The Meaning of Disputes in Philosophy: The Law for Bringing the French and Their Helpers to Justice (Column 223)

More power to you, Rabbi Michi, for another successful post (although I was rather offended by the contempt for existentialism …?).

I disdain it as a philosophical field. It can בהחלט have therapeutic value (= a tranquilizer or a pill that gives a feeling of depth and understanding to those who need them. Without depth and without understanding, of course). Sometimes there are descriptions there of psychological value (= mental facts), and in rarer cases there is a basis, raw material, from which philosophy can be produced (like a table or a poem). But for that you need craftsmen (= philosophers), not psychological poets.

Many, many thanks.
A professional philosopher trying to explain why his profession is vital and contributes to society 🙂
Without plumbing the full depth of the matter, I enjoyed reading it, and in my limited understanding that is sufficient proof of philosophy’s necessity in our material world.
But I do wonder: if the most interesting and important dispute today (in the rabbi’s opinion) is between analytic philosophy and its synthetic rival (a dispute in which the rabbi is an ardent supporter of only one side), then… how will it be decided? (If it is not decided, then no progress in philosophy can occur, at least on this critical point).
After all, it is impossible to prove the reality of spiritual (or abstract) entities by analytic means.
That alone is enough to determine that there can never be a resolution on the most important issue in philosophy!
Your recurring and powerful claim against the analytic camp is that they themselves do not believe what they are saying (since there is evidence of behavioral inconsistency with this belief).
But such a claim is equivalent to the Haredi who argues that “deep in their hearts, all the people of Israel believe that without Torah study in Bnei Brak, the IDF would have collapsed long ago… with all its glorious tanks!”
In other words, perhaps you can steer all analytic-minded people toward the true synthetic path, but you can never refute the analytic claim itself! Or alternatively, the-spiritual-being-that-embodies-the-analytic-view will remain forever existent in metaphysical being. And that is frustrating. But also amusing, and therefore engaging in the issue is important, beneficial, and brings small but meaningful moments of happiness to ordinary human beings laboring for their daily bread, all because of that wicked serpent.

I have nothing against analytic philosophy. On the contrary, I am one of its ardent admirers. I oppose the analytic position, which is a philosophical stance that sees analytic tools as the whole story. I explained this in my books as well.
But it is the French who justify analyticity and bring it down upon us. It comes to deal with the prostitution French philosophy has undergone. Analytic tools protect us from Frenchness, because they sharpen the message and the definitions and thereby prevent the empty French verbiage.

As for your claims about the similarity to Haredism, see my columns on unconscious positions (203-4 and more).

And in short, when the ancient proverb says: “Every French philosophy cast into the trash, except for Parshandata” — that is Solomon, man of Troyes, who developed Hillel’s principle of awareness of the ‘other’ (from whom Levinas took it), by grounding the Torah on “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow,” and explained that “your fellow” also means the Holy One, blessed be He. Awareness of the other is the foundation of everything, both in the realm of ‘between man and God’ and ‘between man and his fellow.’ A ‘thin philosophy’ that includes everything!

Best regards, Razon d’Atra Levingras

“And again, everyone must agree that the claim that causality exists in the world (and not only in cognition) is a claim that does not arise from experience.”
I do an experiment: I kick a ball 1000 times and the ball flies. Two possible explanations:
A. There is a causal connection.
B. The ball flew on those same 1000 occasions unrelated to the kick; by chance I happened to kick exactly before it flew.
Occam’s razor guides me to option A — does adding that consideration already define this as something that does not arise from experience? (One can argue and say that Occam’s razor only points to there being a connection, but not to causality — but that seems to me like wordplay; that connection is what we call causality.)

That is really not wordplay. In Sciences of Freedom and in the fourth book of the Talmudic Logic series I explained that a causal connection has three components: logical (if A then B), temporal (A before B), and physical (because of A, B happens). Without the third, the connection is not causal, but that component does not arise from experience. And indeed, the principle of the razor is not an observation in the usual sense.

Your reservations about what is written in Wikipedia are mostly justified, and if I cared about Hebrew Wikipedia I might consider editing it. But since I don’t use it, and I’ve been exposed to quite a bit of the sewage that passes there between editors and deletion discussions, I don’t even think about it. In any case, the place for those reservations is on Wikipedia’s talk page, not in a discussion about the nature of French philosophers.
As for the substance, you tied together three serious philosophers, and instead of illustrating your point that disputes in philosophy are subtle and that usually the different opinions are different points of view and therefore most of them contribute new insights, you hastened to dismiss all three of them.
I still owe you gratitude for the fact that thanks to your book Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon I was first exposed as a teenager to Husserl, but since then I have also studied Being and Time and quite a few of Levinas’s books.

Heidegger’s claim is not about majority or minority, as might perhaps be implied (to a reader lacking hermeneutic charity) by Wikipedia, but rather that Husserl’s description is incomplete. Not all human consciousness is intentional. The claim is that using the world is another mode of consciousness — I am aware of the chair I am sitting on, but it is not a content of consciousness so long as my use of it is not disrupted.

As for Levinas’s claim — the claim that ethics is first philosophy comes mainly as a contrast to Heidegger. As opposed to an ontological conception that identifies the human being as just another existent in the space of objects, Levinas argues that the human subject is first and foremost ethical. To illustrate: according to Levinas, when Descartes doubts, the reason is not only technological — I don’t want something to go wrong later, so I need to be sure I’m right — but ethical — if I am mistaken I may harm someone.

Levinas’s claim about the “Other” is (if one takes at least one of the presentations — there are differences between the works, much like the differences between Descartes’s cogito arguments), that the human relation is what exposes us to the ethical demand. The commandment not to murder is not revealed to us for utilitarian reasons when we are in our rooms thinking about it abstractly, but when we stand before the face of another concrete person.
(There is also another presentation, in which concreteness is replaced by transcendence; if I remember correctly, that is the direction in Totality and Infinity.)

Seemingly, philosophy is a renewed tradition of Western thought whose beginning is in ancient Greece. In truth, philosophy is a mediation between poetry and science (Plato in the direction of poetry, Aristotle in the direction of science). Therefore, since every nation is characterized by its own spirit, language, and poetry, it is right to speak of national traditions of philosophy: Greek, Roman, Arabic, Jewish, Italian, French, British, German, American. Each has its own characteristics. It is impossible to understand a philosophical system without a good acquaintance with the language and culture of the nation from which the philosopher emerged. In modernity things are much more complex. Martin Knutzen, Kant’s most influential teacher, was influenced by Locke and Newton. Husserl was influenced by Descartes. Levinas was influenced by Husserl and Heidegger. William James by Bergson.
If Europeans are still somewhat capable of understanding one another, the ability of Americans to understand what is non-American is very limited. Therefore, since most Englishmen and Frenchmen have never particularly liked each other’s culture, all the more so I would not expect an analytic philosopher to succeed in understanding continental philosophy, or vice versa.

Blessed is He who speaks and fulfills — I had already thought you had forgotten this question.

By the way, doesn’t this remind you of Rav Kook’s philosophy, where there are many assumptions and few arguments?

As for your remark about Wikipedia, I already anticipated it in the column itself.
Your explanations do not improve the situation in my eyes.
When I use a chair, if you call such a state awareness or consciousness — then of course there are such things. And if you don’t call this consciousness, then there are no such consciousnesses. I still haven’t seen any disagreement here, apart from a rather trivial and agreed-upon fact. Even if there is no claim here about majority or minority, there is a claim about the existence of another category, and that too is a factual or definitional question. I have not seen any philosophical dispute here.
As for Descartes — is this a claim about Descartes’s psychology? Did he diagnose him? On what basis does he build this declaration? What does it mean that he is “first and foremost ethical,” that he is motivated by ethical considerations? It sounds to me like empty verbiage, or a definition, or a simple factual claim (whether true or not).
The claim about the other — is that a claim in psychology? When do we experience the prohibition of murder? Again, in my eyes this is just empty verbiage.
In short, you came to defend them, but for me you only strengthened my position.

