a kind of summary of the overall move, but expressed in Kabbalistic terminology. This terminology will reveal various connections between different parts of the discussion. In the chapter that follows the present gate, the entire course of the argument will be summarized in non-Kabbalistic language, and it is certainly worthwhile to compare what is said there with what will be presented in this gate.

Chapter 1: Chesed and Din — Initial Definitions

Introduction

Chesed is usually perceived as a kind of act or human activity. When a person gives charity, or helps a friend, we call this an act of chesed. Abraham our Patriarch is considered the father of the quality of chesed, and indeed the Torah and the midrashim (rabbinic expositions) describe great acts of chesed that he performed. Isaac our Patriarch, by contrast, is considered the father of the quality of gevurah, and Jacob the father of the quality of tiferet.

The terms chesed, gevurah, and tiferet are drawn from Kabbalah. These are three of the ten sefirot (divine emanations) that make up every being, or every world, in the Kabbalistic description. Beyond the specific function of these sefirot, they also have metaphysical meanings, and they serve as paradigms for an entire range of phenomena. The sefirah Chesed belongs to the right side of the Kabbalistic map, as will be clarified below, whereas the sefirah Gevurah belongs to the left side, that is, to the side called din.

The metaphysical meaning of these concepts can be understood more fully by generalizing from their everyday meanings.

Between Chesed and Din: Everyday Meaning, and What Lies Beyond It

As noted, acts of chesed are acts of giving, such as those described with regard to Abraham our Patriarch. Additional acts of chesed are described in the Bible and in rabbinic literature in other contexts as well. Rebecca our Matriarch, when she was three years old according to the midrash, drew water and gave drink to all of Eliezer’s camels, and to Eliezer himself. Eliezer was an adult man, and apparently far stronger than she was, yet she insisted on doing it herself. At first glance, this seems somewhat disproportionate and even absurd.

No less absurd is Abraham’s conduct when the three angels, disguised as Ishmaelites, arrive at his tent, and he himself bustles about and stands over them to serve them. Abraham slaughters three calves for them, in order to serve each of them a calf’s tongue with mustard, the finest delicacy he could offer. Such an act appears utterly disproportionate, and some would condemn it as irrational waste. One should remember that there were no refrigerators in the tent to preserve the large quantity of meat that remained afterward. Many more examples could be given.

There is here a basic characteristic of the quality of chesed, one that already begins to hint at its metaphysical meaning. Chesed is characterized by a lack of proportion, or by the absence of reasonable measure and limit. It bursts forth on its own, without restriction and without deliberation. Sometimes it even runs contrary to common sense.

Din, by contrast, represents a system of law. Din requires debts to be repaid, damages to be compensated, and so forth. To act according to din is to act according to rules or laws.

This also allows us to understand the inverse relation between these two qualities or sefirot. The basis of chesed, as it is ordinarily understood, is giving something to someone to whom you owe nothing. It is giving without any law that obligates it. The counterexample to such conduct is repayment of a debt, which is an action according to a legal and moral rule. If someone lent to me, I am obligated to repay him.

This contrast can be seen more generally. Din is action according to law, and therefore action that has a cause. I repay a debt because I borrowed and therefore owe. There is a reason for that action. The principle of causality is a kind of paradigm for all actions characterized by lawfulness. Chesed, by contrast, is action without rules, and especially without the rule of causality. There is no cause for the money I give, or the help I offer another, insofar as they stem from chesed. It is action without a cause.

In other words, chesed is action of something from nothing, that is, action that arises without a cause. Our concern here is not with the physical sense of causality discussed in the second gate. Din is action of something from something, action that arises from a cause.

In an action of din one applies judgment in order to infer what din requires. In the world of Torah, din is often synonymous with halakha (Jewish law). It is the system of rules according to which one must act. By contrast, in acts of genuine and pure chesed, at least theoretically, there is no deliberation. The examples we saw above are acts without proportion and without calculation. They break through the boundaries of law. Anyone familiar with halakhic definitions will not be surprised to discover that the quality of chesed and its obligations are not well defined on the halakhic plane. Even the term chesed itself does not have a uniform meaning in the world of halakha. In its essence, chesed does not belong to that plane. It describes everything that lies beyond the sphere of formal law and halakha.

We can now understand why din, rather than wickedness or any other quality, is specifically the opposite of chesed.

Simone Weil on Gravity and Grace

Against the background of the foregoing, it is worth noting that the Torah also uses the term chesed in a negative context, in Leviticus 20:17:

If a man takes his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is chesed, and they shall be cut off before the eyes of their people; he has uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity.

The reason such an act is called chesed becomes quite understandable in light of what we have said so far. It is action without rules, action that breaks out of all frameworks. True, this action is negative, whereas we usually associate chesed with positive actions, but the deeper definition of chesed is action without laws and rules, not necessarily action directed toward the good. More on this will be seen below, in Chapter 3.

At the beginning of her book Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil writes as follows:[^48]

All the natural movements of the soul are governed by laws analogous to those of gravity in the material world. Grace is the only exception.

One must always expect things to happen according to the law of gravity, unless the supernatural intervenes…

Creation is made of the downward movement of gravity, the upward movement of grace, and the downward movement of grace at the second power.¹

Weil, who was far from Judaism, and whose whole outlook was in fact Christian in character, even though she defined herself as a communist, grasped that grace is an action exceptional to all other kinds of activity. It is action not according to laws, and sometimes even against laws, that is, against gravity. For Weil, gravity is gevurah, or din, in Kabbalistic terminology.

The Relation Between Din and Chesed: Theory and Reality

Up to this point we have described chesed and din as two opposite concepts that have nothing to do with one another. One lies within the framework of law; the other outside it.

But in fact, in our world every chesed is limited by din. Din is like a fence surrounding chesed, limiting it so that it appears in a reasonable and intelligible way. In our world even acts of chesed do not appear in their wildest form. Even such acts are weighed on the scales of reason and do not shatter the criteria of common sense.

According to halakha, chesed cannot override din, that is, cannot act against it. It can only occur within it. The quality of chesed instructs us to act beyond the letter of the law, but in no way against the law. The Gemara, in Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 50a, for example, discusses the ordinance of Usha, which says:

One who squanders, meaning gives to charity, and perhaps also for other needs of a mitzvah (commandment), should not squander more than a fifth, that is, one fifth of his property.

In other words, acts of chesed must be artificially limited. Chesed without limit cannot exist in the world in its present condition.

The Ontological Dimension: The Creation of Matter, the Formation of Form, and Action

We have seen that chesed is action of something from nothing. Din, by contrast, is action of something from something. Chesed is the primary act that creates the thing, whereas din is the act that continues it according to rules, thereby giving it form. Lending money to a person is an act of chesed, since the lender owes the borrower nothing. But repayment of the loan is din, because the loan created a debt. Chesed creates something from nothing, and din continues it as something from something, thereby also giving it form.

For this reason, these concepts serve in Kabbalah not only as descriptions of actions, character traits, and human types, but also as a distinction valid on the ontological plane. Chesed is the thing in its raw, hylomorphic state, while din is the form that limits and defines it. Din is nothing but a boundary, which defines the thing by restricting it to particular domains. Din determines when one must give, when one may not give, and when one may give. Chesed operates within these limits and definitions, and there free action comes to expression. Definition is always accomplished through boundary, and therefore definition and limitation are two characteristics of din.

Chesed, then, is the quality that creates things from nothing and initiates them. From chesed begins the initial expansion of the thing, and din limits that expansion and gives it a definite form. A thing without limit has no form. The form of a thing is its demarcation by definite boundaries. Without boundary and form, the thing cannot even be grasped. In the everyday sense, the form of a thing is the structure of its edge. A triangular or circular object is an object with a triangular or circular boundary. This is the aspect that faces the observer and delimits the object within itself. Looking at an object from outside presupposes that the object is bounded by its boundary and ends within a finite range, and thus can be contemplated.

An infinite object is an object without boundaries. Such an object lacks form and definition, and therefore cannot be seen. Put differently, seeing is always contemplation from outside, but an infinite object has no outside. A formless object cannot be grasped. Chesed without din is unbounded, and therefore appears incomprehensible, lacking judgment and proportion, as we saw in the examples above.² Din is what gives us a grasp of chesed.

In Kabbalah, the term gevurah sometimes appears in place of din, as that which limits chesed. It activates chesed according to some set of laws and rules. Gevurah is needed in order to limit chesed and place it within a bounded, formed location. For this purpose din, as it were, exerts force to overcome chesed and the raw substratum itself. This force is called in Kabbalah gevurah, or the power of contraction.

The three lower worlds in Kabbalah, the worlds of separateness, which are not themselves divinity, are also arranged in the same way: the worlds of Beri’ah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. Beri’ah is the world in which things themselves are created from nothing, and are still without form. The creation of a thing from nothing is called creation.³ This world parallels the sefirah Chesed, which likewise describes creation from nothing. The world below Beri’ah is Yetzirah, the world of formation. Its very name indicates form, and indeed, according to Kabbalah, this world contains separate forms, that is, angels, forms without substantial being, something like Plato’s world of ideas. This is the world that parallels din, and it contains forms whose role is to limit raw essence.

Our world, the third in the series of separated worlds, is called in Kabbalah the world of Asiyah, action. In it, as already mentioned, only matter and form exist together. Here form wraps around matter and creates from it an object that appears before our eyes and can be defined. Limitation is what makes definition possible. In this world there are no forms without matter and no matter without forms. Their composition is what creates the reality familiar to us.

Abraham Our Patriarch: Ontology and Character Traits

It is interesting to note that Abraham our Patriarch, who is, as said, the root of the quality of chesed, is himself created, as it were, out of nothing. At the beginning of the portion Lech Lecha, the Torah begins surprisingly with God’s command to Abraham to leave his land for the land that God will show him. The Torah does not describe what Abraham did to merit this, nor does it tell us anything about his past up to that point.⁴ Nahmanides, at the beginning of Lech Lecha, says that this abruptness is unprecedented in the Bible. Biblical Abraham is created out of nothing, in an act of pure chesed. His election did not arise from merits he had accumulated; otherwise it would have been an act of din, like repayment of a debt. It is a choice without cause, a clear model of an act of chesed.⁵

Abraham is also born from a household detached from God, and begins monotheism, and the Hebrew people, from nothing. He is a man who rebels against his family, a man without roots. He is also commanded to leave his land, his city, his family, and his whole past, and go begin a new life in a land that God will show him, a land whose identity he does not even know. Everything points to a severance from what came before.

The creation of Abraham our Patriarch is an act of pure chesed, of something from nothing, and therefore he himself is the root of the quality of chesed. As noted, chesed is not only helping another; it is a mode of action, or a mode of the governance of creation. It is a kind of force, one that certainly expresses itself in what we call acts of kindness or beneficence, but is essentially a more basic concept. The essential definition of chesed is, as said, action without cause and without rules, or in other words, action without form.

It should be emphasized that the Kabbalistic conception contains a Platonic dimension, in that ideas exist in actuality. In Plato, the ideas exist in the world of ideas and not here, and are therefore considered fictions in the Aristotelian account. In the Kabbalistic view, by contrast, every idea has a real root in our lower world. Abraham is the root of the quality of chesed, even though he was a human being with body and soul, and of course included all the sefirot and all parts of the soul. But Abraham is regarded as a metaphysical being, a kind of walking idea. Beyond the fact that he was an ordinary human being of flesh and blood, spirit and soul, he was also the pillar of chesed.

In the second book, in the third gate, especially in Chapter 4, we discussed the actual existence of myths. There we dealt with the conception of Abraham as a walking idea active in the world. He does not merely symbolize chesed and radiate chesed to his surroundings. He also emanates chesed, in a metaphysical process, to his descendants. This is a process of causation, that is, of cause and effect, and not merely of education or spiritual influence. For more detail, see there.

The Logical Dimension: Back to the Relation Between Chochmah and Binah

So far we have seen two dimensions of the Kabbalistic dichotomy between right and left. We have seen its appearance in the sphere of character traits and modes of human action, chesed versus din. And we have seen its appearance on the ontological plane, matter and form. We now turn to its appearance in the sphere of thought, chochmah and binah.

In Chapter 3 of the second gate, especially note 5, we discussed the logical relation between chochmah and binah. These too are Kabbalistic sefirot, and they also belong to the same two sides: chochmah belongs to the right, like chesed, and binah to the left, like gevurah and din.

