Between Intellectual Optimism and Pessimism: 3. The Road to God (Column 496)
In the two previous columns I described the fundamental epistemic rupture that philosophy has faced from its dawn until today. This is the “cemetery” among whose ruins Hillel Zeitlin and Lev Shestov wander in their search for God. In this column we will keep walking with them among the rubble on the way to Him, and with this I will conclude the present series.
Zeitlin’s faith
As I noted at the beginning of the previous column, Zeitlin leaps straight from the ruins to God. I did not find in his words any argument as to why that devastation proves or necessitates God’s existence. It looks like an existentialist solution: in the absence of standards and tools to rely on—“we have no remnant but this Torah”—what remains, at the height of despair, is only faith in God. But who says God really exists? Perhaps, indeed, we have nothing to lean on and should remain in despair?
By wondrous providence, only yesterday I reopened C. S. Lewis’s marvelous book The Abolition of Man. In the first part of the book he sets out the destruction inherent in the subjectivist-relativist view of ethics and aesthetics (its paradigmatic expression is logical positivism, which regards ethics and aesthetics as pseudo-propositions). He opens the second part with these words:
“[This Green Book] is the work by which he presents the subjectivist view. The practical result of education in the spirit of the Green Book can only be the destruction of the society that accepts it. But this does not of itself refute subjectivist theory about values. The right doctrine might be one which, if we accept it, we die. One who speaks from within the Tao [i.e., the objectivist view] cannot reject it on that ground: ‘Kill us in broad daylight.’”
The sentence that ends the passage is taken from The Iliad (Book 17, line 647): the Greeks turn to Zeus to disperse the mist covering their forces, so that at least they can see what is happening on the battlefield—even if the gods have decreed that they will be defeated and die.
Many criticize postmodern and critical conceptions in a consequentialist fashion, as Zeitlin does: they show the devastation that can result from adopting them. But Lewis is a lucid and brilliant philosopher who understands that this is not a substantive critique. Perhaps that is the truth—only it destroys. Perhaps Zeitlin, and we, are doomed to live in a cemetery. The fact that we end up among ruins does not mean there is something else, and it does not justify the assumption of [God’s] existence. Therefore Lewis immediately moves to the second part of the book, where he explains why subjectivism is also false in itself (it entails theoretical difficulties).
Zeitlin does not do this. It seems he has no evidence for God’s existence, and not even objections to atheism. He merely points to the devastation atheism carries. It appears that Zeitlin creates God ex nihilo only to obtain relief from his distress. This is a pragmatist-existentialist move that conflates the necessary and the useful with the true: if we need God, then apparently He exists. If God answers my needs, then apparently He exists.
I have stated my view of existentialism as a philosophy more than once (see, for example, column 140), and likewise my view of pragmatism (see my book The Prime Existent, throughout the Fourth Conversation). A person who believes in God because it solves some distress for him, or due to a religious feeling, is an atheist in disguise. Atheists also have religious feelings, and developing a fantasy about the existence of God—or the Flying Spaghetti Monster—can certainly help them too (“opium of the masses,” as Marx said), but such a feeling proves nothing. The fact that you need God does not make Him exist. If, on rational grounds, you do not arrive at the conclusion that He exists, then even if you conjure a fictional God to solve your troubles, you remain an atheist. I made a similar distinction with respect to the search for meaning—the therapeutic sense of “meaning”—in column 159.
Two notes:
a. There is also the possibility that you do believe, but you are philosophically untrained. That is, you believe He exists but cannot provide a reasonable argument for it, and therefore flee to the realms of existentialism-pragmatism.
https://mikyab.net/translated-articles-rabbi-michael-abraham/post-7393
https://mikyab.net/translated-articles-rabbi-michael-abraham/post-8462
b. Sometimes people think that the very existence of a feeling is evidence that it has a correlate in reality, or that if something is useful it is also true. I am not sure I agree, but this is a legitimate and internally consistent view of faith. That is not pragmatism and not existentialism (in the sense discussed here).
https://mikyab.net/translated-articles-rabbi-michael-abraham/post-70490
Meaning, in Viktor Frankl’s sense, is what solves my distress. Philosophical meaning requires justification, not merely need and relief.
In chapter 3 of his essay on Lev Shestov (pp. 185–193), Zeitlin explains that Shestov does not actually speak about God and faith in Him, but one can hear in his search hints of faith. For Zeitlin, the search itself is the highest expression of faith. He also adds that faith in God is a subjective matter, attainable only once we abandon the naïve and futile aspiration for objective truth. The unity of opposites is not absent from his words either; you can find in him, in one stroke, all the hallmarks of religious opium.