The question is whether there is anything there to understand. I very much doubt it. One can always babble and say that the other person simply cannot grasp the great depth here (“the shortness of the grasping subject and the depth of the object grasped”). I do not think I am such a great idiot, and for some reason all these texts are unintelligible to me. The conclusion is obvious. See the words of Chomsky that I quoted.

I have no problem with many assumptions and few arguments, so long as the assumptions are interesting and novel and have content. As stated, these assumptions are the product of observation with the mind’s eye, and that is the essence of philosophy. In my opinion, the arguments are marginal.
By the way, I very much doubt whether Rav Kook has a philosophy. He had many insights of various kinds, but I am not sure there is a doctrine there. (As is known, that is what Rav HaNazir asked him, and that is how he began editing Orot HaKodesh in order to show that there is a philosophy here. I was not convinced.)

Let us start with the simplest point: the fact that something is agreed upon after it is said is not to its detriment but to its credit.
Would you accept the objection to Descartes on the grounds that “obviously if I think, I exist — what is novel about that,” or to Kant on the grounds that “obviously everything we know is only a phenomenon of our consciousness”?

When Husserl formulated phenomenology, he spoke of cognition as a state in which consciousness apprehends an object intentionally.
Husserl’s claim is that this description portrays the way a person experiences his thinking when he performs reflection, but not his thinking in day-to-day life. This disagreement is a disagreement about the way to grasp human consciousness.

As for Descartes, no, it is not a psychological claim; it is a claim about orders of priority — and I presented Descartes only to illustrate the idea. Orders of priority are definitely something of philosophical weight: when an assumption leads to a certain conclusion, the question whether to accept the conclusion or reject the assumption depends on what your priorities are. A claim about ethical priority means, for example, that the moral demand must stand at the foundation, and therefore if a certain assumption will lead you to the conclusion that murder is permitted, apparently one should give up that assumption.

In general, I get the impression that your position is strengthened mainly because you want to entrench yourself in it, and if you indeed wish to remain in your opposition, perhaps it is better to let it go.

It is not a question of depth, but of a cultural basis. There is little linguistic and cultural overlap between the books Chomsky read and studied and those read and studied by the French “postmodern” philosophers; moreover, Chomsky is not a philosopher and did not study with philosophers — unlike, for example, Levinas, who studied in Strasbourg with French philosophers (incidentally, one of them wrote a dissertation on the metaphysical assumptions in the utilitarianism of Mill and Spencer) and in Germany with Husserl and Heidegger, and even used to study Gemara and Rashi.

I do not know what more I am supposed to do to make it clear that this is not stubbornness. After all, I gave a good rationale for each clause.
When something is agreed upon the moment it is stated, there are two possibilities: either it is agreed upon because the interlocutor understood the novelty, or because it is self-evident and contains no novelty. I explained that in my opinion here we are dealing with a definition or a trivial factual statement.
What you described regarding Husserl is not a dispute about how to grasp human consciousness but two definitions of what consciousness is called. I explained this, and again you do not address the point.
Your claim about Descartes I was unable to understand. What priorities are there here? Descartes presented an argument that comes after methodological doubt. That is all. Not ethical, not fear of harming, and nothing of the sort. And even after your clarification, my question remains: on what is this declaration based? Did he diagnose Descartes?
In short, with your permission I will continue to “insist” on common sense. What can I do — I do not speak French.

You are ignoring what Chomsky wrote. He spoke specifically about fields in which he is not an expert (such as physics), and explained why in his opinion French philosophy (in which he is also not an expert) differs from them.

I really cannot understand your argument.
Why is saying “I think, therefore I am” not completely trivial, while saying “Granted, I think, but that is not all I am” is trivial?

I do not know why you are clinging to the example I brought, when I repeatedly emphasized that it was only for illustration. Is the very claim that ethics precedes philosophy not meaningful? Is the claim in the form I presented it — when a set of arguments leads you to abandon morality, you should infer from this that you must abandon the assumptions — not a meaningful claim? Is it trivial?

Chomsky erred in the comparison between science and philosophy, because every innovation in the exact sciences is understood almost immediately by scientists working in the field, whereas in philosophy a new thought requires a relatively long period of study, digestion, and criticism before it can be understood, all the more so before it can be explained, because to explain a philosophical thought is philosophical interpretation, that is, philosophy — and philosophers are far less common than scientists.

Usually philosophy walks in the wake of poetry and literature. In the second half of the nineteenth century there was in France a movement of Symbolist poets who arose against realism and simplicity and matter-of-fact descriptions, and used phenomena of the real world as a perceptible garment for esoteric relations with primordial ideals — not to represent things but to arouse states of consciousness, which in practice led to the creation of obscure poems very difficult to understand. French Symbolism had a great influence on French thought in the twentieth century. In fact, French structuralism and deconstruction are a kind of philosophical reaction to French Symbolism and are very influenced by its style. Whether the new French thought is nothing but private ideas of a narrow circle of intellectuals, or whether at their basis there is universal thought — that is a good question.

I wonder: why is Noam Chomsky antisemitic in your eyes?

“I think, therefore I am” is really not trivial. At most it is tautological (and even that is probably not true, at least if one accepts the critiques of Descartes). Malcolm already said that there are illuminating tautologies (all of geometry is a collection of tautologies). By contrast, the statements here are at best trivial, and certainly not philosophical (but rather definitions or facts). At worst they are simply nonsense (depending on their meaning. The statements are very vague).
Indeed, the claim that ethics precedes philosophy, in my opinion, simply has no meaning. And if it does have meaning, then it is nonsense. If a set of arguments leads me to an immoral conclusion, it is certainly true that I must check what is more compelling to me: those arguments or morality. So what? What is novel here? A set of assumptions that leads me to some other unreasonable conclusion also needs reexamination.
Or perhaps he means to say that in every such conflict ethics always takes precedence? On what basis? Perhaps your ethical interpretation is mistaken? Perhaps the facts of the world are not ethical? If my conclusion is that God is cruel to the compassionate, must I necessarily reject it because it is not ethical? And if I infer that Hitler is cruel to the compassionate — must I reject that too because it is not ethical? And if nothing at all is clear to me (as Descartes held at the stage of his methodological doubt), must I reject that because it leads to unethical conclusions? (What conclusions?)
Do you not see that this is nonsense which is either a definition, or something trivial, or simply an error? And yet I am the one who is stubborn?…

As I said, that is an excuse that can save any heap of straw. One can always say that there is deep symbolism here. There is no point in dealing with such a thesis if it cannot be refuted.

In my eyes, anti-Israelism of an unreasonable kind (far removed from reality) is an expression of antisemitism.

You continue to address half-things, so your answer did nothing to help me understand your method.
Of course Descartes’s statement is not trivial in my view; my question is why it is less trivial in your view than the claim that a human being is not only a thinker.

As for ethics, you give examples of different ethical interpretations, but my claim was about abandoning morality altogether, not adopting a different moral opinion. And yes, if you remain with something in Descartes’s method such that nothing is clear to you and therefore it seems to you that there is no morality at all, that philosophical position is null before the moral imperative that precedes it.

I’ve lost you. Where did you say that a person is not only a thinker? But beyond that, even if you did say it, that is a statement trivial beyond measure. It is like saying that a person has other things besides legs. A marvelous novelty…
I explained about Descartes. Nothing is nullified because it nullifies morality — whether all of it or an interpretation of it. If a person has doubt, then he has doubt even if that leads to the nullification of morality. This is nonsense.

The intention is not symbolism in the sense of allegory but in the sense of association. Over the generations it was customary to distinguish between what is true in language (one truth) and what is imaginary (a multiplicity of images). De Saussure distinguished between the signifier, the mental image of the audible or visual dimension of the word, and the signified — the image, the meaning, that arises in our mind, and the referent — the real object to which the image refers. Following him, people began to attribute to language a third dimension — the symbolic. A basic difference between De Saussure and the Symbolist poets is that in De Saussure’s view the signifier is arbitrary, whereas in their view it has mystical significance. As a result of these approaches, modern theories of language developed, or ways of thinking about language that differ essentially from classical conceptions of language. The French intellectuals Chomsky mentioned — their ideas are the descendants of the descendants of these theories. Without cultural background, one cannot understand them.