We saw there that chochmah is the body of knowledge itself, whereas binah is the set of logical rules telling us how to approach that knowledge and analyze it. We can now describe the parallel between the relation chochmah-binah and the relation chesed-gevurah. These two relations parallel one another. Chochmah and binah are two poles, whose combination is called da’at. Chesed and gevurah are two poles, whose combination is called tiferet.⁶ Jacob our Patriarch is the perfect combination of Abraham and Isaac, the chosen of the patriarchs, in the language of the sages, that is, the combination of chesed and gevurah, which yields tiferet. Tiferet is the complete thing in this world.

On the ontological plane, the objects that exist in this world possess matter and form. Matter or form by themselves are regarded in our world as mere fictions. Complete existence is therefore existence of matter and form together. We also saw above that pure chesed does not exist in the world. Pure din, without any measure of chesed, also destroys the world. See Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 30b. The same phenomenon therefore exists both on the ontological plane and on the plane of character traits.

The same is true on the intellectual-logical plane. We saw in Chapter 3 of the second gate, and note 5 there, that binah without chochmah is in fact the essence of postmodernism. Chochmah without binah is prophecy: one simply sees the truth, without logical inference and without any need for thought. In the second gate of the first book, we examined the historical process of transition from synthetic-prophetic thinking to analytic-logical thinking. We saw there that the complete state is one in which there is chochmah, and binah emerges from it. Binah without chochmah is like a system of gates with no rooms to which they lead. Chochmah without binah remains theoretical, since the knowledge latent within it is raw and abstract, and therefore undefinable, and hence unusable.

We saw in the first book that the axioms of geometry are a form of chochmah, and all geometrical knowledge is implicit in them. But it exists in them only in a raw state, without the possibility of using or understanding it. Every child knows and understands the axioms of plane geometry, but no child knows that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees unless he has learned in class how to extract that from the axioms. That is the task of binah.

By contrast, one who does not believe that the axioms describe any truth, see the discussion of Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics in the second book, Chapter 5 of the second gate, and merely uses logical principles, that is, binah, applying them to axioms in order to derive theorems as a mere amusement, cannot acquire any knowledge. One who does not think the axioms are true cannot answer the question, “What is the sum of the angles of a triangle?” At most he can say that under Euclid’s arbitrary assumptions the sum is 180 degrees, but with respect to truth he can say nothing.

Conclusion: In Our World, Only the Combination Has Existence

The conclusion is that chochmah without binah, or binah without chochmah, cannot exist in our world. This is the same phenomenon we saw above on the ontological and moral planes. Right and left must appear together in our world. There is no right without left, and vice versa.⁷

The author of Leshem Shevo ve-Achlamah writes in Ha-De’ah⁸ that when din stands alone without chesed, it destroys itself. It has only a parasitic existence, not an existence of its own. This is exactly the phenomenon of instability in a purely analytic position, or the Nietzschean scenario, that we described in the second unit of the first book. The philosophical description of the self-destruction of din is precisely the argument presented there for postmodern disintegration, or the transition from positivism to postmodernism. Din is the approach that seeks proof for every truth and recognizes no certainties that cannot be proven or empirically observed. In the first book we presented the refutation of this claim, namely that analyticity itself does not meet these demands. In other words, the attempt to demand proof or empirical observation for the analytic principle itself is what destroys the analytic position. Here we see how analyticity, when it stands alone, destroys itself.

This is a philosophical description of the self-destruction of the approach of din, according to the interpretation given here. Only when analyticity serves common sense, that is, clarifies and orders our cognition rather than trying to replace it, only then does it have a right to exist.⁹ In the next two chapters we will continue to see processes parallel to those described here.

Chapter 2: Implications — Intermediate States Between Chesed and Din

Introduction

In this chapter we will deal briefly with some implications of the conception presented above. We will see a metaphysical approach to acts of chesed, and thereby better understand the importance of such acts.

Two Examples of the Halakhic-Religious Meaning of Chesed

Rosh Hashanah, as Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner writes in his book Pahad Yitzhak on Rosh Hashanah, is identified with chesed, because of the liturgical phrase, “This day is the beginning of Your works.” The beginning of the year, and perhaps also the beginning of creation itself, though this is disputed among the tannaim, is creation from nothing, and therefore an act of chesed. Here something begins to exist.

Purim too, as may be seen in several contexts, is a day of the quality of chesed. On this festival all frameworks are broken, including some halakhic frameworks as well. As noted, halakha here corresponds to din. Purim is a day of action without rules.¹⁰

The Value of Chesed, and Choice as Cleaving to the Attributes of God

In the second gate we saw that the human will is what begins all causal chains in the world. From that point onward, everything continues in a deterministic chain of cause and effect. The will is the only element in the world not subject to the lawfulness of cause-and-effect relations that govern the world in an endless chain.

Here we have seen that chesed is what begins the chain of human actions. In chesed the chain begins, because this is the only action that has no cause. From that point onward things continue to roll and turn in the form of cause and effect.

We also saw that a similar process occurs on the ontological plane. Chesed describes the creation of the very substance of being. After that there is the giving of form, which is something from something, subject to the framework of cause and effect.

On the logical plane too, we saw that chochmah is the coming-into-being of thought and understanding from nothing. Afterward, binah continues the chain as something from something, or as cause and effect.

Thus, an act of chesed is defined as the kind of action that begins such chains. At the beginning of every chain there is a first act not preceded by a cause. This is the act of chesed that underlies all happenings in the world. When the tanna says in the first chapter of Pirkei Avot that the world stands, among other things, on acts of chesed, his words are to be understood literally in light of what we have said.¹¹

Usually this saying is interpreted to mean that because of chesed life appears more beautiful, where chesed is understood as morality and helping others. In light of our discussion here, the meaning is much deeper, and touches the very ontology of existence in the world: the world stands on chesed because every chain of being begins at a point of chesed. The whole world stands on the system of actions that created it and continue to create it. Chesed is the creation of things from nothing, and therefore all being exists and stands upon it.

The creation of the world is often described as an act of chesed by the Creator. This description often raises moral perplexities. For example, is creating something and benefiting it preferable to its not having been created at all? And similar questions. These questions arise because the term chesed is understood in its moral sense, that is, beneficence. But according to our approach here, the concept describes not only beneficence, but creation from nothing. In this sense, the creation of the world is chesed not only because it is beneficial, but primarily because it is an act of the Creator that exists without any prior cause.

Clearly there was no prior cause that made God create the world. He is not acted upon by anything outside Himself. Nor was He subject to any law in that situation.¹²

In light of this we can understand the deep value of the quality of chesed, a value also expressed in the modern value of creativity. This is the value whose role is to establish and develop the world, and creation as a whole. A person who performs chesed cleaves to the attributes of his Creator, because he too creates worlds from nothing through acts of chesed. The ability to create from nothing, like artistic ability, the capacity to benefit, the capacity for insight and scientific discovery, all of these draw from a divine source. In note 31 above we saw that without the divine root in the human being none of these would be possible. The basic value in chesed, then, is not helping another, but cleaving to the attributes of God.¹³

Gratitude: Between Chesed and Din

In this section we will consider one implication that illustrates the relation between chesed as creation from nothing, which opens a chain of actions based upon it, and din. Here we will also see a certain value that exists in din, and define an intermediate concept between chesed and din.

Chesed necessarily produces continuation, like a planting. Since chesed is the establishment of new chains of reality, it must by definition create continuity, so that the chain can continue and develop. Chesed that has no continuation created nothing. Continuity is what gives it meaning. In this sense, din not only continues and develops chesed, or makes use of it, but is what gives it meaning.

The obligation of gratitude to one who has done chesed for me is essentially the obligation to allow chesed to bear fruit, or to allow the chain that was created to continue. When someone does chesed for me, he begins a chain from nothing, and it is incumbent upon me to continue it by responding appropriately to that act. This is the duty of gratitude. Ingratitude, by contrast, is the cutting off of a chain that sought to come into being. Just as the world stands upon acts of chesed as its basic constructive act, so ingratitude can be regarded as the destruction of the world, insofar as it severs the continuity of chesed.

This seems to have been Simone Weil’s intention in the passage quoted above, where she writes:

Creation is made of the downward movement of gravity, the upward movement of grace, and the downward movement of grace at the second power.¹⁴

This description expresses the fact that the initial act of chesed is present in all the results that flow from it and continue it.

The Maharal, in his commentary Gur Aryeh on Genesis 18:4, explains that God repaid Abraham’s children measure for measure for every detail of the hospitality Abraham showed to the Ishmaelites, as a result of the obligation of gratitude. An act of chesed necessarily yields fruit, and the chain continues to exist because the recipient of the chesed expresses gratitude and thus carries its effect onward.¹⁵

Gratitude is not an explicit halakhic obligation, but only a recommended virtue. One does not find in halakhic works that there is an obligation to be grateful. The reason is apparently that the Torah wishes to leave dimensions of chesed within gratitude, and not place it entirely on the footing of din, that is, formal halakhic obligation. It seems that the reason for this is that, if gratitude were defined as a purely halakhic duty, then it would be an act of din that could no longer itself generate further fruit. In that case, the chain created by the initial act of chesed would be cut off. Therefore the obligation of gratitude was left as a voluntary obligation, “grace at the second power,” in Weil’s terms.

When a person gives a loan, he performs an act of chesed. The recipient is obligated to return the loan. A debt is created here, and therefore repayment of the loan is din. But such a din has no continuation at all, for once the repayment is made the process ends.

Here the quality of gratitude enters. The person who received the loan is obligated to the lender, morally, not only for the money he borrowed, but also in gratitude. True, this is not an absolute obligation, for if it were halakhic, it would again lack the power to bear fruit and continue onward. This obligation also does not exist only toward the lender; what is created here is an extra-halakhic commitment to lend and to perform chesed toward anyone who needs it.¹⁶

It should be noted that gratitude contains an element of chesed, but it is not full chesed. This obligation is created by a prior cause, the original act of chesed, and therefore it does not meet the full definition of chesed. Gratitude bears some resemblance to a financial debt, although a debt is a necessary continuation of a loan, a full din, whereas gratitude is voluntary from the standpoint of formal halakha. It is a result of the act of lending, unlike the debt, which results from the mere fact that the lender’s money is in the borrower’s possession.

On a superficial level, gratitude for an act of chesed may be interpreted as a form of “he who hates gifts shall live,” that is, its purpose is to ensure that the original giving was not a free gift. On that reading it is a kind of compensation for the original gift. But Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, in his Pahad Yitzhak on Rosh Hashanah, Essay 3, proves that this is not the case. Rather, it is an obligation to continue the chain of chesed, just as we explained above. We will now cite his words in full:

Anyone privileged to have served true sages knows how severe their insistence was regarding gratitude. A person in whose nature they sensed ingratitude almost became, in their eyes, unfit altogether.

When we seek the roots of this matter of gratitude, the first understanding is that the quality of gratitude is one detail of the broader quality of “he who hates gifts shall live.” By repaying one benefit with another, the aspect of gift in the first benefit is diminished, whereas the ungrateful person shows that he is comfortable with bread of shame.

But this still does not exhaust the content of gratitude. We have an example showing that gratitude has roots in another domain as well, beyond its roots in the sphere of hating gifts. The example is this: two people seek help, and a third person can help only one of them. One of those in need has legal precedence according to the laws stated at the end of Tractate Horayot in the Babylonian Talmud. But toward the second, the third person has an obligation of gratitude. Which of them takes precedence?

“Your father’s lost object and your teacher’s lost object: your teacher’s takes precedence.” And it is ruled in the Shulchan Arukh: “This applies only when the father does not pay wages to the teacher. But if he pays wages, the father’s lost object takes precedence.”

Now it is obvious that with respect to honor pure and simple, the teacher’s honor is greater than the father’s even when the father pays wages. It is only with regard to the act of chesed involved in returning a lost object that the father takes precedence when he pays the wages. What has payment to do with this?

It follows necessarily from this that the statement “for his teacher brings him to the life of the world to come” contains both elements: the obligation of honor to one’s teacher and the obligation of gratitude to one’s teacher. By the father’s payment, the obligation of gratitude toward the teacher is removed, even though this has nothing to do with the honor due the teacher as such.