Recall that at the beginning of the essay, Zeitlin showed that we lack objective tools to ascertain God’s existence—or to reach any conclusion at all—since all our tools have sunk in the sea of intellectual ruins. Therefore, in contemporary thought there is no room for faith in God or in anything at all (this is the cemetery of ideas). Yet Zeitlin maintains that what remains for us is the search, and this search is faith. Perhaps he only meant that the search expresses a state of faith (if you are searching, you presumably assume there is something to find), but that is not what he says. For him, faith is a subjective state, not an objective claim of intellect and cognition about the world.
This style of argument parallels, to a considerable degree, many modern-day ba’alei teshuva (outreach) approaches. They try to show the lack of foundations of rational thought, to undermine science and philosophy, and thus it seems to them they have proven God’s existence. I assume that what underlies this is that they address people who already have the intuition that God exists, but are troubled by scientific and philosophical difficulties. In such a situation, perhaps shattering the basis of rational thought suffices to wave the difficulties away and remain with intuitive faith. But demolishing rationality, by itself, of course proves nothing.
This is the conception I labeled, at the start of the first column, intellectual pessimism. The devastation and despair it engenders lead a person to conclusions that alone can rescue him from that state. As noted, in my view a person who holds such conceptions is an atheist in disguise.
My argument
I will present the matter briefly, since I have discussed it at length in my books The Prime Existent (Fourth Conversation) and in the second part of the fourth conversation. My aim here is not to persuade you of the proof’s soundness, but to set it against Zeitlin’s and clarify the intellectual optimism that it contains.
To present the argument, we must return to the epistemic rupture. We saw that our scientific knowledge contains information we did not observe (general laws of nature). Hence there is information about the world (synthetic) that was not gathered by observation (a priori). How is that possible? My answer is that this information is gathered by observation—but not by the senses.
From the dawn of history there has been the familiar dispute between empiricism and rationalism. The parties agree on a dichotomy between cognition by the senses (observation) and by the intellect (reason). Both sides assume these are two separate, independent faculties. My claim is that we have a third cognitive capacity that deals with cognition while combining them both. Some will call it a “sixth sense”; I prefer the name intuition (see column 364); it is also the capacity sometimes called “faith”—not necessarily faith in God.
When I see a person kick a ball and the ball flies, and I am asked: how do you know the kick caused the ball’s flight? my answer is that I simply see it—though not with my eyes, but with my intellect. I have an intuition that recognizes a causal relation between the two events. This is a kind of cognition that is not mere sense-perception, but rather a thinking-cognition. The same holds for scientific generalizations. I see objects fall to the ground and infer a law and a force of gravity. Hume attacks this again, arguing there is no empirical justification for it. In laws we do not see that there is such a force or such a general law. Again my answer is that we do see it—with what might be called the “eyes of the mind,” i.e., intuition.
The premise of this proposal is that the distinction between thinking and perceiving is not sharp. There is a gray zone that blends them. Husserl calls this capacity “ideational seeing,” Rabbi Ha-Nazir calls it “auditive logic,” and Maimonides calls it “the eyes of the mind.” What they all share is a capacity that combines cognition (hearing, sight) with thinking (logic, intellect, ideas). All of these (not always fully consciously) tell us that the boundary between thinking and perceiving is not sharp, and that there is a cognitive capacity we may call cognizing thought.
Husserl speaks of ideational seeing—that is, of perceiving ideas. He means that we can look through particular objects or events that appear before our eyes, and see through them, as if they were transparent, the generalization (the idea) they instantiate. Through the horse we can see horseness; through the cases we have observed we can see the general law. These are not the products of empirical observation in its conventional sense, nor of (discursive) reasoning. The generalization is the product of another kind of observation. In fact, all our synthetic-a priori insights are the product of intuition, i.e., of cognizing thought. Incidentally, in my book The Spirit of Law I showed that this is also the basis of what legal theory calls “judicial legislation,” which causes endless turmoil in that field. On the philosophical level, all this is nothing but the legal aspect of the debate over the synthetic a priori.