I will quote myself from 2 comments above:
“Why is saying ‘I think, therefore I am’ not completely trivial, while saying ‘Granted, I think, but that is not all I am’ is trivial?”
You say, “This is a statement trivial beyond measure,” but in fact much of idealism was written from a rationalist point of view that ignores concrete existence and sees it as an illusion or a phenomenon among phenomena. And specifically, Husserl wrote an entire philosophy that crowned itself as an ego-logy, in which he analyzed cognitions as intentional acts of the subject, and therefore he misses, for example, the fact that a person is aware of the chair he is sitting on in a broader sense, though certainly not as an intentional form of cognition. So to say “trivial” is a bit too convenient after the argument already exists. I do not see why this is more trivial than the claim that one cannot doubt the act of doubting.

I do not understand the argument “this is nonsense.” I argued that when a person encounters an argument he always faces the dilemma whether to accept the conclusion or reject the assumption (I am almost sure that you yourself write this in at least one of your books); why is the claim that a conclusion that rejects morality will lead to rejection of the assumptions nonsense? You may disagree with it, but I do not see the absurdity that is apparently so obvious to you.

The claim against disagreements in philosophy reminds me of Rav Kook’s words about disagreements in Torah:
In the prayer we say: “Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Chanina: Torah scholars increase peace in the world, as it is said: ‘And all your children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children’; read not ‘your children’ but ‘your builders.’” Rav Kook zt”l explains these words of the Sages [Ein Ayah, tractate Berakhot, p. 64] as follows: “There are those who err and think that world peace will be built only by one single uniformity of opinions and traits, and therefore when they see Torah scholars investigating wisdom and Torah knowledge, and through the investigation the sides and methods multiply, they think that בכך they cause dispute and the opposite of peace. In truth this is not correct, for true peace cannot come to the world except precisely through the value of abundant peace. The abundance of peace is that all the sides and methods will be seen, and it will become clear how all of them have a place, each according to its value, place, and matter. On the contrary, even matters that appear superfluous or contradictory will be seen, when the truth of wisdom is revealed in all its aspects, that only through the gathering of all the parts and all the details, and all the opinions that appear different, and all the diverse disciplines — precisely through them will the light of truth and justice be seen, and the knowledge of God, His awe and His love, and the light of the Torah of truth.”

I do not see the difference for our purposes. One can hide behind this or behind that. Neither is refutable.

1. To say that I am not only thoughts but that there is something that thinks is trivial. And if someone wrote otherwise, then he is babbling nonsense. For that you do not need all this French verbiage. Therefore Descartes’s conclusion is indeed trivial. What is novel in him is the argument that leads to it.
2. Regarding Husserl, I do not know what more I can or should add. Try telling a normal person that he sometimes also sits on a chair and does not merely perceive it, and he will throw you down the stairs. In his eyes this will be like whispering to him that he has two legs. It is trivial before the argument and after it.
3. When there is an argument that leads to some conclusion, there are two possibilities before you: reject one of the assumptions or reject the conclusion. This is, of course, a very small novelty. But according to your words, Levinas does not claim that; rather, he claims that when some otherwise reasonable conclusion requires giving up morality, one must always reject the conclusion. And I ask: from where does he get these prophetic words? If I have some doubt about the world, does the fact that it leads to an immoral result remove the doubt? This is nonsense. Suppose I rolled a die and another person decided to kill someone if the result is even. I have a doubt what the result will be. Must I decide that it will be odd because of the immoral implication? A doubt has reasons of its own, regardless of results and implications.
I must say that after a genuinely sympathetic reading (I really am looking for whether and where I erred, since as is known I am no great expert in French philosophy), the conclusion is that every sentence you add only strengthens my position all the more.

Correct, it is exactly the same thing. My claim is that if intelligent people raise arguments, then apparently each of them has some truth, and therefore in many cases there is no dispute here but rather several facets that together create one complex truth. What the Ra’ayah calls peace (in the sense of completeness).

You remind me of the joke about the mathematics lecturer who says, “From here it is easy to see that…”
One of the students asks him: “How?”
And he answers: “It’s trivial.”
“I don’t understand — how does it follow?”
The lecturer scratches his head, ponders for a long time, flips through his notes, scratches his head again, and finally says: “Yes, no doubt, it’s trivial.”

In Kant’s thought, is it clear that the phenomena are possible only because the human being exists in the world? I don’t remember seeing that. So maybe to your taste it is obvious, but most of German idealism that read Kant did not see it as obvious.

Was it obvious to Berkeley? Maybe, but that is already a matter of interpretation.

As for the claim of “prophetic words” — and even if they were prophetic words, so what? I do not think that a conclusion that rejects morality is a “reasonable conclusion,” as you put it. In any case, here you are already entering the question whether his claim is correct or not; you tried to say that everything is meaningless. The die example is silly: to begin with, the immorality is not that of the die but of the murderer, and more than that, before you throw a die ask of every murderer: how does he exist if he lacks morality? And the answer is of course that this is not connected at all to the claim I presented, which spoke of a case where you have an argument that leads to the abandonment of morality, not to an immoral act. You keep confusing the two; if you like, I am willing to admit that this morality could be antisemitic, neo-Nazi, and vegetarian — I am not making a claim here about the content of morality but about morality as such.

But if every response of mine only strengthens your position, perhaps it is better that I stop, on account of the commandment not to say something that will not be heard..

With God’s help, Thursday, parashat BeMesillah Na‘aleh, 5779

Indeed, Northern European philosophy, founded by the “Germania of Edom,” excels in the characteristics of precision and orderly thought, like the “king’s highway” that does not incline right or left, but its deficiency is its dryness. Therefore, in France, planted in Mediterranean culture that also thirsts for experience and feeling, there arose a philosophy that speaks also to the heart, something unattainable through punctilious Yekke precision.

Therefore the prophet Obadiah tells us that the day will come when “the exiles of the Canaanites as far as Zarephath, and the exiles of this host who are in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the Negev,” and they will breathe a fresh spirit and living moisture into the dryness of the “land of the Negev” 🙂

Best regards, Sami l’Vanger

In the Midrash: “He is wondrous” — the name of the angel is ‘Wondrous’ according to his mission. He came to consecrate Samson as a Nazirite, as it is said, “for the boy shall be a Nazirite unto God”; therefore he called his name ‘Wondrous,’ as in the matter of the verse “When a man or woman shall clearly utter [yafli].” And in Malbim: “I do not seek honor and glory from man, for I am an angel. And also my name is wondrous; those who dwell in matter do not know it. And since the name of the angel is according to his mission, and he was sent at this moment to do wonders, as it says: ‘and does wondrously,’ therefore now his name was Wondrous.”

So too with our own Shatz”l, who has ascended and been elevated to the rank of angels: according to the matter of his mission, his name changes, for example:

Sami l’Vanger
the minor Hershel HaLevi
Sh. M-N
Razon d’Atra (ben Elyada)
SZ
Razon d’Atra Levingras
and more, and more.

Usually those well-versed, who understand one thing from another, know how to understand the connection between the mission and the name.
But when he signs simply Shatz”l, then who knows what is meant?

Chazab

And Radak already noted (in Sefer HaShorashim) that the root יקה means “obedience and accepting a yoke,” and thus he explained the verse “until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of peoples” — that all the peoples will accept the authority of the King Messiah (Ramban cites this in his commentary to the Torah in the name of “the grammarians”).

Best regards, Shatz

You are interpreting in a French way the instruction of the Sages not to say something that will not be heard. They meant not to say something that people will not accept from you even though it is correct, whereas here you are saying things that are incorrect (and therefore people do not accept them from you). That seems to me a very fitting interpretation for Levinas.
As for the rest, I have already explained everything, and there is a commandment not to say something that will not be heard (in the correct sense). And reflect on this well.