And since we see that because gratitude applies to the father, his lost object takes precedence over the teacher’s, it follows that the obligation of gratitude overrides the rule of precedence in the order of the mitzvah of acts of chesed, for returning a lost object is a mitzvah of chesed toward the owner.

And this has no explanation except to say that gratitude is literally a bond of chesed, meaning that receiving a benefit binds the recipient to repay it in acts of chesed corresponding to it. Only from this perspective can a bond of chesed take precedence over a mitzvah of chesed. And clearly the general quality of hating gifts is not sufficient to elevate gratitude to the strength of an actual bond of chesed.

These words are very much in keeping with what we said above in explaining the quality of gratitude.

Let us add here a remark concerning the prohibition of interest. As is well known, the Torah forbids both paying and taking interest. Someone has noted¹⁷ that the commentators do not offer a moral reason for this prohibition, for apparently this is simply a business transaction like any other. Just as a person may rent out his house or his tools, why should he not also rent out his money?

One may perhaps conjecture that the basic reason people pay interest, that is, some sum beyond the debt itself, is that they feel that beyond returning the money to its owner they also owe something to the owner for having given them his money. Repayment of the loan follows from the fact that the lender’s money is in the borrower’s possession. Interest is recompense for the chesed the lender did for him in lending the money.

It may be that the Torah’s prohibition on the payment of interest stems from the fact that it neutralizes the ability of chesed to continue onward, and cancels the obligation of gratitude. It reduces this moral obligation to juridical small change, and thereby deprives it of its power of continuation. This is the transformation of chesed into din, which may nullify it and neutralize all of its sustaining power.

In the first book I noted that the communist conception attempted to place chesed on the footing of din, that is, to require people by law to give of their own and share equally with others. This is an approach that legally obligates people to perform chesed. It leaves no room for voluntary acts of chesed, and therefore neutralizes the very meaning of chesed within it. Since chesed is the foundation upon which the world exists, an approach that neutralizes it, even if its intentions are positive, cannot endure. It turns the world into something highly mechanical, devoid of acts of chesed.¹⁸

The Kabbalistic Dialectic on the Three Planes

We have seen that gratitude is an intermediate condition in which chesed and din are combined. There is indeed an obligation here that is derived from a prior cause, but its flowing from that cause is not necessary in the way an act of din is necessary. This phenomenon parallels what in Kabbalah is called rachamim, mercy. Mercy is a kind of action or feeling that is not din, for when I pity someone and therefore help him, I do not do so because there is some cause that obligates me. But neither is it full chesed, since the action is done out of some cause, namely the feeling of pity. The logical character of this action is very similar to gratitude, though of course these are different actions and different qualities.

Mercy is the synthesis between chesed and din. If we consider chesed and gevurah, which are more abstract concepts, that same synthesis is called tiferet. There too it appears more complete to us than either of its components. We saw that in our world it is the combination that is more complete, whether the combination of chochmah and binah, called da’at, or the combination of matter and form, creation and formation, called the world of Asiyah.

Our world, then, is a world of syntheses, and therefore the components out of which these syntheses are composed appear to us abstract and incapable of real existence in this world. They belong to worlds other than ours, and there they exist in pure form, like Plato’s world of ideas or forms. This picture leads us directly to the next chapter. There we will see that the analytic-synthetic conflict is also an expression of this same phenomenon.

Chapter 3: Back to the Analytic-Synthetic Conflict

Introduction

This chapter returns to the questions of analyticity and syntheticity, identifying analyticity with the left side, gevurah, binah, and din, and syntheticity with the right side, chesed and chochmah.

Chochmah and Binah

The point of departure here is in fact a familiar aspect of the discussion. When we dealt with the relation between chochmah and binah, we already noted that according to the sages, binah is the power to understand one thing from another. That is, it is the power of logical inference, by means of which conclusions are derived from given premises. Chochmah is the power to know things without a prior rationale, that is, to know the premises themselves. In the first book, especially in the eleventh gate, we identified this power with recognitional thinking, or with faith. In the present book too we have returned to the point that it is impossible to understand the basis of first assumptions, both in logic and in various domains of judgment and evaluation such as ethics and aesthetics, without giving up the distinction between thinking and cognition. We cognize our first assumptions; we do not merely think them.

The synthetic position is prepared to accept even unproven theses as true or false, and not to regard every unproven claim as arbitrary. Syntheticity leaves room for the assessment and judgment of axioms, whereas analyticity is prepared to accept as valid only logical inference. Only logical derivations will be judged valid or invalid in the analytic world. Other claims and arguments appear there as arbitrary. More on this will be discussed below in the appendix.

Thus, in the terms introduced in the present gate, analyticity recognizes only processes of binah and denies chochmah as a tool for attaining truths. Syntheticity, by contrast, accepts both chochmah and binah. See on this the first gate of the first book.

So far we have dealt with the logical plane. But what about the ontological and axiological planes? Does the analytic-synthetic conflict also express itself there?

The Ontological Plane

Already in the first book we discussed the epistemological implications of the analytic-synthetic conflict. In the analytic picture, the attitude toward concepts is conventionalist. Concepts have no existence beyond the totality of their properties. The synthetic world, by contrast, has an essentialist attitude. That is, it maintains that concepts have an existence of their own. The essence of the concept bears its properties and characteristics, but is definitely not identical with them.

In the analytic picture, the distinction between creation and formation, that is, between matter and form, is a fiction. There is no matter without form and no form without matter. The abstract definitions of matter, or essence, and form are nothing but abstractions.

The worlds above our world, the world of Asiyah, are merely fictions. Aristotle therefore rejects the Platonic picture, that is, the claim that ideas exist. In this way the Platonic approach to mathematics is rejected, as is the informativist approach, in Bechler’s terminology, in the philosophy of science. As we saw in the second book, theoretical entities are mere fictions, and scientific theory is not a claim about reality but only an efficient and convenient arrangement of particular facts. These are at most ideas, and nothing more.

The Human-Normative Plane: Will, Choice, and Judgment

In the second gate we pointed out that choice is an action performed in the mode of something from nothing. It has no prior cause that generates it, but it is not indeterministic. Similarly, in the third and fourth gates we saw that the various acts of judgment, ethical and aesthetic, are likewise not arbitrary and relative. They have an objective core, but that core is freely chosen. A person decides his aesthetic values in a way very similar to the choice of ethical values.

This picture is rejected entirely in the analytic world. There, the total range of possibilities for understanding the process of choice is conceived as one of two options: either determinism or indeterminism. The principle of causality contradicts the indeterministic conception, and thus only the deterministic approach remains. The analytic world generally endorses determinism.

In our context, the meaning of determinism is the denial of choice as something from nothing. It is an action of something from something, performed like every other physical action as cause and effect. The same is true of aesthetic judgment, which is either arbitrary or caused by deterministic circumstances, and thus does not involve any real decision.

The picture on the normative plane is therefore very similar to the pictures we saw on the logical and ontological planes. Here too analyticity denies chesed, the right side, and accepts only din, the left side.

Action According to Rules

We saw in the first book, eleventh gate, Chapter 2, the problematic nature of action according to rules, as presented by Wittgenstein. We saw there that even when we act according to a rule, this is in fact action not according to rules. The rule is only a presentation of a living insight, an attempt to force it into a formal framework.

At the beginning of the third gate there, we discussed two different ways of learning a language, and there too one can see the same phenomenon. A language can be learned as a baby learns to speak at home, as a mother tongue, and it can also be learned in an ulpan through formal rules. We saw that the rules are only an approximation to the living language, and therefore there are always exceptions. See the second book, especially the third chapter of the fourth gate, in the discussion of semantics and syntax. In the current terminology, the description of language by means of rules is a description, in the mode of din, of something that in itself is of the nature of chesed, that is, something that does not obey rules. Form is meant to describe and define essence, but it is not identical with it.

In our present terminology, one could say that both of these phenomena describe a situation in which din gives shape to chesed, but the real thing is chesed. It is what gives meaning to din. Chesed is action that, in its pure form, is not conducted according to rules. In our world one cannot act in this way, and one cannot even understand phenomena in this way, and therefore rules arise. But action solely according to rules is itself only an illusion. Din can never stand on its own without the chesed within it that animates it.

Analyticity relates to all reality through systems of formal rules and logical connections between them. It even conceives science in this way, as we saw in the second gate of the second book. Syntheticity, by contrast, is willing to accept also non-deductive arguments and connections as describing some truth.

All these phenomena therefore describe chesed and din as two aspects of reality. Chesed is reality itself, while din is the form that reality receives in our consciousness, so that we may understand it and act in accordance with it. In the analytic picture there is nothing beyond din. Reality as such does not exist at all. As we discussed at length in the first book, the fact that each person interprets the rule according to his own way and cast of mind leads the analytic thinkers to relativism. In the synthetic picture, these various forms join together into one harmonious picture of truth. This picture describes reality as it is in itself, and of such reality there is only one.

Christian Chesed and Jewish Chesed

The Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, in his book Fear and Trembling,¹⁹ describes the binding of Isaac as the sacrifice of moral rules, see above in note 22. It is the sacrifice of human reason on the altar of religious obedience. Here too Abraham our Patriarch breaks all logical and moral rules and apparently acts without rules. It is an act of chesed, performed by the pillar of chesed, Abraham our Patriarch.

Kierkegaard divides the stages of human existence, as well as the stages of his own personal history, into three: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. See the epilogue of the first book. The essence of behavior at the religious stage is the sacrifice of ordinary human reason and life in paradox. In the current terminology, these are life without rules, or life of chesed.

But these are a life of Christian chesed. Christian chesed attempts to implement the concept of chesed in its purity within our world. But as we saw above, this cannot be done. Chesed must be mixed with din. Chesed itself is described in our world in the terms of din. As we saw, even modes of chesed must be conducted subject to the rules of common sense.

Jewish chesed is not the sacrifice of moral rules, and certainly not of the rules of logic. On the contrary, those rules are an expression, albeit partial, of chesed. We saw in the twelfth gate of the first book that the mainstream of Jewish thought is also unwilling to accept belief in logical contradictions. Logic is a framework that must not be breached, even though it is not the whole story, as the analytic thinker imagines. Christianity posits an alternative of pure chesed, which does not belong to our world. Therefore it is prepared to accept its lack of subjection to the laws of logic, as in the coincidence of opposites of Nicholas of Cusa, or to moral rules.

Abraham our Patriarch argues with God over His decision to destroy Sodom, and bargains with Him as if in a marketplace in order to cancel the evil decree. And even in the binding of Isaac, the main message in the end is not the willingness to sacrifice, though that too is important, but rather the message, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad,” that is, the identity between human rules and religious worship. See above in note 22.

Anyone who studies the writings of Simone Weil, from whom we quoted above, will see that her descriptions of grace come much closer to the Christian model than to the Jewish one. The Christian model, precisely because it is not workable, may lead to general collapse, and history has indeed seen such things. Judaism, precisely because it is apparently more pragmatic, succeeds in steering abstract rules so that they appear in a more morally correct way in the real world.

Visuality and Aurality

In the first book, especially in the eleventh gate, we discussed the distinction made by Rabbi ha-Nazir between Greek logic, which is visual at its root and follows external appearance, and Hebrew logic, which is auditory in essence.

This distinction too is connected to the relation between analyticity and syntheticity, or between chesed and din. Din is the form that wraps around chesed. Analyticity relates mainly to form, and ignores the essence concealed within it. Therefore it focuses mainly on sight, through which that form is discerned. Hellenistic culture placed plastic art and the culture of the body at the center of its concern, whereas Hebrew culture distances itself from both. Its concern is with hearing what lies beyond form, with listening to essence itself.

The same distinction exists even with respect to ideas themselves. Analyticity sees ideas as abstractions. For it, redness does not exist; what exists is only the red color of concrete objects. Syntheticity, by contrast, believes in the existence of redness itself. The way to discern this is by means of what Husserl called eidetic intuition, that is, the contemplation of ideas.

Does Pure Din Really Exist?

Gevurah, or din, is not a real thing. Din is not an entity, but only a kind of force, one whose entire power is merely to limit essence, namely chesed, or to cause an absence of chesed. Seeing din as a real thing is nothing but an analytic illusion. We saw this above, in and around note 5, with regard to the illusion that binah without chochmah is possible. In the first book too a parallel illusion was described, as though there are analytic value alternatives, such as democracy and equality, to the synthetic position. But in fact these are merely values, and nothing more.

