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Rabbi Shagar and Postmodernism

שו”תCategory: faithRabbi Shagar and Postmodernism
asked 2 years ago

Hello Rabbi, I read in ‘Truth and Unstable’ that you strongly oppose Rabbi Shagar’s statement that it is possible to be a postmodernist and believe, and that this is the appropriate way to believe in our time.
I wanted to ask if there is a fundamental difference between Rabbi Shagar’s view that faith is a choice and an existential feeling and your words, because you also agree that in order to think philosophically, one must first choose to believe in our thinking, and the statistical evidence that you present (in several places) does not really prove whether it is always possible to doubt everything, causality in induction in what we see. If so, you also start from a choice or feeling, is this not a purely quantitative difference between you and Rabbi Shagar.
Or perhaps Rabbi Shagar believed that one must choose to believe in God, and you chose to believe in our thinking and thus come to believe in God, and the difference is in the free choice of both of you.


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מיכי Staff answered 2 years ago

Absolutely not. The question is why you call it “choosing”. Is it an arbitrary decision, as implied by Rabbi Shagar’s words, or is it an intuition that tells me the truth, as I do. A bit related to my article on arbitrariness in Leibovitz: https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=f18e4f052adde49eb&q=https://mikyab.net/%25D7%259B%25D7%25AA%25D7%2591%25D7%2599%25D7%259D/%25D7%2 59E%25D7%2590%25D7%259E%25D7%25A8%25D7%2599%25D7%259D/%25D7%25A9%25D7%25A8%25 D7%2599%25D7%25A8%25D7%2595%25D7%25AA%25D7%2599%25D7%2595%25D7%25AA-%25D7%2594 %25D7%25A8%25D7%25A6%25D7%2595%25D7%259F-%25D7%2591%25D7%259E%25D7%25A9%25D7% 25A0%25D7%25AA%25D7%2595-%25D7%25A9%25D7%259C-%25D7%259C%25D7%2599%25D7%2591%2 5D7%2595%25D7%2591%25D7%2599%25D7%25A5-%25D7%25A4%25D7%2595%25D7%2596/&sa=U&ve d=2ahUKEwi4i_ORtd2EAxWlavEDHXeAAkUQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2TfVqEVjDIahVTQqLFB-_q If it is an arbitrary decision, there is no claim of fact here. You choose to believe in God or be committed to His commandments not because you have to and you have no demand from others to do so, but because that is how you are built / that is how you feel, etc. In my opinion, you choose to believe and be committed because that is what needs to be done. This is the demand of all. In short, the question is whether intuition is an arbitrary matter or a tool for grasping the truth even if you don’t have an argument to support it.


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מוטי replied 2 years ago

Thank you. I think I understand the fundamental division, but in any case, do you agree that anything that says, like the definition “that intuition is a tool for grasping the truth”, is also a basic premise that can be challenged as to why it is true, and in the end we will need to reach an arbitrary choice. (And the difference is that this is an additional step.)
It's like a complete skeptic can also challenge 1+1=2 even though I can explain an explanation that there is no difference between 1+1 and 2, because he will also challenge this explanation.

מיכי Staff replied 2 years ago

You can challenge whatever you want, but that doesn't mean the decision is arbitrary. Can you also challenge the theory of relativity, so its adoption is arbitrary? For every claim you make, I can offer an alternative claim. But this one is reasonable and this one is less so. Therefore, the decision is in favor of the reasonable, and it is definitely not an arbitrary decision.

מוטי replied 2 years ago

I understand. Thank you.

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