Popper’s principle of falsification suits empiricist scientific thinking, not intellectual thought. In any case, thoughts can be criticized in many ways, but before criticizing any thought one must first understand it. European culture is built in layers upon layers. It is impossible to understand the French post-structuralist intellectuals without understanding Mallarmé and Blanchot. Anyone who has tried to understand Mallarmé and Blanchot has encountered great difficulty in understanding them. Already in Mallarmé’s own generation many attacked him with the claim that he was impossible to understand, and in the face of the attacks he replied that his colleagues did not know how to read. So anyone who does not understand the French intellectuals is in good company, but more than this teaches anything about the value of what they say, it teaches something about the limits both of obscure writing and of simplistic reading.

M,
You did not understand my words. If you had understood them, you would see that I am completely right.
And seriously, when I claim that there is nothing there to understand, you cannot answer me by saying that before criticizing one must understand. Or perhaps logic also does not apply in a discussion about the French.

And it should be noted that the halakhah does not follow Rabbi Meir, who could show reasons for impurity and for purity — that is, he understood that in those matters there truly was room for both sides, and these were not disputes of truth versus falsehood.

Nevertheless, it seems that this does not include all the disputes in the Talmud, for in Sanhedrin (88?) it is explained that the proliferation of disputes was due to the fact that they appointed unworthy students, implying that there are disputes that testify to a deficiency on one of the sides; and it is possible that the students were unworthy not because of the dispute itself, but because they did not submit to a vote to decide according to whom to act in practice.

Rabbi Michi, you can claim that there is nothing to understand in the words of the French intellectuals, but you do not know French and did not bother to read their writings, so your claim is intuitive or arbitrary or empty.

I clarified everything. I see no new claim here. Besides, if you had understood my words you would see that I am completely right. You just do not read Michi-ese.

Showing reasons for impurity and purity does not mean there is no truth. See my article “Is Halakhah Pluralistic?” From there you can understand that the Sanhedrin sugya is not relevant here.
Beyond that, in a matter like this, a halakhic ruling is not applicable.

“Reading is tormenting, because every text, whatever is important, amusing, interesting… empty — fundamentally it does not exist: you must cross an abyss, and if you do not leap, you will not understand.” (Maurice Blanchot)

And regarding what you asked, “What is Shatz”l?”

It seems that it is an acronym for “Shatz”m Chanak”l,” for on his way to the world of the angels (in the site of “Michael, the great prince”) he passes through the world of the spheres, where the seven planets circle every hill. (As the poet Saul Tchernichovsky said in his poem “They Say There Is a Land.”)

Best regards, Shatz”[m Chanak]”l

And from one matter to another, it seems they call the mountain “Br”g,” which is an acronym for “bashful, merciful, and doers of kindness” — the traits we inherited when we stood by the mountain…

We have found a great nation that is not Jewish:
“For what great nation is there, that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is whenever we call upon Him?”

See Avodah Zarah 58b

I reread this strange thread about his conversations. A few remarks:

1. Seemingly there is no difference between Whitehead’s words, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato,” and Levinas’s words, “All philosophy is but thinking about Shakespeare.” The Jewish French philosopher defines philosophy in relation to an English poet, and the English philosopher in relation to a Greek poet, except that their words imply a different attitude to innovation: according to Whitehead, the main innovation was in the ancient period, while according to Levinas in the modern period.

2. Has philosophy gotten a bad name? Where? When? When there are original thinkers, they usually have many students and readers (although many students and readers are not necessarily a mark of original thought). If they do not have many students and readers, then either their thought is not really original, or they do not know how to teach, or the students do not know how to learn.

3. In entries that require examination, Wikipedia, although written in clear language, usually confuses more than it explains. For if philosophers were capable of explaining their thought simply, they would not trouble themselves to clarify it in books — or they might even come to realize that it is better not to be a philosopher.

Well, this is not really advancing.
1. Even if your homiletics about Levinas versus Whitehead were correct, I do not know why that is relevant to our matter.
2. Go out and see.
3. This has already been discussed. We have a tradition from R. Chaim that an unclear explanation points to an unclear understanding (or to there being nothing to understand — which is probably the case here).

When the Nazis entered Paris, Heidegger said, “Today Descartes died in France,” and unfortunately he was right.

Another thing the Germans, may their name be blotted out, destroyed.

An explanation of a thought should preferably be clear, but not every clear explanation of a thought necessarily explains it well. In any case, thought is neither science nor halakhah, because halakhah deals with action, and just as action itself is limited and constrained, so too is halakhah; and science deals with knowledge according to experience, and both human experience and human knowledge are limited and constrained. But thought has no limit and no constriction — or its constriction and limit are beyond understanding — and therefore the language of thought is unique. Note the difference between the Sages and the Greek wise men: the Greek wise men tried to express their thoughts in a clear form, whereas the Sages clothed their thoughts in the garment of aggadah.

With God’s help, eve of Shabbat, Chukkat HaTorah, 5779

The problem of every philosophy is that it tries to explain reality from within itself: from what is known it tries to infer what is unknown, but one basic thing we cannot know: what is the purpose and destiny?

This is what Abba Yosef the Builder explains to Avnimos the Gardi, greatest of philosophers (or: the Gederite): you cannot stand below and understand without “going up to the roof”; and even the “roof” is not complete — we are in the middle of the process of building it, and “we are day laborers,” seeing only a small part of the picture.

The foundation of the world comes from a high and incomprehensible place — “the Holy One, blessed be He, took dust from beneath the Throne of Glory,” and from it the world was created in order to build from within it the “Throne of Glory” for God.

With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, Shatz

The dialogue between Avnimos the Gardi and Abba Yosef the Builder appears in Exodus Rabbah, parashah 13. And see the article by Rabbi Netanel Aryeh, “Between Tailor and Builder — Avnimos the Gardi and Abba Yosef the Builder,” on the Asif website. On the various attempts to identify “Avnimos the Gardi,” see the “Writers and Books Forum” on the B’Chadrei Charedim website.

Best regards, Shatz

In the above-mentioned discussion in the “Writers and Books Forum,” three Greek philosophers were mentioned whom researchers have conjectured to be “Avnimos the Gardi,” and who had connections with the tannaim: (a) Oenomaus of Gadara (Dr. Rafael Yashpe, “Greek Wisdom — On the Attitude to Philosophy in Hazal and in the Middle Ages”; Prof. Joseph Geiger, “Athens of Syria: On Greek Men of Letters in Gedera”). (b) Numenius of Apamea (Dr. Yehuda Ne’eman, “The Ties of the Galilee with Transjordan before and after the destruction of the Second Temple,” Sinai 124, p. 47 n. 48).

Best regards, Shatz, man of Kochav HaShachar

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… two philosophers were mentioned…

Note that Hazal mentioned only philosophers (Avnimos the Gardi, Proclus, Antoninus) whom they knew and met. The Kants and Descarteses and the continental philosophers and the analytic philosophers of their time were considered by them like the peel of garlic, because they did not recognize the uniqueness of Israel and did not come to learn from them.

By the way, the English scholar Theophilus Gale argued, on the basis of Hellenistic sources, that Plato derived his philosophy from the Jews, and that when he wrote that the Greeks received their learning from the barbarians, he meant the Jews, and that he concealed the sources of his learning in order to avoid the jealousy of Israel-haters and to glorify himself.

With God’s help, 5 Tammuz 5779

To M-80 — greetings,

The matters with which the Greek philosophers dealt parallel the subjects that Hazal considered “the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot,” which are secrets of Torah not expounded publicly. So it is difficult to know clearly what Hazal’s attitude toward them was, and whether there was any acquaintance at all.

It may be assumed that Hazal knew at least central philosophical ideas circulating among the educated public, both Jews and Greeks, with whom they had oral discussions; and in aggadic passages they alluded to those ideas without explicitly mentioning the ideas with which they were “in dialogue.” Those who were “in the know” understood the hints, while those who were not “in the know” — the overwhelming majority of the public — were not exposed to them.