Above we saw that din is action according to a rule, whereas Wittgenstein already showed that this is only a fiction and an illusion. There is in truth no meaning to action merely according to a rule. In reality, we always act in the mode of chesed, while pure din and pure analyticity are illusions. They exist only when attached to chesed. In exactly the same way, form has meaning only when it limits matter. In our world it has no existence of its own, since one cannot speak of form without matter.

Seeing the shell as existing by itself without the kernel is a distinctively analytic phenomenon. Ethical and aesthetic judgment too are made as though there were no core to the onion. The layers exist with no core at their root. In all these cases the reason is the failure to distinguish between thinking and cognition. Without a cognitional basis one cannot arrive at a firm truth that gives meaning to the whole structure built upon it.

In note 5 we saw that the Torah calls impurity, or evil, every phenomenon of severance from root. Seeing a structure cut off from its root is itself evil. The conception of din without the chesed at its base, in each of the planes discussed above, is impurity in this sense.

Pure din, then, does not exist at all. Din is the form of chesed, but it has no independent existence. A conception of din that does not recognize the dimension of chesed at its root is nothing but impurity.

Many religions and mystical doctrines speak of two opposite forces that act together, in some kind of equilibrium, and by whose power the world is conducted. Familiar examples include yin and yang in Far Eastern mysticism, male and female in many other teachings, including Kabbalah and life itself, good and evil as in Zoroastrianism, right and left, east and west, and many more.

Here we have proposed a monotheistic conception that indeed recognizes two forces, but ontologically admits only one genuine kind of being, while the second does not exist in any real sense and constitutes only a limitation of the other. See the discussion of the goat sent to Azazel above in note 5, where we also explained why this must be the conception in a monotheistic approach.²⁰

Right and Left²¹

In the first book we identified a left-wing worldview with analyticity, and a right-wing worldview with syntheticity. We pointed out that this identification also explains the connection between right and left in their Israeli political meanings and their broader global meanings, which are apparently quite different.

We also explained in this way a number of different correlations that we encounter in our world, and that at first glance are not necessary at all. We saw that analyticity leads to secularity, to pluralism, to democracy, to a communist socio-economic outlook, to a desire for peace almost at any price, and to understanding the rival, and even the enemy, apart from the synthetic enemy. Syntheticity, by contrast, leads to the opposites of all these.

As mentioned, in the Kabbalistic picture chesed is on the right and gevurah on the left, just as chochmah is on the right and binah on the left. In our interpretation, chesed is syntheticity, which indeed characterizes the right, and analyticity characterizes the left. It should also be noted that there is various evidence from brain research that synthetic activity is performed mainly in the right hemisphere, whereas analytic activity is performed mainly in the left hemisphere.²²

Kabbalah identifies these different sides with the sides of the human body, and perhaps of the world as well. See note 17 in the second book on the objective meaning of right and left in the context of the mirror paradox. Should this identification be linked to the names of political, social, and economic outlooks, as we proposed here? I believe the answer is yes.²³

Again: Liberty and Freedom

In the third gate we defined the concepts liberty and freedom as opposites. Liberty is the power to act autonomously within constraints imposed upon us, whereas freedom is the absence of constraints.

In the synthetic conception there is an objective reality, and the various ways of viewing it are our degrees of freedom. As we saw, this is true with respect to ethics, to aesthetics, see above in the third gate, and even to scientific cognition, see the second book, especially the second gate. In the analytic picture, by contrast, there is no objective reality, in varying degrees. Some accept the reality of objects, and some do not even accept that. The result is that differences between worldviews can be attributed to one of two possibilities: either absolute freedom, as opposed to liberty, resulting from the fact that one can shape one’s worldview in a wholly arbitrary and entirely free way, which leads to pluralism, see also below in the appendix; or, alternatively, total bondage, according to which all human conceptions and judgments are derived from the reality in which he finds himself, in a way independent of personal decision. Postmodernity finds itself oscillating between these two poles, sometimes without any clear distinction between them.

In contrast to analyticity, which oscillates between bondage and freedom, syntheticity advocates neither of these, but liberty. The axiological difference once again coincides here with the ontological and epistemological difference.

Summary of the Discussion in the Sixth Gate

In this gate we have presented the analytic-synthetic conflict, as described throughout the three books, see also the concluding chapter that follows immediately, in Kabbalistic terminology and from an abstract, mystical angle of vision.

We saw that analyticity is connected to the Kabbalistic left side, and syntheticity to the Kabbalistic right side. The left side in Kabbalah contains the sefirot Binah and Gevurah, under the general heading din, while the right side contains the sefirot Chochmah and Chesed. In Kabbalah, each of these two pairs is combined into a synthesis that is a fusion of its two components:

chochmah + binah = da’at; chesed + gevurah = tiferet.

We discussed three planes on which this identification can be applied: ontological, logical, and normative.

On the ontological plane, we saw that analyticity does not accept the objective existence of an axiological, or even scientific, onion core. It sees the onion’s layers as existing in themselves. The same is true of an essential dimension of concepts. Syntheticity, by contrast, accepts the basic stratum as some kind of being, and that is what allows it to see in the whole structure built upon that foundation an expression of some truth, and not merely a relative angle lacking objective significance.

On the logical plane, analyticity does not accept the existence of chochmah. It creates the illusion of binah without chochmah, or of theses without axioms. Syntheticity, by contrast, accepts chochmah as the basis that gives meaning to the whole structure that binah creates out of chochmah, namely the derivation of conclusions from axioms.

On the normative plane, analyticity does not accept the existence of free choice. It sees human actions as the mechanical result of circumstances, deterministic bondage, like elections in Syria, or as a wholly free product, indeterministic. Since there is no objective being that defines correct and binding values, the matter is perceived as an arbitrary act, like elections in Switzerland.

The conclusion from everything said in this gate is that right and left are simply the Kabbalistic terminology parallel to syntheticity and analyticity. From the right-synthetic root derive all the secondary ideas of syntheticity, the carriages of the synthetic train, in the terminology of the introduction to the first book, and from the left-analytic root derive all the secondary ideas of analyticity.

Concluding Chapter: From the Human Being to the Human Being Through Science, Philosophy, Religion, and Myth

An Overview of the Course of the Trilogy Thus Far

Introduction

The first three books were planned as a trilogy whose purpose was to describe the analytic-synthetic conflict from different angles. The first book dealt with presenting the abstract ideas, the analytic and the synthetic, and with showing their importance in explaining various cultural and ideological phenomena. That book also presented arguments in favor of syntheticity and against analyticity. The second book dealt with the implications of this account for the philosophy of science and for conflicts between science and myth. The present book completed the movement by describing the implications for understanding the human soul and its different functions.

The fourth book, which concludes the quartet, deals with meta-halakhic and meta-juridical questions. It shows the implications of the synthetic approach for solving several fundamental problems in those fields. This is an addition that serves as a kind of appendix to the original trilogy. The principal move is presented in the first three books, and the purpose of this chapter is to clarify its main lines.

We will do this by pointing to the circularity of the argument presented in the trilogy, and by adding an explanation that shows its necessity. We will survey the course of the trilogy as a whole from a broad perspective, and we will see that at the endpoint we find ourselves back at the point of departure, namely at the beginning of the first book. This circle will also serve us in presenting the main arguments and insights accumulated along the way.

On Circularity: Philosophy and Theology

Very often a circular structure is perceived as problematic. A logical move whose tail is in its mouth is usually of no logical use. One cannot ground premise A on premise B and then return and ground B on A. But here we must pay attention to several important methodological points:[^72]

1. The study of the human soul, and especially of the human intellect, is condemned to circularity by its very definition. A human being uses his own intellect in order to understand how his intellect itself operates. We have no other tool, and no other method, for doing this.

2. Circularity is not always problematic. Even in mathematics one sometimes uses a technique that appears circular. For example, in the area of nonlinear equations, one often assumes a certain solution, substitutes it into the equation or the system of equations, and checks whether the solution is consistent. That is, if the assumption of what is sought proves itself, we adopt the claim expressed in it.²⁴

In our case we present an entire structure, one that is supposed to be consistent and capable of repeating itself in a smooth and continuous way, that is, of closing the circle of the argument hermetically. The alternative is a structure that is not consistent, not smooth, and not continuous. As we saw throughout, the analytic structure does not succeed in making the full circular journey. It presents a loose and problematic structure. In such a situation one can show, at least by way of negation, that pointing to the coherence of the structure is enough to prove that it is the correct one.

Of course, all this is only an analogy for our subject. We are not dealing here with a mathematical problem, and therefore existence and uniqueness theorems for solutions do not exist and are not relevant. But the basic logic remains valid even in a scheme such as this.

In the first book we presented two paths of argument, see notes 21 and 25 there: the philosophical path and the theological path. The philosophical path proceeds from premises to conclusions. The second, the theological path, proceeds specifically from conclusions and infers from them the premises. That is, from our intuitive beliefs we extract the premises embedded within their foundation. In this way we expose our deepest internal structures from above downward, from the conscious to the unconscious.

The basic argument of the trilogy is built in this theological form. We assume the reliability of our intuitions and ask what premises underlie them, and whether there is any need to abandon these intuitions, or perhaps even abandon the very validity of intuition as a tool, as people of analytic outlooks tend to say. At the beginning of this process we notice that we have intuitive assumptions such as the assumption that scientific information can be accumulated and the world known, or that one can conduct an argument about ideas, or that aesthetic judgment has some objective significance. From these assumptions we seek the philosophical framework and infrastructure that make such assumptions possible. The premise is that if there is a reasonable way to do this, then we should remain with our intuitions rather than abandon them. The conclusion we discover is that the only way to ground these intuitions is by assuming the existence of abstract entities, whose contemplation forms the basis of every normative or scientific system, in our terminology here, a categorical system. If we wish to retain our intuitions, we have no escape from this.

In this way it becomes clear that we have always assumed certain premises, only until now implicitly. At the next stage we raise these premises to consciousness and integrate them into our worldview. From that point onward we use them explicitly, and do not merely presuppose them implicitly. Thus we arrive at adopting the claims that emerged over the course of the trilogy, namely that ethical and aesthetic entities exist, and that there is a faculty of thought operating in cognitional modes, that is, a relinquishing of the distinction between thinking and cognition. At the end of the process we arrive at God, who stands at the base of everything. He is what makes possible trust in the validity of our intuitions, and therefore also in the validity of the premises at their base.

A philosophical path of argument would have had to proceed in the opposite direction: from the premises that there is a cognizing component in the intellect, and that there are ethical and aesthetic objects, we would infer that aesthetic and ethical judgment have meaning, and that the world can be known scientifically. But here we proceeded in the opposite, theological direction: from conclusions to premises.

The description presented here places what we have done within a theological scheme. It is therefore no surprise that it is built in circular form. Logic operating in the philosophical way, from premises to conclusions, is linear. But as we have seen, contrary to the analytic illusion, it is never sufficient. In the background there will always stand the question of the validity of the first premises. Alternatively, a valid deductive logical argument always contains an element of begging the question,²⁵ and is therefore circular in essence as well, though often the circularity is hidden.

How, then, is the reliability of a theological argument tested? Is it enough that our intuitions can remain in place? That is an important consideration, but not the only one. As said, the theological argument is circular in its essence, since we start from conclusions, try to extract an infrastructure of theoretical premises from which those conclusions can be returned to, and then see whether the circle closes. When we succeed in this circular move, and find that we have indeed returned to our starting point, we thereby confirm the theological move as a whole.

Thus, the circularity of the course of the argument is based not only on the fact that we are dealing with ourselves, as seen above, but also on the form of argument we adopted here. It reflects the replacement of the philosophical method with the theological one. It also dictates the criterion for evaluating the quality of the argument. A circular argument is measured by consistency, and not necessarily by proofs from premises, as in the philosophical argument, which is itself only an illusion, as noted above.

Reconstructing the Course

Let us try to detail the circular course of the trilogy thus far. The point of departure was the human being and his thought. We began by presenting the two basic alternatives in our logical conceptions: the analytic and the synthetic. We saw that corresponding to these two positions, which characterize human thought and will and appear on the logical plane, there also arise two alternatives with respect to the epistemological plane: essentialism and conventionalism. These describe the human being’s relation to epistemology and thought. From the presentation of this philosophical conflict we saw that many ideological disputes in our world emerge: right and left, religion and secularity, modernity and postmodernism, and more.