How does this connect to God? In the fourth conversation of The Prime Existent I argued that our ability to place trust in the cognitive-thinking tools embedded within us is conditioned on the assumption that they were fashioned by an intelligent agent who ensured their reliability—that is, that the picture they present to us matches what occurs in the world in itself. Without this, there is no reason to assume such a match (i.e., that intuition actually works and gives us a faithful picture of the world as it is in itself). I called this “the argument from epistemology.” I will not enter into its details here so as not to extend this discussion; I have elaborated elsewhere.
What is the difference between the arguments?
At first glance my line of reasoning looks very similar to Zeitlin’s. We both conclude that without God there is no way to ground our epistemology, and therefore, like him, I too “create” a God to resolve my distress and raise the ideas from their grave. The resemblance is real, but there is a thin, decisive difference—one that returns us to intellectual pessimism vs. optimism.
Zeitlin answers: necessarily I start from the premise that our cognition is not reliable; now I ask myself how that could be. He then declares that since rational cognition has been razed to the ground, if we wish to live we must adopt an alternative. This is not an argument but a need (existential or utilitarian).
By contrast, I present an argument: if our cognitive tools are reliable, then necessarily there is someone who confers that reliability on them—and that is God. I therefore relate to my route as intellectual optimism, since I start precisely from the premise that our rational thought is reliable, and from this arrive at faith in God.
I am not claiming that faith erects rationality; rather, that I need not raze the rational world in order to arrive at faith. That may sound similar, but the direction is completely opposite. As I noted in the first column, the difference is not only in the music that accompanies it and the direction of travel. My claim is that Zeitlin’s doctrine is, in truth, atheism in disguise, whereas mine is religion: his is warm and full of feeling, but it is only feeling. Intellect is demolished and what remains is only the subjective plane—very reminiscent, of course, of Rav Shagar.
Logical formalization: modus tollens and modus ponens
I wrote that my argument is a valid logical inference, and indeed it can be given a formal deductive shape using two basic patterns.
Modus Ponens (MP):
A → B
A
────
B
There is also a parallel pattern called Modus Tollens (MT):
A → B
¬B
────
¬A
Let A denote “There is no God,” and B denote “Our cognition is not reliable.” My argument can be formalized thus:
A → B (If there is no God, then reliable cognition is impossible.)
¬B (Our cognition is reliable.)
────
¬A (Therefore, there is a God.)
This has the structure of modus tollens and is a valid logical argument.
Incidentally, in the third part of the fourth conversation I presented a similar argumentative form with respect to morality, where B was “There is no valid morality.” The structure is exactly the same (see column 456). In both of these arguments I move backward from the consequent (B) to the antecedent (A), unlike MP, where one goes forward from antecedent to consequent.
The difference between the arguments (again)
In that fourth conversation I called the second pattern (like mine) a “revealing” argument, as opposed to MP, which I called a “constructive” argument. In other terminology, I called the revealing argument “theological,” and the constructive one “philosophical.” That terminology comes from a quip I once heard in a course by Asa Kasher: what’s the difference between a theologian and a philosopher? The philosopher relies on premises and derives conclusions from them; the theologian relies on conclusions and derives premises that lead to them. The believer constructs an argument whose conclusion is that God exists—but his faith did not in fact arise from that argument; it preceded it (see the opening of the first conversation in The Prime Existent). His route is the reverse: he builds the argument so that it will lead to the desired conclusion (that God exists); he goes from the conclusion he wishes to prove to the premises.
I explained there that the joke is sharp and has something to it, but on reflection it throws dust in our eyes and aims to belittle theologians’ modes of argument. Philosophy, too, often relies on “revealing” (or “theological”) arguments, and theology sometimes relies on “constructive” (or “philosophical”) ones. The most prominent example of a revealing argument in philosophy is Kant’s treatment of the synthetic a priori. Awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume’s doubts, standing before the epistemic rupture and seeking a remedy (a justification of our cognition), Kant stresses that he is not asking “whether synthetic a priori judgments are possible,” but “how such judgments are possible.” It was clear to him that they are possible; his only question was how to justify this. Notice that he granted the a priori trustworthiness of the laws of nature and the meta-scientific principles on which they rest (causality and induction), and only then asked himself how it could be that we are entitled to trust them. From there he moved backward and found (so he claimed) the sole way that allows this—the distinction between phenomena and noumena, and the use of transcendental arguments. In other words, de facto he built an argument that would yield the desired conclusion (that we may trust our cognition). Kant was undoubtedly a philosopher, not a theologian—and yet he was the first to place this “revealing” move explicitly on the table. Many before him had done so, but he was honest enough to say it explicitly. After I rejected the Kantian picture and said it cannot answer the epistemic rupture, the revealing argument falls. Trusting our cognition does not force us to adopt the Kantian picture (phenomena/noumena and transcendental arguments). Yet I also said that the Kantian picture may be true in itself, even if it does not solve the rupture; therefore I replace the revealing (Kantian) argument—based on our acquaintance with the structure of cognition and the cognitive component in perception—with a constructive argument.