It is worth noting that even among Hazal there were experts who specialized in these subjects. Thus the Sages send Avnimos to Abba Yosef the Builder, who was apparently the expert in the “Account of Creation,” although his name is not mentioned anywhere else, neither in halakhah nor in aggadah. So the non-mention of a sage does not indicate his lack of importance.

With blessings, Shatz

At any rate, it may be that Hazal’s evaluation of Balaam and Avnimos as “the greatest philosophers” really stemmed from the interest they showed in the people of Israel — in Balaam’s case, hostile interest, searching for the weak point; and in Avnimos’s case, positive interest in the secret of the existence of the people of Israel, as expressed in his question of how wool enters the dyer’s vat and succeeds in remaining clean without being singed.

For the criterion of the Sages for “Who is wise?” is “one who learns from every person.” A Greek philosopher who knows about “a nation of philosophers” whose lives are conducted according to a “book,” and remains indifferent without trying to clarify “what this is and what this is about,” shows no signs of genuine “love of wisdom.” By contrast, one who makes the effort to know that “nation of philosophers” up close and tries to understand its secret meets the Hazalic criterion of “Who is wise?”

Best regards, Shatz

And indeed, the answer given by Balaam and Avnimos to the secret of the existence of the people of Israel is the voice of schoolchildren heard in synagogues and study halls. A people that accustoms its children from a young age to love wisdom and meditate upon it, and makes the children full partners in its faith and values — will stand firm before every foreign wind and know how to cope with it successfully, separating the wheat from the chaff.

Peace be upon you, Shatz,

There are two paths in wisdom. One is one who learns by himself, like Abraham our father. The second is one who learns from others even if they are smaller than he is, as Ben Zoma said. And what they share is humility.

Hazal’s attitude to Greek culture was very complex. On the one hand, they called the Greek exile darkness and forbade teaching the sons Greek wisdom. On the other hand, of books they permitted to be written (in foreign languages) only in Greek (Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel); they examined and found that the Torah can be translated adequately only into Greek; and Rabbi said in the Land of Israel: why Syriac? Rather, either the holy tongue or Greek. The prohibitions are because “if someone says there is Torah among the nations, do not believe it,” and the permissions because “if someone says there is wisdom among the nations, believe it.”

On the reciprocal relations between Greco-Roman culture and the people of Israel, see the books of Prof. Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine; and Dr. Yohanan Levy, Worlds Meet — Studies on the Status of Judaism in the Greco-Roman World.

Best regards, Shatz

Michi,
Not long ago you wrote about a subtle distinction between the logical conception and the psychological conception. I quote:
“This is a nice example of the fact that two claims that are logically equivalent are not perceived by us in the same way.
It is easier for us to deal with one than with the other.
The difference between the claims is not on the logical plane (for they are logically equivalent), but on the psychological plane […]
For it is easier for us to understand that a black raven confirms the theory that all ravens are black
than to understand that finding a pink table also confirms that same theory (albeit to a much lesser degree).
The positive formulation is more psychologically accessible to us than the negative formulation, despite their logical equivalence.”

Even though you did not clarify the nature of this difference between the planes of logic and psychology, and did not explain how and why it is created, in my view the very distinction itself is a breakthrough.
Just as you told about yourself how at the beginning of your path you clung to analyticity alone, and later understood the value and significance of the synthetic perspective, so I expected that a time would also come when you would understand the essence and significance of existential discourse. And behold, it is beginning.
If you have noticed the aforementioned gap between logic and psychology, there is room to draw your attention to the following question:
What is the relation between these two domains? How does one affect the other?
Do you see that logic is the daughter of psychology?
Do you discern the reciprocal relations between them?

I will explain:
The essence of the ‘world of speech’ (‘the world of speech’ is made up of all the utterances of humanity from the moment of its creation, and it is the space in which, among other things, logical and philosophical discourse are created and sustained) is the collection of expressions and presentations of the worlds of human souls (the objects of psychology). In other words, the ‘world of speech’ is built from the human effort to translate and present in verbal language the many and diverse experiences that the soul, living in the world, undergoes.
The world of the soul includes many layers, each deeper than the next. Among them, people are accustomed to count (in the ‘world of speech’) the layers of thoughts, beliefs, emotions, senses, desires, conscience, and more.
By analogy only, one may compare the two worlds of soul and speech to the two worlds of knowledge and action: both participate, each in its own uniqueness, in creating a complete structure of reality (in the way the organs of the human being participate in composing the full stature of the person).

As a result, every contribution of each partner to the overall reality enriches and changes that overall reality, and thereby influences the other partner.
More specifically, the psychic experience (from the world of the soul) supplies the raw material to the world of speech, where this material is processed through verbal formulation until an objective and meaningful insight comes to light (which joins previous insights and together they make up the world of speech, as stated). Then the soul goes back and encounters this new product and experiences it in its own world, a psychic experience that will again sow a new seed for a new insight (this is the process that produced what I am writing here), and so on and so forth.
This is the reciprocal relation that exists between psychology, philosophy, and logic (and indeed among all the ‘sciences’).

This is the basis for understanding the difference between the psychic perception and the logical perception:
The psychic experience ‘experienced’ what is called (in the world of speech) logical ‘equivalence’; that is, it identified, by its own tools, the common component in two logical claims, and on that basis logic came and declared that confirmation of one logical claim can also be based on experience (experience) of the truth of its equivalent claim — something the soul did not experience.
As I wrote, it is not impossible that a soul that tries to experience the confirmation of a given claim by way of experience of the truth of its equivalent claim, and does this again and again, will eventually grow accustomed to experiencing confirmation in this way, and for it the gap you spoke about will be greatly narrowed. (Here is an example of logic influencing psychology).

Existential discourse developed new concepts that serve as tools fit for articulating and speaking about the fine fibers that tie together the world of the soul in itself and the world of speech. For example, when you, in the world of speech, declare (hammering it down on the reader) that at the basis of every proof there are assumptions that cannot be proven, you describe this as a fact with no room to try to trace its roots and reasons. That is reality and there is no right to question it. But the phenomenologist (the grandfather of existentialism) directed toward such insights (the axioms) his best inquiries and gazes, in order to try to describe and formulate (that is, to present in the world of speech) the psychic occurrence at the basis of those axioms.
A sentence like the one quoted above, which gives morality precedence over a philosophical conclusion that is rejected because of it, is distinctly the fruit of such contemplation. It was born from an understanding of the psychic forms of philosophy and morality, and from ‘measuring’ between them (even if in the world of speech these are two “incommensurable” things).

This was what your friends meant when they told you that you do not understand what they are pointing to (and I hope that I have been understood).

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… Dr. Yohanan Levy, Worlds Meet…

Many thanks to the rabbi for the interesting column.

A bit late, admittedly, but I would like to ask you two questions.

1. Do you think there is a difference between the person who errs because he is not completely solipsistic and the person who reached a philosophical conclusion not far from yours?
In other words, why is this disagreement, in your eyes, better and narrower? Why is the mistake in intuitive judgments less severe?

2. The progress or innovation in philosophy — how do you see it? As discovery of hidden truth? And what about Kuhn and Popper whom you mention from time to time — if you mean that there is innovation in metaphysics beyond innovations in physics, I do not understand your words. We have already remembered the “footnotes to Plato,” have we not?

Hello Yisrael.
It seems to me that I have long understood all this very well (perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to read my series of columns on poetry, and maybe also the series on academic nonsense). My main claim is not principled but practical: I do not see meaning in the various existentialist claims, and insofar as some of them do have meaning, this can be phrased in ordinary philosophical language without resorting to the hollow verbiage customary there.
In other terminology I would say that existentialism as you describe it may constitute the “context of discovery” but not the “context of justification” (following the familiar distinction in philosophy of science). As far as I am concerned, philosophical insights may grow out of experiences, but that is not interesting. In the end they have to be formulated and make claims and be based on arguments. If one remains in the realm of experience, this has no philosophical value.
By the way, I do not think I omitted anything regarding the relation between logic and psychology. Psychological biases interfere with logic, and one should try to overcome them. There is an intuition that is a direct grasp of truth not by way of rigorous analysis, but on that I have already written quite a bit. In short, do not pin many hopes on it. I do not see any budding “progress” in me here (thank God). But who knows? Time will tell. 🙂

Are there questions here? I didn’t understand them.