The point of departure was therefore philosophical and logical, but this is after all only a worldview and a way of thinking adopted by human beings. Different people choose analytic or synthetic modes of thought, and therefore the real point of departure of the discussion is the human being.

After we identified the contemporary implications, we returned to the philosophical discussion, and there we presented several arguments, most of them theological in character, in favor of the synthetic-essentialist position and against the supposedly rational analytic-conventionalist one.

At the end of the first book we tried to present the synthetic alternative positively, as far as possible. We saw there that the only way to continue holding on to our intuitions is to relinquish the distinction between thinking and cognition, that is, to make a partial identification of the two planes of discussion with which we began, the logical and the epistemological. This is the only way to accept the real possibility of synthetic a priori judgments, as opposed to Kant’s proposals, which are analytically implicit and merely perpetuate and conceal the problems raised by David Hume.

We saw that the meaning of this relinquishment is the creation of the possibility of a correspondence between the intellect and the structure of the world. This correspondence was created by an entity that governs both sides of the equation: God. We saw that without God there is no cognition, no science, and in fact no truth. Nietzsche already showed this when he foresaw the postmodern fracture, the age of the death of God.

In the second book we saw that these two fundamental approaches also underlie two approaches to science and its philosophy. According to the analytic approach, called actualistic in Bechler’s terminology, science does not add information about the world, but only helps us store and organize the information already available and present it in an efficient and useful form. As we saw, this is an utterly untenable position. Let me emphasize: this is not merely a possible worldview, or a non-necessary one. It is a position that does not withstand the most basic empirical tests. In the second book, in the second gate, an argument was presented that clearly proves its untenability. We saw that all scientific intuitions and results stand in frontal opposition to it.

By contrast, we presented the synthetic framework, which is based on synthetic capacity as thinking-cognition, and which constitutes the sole basis for the possibility of scientific progress. Thus, up to this point we moved from the human being, through God, to science and its philosophy.

From there we saw later in the second book that one can adopt parallel explanatory planes for the very same events, and think that all of them are true simultaneously. We demonstrated this by the simultaneous adoption of explanations on the mythic or religious plane, while pointing out that such adoption does not touch the scientific plane. Both can be true at the same time. This was a certain return to God, religion, and myth as explanatory planes parallel to the scientific and other planes. This return anchored the insertion of God between the human being and science and its philosophy.

After all this preparation, the ground was ready for a return to the discussion of the human being, which had in fact been the point of departure all along. The discussion in the present book concerns the human being, but this time not implicitly, but explicitly. Here the human being does not appear only as the framework within which the discussion takes place, as in the first two books. Here the human being, the structure of the soul, and its cognitive capacities are themselves the subject of the discussion. Here the tools developed in the previous books, including the relation between thinking and cognition, trust in intuitions, and God’s guarantee of all these, serve us in turning back to examine the source of all these ideas: ourselves.

The discussion in the present book began with the relation between body and soul, that is, the question of materialism. Here we were still not dealing with the human being himself, but with a certain periphery of him, namely the body. After that the discussion focused on the structure of the soul. There too we had to peel away several layers until we reached the human being himself, the I. This continues what we saw in the second gate of the first book, that every being or concept has an essence, and around it an envelope of properties and characteristics, that is, form. From that perspective we penetrated through psychology and drives, and saw that this entire complex is not identical with the human being himself. The I is not located within our psychological map. The I is the being that bears this map, or that travels through it. It is the owner of this map. Psychology and the drives too are only a periphery of the human being, though a more internal one.

Two supreme functions stand closest to the human being as he is in himself, and that expression itself, borrowed from Schopenhauer, constitutes a circular application of the Kantian method to the human being himself:[^75] thought and will. There we found that at the basis of both lies a capacity for contemplating abstract objects. As noted, in the background stands the Platonic conclusion reached in the first book, that the essences of concepts do indeed exist. These objects are divided into several kinds, each of which establishes a different category: there are ethical objects, aesthetic objects, scientific-factual objects, and so forth.

We saw that in order to accept the possibility of an objective dimension in each of these three kinds of judgment, we must assume that each such abstract concept creates a categorical system, which within our cognition describes the system of principles governing our cognitive activity in that category. The possibility that such categorical systems can organize themselves into a coherent structure of meaning, from which we adopt them, alter parts of them, conduct discourse and communication about them, or rank them, led us to the existence of a super-system that constitutes a framework for them all. In the Jewish world, this supra-categorical system is the Torah, which is God’s representative as the categorical skeleton of the world.

Thus, after completing the discussion of the human being and his thought, and confirming the synthetic framework through which we arrived at God, we find ourselves back at the same point. The correspondence between the human being and the world leads to God.

We saw that God is the basis for the very possibility of syntheticity, since He guarantees the correspondence between cognition and judgment on the one hand and the world on the other, and He is also the result of the synthetic observation of the concrete and abstract world for which He serves as guarantor. This is the essence of the synthetic circle described above. After presenting the synthetic picture of the human spirit, we arrive at God, whereas in the first book God was the basis that made the synthetic argument possible, since He is the one who creates syntheticity and guarantees its reliability. In the end, it is syntheticity itself that shows us His very existence.

The path from science to God is theological, but from God to science the path is philosophical. It is simply walking the same road in both directions. As we explained above, this walk is not a proof in the usual sense, but the presentation of the only possible framework that allows us to think about the world, know it, and remain rational, in contrast to the fantasies of analytic rationality. Thus, even if there is no ordinary linear proof here, there is certainly a proof by way of negation. The alternative of analyticity without God is not consistent with the scientific method and its successes, nor with the feeling that there is an objective dimension in our cognition and in our judgments.

It should be noted that in the course of the argument many additional circles were created, with smaller diameters, and this is not the place to return and detail them all. To summarize, the broad circle created here is the following: from philosophy, that is, thinking-cognition, to the human being by a theological path; from the human being to God, also by a theological path; and from Him back, by a philosophical path, to philosophy. As with any circle, one may begin walking along it from any point, but the criterion of success is a consistent return to that same point.

Back to Kant, and from Him to Us

At the end, one cannot dispense with Kant. In fact, the path we followed here is precisely the Kantian path. The problem Kant sought to solve was the problem of the synthetic a priori, and so too did we. One could say that the entire movement of the trilogy is nothing but a proposal for a reasonable basis for a genuine synthetic a priori, not like Kant’s version, which is only analyticity in disguise. What Kant proposed as the cornerstone of his solution was what he called transcendental reasoning. This very reasoning, which in our case is also meant to solve that same problem, namely the synthetic a priori, though from another angle, we call theological proof.

The basic difference is that Kant remained within an analytic position, since he did not really propose the existence of synthetic a priori judgments. He does not show a way in which we can make a priori claims about the world itself. He simply redefines the world with which our cognition deals as something subjective existing only in our consciousness. If so, his judgments may be a priori, and even that we doubted in the first book, but they are certainly not synthetic.

By contrast, what we have proposed here is indeed a Kantian move, but one that is genuinely objective. It preserves our ability to formulate and adopt synthetic a priori claims about the world itself. These claims concern the world itself, and we really know them a priori. True, there is a price here as well, for the full and pure synthetic a priori does not exist in full. In our account, the concept a priori itself undergoes a certain metamorphosis. For us, a priori means not by means of the five senses. But in a certain sense it is nevertheless posteriori in its essence. As we have already mentioned many times, this is a process somewhat like cognition, not pure thought. It is contemplation of concepts, or ideas, existing somewhere outside our cognition. This is the meaning of the term synthetic a priori in the language we have proposed.

From this it is clear that much credit in this move belongs to Immanuel the Elder, who placed many of the milestones along this path. He sharpened the questions and even pointed to the direction of the solution. So too, though to a lesser degree, did many other philosophers. But it is very important to view this many-years-long philosophical effort from a broad perspective, and that is all we have tried to do here. The present situation is that analyticity offers a grounding for nothing at all. All domains of inquiry and thought are emptied entirely of meaning and justification, and the fact that life, science, various judgments, and many other human activities continue and win our trust despite the absolute absence of justification, and despite their apparent untenability, ought to be considered a miracle. Hugo Bergmann indeed says exactly this in Chapter 9 of his Introduction to Epistemology, as a summary of the sorry state of epistemology and the philosophy of science.

On the Analytic Emperor from the Beginning of the Book

Seen broadly, a very troubling picture emerges. Analytic culture currently finds itself in a state in which there is no solution to any basic question in any theoretical field, including the philosophy of the scientific disciplines. Yet despite the fact that there is no way to provide grounding for any such question, for example in the philosophy of science, everything nevertheless works. Not only does everything work, we are full of confidence in these untenable, these miraculous, processes.

The only alternative that tried to offer some grounding was Kant’s. Today many know that it did not succeed, but without a broad view it is very easy not to notice that we have been left empty-handed. Throughout the whole expanse of philosophy there exists no real answer to these basic questions, and abandoning Kant ought to lead us to a renewed examination of the questions he raised and sharpened. This has not happened at all.

Sometimes an odd analytic remedy is proposed for this illness: turning doubt, and the raising of questions, into a supreme ideal. In an analytic world in which there is no answer to any essential question, skepticism becomes a value, and a paradoxical and absurd relativism, some of whose most bizarre aspects surfaced in the course of this book, takes the place of rationality.

It is very important to distinguish between the value of critical reflection and courageous testing of every idea, which is indeed an important and necessary characteristic of any method that can reach some truth, and the elevation into a value of the very state of being in doubt. In a sane outlook, the value of skepticism should pertain to method and not to the state in which we find ourselves. But analyticity has never truly presented a sane picture. The cloak of rationalism that it wears is nothing but the emperor’s new clothes. As we have seen, a necessary condition for genuine rationalism is specifically the adoption of a synthetic position.

In the quotation at the beginning of the present book, we cited a passage speaking about the happiness of ignoring and about thought as the source of problems. Analyticity feeds on the illusions of rationalism and the aura of science. If someone really begins to ask hard questions, it vanishes on its own. But the analytic emperor, in his kindness, always sees to it, by means of amusements and various diversions, that we do not suffer from that painful disease.

We Have Nothing Left but This Torah

The point at which the discussion ought to conclude is the Torah. As we saw, the Torah is the supra-categorical framework. Within it every category receives its place and meaning, and within it every category is examined and understood. In note 37 above we saw a more detailed description of this claim.

For that reason, questions such as “Why study Torah?” or “What is the value of Torah study?” are devoid of meaning. Such a question, by its very nature, expects an answer that rests on a more basic principle, something even more self-evident and not itself in need of justification: “We should study Torah because…” But there is no principle more basic than the obligation to study Torah. That principle is what gives meaning to all other values and obligations. The Torah is the general, inter-categorical framework within which alone meanings can be given at all.

This is what we called in the fifth gate Torah lishmah, Torah study for its own sake. The concept lishmah is the cognitional principle that grounds every categorical system. Every such system ends in a reason that looks like “because that is just how it is,” but the meaning is not arbitrary “thus,” but “thus” in the sense of self-evident.

A Final Clarification

From contemplating the overall structure as presented here, one might get the impression that the Torah, as a supra-categorical structure, is a priori. Any reasonable person’s observation of this object would immediately yield the whole set of our a priori insights, and especially our synthetic a priori insights, in every field, science, ethics, aesthetics, myths, and the like. Moreover, the picture that might emerge from our discussion is that all the details comprising the Torah we possess are a priori and necessary, the product of pure intellectual contemplation, and that we are born with the ability to contemplate them and extract from that contemplation the whole of these insights, and all the details that make up the concept Torah in its Jewish sense.