https://mikyab.net/translated-articles-rabbi-michael-abraham/post-75181
Returning to our discussion, a revealing argument has the modus tollens form I described above. A constructive argument corresponds to modus ponens and says:
A → B (If there is no God, reliable cognition is impossible.)
A (There is no God.)
────
B (Therefore, there is no reliable cognition.)
The difference lies in the second premise, and the conclusions are opposite. The revealing argument arrives at the picture that God exists and our cognition is reliable; the constructive argument yields the opposite: there is no God and our cognition is unreliable. Both are, of course, logically valid and legitimate. Choosing between them depends on whether one accepts A or ¬B. At the purely formal level there is no advantage of one over the other. One clear point, however: you cannot adopt a worldview in which there is no God while still maintaining that our cognition is reliable (or that morality is valid). You can only do so by rejecting the first premise (the implication)—which, as I have shown, is highly implausible.
Thus a revealing argument is a valid logical argument just like a constructive one; there is nothing wrong with it. The only question is whether we accept ¬B or not. But that is true of any logical argument: its conclusion follows only if we accept its premises. The distinction between “revealing” and “constructive,” or “theological” and “philosophical,” is illusory. There is no defect in revealing arguments. The usual criticism covertly assumes that any revealing argument is a kind of pragmatism—that is, arbitrarily adopting a premise in order to obtain the desired conclusion. But as we have seen, that is not the case. I do not merely wish B to be true; I assume that ¬B is in fact true (my intuition says it is). By contrast, with Zeitlin it appears that this is precisely what he does: he looks for an alternative and does not find one, and thus he clings to faith subjectively and without justification—though he was honest enough to say that his conclusion is subjective-existential-pragmatist, rather than presenting it as a binding philosophical conclusion.
Summary
Zeitlin’s premise is that there must be something optimistic (not ruined). I see no real basis for that premise; for me it is wishful thinking. His God is opium for the masses, for he creates Him for pragmatist-existentialist reasons.
By contrast, in my argument the foundational premise is that our cognition is reliable (or that our morality is valid). This very much accords with the intuitions of any reasonable person, and thus adopting such premises is sensible and fitting. Remember: every logical argument begins from premises, and premises, by definition, are not based on other premises but on intuition. In that sense, my revealing argument is not exceptional. Although it may look pragmatist on the surface (as if I “invent” God to underwrite morality and cognition), it is not truly so.
A person can certainly claim he does not accept this premise (that our cognition is reliable, or that morality is valid), and then the argument will not lead him to the conclusion that God exists. But that is true of any logical argument: it speaks only to those who accept its basic premises. This is therefore not a flaw in the argument—at most a disagreement about its premise.
By contrast, in Zeitlin’s move there is no argument at all. He razes our cognition and thinking, and then declares that we must believe in God. Why? No explanation. No wonder he himself says that his God is subjective, for he has no argument that proves His existence. He adopts Him by default, as the last option that might rescue or console us amid the ruins of rationality.
In other words, Zeitlin murders rationality to prove God’s existence, whereas I presuppose rationality (the validity of morality and the reliability of cognition) in order to prove His existence. That is why I described Zeitlin’s stance as intellectual pessimism, for it is built on the destruction of rational thought, and the edifice it constructs is nothing but a subjective fiction, not a true building. My argument, by contrast, is built on rational thought and the trust we place in it, and explains that what constitutes it (or prevents its destruction) is faith in God.
Discussion
The Rav assumes that intuition is correct, and therefore that God created it.
And my questions are: 1. On what basis does the Rav assume this? Is it because, in practice, science works?
2. Isn't this basically Descartes's argument about the reliability of the senses (against the deceiving demon)?
Thank you very much!
For that, one has to point to what exactly needs explaining, and not suffice with declarations of despair. He also isn't talking about the existence of something, but about an epistemic break.
1. Intuition. It is based also on the success of science.
2. Descartes did not prove anything from the reliability of the senses. On the contrary, he cast doubt on everything and asked what remained that could not be doubted.