If you reduced the disagreements of wise philosophers to disagreements mainly over definitions and intuitions, why are those philosophers who do not hold your definitions (as in the example about Kripke) — their intuitions and assumptions — mistaken in a less severe way than the French? In the end, both do not hold the truth, do they?
For example, on the question whether there really is an external world or not. If there really is, then I am mistaken if I think there is not, and vice versa. If I am wrong, or French, which is worse?
You assumed that nobody succeeds in being consistent and maintaining that there really is no external world — so what of it?

I am referring to the fact that there are two possible errors you included in the article: inconsistency, and consistency but error in intuition.

I understand intuitively why a wise person who does not entirely hold the truth and a foolish person who does not hold it (and is also inconsistent, or does not discuss truth at all) are not on the same level. But why? Beyond that, isn’t truth one complete thing?

What is that philosophy in which there is progress? Our understanding of the physical world, the laws of physics, God, the Ideas?
How does knowledge about quantum physics and advanced neuroscience contribute regarding God or the Ideas, if all their contribution on the philosophical level is that we made a hidden assumption about the existence of an external world?

As I understand it, existentialism refuses to distinguish between “justification” and “discovery.” For it, justification is nothing but discovery. For it sees the reality given to consciousness as an “event” that happens to consciousness, and therefore what “justifies” a thing (proves its existence) is the very fact that it is revealed to us. For it, “proof” (“justification”) is nothing but presenting the context of discovery that leads the philosopher to assert the “proven” claim [therefore it tends toward statements such as “truth is subjective”].
(This does not contradict the possibility of error. There is truth and falsehood in “epistemological disclosures” in the sense that a person does not always understand himself correctly. Moreover, consciousness is not completely free; it has fixed limitations shared by all humans. No one, I hope, would support, for example, the claim of the existence of a crooked straight line (in the same dimension). Logical contradiction is one of the principal limitations of human consciousness, and a contradictory claim is an error).

Therefore existentialism does not see itself as different (in principle) from ordinary philosophy. Both formulate what they experience (psychologically); it is only that traditional philosophy does not speak openly about the transition from experience to defined formulation (the context of discovery) — it takes it for granted (and it is mistaken in this, as the situation underlying your present article proves) — whereas existentialism “reveals nakedness” and seeks to speak openly about the more concealed layer (psychology), speeches which, as stated, serve for it as the “justification” of philosophical arguments, and therefore count as philosophical arguments (very interesting ones) in every respect.

Even so, I admit that in practice I too find it very difficult to understand existentialist statements. When I read parts of Levinas on “otherness,” I wondered greatly. I tried to search within myself how such claims could arise (the context of discovery), and I did not find it. But I attribute this to my own deficiency. As people said above, this difficulty is like the difficulty of understanding modern poetry; we are not accustomed to their terminology and concepts. It is simply a “language” that one must (if one wants) learn.

With God’s help, 7 Tammuz 5779

To R. M. A. — greetings,

Indeed, “psychological biases interfere with logic” when they are in their lower form, namely “envy, lust, and honor,” which are present in a person in his raw natural state.

Therefore they must be balanced by cultivating an emotional world of fraternity, empathy, generosity, and humility. Good and noble feelings do not grow on their own, and good experience has a major role in cultivating them.

Only a strong “good inclination,” cultivated and strengthened by all intellectual, experiential, and emotional means, constitutes a guarantee for objective intellectual inquiry not biased by raw impulses.

Best regards, Shatz

Yisrael,

Do not confuse phenomenology with existentialism. In order to understand the French phenomenologists, one must first study carefully and consecutively the writings of Descartes, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (originally a series of introductory lectures on transcendental phenomenology that Husserl delivered at the Sorbonne and whose listeners included Levinas).

Mem,

I did not compare existentialism to phenomenology.
I pointed to a root-and-branch connection between them (I wrote “its grandfather”).
Phenomenology was the first to direct its inquiry to the psychological layers underlying philosophy.
(In the very little I read I saw that Husserl takes pains at length to clarify the difference between his doctrine and psychology.)
Existentialism, of course, deals a great deal with that layer
(to the point that to some it seems to do nothing but express emotional feelings that have no meaning…),
And it seems to me (I think I also read this) that it arose following the development of the phenomenological method.

Do you think all this is incorrect?
If so, I would be glad if you would define how you understand phenomenology and existentialism.

Yisrael,

In my humble opinion, existentialism is a literary movement seeking some kind of authenticity of the individual, whereas phenomenology is a philosophical method dealing with consciousness.

I’m sorry, but this looks like Chinese to me. I do not understand it.

So there are very deep and exalted things there, only neither you nor I (nor Chomsky, and perhaps not even the authors themselves) understand them. So how do you know that there really are such things there? Faith in the sages? There is no point in discussing unsupported existential claims.

As for psychology and logic, the approach that logic is part of psychology is called psychologism. Both analytic philosophy (The Foundations of Arithmetic by Frege) and phenomenology (Logical Investigations by Husserl) oppose psychologism.

With God’s help, 7 Tammuz 5779

That is exactly what I claimed: in order to be a “Frege,” an asker of questions, one must be a “Gottlob,” a lover of God. When there is love of God and love of people, then the questions reflect a striving for truth and lead to correct conclusions without ulterior motives and biases. And these are the “foundations of arithmetic” — only those who rule over their inclination can properly calculate the “account of the world” 🙂 Corrected psychology is the gateway to balanced logic.

Best regards, Shatz

It is customary to divide the French intellectuals of the twentieth century into groups: phenomenologists, structuralists, personalists, existentialists, Marxists, psychoanalysts, post-structuralists, etc. But these labels are superficial, both because not everyone assigned to one group or another really considered himself such, and because in each group usually what is distinctive is greater than what is shared. What can be said is that after Western culture was destroyed in the First World War and only shadows of shadows remained of it — all the more so after the Second World War — for some reason Paris still retained an intellectual atmosphere that produced a wide variety of views and thoughts (something that no longer exists in the age of Facebook and Twitter).

Usually, a significant philosophical awakening is a sign of the beginning of the decline of the spirit. Classical Greek philosophy — the decline of Athenian culture; Stoic philosophy — the decline of Roman culture; Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages — the decline of Spanish Jewish Torah culture; neo-Platonic Italian philosophy — the decline of Italian culture; English empiricism — the decline of English culture; German idealism — the decline of German culture; American transcendentalism — the decline of American culture. French phenomenology — the decline of French culture.

Beyond the French word-games that divide themselves into several subcategories of French word-games, there is in the second paragraph here a distinctly French argument about the sign that a philosophical awakening constitutes for the decline of the spirit. It is French because it has not a shred of basis, and it is nothing but forcing history into a preordained category in a completely arbitrary way.
For example, Greek philosophy continues almost throughout the whole Greek period, so if you choose its end then indeed it comes before the decline of Greek culture (and in fact its transition to Rome).
Stoic philosophy was actually born in Greece (it is a Greco-Roman school), and according to your method it is a sign of Rome’s decline. Again, you chose an arbitrary philosophical school, one among many, and even regarding it what you wrote is not true. It continues continuously from 300 BCE to 260 CE. How is that a sign of Rome’s decline if it exists throughout the whole period and certainly does not arrive only at its end?
Jewish philosophy in medieval Spain began around the tenth century, not long after there was an actual Jewish community in Spain, and continued throughout the whole period until its decline (in the expulsion. No connection that I know of to any thinning of the spirit). If by chance you choose for some reason דווקא Abarbanel as the beginning of Jewish philosophy in Spain, then of course you will succeed in forcing this item too into your general theory.
English empiricism is a sign of the decline of English culture? From where did you invent that? It began in the middle of the seventeenth century (actually earlier, but Locke is considered the chief among the beginners). Exactly when, in your opinion, did the English spirit decline or thin out?
German idealism, one of the schools in Germany that you also chose arbitrarily, is a sign of the decline of German culture.
It reminds me of the similar theory cited by R. Elchanan Wasserman in the name of the Chafetz Chaim, that before the end of every period in the history of halakhah there is a great man greater than all his predecessors in that period (an exception to the decline of the generations). I had similar thoughts there too.