But these conclusions would be exaggerated, and such a picture is not what we intended here. In notes 21 and 25 of the first book we discussed the theological proof of the existence of God, and distinguished between God as a transcendental force, the source of our synthetic capacity, which is a universal concept, and the particular God of Judaism and the Torah. The same distinction must be made with regard to Torah as the normative reflection of God. The normative object called Torah does indeed help us constitute our synthetic a priori insights in all fields. But its main contribution lies in the very willingness to grant validity to such insights, and not necessarily in their content. It seems very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to derive from the Torah what is beautiful, or even what is good, and certainly not what is scientifically correct. What was intended here is that one may derive from the Torah trust in our ability to know all these things, and a philosophical basis for that ability. In other words, one can derive from it a barrier against the need many people feel to deny that trust out of hand. The picture described here is an optimistic completion and grounding of all human capacities, and not their pessimistic replacement by second-rate mysticism.²⁶

The very contemplation of the Torah is not an a priori act in the way ordinary sight is. I know of no way to contemplate the commandment of tefillin, or the prohibition on eating pork, or to contemplate something that would yield these commandments a priori. These more concrete contemplations draw on tradition, on batei midrash, houses of study, on study of material transmitted to us by various means, and on trust in the mode of vision that develops through engagement with that material. See on this in greater detail the thirteenth gate of the first book. The beit midrash, the house of study, is the place where this synthetic ability develops, as does our trust in it, and where we observe this object.

Thus, this supra-categorical object is not only the basis for all the insights we have mentioned, but is also nourished by them. It builds them and is built by them. Study of the sugyah, the talmudic topic, of tefillin and pork builds the intuitions that accompany us in other fields as well. The synthetic ability is built in the beit midrash, and from there it can go out and establish additional domains of knowledge. This is but a reflection of the broader circle described in this chapter.

Of this the sages already said:

If this despicable one, that is, the evil inclination, encounters you, drag him to the beit midrash.

Epilogue

Achilles: My friend Tortoise, it seems we are back at the point of departure.

Tortoise: What do you mean?

Achilles: In the first book you explained to me that faith is the necessary infrastructure for our ability to grasp fundamental truths. You added that without it there is no way to ground the validity of synthetic a priori judgments. And now suddenly you tell me that faith is specifically the conclusion drawn from the use of that very ability. So make up your mind: is faith a premise or a conclusion?

Tortoise: In the first book we already distinguished between philosophical loading, which derives conclusions from premises, and theological loading, which derives premises from conclusions. From the philosophical perspective, the ability to cognize ungrounded truths is the basis of faith. But from the theological perspective, faith is specifically the basis of that ability.

Achilles: So is faith a premise or a conclusion?

Tortoise: Both.

Achilles: It is hard to avoid the feeling that these sophistries conceal a logical vacuum. First you hang A on B, and then you hang B back on A.

Tortoise: Tell me, did Hephaestus really exist?

Achilles: Certainly. He is the one who fashioned my famous suit of armor.

Tortoise: So the armor is the premise and the existence of Hephaestus is the conclusion.

Achilles: Correct.

Tortoise: And from where did that armor come?

Achilles, impatiently: From the skilled hands of Hephaestus. Did I not already tell you that?

Tortoise: So is Hephaestus the source of the armor’s existence, or is the armor the source of Hephaestus’s existence?

Achilles: What nonsense is this? Obviously Hephaestus made the armor, and the existence of the armor testifies to the existence of Hephaestus. What is the problem here, my dear Watson? he says while drawing on an imaginary pipe.

Tortoise: If so, then the situation with faith is very similar. Faith is the tool that helps us recognize fundamental truths, the synthetic a priori, but the existence of those truths testifies to the validity of faith. In what way is this different from the example of Hephaestus and the armor?

Achilles: This reminds me of what we saw in the second book with respect to science. The particular facts are the basis from which we infer the existence of the general law, but the general law is the cause of the occurrence of the particular facts.

Tortoise: Bravo. You are beginning to improve.

Achilles: Do you remember that we set out in order to determine whether human beings also exist, or only the gods, and to try to examine what sort of beings these humans are?

Tortoise: Indeed.

Achilles: If so, the conclusion of this last excursion is very similar to the conclusion of the excursion we made in the previous book. There we proved to human beings that myths exist, and here we proved to myths that human beings exist.

Tortoise: And to human beings as well, for as you will recall, the analytic thinkers among them cast doubt on their very existence.

Achilles: Which means that their thesis is: I think, therefore I do not exist.

Tortoise: Correct.

Achilles: The conclusion, then, is that there are apparently three kinds of beings: spiritual, material, and dual, that is, material-spiritual.

Tortoise: Indeed.

Achilles: So what about nymphs? Do they exist too? After all, my own existence is evidence that Thetis also existed. And then, with sparkling eyes, he adds: And what about tortoises? Perhaps I actually won the mythological race between us?

Tortoise: All that we will leave for one of our next excursions…

Appendix: On the Arbitrariness of the Will in Yeshayahu Leibowitz

Between Positivism and Pluralism

Avi Sagi, in his article “Leibowitz: The Man Against His Own Thought,”²⁷ sharply criticizes Yeshayahu Leibowitz, claiming that he was inconsistent with the conclusions that ought to arise from his philosophy. It seems to me that this criticism, which also represents other similar critiques of Leibowitz’s thought, rests on a basic failure to understand it. Beyond that, I think there is a typical failure in the analysis of positivist positions in general, and it is mainly this that I wish to address in the present appendix.

The failure to be described here has deep roots in the cultural-philosophical development of the present century, whose effects are now beginning to be felt even in contemporary Jewish thought. I will try to discuss this briefly in the third and final section of the appendix.

A. Sagi’s Critique

In the above-mentioned article, Sagi points out, rightly, the revolutionary character of Leibowitz’s determination that Judaism is a value-normative system and not a system of truth-claims about the world.²⁸ Leibowitz, as a product of a positivist world of thought, refused to base his faith and worship of God on a system of truth-claims about the world, since such claims necessarily include assertions that cannot be grounded by strict empirical cognition, as positivism demands.²⁹

For this reason, in Leibowitz’s view the system of the service of God is based on a human value decision, by which one decides to accept the yoke of the commandments. This is not the result of belief in revelation, or of some physical-historical event, but, as Leibowitz repeatedly emphasizes, an arbitrary decision of the will.

The reasoning for this position, as Sagi describes it, rests on two parallel tracks that may be schematically described as follows:

The first track is based on the incommensurability of values, that is, on the absence of the ability to decide rationally in a conflict between two different basic, that is, underived, values, because of the absence of a shared value measure. From this situation Leibowitz infers, implicitly, that in the absence of a rational path of decision, a person must decide arbitrarily between those values.

The second argument is based on Hume’s naturalistic fallacy, according to which one cannot derive the ought from the is, or alternatively, cannot ground values on facts alone. One must always add to the grounding argument another premise that connects the factual plane with the plane of values. In the context of the service of God and the observance of commandments, this means that the fact of revelation at Sinai cannot serve as a ground for the obligation, which is axiological in essence, to accept the yoke of the commandments that were commanded there. To the factual plane, which deals for example with revelation, one must add the autonomous decision of the person to accept upon himself the yoke of the commandments given at Sinai. This is again an arbitrary addition, since it does not rest on facts or rational argument.

From these two arguments it follows that a person standing at an axiological crossroads must decide in an irrational way, in positivist terms, or arbitrarily, in Leibowitz’s terminology, which value direction to choose.

Sagi goes on to point out that Leibowitz inferred from the situation of conflict between values that since he cannot persuade the other to act correctly, if a person wishes to change the other’s beliefs and mode of conduct, he must struggle with him, even by violent struggle, in certain contexts and senses, in order to impose his own values.

Sagi argues that Leibowitz’s basic position should necessarily have yielded a pluralistic one, at least in the weak sense, see the explanation and references there. He continues by claiming that Leibowitz, despite advocating a value-cultural struggle, did not follow the direction implied by his own doctrine. Sagi claims that Leibowitz erred at this point and was guilty of inconsistency. If Leibowitz indeed assumes that a person’s values lack justification and that his choice of them is arbitrary, then he cannot call for a value-cultural struggle that presupposes the superiority of his own system of values over alternative ones.

Sagi further remarks that Leibowitz also erred in claiming that an axiological decision cannot have any justification, since justification need not be universal. There can be an axiological decision that is not universal, but still not arbitrary. It may have personal-subjective justifications.

Sagi summarizes:

The conclusion is that Leibowitz’s conception allows, and perhaps even requires, a pluralistic worldview, or at least what I called weak pluralism. Leibowitz refused to acknowledge this even when it was put before him. Precisely the man who succeeded in applying to the Jewish sphere the idea that religious-axiological commitment does not rest on truth-claims about the world recoiled from applying this idea to controversy within the Jewish world itself. In this he indirectly returned to the claim that Judaism, in its Orthodox interpretation, is based on truth-claims.

Sagi then argues that this contradiction reappears in analyzing Leibowitz’s conception of the shift in the question of the meaning of the religious world from the causal context to the question of meaning.

I will not elaborate here on this further argument of Sagi’s, because in my opinion it is no more than a reformulation of the previous one from a different angle. His main claim is that Leibowitz held that the Jewish-halakhic world can be understood only in terms of meaning, not in terms of rational-causal grounding. A cultural world can be understood only from within itself and in its own terms, and not by means of any objective or other system external to it.

This shift once again confirms, according to Sagi, the pluralistic position implicit, at least, at the base of Leibowitzian thought, and his reasoning is as follows:

If the meaning of an activity is internal, there is no room for comparison and for setting up a shared criterion by which to assess the value of other ethical systems… I do not see how Leibowitz could deny this position, which stands at the basis of his axiological conception.

Sagi concludes his article with the following words:

The rejection of the pluralistic position is often based on the assumption that if you do not negate the other’s world, then you do not truly and wholeheartedly believe in your own axiological world, and are not committed to your own values. This position is not necessary at all. A person’s fidelity to his values is not measured by the degree to which he negates the other’s world, but by the degree to which he is prepared to live out his values consistently and to remain committed to them in difficult situations as well as easy ones. Axiological fidelity is connected to a person’s disposition toward his values, and not necessarily to their cognitive superiority over other positions. This clear lesson emerges from Leibowitz’s thought even if he did not explicitly admit it.

That, then, is Sagi’s critique.

Had Sagi claimed only that, on the principled level, one can base a position of Jewish pluralism on Leibowitz’s thought, I would have remained silent, though I do not agree even with that. But Sagi’s claim is far sharper: he argues that Leibowitz erred in not drawing the pluralistic conclusions that necessarily arise from the premises of his doctrine. It seems to me that in this claim, namely that a pluralistic position necessarily follows from Leibowitz’s premises, Sagi himself is plainly mistaken, as I will try to show in the next section. As noted at the outset, this failure is of much broader significance than some correction or other in the understanding of Leibowitz’s doctrine, and I will return to that below.

B. Positivism and Pluralism

In Leibowitz’s argument, according to Sagi’s reconstruction, which seems reasonable at the principal level, there are two levels of discussion. First, he assumes an arbitrary choice of values. Second, despite this, he assumes that situations may arise in which someone will want to impose his arbitrary values on another. Hence, because the path of persuasion is not open to him, according to Leibowitz, who affirms the arbitrariness of axiological choice, he finds himself compelled to choose struggle, sometimes violent struggle.

Sagi challenges Leibowitz’s intolerant conclusions. But it seems to me that the dispute is not on the plane of the methods of struggle and the relations between systems of values, that is, not in the conclusion drawn from these two levels of discussion, but on a more basic plane. The dispute is on the foundational level at which Leibowitz claims that despite arbitrariness, a situation may arise in which a person will want to impose his values on another. In particular, Sagi challenges what such a desire presupposes, namely the assumption that a person who espouses an alternative system of values, contradictory to mine, is mistaken in his path. As stated in the quotation at the end of the previous section, Sagi maintains that a person’s fidelity to his values is not necessarily derived from the negation of alternative value systems.

A deeper examination of Leibowitz’s positions, one that takes into account their distinct positivist orientation, makes it clear that he seriously believed in the value system he chose and even granted it a value of truth.³⁰ Therefore it is clear that if someone chooses to adopt a contradictory value system, one should not expect from a positivist like Leibowitz a pluralistic attitude, but at most a tolerant one.³¹

It seems that the focus of the misunderstanding lies in the attitude toward the rationality of values, and toward positivist rationality in general. More precisely, the discussion centers on the meaning of “the arbitrariness of the will” in Leibowitz’s terminology.

My principal claim is that when Leibowitz argues that no factual grounding should be accepted for values, what he calls an arbitrary choice, this does not mean that he has no trust in them, or that they lack a value of truth. He intends only to say that they are not susceptible to objective, intellectual, or empirical justification, and that they cannot be argued about or proved to others.