The label “phenomenology” was coined by Johann Heinrich Lambert, “psychoanalysis” by Freud, “personalism” by Friedrich Schleiermacher, “existential” by Kierkegaard and “existentialism” by Gabriel Marcel, “structuralism” by Edward Titchener, “postmodernism” by J. M. Thompson. Not only did the French thinkers not invent most of these labels, but most of them actually disavowed them and regarded them as ridiculous.

Classical Greek philosophy — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. After that Athens was no longer independent.
Stoic philosophy (meaning late Roman Stoicism) — begins in Rome’s “Silver Age” and concludes with Marcus Aurelius, who saved Rome from bankruptcy with his own wealth. A few years after him the Roman Empire was sold at public auction to the highest bidder.
Spanish Jewry existed already from the First Temple period. After the Rambam there was an ongoing decline in Torah and wisdom in Spain.
It is agreed among the English that their culture reached its peak in the Elizabethan age. Did not the first writings of the empiricists appear in the period of the Commonwealth, when the conception of liberty changed?

Is there before the end of every period in the history of halakhah a man greater than all his predecessors? Maybe. And maybe he is significantly greater than those who come after him, to the point that they are unable properly to assess their predecessors. Was the Rambam greater than R. Yosef ibn Migash or than the Rif?
Was Aristotle greater than Plato or Socrates?

In every historical examination of the development of the spirit there is something arbitrary, since the famous names of a period, or those later generations accepted as famous for that period, are only part of the story and not necessarily the significant part.

One may sum up the discussion with the statement of the French thinker and writer Guy Shlopin: “The decline of the spirit at the end of the day — brings about its renewal!”

Best regards, Li-Shon, man of Le-Wing

M80, in short, everything is arbitrary.

Shatz”l, everything follows the signature line. Your signatures are something else. I think it would be worthwhile to publish a collection of your signatures in their various contexts (like Rav Kook’s approbations). 🙂

When many begin saying Guy Shlopin, the spirit declines, and it is renewed only elsewhere or after a long period.

With God’s help, 8 Tammuz 5779

There is a situation in which, when a society feels it is in spiritual decline, giants of spirit arise whom the bleak situation gives an “adrenaline rush,” and they create great works that try to breathe new life into the “dry bones.”

One of the outstanding examples is the Rambam, who himself testifies in his letter to the sages of Lunel that most countries in his time were “dead or dying” from the standpoint of Torah. In Spain and North Africa, Judaism had been physically destroyed by the persecutions and forced conversions of the Muslim zealots, and in the rest of the Islamic lands Judaism was in decline and degeneration, whether because of slackening in Torah study or because of the strengthening of general culture.

Then stands Rabbi Moshe son of Maimon, who “girded his loins and shook out his cloak,” and gathered and defined the world of halakhah and thought and made it accessible to the many in the spoken language and in a form suitable for everyone, so that the Torah would become the inheritance of each person. Thus everyone could encompass the whole Mishnah, and receive in the introductions (to the Mishnah, to tractate Avot, and to chapter Chelek) the foundations of faith; encompass the 613 commandments of the Torah and their basic parameters; and encompass all the practical and doctrinal laws of the Torah in the work Mishneh Torah.

The educated receive the Guide for the Perplexed, which deeply grounds the foundations of faith, and the perplexed from all over the world receive ideological and halakhic responses in letters and responsa. Thus the consciousness of crisis brought an “adrenaline rush” that breathed fresh life into the generation and the generations.

That is to say: the consciousness of crisis may bring destruction and decline, but it may also be a “trigger” for new creativity that revives the “dry bones.”

Best regards, Shatz

Shatz, what you wrote is correct (even if not always common). Rashba wrote that the Holy One, blessed be He, did a great kindness for their generations by bringing them a great rabbi like the Rambam. The Rambam in his generation was like the Ramchal in his generation, like the Ra’ayah Kook in his generation (and note the opposition there was to their teachings). But there is a great difference between Israel and the nations of the world, the difference between wisdom and Torah: in Israel the Torah of a great rabbi is studied well for generation after generation, whereas among the nations of the world after four generations, usually they no longer properly understand the sage’s wisdom, even if they continue to study it.

It is a good sign for a nation when it has original thinkers. A less good sign is periods in which its glory lies in its thought. Here there is a difference between the Rambam and the Ramchal and the Ra’ayah Kook, for the Rambam’s main glory is Mishneh Torah, while for the Ramchal and the Ra’ayah Kook it is their books of thought. Perhaps the earlier ones were more present in the world of action and the later ones in the world of Talmud; then the Ramchal would be right that the main learning should be in the inner dimension of Torah.

With God’s help, eve of Shabbat, Lema’an Da‘at, 5779

And there are situations in which the close of a period comes not because of crisis, but as the peak of a natural process of creation. The abundance of thoughts and methods produced in the joy of creativity calls for organization and gathering that will clarify the place of each opinion and its integration into the overall weave, and a concise definition of the great abundance of thought. Thus Micah briefly sums up the calls of the prophets by saying: “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Thus the Men of the Great Assembly gathered the abundance of the prophets’ prophecies and selected from them the prophecies “needed for future generations.” Thus Rabbi Judah the Prince, in whom Torah and greatness were united and around whom the sages gathered, summarized the abundance of the words of the tannaim and arranged them by subject as an orderly “Mishnah,” and immediately after its close a new period began — the period of the Talmud — in which the Mishnah and tannaitic literature became the point of departure for a new creativity focused on interpreting and deciding the words of their predecessors, the tannaim.

Thus Rabbi Yohanan in the Land of Israel, and after him Rav Ashi in Babylonia, serving as heads of academy for dozens of years and teaching Torah in a great gathering of sages, thereby created the Talmuds, the Yerushalmi and the Bavli, which gathered and sealed the period of the amoraim; and this sealing became the point of departure for a new period of interpretation and application of the Talmud by the geonim and the rishonim.

And similarly in the period of the rishonim. The commentaries of Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel were the peak of the interpretive creativity that preceded them, and paved the way for a new creativity of Tosafot and novellae. Likewise in halakhic ruling, the codifications of the Rif, the Rambam, and the Turim required summary and closure, which were done by Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Rema, whose work sealed the period of the rishonim and immediately opened a new period of interpretation, application, and decision — the “period of the acharonim.”

***
Besides the natural need to gather and clarify the abundance of creativity of every period, the gathering and sealing also had the aim of creating a basis for revival and redemption.

Thus the work of the Men of the Great Assembly came in the period of the Return to Zion and turned the sparse settlement in the land into a settlement with a sense of mission, seeing itself as rebuilding Judaism. Thus the Mishnah was edited as a continuation of the redemptive aspiration of Rabbi Akiva and his students.

Likewise the creation of the Beit Yosef was a continuation of his teacher Rabbi Yaakov Beirav’s aspiration to renew the Sanhedrin. The Beit Yosef, which gathered the methods of the rishonim and decided among them by majority opinion, was a kind of “virtual Sanhedrin” that created an infrastructure for a shared halakhic basis for the people of Israel in all its dispersions.

Likewise Rav Kook called on the sages of Jerusalem in his lecture in 5681 to create, parallel to the physical ingathering of the people in its land, a spiritual ingathering of all Torah creativity as well. In that lecture the Rav formulated the “work plan” of Torah creativity: a Talmudic Encyclopedia and a treasury of commentators on the Talmud, and Halakhah Berurah and Birur Halakhah, and a commentary on the commentaries of the Vilna Gaon, which together would clarify the paths of development of the methods of the halakhic decisors from the Talmuds and their commentaries. In later years Rav Alter Hilovitz zt”l (one of the leaders of the Talmudic Encyclopedia) proposed editing an “Encyclopedia of Aggadah and Thought” that would gather and unify as well the literature of aggadah and Jewish thought.