From Sagi’s interpretation of Leibowitz’s doctrine it emerges that a person’s act of value choice is nothing more than arbitrary indeterminism. A person chooses his values just like that, in the same way that a die chooses to land on one of its faces.

The distinction between arbitrary action and action of choice was described at length in the course of this book, and I see no need to clarify it again here.³² Choice is an act of decision which indeed has no intellectual or other cause in the accepted senses of the term cause, that is, it is not deterministic, but it is equally clear that it is not arbitrary, that is, indeterministic. The result of such a decision is faith, in the full sense of the word, in the value system that the person has chosen to adopt. True, this choice has no rational justification, certainly not in positivist terms, but that does not mean that it is not truth. I do not mean truth in the sense of correspondence to a state of affairs in the world, but a binding belief subject to the law of non-contradiction. A person’s responsibility for the outcomes and significance of his moral choice, which Leibowitz himself often emphasizes, clearly presupposes that it is not arbitrary.

It is entirely clear that when Leibowitz speaks of arbitrary choice in values, he means to deny their grounding on an empirical-factual basis, or on an intellectual-rational decision between conflicting, incommensurable values. In other words, he means a denial of the possibility of positivist justification. But that does not mean that they have no meaning of truth in themselves. His position holds that there is no point and no possibility of arguing about values, but that does not mean that all of them are therefore equally correct. As noted above, values too are subject, for Leibowitz, to the law of non-contradiction.

A common distinction is drawn between conflicts of beliefs, that is, cognitive conflicts, and conflicts of desires, that is, conative conflicts.³³ In cognitive conflicts, once a person adopts a position he thereby rejects everything that contradicts it. In a simple sense, there is no possibility of a genuine cognitive conflict. In conative conflicts, by contrast, one can desire two contradictory things at once. Williams already pointed out that a normative conflict, that is, a conflict between duties, resembles not a conative conflict but specifically a cognitive one.³⁴ My recognition of a certain duty as binding upon me excludes the legitimacy of duties opposed to it.³⁵

To be sure, this point applies mainly to the consistency of a person’s position with himself, namely that if he accepts upon himself the duty to do X, he excludes not doing it, or doing not-X. I wish to claim that with Leibowitz this applies not only inwardly, but also to others who hold such duties. A person who adopts a certain value system necessarily rejects the other who holds a contradictory system. This is what I meant above when I said that Leibowitz grants a value of truth to a person’s arbitrary value choices.

In Leibowitz’s book Faith, History, and Values³⁶ there appears a lecture on tolerance from 1979, in which Leibowitz discusses the positions of the Radbaz and Maimonides on this issue. The main point is that according to the Radbaz, a person cannot be punished if he acts on the basis of his best judgment, even if he denies a fundamental principle. According to Rabbi Tzadok ha-Kohen of Lublin, quoted there, such a person is considered coerced. According to Maimonides, precisely such a person is to be punished severely. But on all views, including Leibowitz’s own, it is clear that such a person is certainly mistaken. The dispute concerns only the degree of tolerance that should be exercised toward him. Leibowitz, characteristically, inclines here too toward the view of Maimonides.

According to halakha, clear and severe sanctions are imposed on idolaters and on transgressors generally, and I do not see how one can propose an essentially pluralistic interpretation, even in the weak sense, of the Jewish-halakhic system. In any case, Leibowitz himself certainly did not do so, and in several places he says this explicitly, for example in the long quotation to be brought at the end of the appendix.

Leibowitz argues that since one cannot persuade another person through rational discussion to change his values, one has no choice but to struggle with him in order to impose upon him the correct system of values, that is, Leibowitz’s own. This apparently puzzling position stems precisely from the fact that Leibowitz genuinely believes in those very values he chose, and they are not arbitrary in his own eyes. It is true that according to Leibowitz one cannot persuade the other of his error, but it does not follow that the other is not mistaken.

We saw above the connection between duties, values and norms, and cognition, rather than desire. Even in the cognitive world there are propositions that have no rational justification, in the positivist sense, and yet they are regarded as correct by the person who believes them, and therefore their opposite is regarded as false. To what may this be compared? To a positivist who suddenly discovers that some concept, which in his eyes is well defined and obvious to any rational person, cannot be grasped by his interlocutor. In such a case he would have no choice but to struggle against that foolish fellow until the latter understands what every rational person ought to understand. The meanings of basic self-evident terms cannot be rationally proven, and therefore there is no choice but to struggle with someone who does not accept them. Inability to persuade, especially for a positivist like Leibowitz, does not necessarily testify to a state of relative truth or relative justice.

Leibowitz’s stubborn formulations about the arbitrariness of axiological decision are what cause confusion in understanding his words. This is especially striking in Dialogue 1 with Tony Lavie, which was mentioned earlier. It is clear that Leibowitz does not mean arbitrariness in the indeterministic sense, for if he did, there would be no point at all in voicing his own opinions or in his incessant preaching and rebuking of those who disagree with them. In his eyes, the choice of values of morality and justice is arbitrary in exactly the same sense as the choice of values of religion, and therefore there would be no point in persuading people of them either, or in exhorting them to observe them.

My main claim is that Leibowitz insists on arbitrariness only in order to exclude the position that regards this decision as the result of rational, empirical, or intellectual judgment. His purpose is to stress that this is the free action of the will, and that it does not depend at all on the intellect, on cognition, or on thought. It is clear that according to Leibowitz the value system a person chooses through his will is absolute, and all systems that are not commensurable with it are wrong, that is, not just, not moral, not proper.

In the course of this book we argued that the basis of every normative system is some sort of entity whose existence is not merely a neutral fact. This entity is colored in such a way that whoever contemplates it finds himself obligated by the norms that arise from it. We presented this both in the aesthetic context and in the ethical and religious contexts. In the end we concluded that the supreme entity which is the basic source of all kinds of norms in their various shades is the Holy One, blessed be He.

Contemplation of this entity is the only possible justification for commitment to the normative system. That is why Leibowitz says there is no rational justification for it, meaning in the form of arguments. We did note, however, that rhetoric, not logic, is the tool intended to bring one’s counterpart to contemplate that abstract entity from my angle, and thereby persuade him. Accordingly, as we will explain further on, Leibowitz is not correct in his conclusion that one cannot argue about values and that the only way to impose them is by force.

I will now try to expand a little on the misunderstanding of the positivist position, because in my opinion this has broader importance than the present discussion. For the sake of the discussion, I will define hard positivism, in broad outline, as the position that there is no point in dealing with propositions and concepts that cannot be defined and proven precisely. According to this position, every concept we use must be clear and well defined, and every claim we make must be capable of proof or refutation.

Clearly such an approach assumes the existence of a system of atomic basic concepts that cannot themselves be defined, and by means of which all the other concepts are to be defined. Likewise, at the basis of every such positivist mode of thought there must stand several basic propositions, axioms, that cannot be proved, and by means of which all derivative claims are to be proved.

Since the positivist demands strict and clear definition for every concept, and proof for every claim, one may ask him what grounding he offers for his own basic propositions, and what definitions he gives for his own basic concepts. Since one cannot provide grounding or definition, in the positivist sense just described, for propositions and concepts at the atomic level, one might think that they are arbitrary.

As we saw in the second unit of the first book, the sharp transition that occurred in the twentieth century from positivism, which dominated its first half, to postmodernism, which followed it, is based on an argument of this type. Since a proposition is true only if it has strict proof, the axioms, which of course cannot be proved, are arbitrary. It follows that every person or group can adopt axioms as it wishes, and the only requirement they must satisfy is consistency with their own premises. In such a process we move, as if by magic, from positivism, which appears stringent in its demands regarding the concept of truth, directly to postmodern nihilistic skepticism, according to which there is no truth at all. The result is that each group has its own narrative, and in our terminology, its own foundational system of premises and definitions.

Here the question naturally arises, a question we did not discuss there: what did that positivist of the early and middle twentieth century think? Was he not aware of the relativity of his own foundational assumptions? How did those assumptions themselves satisfy his strict demands for justification by proof? Clearly the positivist grasped that there are propositions and concepts that are self-evident. They are not arbitrary, nor merely unsupported. It was obvious to him that these are propositions or concepts that need no grounding at all, because they are evident to any rational person. In other words, they are arbitrary, that is, not justifiable, yet true, that is, their opposite is incompatible with them and therefore false.

Let us now think about what happens when that strict positivist, as defined above, encounters another positivist, no less strict than he, who has adopted a different and contradictory system of foundational assumptions. According to the strict criteria accepted by both, which require proof for every proposition, it is clear that neither will be able to persuade the other that he is mistaken. But, as said above, each of them believes that he is necessarily right and the other, of course, is mistaken. They are not relativists. It is clear that in such a situation each of them may have no choice but to struggle against the other.

One should note that such a positivist believes completely in his foundational system, and yet he is aware that it is accepted only by him and his group, not by the members of the rival group, and he is also aware that he has no way at all to persuade them rationally of his system. Is he therefore obligated to conclude that each of these systems has the same truth value, or alternatively, that he must arrive at pluralism? Perhaps yes, in which case we would arrive at Sagi’s position. But this cannot be said with certainty. It is entirely possible that such a positivist will continue to hold fast to his position, and therefore to believe that the other is completely mistaken, even while it is perfectly clear to him that he cannot persuade the other rationally of its correctness.

In fact, one may say that positivism and postmodernism share the assumption that a proposition is true only if it can be proved, and they differ over the question whether such proofs can in fact be provided. The positivist thought they could; the postmodernist thinks they cannot. Hence the former clings firmly to his rationalist position, and the latter gives up entirely the classical, absolute concept of truth.

From the first book until now we have proposed a synthetic alternative to both of these positions, according to which there is a way to persuade and argue even about values and foundational assumptions. In fact, most real disputes in the world of ideas and values are conducted specifically not on the logical plane. Very few of them end in a logical knockout, that is, in the refutation of the opponent’s position.

So far we have seen the positivist’s situation in relation to his cognitive world. His assumptions and basic concepts are things that are self-evident and do not need rational justification, and therefore their opposite will naturally be considered false, even though they have no such justification.

Leibowitz’s situation, as a positivist, in the world of values parallels his cognitive situation, in terms of the truth value attributable to his propositions. Values are the postulates of the will, whose status with Leibowitz is entirely parallel to the status of the postulates of intellect and cognition.³⁷ As one living already in the postmodern age, he is fully aware of the relativity of values and of differences in the beliefs of different groups of people. But he still remains a positivist, and as such he believes completely in the value system he has adopted. He has no way to persuade his friends-opponents of its correctness, because as Sagi wrote, it is not based on any state of affairs in the world, nor on any rational proof. He does not accept the synthetic thesis that sees the source of normative systems in the contemplation of a colored object, and therefore also believes in the possibility of persuading another by rhetorical means, that is, by bringing him to contemplate that object. But despite all this, it is clear to him that they are mistaken, that is, acting wrongly. It is true that his ideological opponents make no error in reading reality, but their error nevertheless follows from the laws of logic, and especially the law of non-contradiction. For example, if I truly believe that a Jew is obligated to choose to accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven of the God of Israel, then I cannot accept the equal standing of alternative value systems that do not choose that.

For this reason Leibowitz determines that there is no way to prove, and as a positivist, this also means no way to persuade, the other of the correctness of the system I have adopted, and in his terminology, it is arbitrary. But this does not mean that the other is not mistaken. According to Leibowitz, he most definitely is mistaken. It therefore becomes clear that the only way to restore him to the proper path is to struggle against him.³⁸

We thus have before us a position that decides in favor of a specific value or religious world, does not ground it on empirical-factual reality, and yet is not pluralistic toward other positions. Contrary to Sagi’s determination, there is no philosophical error here. This is exactly the position, fully consistent, of Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

Sagi seeks to take Leibowitz’s thought in the same way that the postmodernist takes his spiritual father, the positivist. The postmodernist argues that if indeed a true proposition is only one for which there is proof, as the positivist claims, then since at the base of every proof stand foundational assumptions that of course cannot be proved, all systems of assumptions are equally valid, as the postmodernist claims.

In exactly the same way, Sagi argues that if Leibowitz truly cannot prove his axiological positions, then he must accept the equal standing of all systems of values parallel to his own, that is, he must support pluralism, or at least weak pluralism. Sagi’s mistake lies in failing to understand that Leibowitz examines alternative positions as well from his own point of view, and sees nothing wrong in that. If he believes in some axiological position, it is clear to him that the laws of logic apply to it, and therefore he is also bound to reject its opposite and all who hold it.

The concept of the incommensurability of values in Leibowitz’s thought must likewise undergo a parallel transformation. According to Leibowitz, the incommensurability of values means that there is no rational path, in the positivist sense, that is, no path of proof or empirical observation, by which to decide between values. But this does not mean that every axiological dilemma is incommensurable in the essential sense, that is, that one cannot be convinced that one side is right and the other wrong. One cannot persuade someone else who disagrees with me, but I myself can certainly believe that he is mistaken, and in the same way I can also decide in the value dilemma before me. As explained above, the value decision is not arbitrary, at least in the eyes of the one who decides, but only not susceptible to objective justification and to persuasion.

My basic claim is that a person’s awareness that he acts within a system of values and foundational assumptions that he chose does not contradict the possibility of his believing that parallel systems are mistaken. From within the Jewish-halakhic system that Leibowitz adopted in what he calls an arbitrary way, though of course not arbitrary in the essential sense, Leibowitz determines that all other beliefs are forms of idolatry, and therefore wrong and invalid. There is no inconsistency here of any kind.

Sagi’s claim that belief in one value system does not necessarily mean the negation of alternative systems that contradict it is likewise based on this position of his. The identification he makes between Leibowitz’s claim that the value system lacks empirical-rational grounding and the claim that it lacks truth value, or is not subject to the law of non-contradiction, is mistaken. This is exactly as with some axiomatic cognitive system that, in the eyes of the positivist, cannot be given rational grounding, and yet is true and its opposite false.

Sagi himself apparently supports the view that the adoption of a value system is an arbitrary act of choice whose result is not subject to the law of non-contradiction, at least externally, that is, toward the other. This is perhaps a possible position, though not a plausible one in my eyes, as we saw throughout the discussion in the three books. But it is clear that in Leibowitz’s eyes this is not the case. Even if there is no empirical-rational grounding for a value choice, the result of such a choice is definitely subject to the law of non-contradiction. In my humble opinion, if Sagi does not impose his own beliefs upon Leibowitz’s doctrine, he will not find a contradiction in his words.

Let us conclude this discussion with the remark that Tony Lavie’s errors in his conversations with Leibowitz, see the beginning of the third gate, are completely parallel to the errors to which we pointed here. A clear source for our claim is found in the following passage from page 35, which we quoted there:

Leibowitz: I maintain, then, that the volitional decision is not dependent on knowledge.

Lavie: Last night I looked through your book Judaism, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel,³⁹ and by chance I found there on page 313 that you say something like this: the decision of a person who has a religious interest and who is in a certain situation is given over to his discretion and to the judgment of his understanding. This formulation contradicts your view that understanding has no influence on the will.

Leibowitz: I mean to say that a person’s volitional decision is indeed an expression of his rational thought, yes, but not of his knowledge. That is where we disagree.

It is difficult to state the point more sharply and clearly than this.

C. Conclusions

Beyond defending Leibowitz’s thought, I want to point here to a broader implication of the argument in the previous section. It seems to me that one can walk along the same path in interpreting the general positivist-postmodern crisis as well, as an alternative to Sagi’s interpretation in the Leibowitz case.

As noted above, the transition from the positivist position that dominated the first half of the twentieth century to the postmodernism of its second half occurred because of conclusions drawn regarding the status of foundational assumptions. As I tried to argue, this inference is not necessary. It is true that every proof is based on foundational assumptions, and these of course have no proof of their own. But what ought to have been broken was the positivist identification between truth and provability. The positivist who believed in his assumptions even without proof, when he met another positivist who believed in another system, should not have concluded that both therefore have equal status. He should have concluded, as a genuine positivist indeed would, that his own assumptions are correct even without universal justification. He should have recognized that even in his own doctrine there are truths not based on strict proof. In the earlier terminology, he should have abandoned hard positivism, as defined above, and recognized the existence of foundational claims that do not need proof.⁴⁰

In fact, one can say more than this. Daily experience teaches us that one can also persuade those who think differently from us by means of various arguments, and usually this is done even without proof. This means that not only is truth not necessarily bound up with proof, as in the case of foundational assumptions, but even the ability to persuade is not necessarily tied to proof.

We see people changing systems of values and beliefs as a result of encountering alternative systems, and this points to the possibility of persuasion even in discussion about values and beliefs. This usually is not done by means of proofs, because there are alternative ways of persuading, and these too are rational and legitimate. Proof is a sufficient condition for truth, but not a necessary one. Some may call such changes by names like brainwashing, but that is not necessarily so. One can change one’s position in a rational way, or at least a reasonable one, even without reliance on proof in the strict sense. As we saw in the present book, this is exactly the role of rhetoric.⁴¹

A contemporary person who is aware that he assumes a certain system of axioms need not assume that it is arbitrary, even if he cannot supply it with proof according to positivist criteria. I can maintain that my friend is mistaken even if I rely on my own assumptions. Awareness of this does not necessarily lead to pluralism, and certainly not to postmodernism.

At this point it seems to me that Leibowitz himself is not correct, but in the opposite direction from Sagi. The inability to provide proof does not necessarily entail violent struggle, and neither does it necessarily entail pluralism, because one can try to persuade by less rigorous means. Leibowitz, as the proud positivist product of the first half of the twentieth century, was unwilling to hear of such ideas, for in his eyes rational persuasion could occur only by bringing evidence.

In another way, one can say that the common assumption of positivism and postmodernism — namely, that a true claim is only a proven claim, and that one can persuade only by adducing proofs — is mistaken. The postmodernist is right in his criticism of the naive positivist, who believes that unconditional, objective proofs can be produced for all his claims. But his nihilistic conclusion, and even its milder cousin, the pluralistic one, does not follow from this. One can simply give up the assumption that truth is identical with provability. If one does not assume this, one can adopt the postmodernist’s criticism without surrendering the concepts of truth. Values that I choose, as well as my cognitive first principles, are correct, even though no proof can be produced for them. More than that — and this is contrary to Leibowitz’s position — one can also conduct a dialogue and persuade one another of these claims.

In recent years, voices have begun to be heard claiming legitimacy for a religious Orthodox Judaism that is at the same time pluralistic, and sometimes even postmodern. It seems to me that at the basis of these positions lies the same misunderstanding regarding the disconnection between the way a person adopts his assumptions and their essential content. Today it is commonly accepted that a person decides to serve God in a way that does not rest on any factual state of affairs, or on proofs in the strict sense. As we have seen, despite this, that same person can remain faithful to the halakha (Jewish law) and its imperative to condemn alternative value systems, and even to punish those who follow them, in cases where this is required. From my point of view, even though I am aware that I have no objective ability to persuade the other, I can still believe that I am right, and it therefore also follows clearly for me that the other is mistaken.

It is interesting to note that, in my impression, a significant portion of those who hold such views, exactly like Sagi, tend to rely on Leibowitz’s doctrine, which ostensibly presents a completely opposite approach. In my opinion, they fall into the same trap to which I pointed earlier. They identify the inability to produce “rational” proofs with the absence of any value of truth.

As I noted above, in principle such conclusions can indeed be drawn from the impossibility of producing proofs, and in this sense Leibowitz’s doctrine does indeed open a door to Jewish pluralism. But these conclusions are certainly not necessary, as Sagi claimed.

Beyond that, as I noted briefly above, in my humble opinion such a position cannot be grounded within the Orthodox-halakhic framework, regardless of whether one adopts a Leibowitzian interpretation or another. But that discussion requires a place of its own, and this is not the place for it.

Sagi argued that Leibowitz ostensibly opened for us the way to Jewish-halakhic pluralism. Ironically, it seems to me that it was specifically he who made it possible for those of us who are aware of the subjectivity of our activity and of the narrative within which we act to remain faithful to halakha in its non-pluralistic shades. As stated, the “subjective” adoption of a value system does not necessarily mean pluralism.

To conclude, I will present here several representative and illuminating passages from Leibowitz’s article “Jews Among Their People, in Their Land, and Among the Nations”:[^92]

As for values, one must distinguish, in the problem of Jewish essence in our generation, among different systems of values, which clash with one another in the thought and action of the human being. A theocentric religious system is essential to the Judaism of Torah and mitzvot (commandments), which presents the service of God as an end… the nullification of human values — both personal ones, such as a father’s compassion for his son, and general ones, such as destinies for the people and for all humanity in the covenant between the pieces — before the service of God. In the humanistic anthropocentric system, everything revolves around the axis of the human being as the supreme value, amounting to the deification of man, as in Kant’s doctrine…

There is also a false humanism, atheism in religious disguise — namely Christianity. Here too man himself is the center, and his redemption is the central focus of intention, whereas God is only a tool and means, an instrument for the realization of redemption…

But there also exists a system of values that is not only inferior and invalid but actually abominable: the ethnocentric conception, which presents as the end not God and not man, but a human collective — a people, a race, a state, and the like… This is the conception that is the source of much of the evil and wickedness in human reality, and its final logical conclusion is fascism…

Despite this common consciousness and common will [of the people of Israel], this collective is also deeply divided — between those who observe Torah and mitzvot and those who cast off the yoke of Torah and mitzvot. … If the Jew does not fulfill his obligation, then he is a Jewish offender; and if the Torah had real force, he would be punished by a court of law, even with the death penalty, and yet for that reason he would not cease to be a Jew…

But behind the curtain of declarations and shared feelings there exists a deep rift at the level of way of life, one that does not permit actual shared living, and in the end the difference in reality will overpower the shared consciousness. A religious Jewish man (or woman) and a secular Jewish woman (or man), if each stands by his or her own commitments, cannot marry — because of the laws of menstruation and family purity… And a Sabbath-observant Jew and a Jew who does not observe the Sabbath cannot jointly maintain an agricultural or industrial enterprise, or a shop, or an office, or even a shared experimental scientific investigation… And a Jew who keeps kosher and a Jew who does not keep kosher cannot dine together at one table. No marriage, no shared economic and technical activity, not even a drink that brings hearts together — can the unity of the nation continue to exist over time under such conditions? Nor is there anything new in this: throughout Jewish history, Torah and mitzvot were the factor that divided the people…

What is required of us for our spiritual healing is precisely the very thing from which the innocent (or those pretending innocence) among us recoil — what in European political jargon is called a “culture war.”

In these passages, as in many others, Leibowitz takes care to distinguish clearly, and even to rank, between correct values (theocentric), inferior and invalid values (anthropocentric), and even abominable ones (ethnocentric). He then explains that the halakhic offender is liable to death, where there exists a court with real authority to impose it. He adds that we must split apart from one another because of our differing desires and values, and finally he caps the matter with the urgent and vital need to conduct a culture war. Thus, according to Sagi, we have an intellectual revolution from which anyone who does not draw conclusions about tolerance and Jewish-halakhic pluralism — including Leibowitz himself — is simply mistaken.⁴²

For one who listens to the melody that emerges from Leibowitz’s doctrine, not necessarily from his actual conduct,⁴³ this is precisely the central message he wanted to convey. A decision to choose a value system is indeed non-deterministic; that is, unlike scientific cognition, in Leibowitz’s understanding, it is not forced upon us by reality or by reason, as some think, but neither is it arbitrary, as others perhaps think. It is the result of the operation of the will, and not of the intellect,⁴⁴ yet it obligates no less than the result of an intellectual decision. It is subject to the laws of logic, and in particular to the law of non-contradiction, and therefore it also necessarily negates the value systems opposed to it.

In my humble opinion, two conclusions clearly emerge from these remarks:

1. Leibowitz’s doctrine has nothing whatsoever to do with pluralism.
2. This part of Leibowitz’s doctrine, to the best of my understanding, is free of contradiction.

Beyond the conclusions that concern Leibowitz’s doctrine, as a generalization of this way of looking I have tried to point to what we already saw in the first book: postmodernism is not a necessary result of positivism, as one might perhaps have inferred from the history of the twentieth century. In my remarks above I also hinted that the possibilities for a Jewish-Orthodox pluralism that have been taking shape in recent years, as well as the postmodern avant-garde of these approaches, suffer from a similar failure. A detailed discussion of this subject lies beyond the scope of this appendix.

Bibliography

Index of Subjects and Names

Footnotes