In short: every period of creativity requires a major work that gathers and clarifies, and this gathering opens the way to a new creativity that will interpret and apply and pave the way for practical renewal.

Best regards, Shatz

Paragraph 4, line 3
… the codifications of the Rif…

There, line 4
… whose work sealed…

Paragraph 7, line 3
… for a shared halakhic basis…

Paragraph 8, line 4
… the paths of development of the methods…

Paragraph 9, line 2
… for spiritual and practical renewal.

The Oral Torah is Oral Torah. Every general gathering of the Oral Torah in writing is caused by exile and a significant decline of the generations, and is done for the sake of future generations.

To Shatz”l,
The world of Torah became depleted in the Middle East because around the time of the Rambam the Middle East collapsed ecologically, and if there is no bread there is no Torah. The only place where there was bread was Europe, and therefore the Torah moved to Europe.

M80’s claim is an interpretation of the paraphrase of Hegel’s owl of Minerva: the owl (wisdom) begins to fly after sunset (culture). The number of quills broken over this paraphrase encompasses roughly all of German philosophy after him.

“Agreed among the English”!?
If anything, it is agreed that their culture begins to soar with Queen Elizabeth. Does it decline? I wonder. At most it passes to other places. This organic historicism — every culture is born, flourishes, wanes, and dies — is ridiculous. Republicanism migrated to other lands. Stoicism is still with us, and Epicureanism too (Hobbes and the Enlightenment).

With God’s help, eve of Shabbat, “Water shall flow from his buckets,” 5779

Sometimes great Torah creativity comes out of a sense of distress and crisis, but sometimes precisely an abundance of creativity, which brings many discussions and a variety of opinions and methods, requires condensation and summary that will enable the learner to “find his hands and feet” in the stormy ocean of discussion.

Then the very attempt to condense and summarize brings stormy arguments and attempts to summarize in another way, and on the other hand attempts to defend and ground the opening summary; and when the summary becomes established and accepted, whole discussions open about its explanation and application.

So every period of flourishing and creativity requires summary, and the attempt at summary itself opens the way to new discussions.

Best regards, Shatz

And I have already noted that in many periods the need for summary was bound up with an atmosphere of national revival. Thus act the Men of the Great Assembly, sealers of Scripture, in the generation of the Return to Zion; thus the Mishnah is created in the circle of Rabbi Akiva and his students, who raised the banner of revolt against the kingdom of Rome; and thus the Shulchan Arukh was created in the atmosphere saturated with yearnings for redemption among the renewers of settlement in the Land of Israel in the generation after the expulsions from Spain.

With God’s help, eve of Shabbat, “How goodly are your tents,” 5779

To Y.D. — greetings,

Sometimes states of economic prosperity bring Torah growth, but sometimes the opposite: economic success may lead to sinking into the pursuit of material success and increased drift after the surrounding culture; whereas “from the children of the poor תורה comes forth,” for they know that “this is my comfort in my affliction, that Your word has revived me.”

The revival of Torah in Europe (and later in the entire Jewish world) stems from Rashi’s interpretive enterprise, which made the ability to understand Scripture and Talmud accessible to every learner. Rashi’s commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud made access to learning possible for youths and simple householders, and on the other hand opened the way for Torah scholars to in-depth study. Thus the path was paved for a shared discourse around Scripture and Talmud, around which great and small alike could unite.

The Rambam’s enterprise was similar. On the one hand he made the Mishnah, halakhah, and the foundations of faith accessible even to people who were not learned or great Torah scholars, and on the other hand his works became a lever for scholars and educated people to examine and delve more deeply. And he instructs his student to study his work alongside the halakhot of the Rif, and when there are differences — to return to the Talmud in order to understand their cause.

Making Torah accessible in a form equal for every person — that is the guarantee that Torah will not depend on economic establishment, but that it will be possible to cleave to it in every situation.

With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, Shatz Levinger

This comment refers to Y.D.’s words that appear below.

Best regards, Shatz

In the penultimate line
… and thus the Shulchan Arukh was created in an atmosphere…

My response to Y.D.’s words — above [“Not by bread alone”]

Every nation has its own unique spirit. In the history of every nation there are rises and falls in its originality, and usually one period of original creativity stands significantly above all the others.

The Mishnah was not created in the circle of Rabbi Akiva and his students; rather, following the disputes between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel they began to clarify it in Yavneh, and to arrange it in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, and Rabbi Judah the Prince and the sages of his generation sealed its editing, for the way of sages is to clarify, arrange, and explain. (See Generations of the First Ones — From after the Destruction until the Sealing of the Mishnah, vol. 1 by Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Halevi). What one can say is: the Mishnah — an ordered and sealed work of the Zugot and the Tannaim based on the Torah that Moses received at Sinai. The Jerusalem Talmud — an unsealed and uncorrected work of the amoraim of the Land of Israel, founded on the Mishnah and the Tosefta. The Gemara — an edited work of the amoraim of Babylonia founded on the Mishnah and baraitot, which the savoraim and geonim continued to edit and proofread.

Many thanks; I definitely identify with the criticism of the crazy Frenchmen. I do protest, however, the attitude toward idealism, and in particular the confusion between it and solipsism. Idealism does not claim, as solipsism does, that only I exist, nor that reality is an illusion or some such question-begging nonsense; rather, that the basic essence of reality is not matter but thought/consciousness. Not only philosophers but also leading physicists in the field of quantum theory tend in this direction, rejecting the realist conception of reality according to which matter exists “outside,” and seeing the whole universe as something more like a great thought than a great machine. The one who has been advancing this view excellently in recent years is Bernardo Kastrup, whose books convinced me as well to adopt idealism, and in them he presents successful logical arguments backed by scientific studies that support them. So the automatic rejection of this position usually stems from caricature or lack of understanding.

The term idealism as used here means solipsism. That is how it was customary to call it until recent years (thus, for example, Berkeley is classified as an idealist although he was a solipsist). Therefore I really did change it to solipsism in most places. In any case, the question of what is primary and what is secondary is a bit of a definitional matter, and therefore it does not seem to me an important question. Bottom line, this is dualism.

Berkeley was not a solipsist. A solipsist believes that only he exists, while Berkeley of course believed that all other people exist. Of course idealism is not dualism; it does not believe that two different essences exist — matter and consciousness — but that consciousness alone exists, and matter is images that exist within it. Matter does not produce consciousness as in materialism, nor does it exist parallel to it as in dualism, but rather proceeds from it. This has very significant implications in many central issues, such as the psychophysical problem, the survival of the soul, and more.

This is the sort of distinction I simply cannot understand. If matter is images that exist within consciousness, then I see no difference between that and solipsism. Does the idealist deny the existence of images? To me these are mere words.

Solipsism = the belief that only I myself exist, and the whole world, including all other people, is only a kind of dream I am dreaming, without consciousness of their own. No one officially holds such a belief, because since I know that I have consciousness, then if someone else were to claim he is a solipsist, I would know that he is wrong. (There is a story about some philosopher who espoused solipsism until after one of his lectures a woman approached him and told him that she too was a solipsist and how nice it was to meet another one like herself… which illustrates the absurdity of it.)
Idealism = reality exists within consciousness, but not only my consciousness — also the consciousnesses of all human beings, which in turn are part of God’s super-consciousness. That is something entirely different.
These are really not just words. I recommend that you read Why Materialism is Baloney, or Kastrup’s newer and more up-to-date book, The Idea of the World. This is a genuine Copernican revolution. You can say that from the point of view of the ordinary person there is no difference whether the earth circles the sun or vice versa, but from the point of view of an astronomer (or in our context, a philosopher), it has very significant implications.

I’m sorry, I still really do not see any difference. By the way, I also see no absurdity in the case you described regarding the woman. There is no logical problem in it, quite simply. Unfortunately I am not sure I will have enough time to invest in reading a book (in English) on these topics, which seem to me to be nothing but a word mill.