I didn't understand what the difference is between Zeitlin's argument, in which 'God' resolves the existential distress and confirms existence and validates morality and values, and your argument, in which 'God' resolves the epistemological distress and confirms the connection between the rational and the empirical. To each his own distress, for which he posits in his faith—and with no basis beyond pure faith—that God's role is to 'solve' it and fill in what is lacking, unseen, and inconceivable. In Zeitlin's time, the bodies of science and enlightenment and the great social ideals still lay before him in their graves, and they had been the main objects of his life, so the despair over them was great, and for that he needed his God more in that sphere. In our time, culture is already dismantling humanity's very basic logical and cognitive concepts—and, like a kind of social Alzheimer's, even basic concepts of society and gender are disintegrating—and we need God to solve it / fill in the lack. Isn't that so?
By the same token, God could resolve the physicists' distress over the strange / contradictory assumptions of quantum theory, the astrophysicists' distress over the interior of black holes, and the biologists' distress over the origin of life and the missing stages of evolution—just like the reassurance He instilled in our ancestors at the sight of unexplained lightning and thunder. Each generation and its own outlook, each generation and its own current, up-to-date question: 'Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?' In what way are your arguments more persuasive about reality, or more 'correct'?
I explained all this in the posts themselves. It's like the difference between someone who says that if there is valid morality then there is a God (a 'revealing' argument from morality), and the claim that morality is not valid, and because of that we have no choice but faith (the moralists).
At no stage do I need to fall into despair. Everything is fine, except that God is needed in the background. But Zeitlin falls into despair, and even after there is God, he does not raise science and philosophy up from their ruins. For him, God is a substitute for them, not what restores them. That is why he speaks about faith as something subjective that can occur only after we have abandoned the naivete of objective truth.
Basically you are arguing that empiricism is impossible. We are left with rationalism—that is, knowledge comes from our thinking (I didn't understand what difference it makes whether you call it thinking or the eyes of the intellect; it's the same thing)—but in order to justify the reliability of thinking, one must assume the existence of a Creator.
In practice, thinking could be justified just as well by evolution. Natural selection created in human beings the ability to know reality.
Is there a typo?
You wrote: "Whereas my own doctrine is a true faith in God. He is indeed warm and full of religious feeling, but what there is in his doctrine is only feeling." I think you meant that in your view, following this proof, it is indeed not warm and full of feeling, etc.
By the way, I think there is another assumption in your argument, namely that it is pragmatist: you assume that in order for our cognition to be reliable, there must be some coordinating factor. The problem is that this factor is external to you, and so the question that will of course arise on your view is that you cannot know whether cognition is reliable, and therefore the assumption that it is reliable is itself pragmatist.
What do you think?
Because really, ostensibly, what would Zeitlin answer to your argument? After all, if there is a God, then he too agrees with the idea that there is coordination…
Rather, it seems he would explain it as I do.
There is no typo. He (= Zeitlin) was warm and emotional in his faith.
I didn't understand your question about my pragmatism. That itself I explained in the post. I assume that my cognition is reliable, not merely that I want to assume it.
I do not understand your last question.
What I'm asking is: if your proof is so simple, and then Zeitlin and his whole camp are mistaken, why didn't he think as you do and see God as an optimistic way out?
Rather, as I understand it, he disagreed precisely on that point—that from their perspective your argument is pragmatist to the same degree,
and that only on the assumption that there is a God can you suppose that you are coordinated, but you have not been exposed to whether there is or isn't, and therefore you merely hope that your cognition is reliable.
(But you have never stepped outside your own existence as such to examine this.)
It's obvious that you're a yeshiva bochur. So I'll let you in on a secret, just between us: outside the yeshiva there are sometimes situations in which the dissenter simply didn't think of something. There isn't always some profound conception behind the disagreement. (To your credit, you prefaced your question with the assumption that this is a simple argument, and then even outside the yeshiva one should understand the dissenter's position. But in my opinion it is really not simple.)
But even if you are right and he thought this was a pragmatist argument, he was mistaken about that (as I explained).
My argument regarding trust in cognition does not apply to the conclusion that there is a God, because:
1. There it is thinking, not cognition (sensory).
2. There it validates itself. If I assume that there is a God, then my conceptions are correct, and then indeed I am right that there is a God. But regarding sensory cognition, without God there is no logic in it, and it does not validate itself.
Many thanks,
A bit strange. By the way, it seems to me that on your view this is better than saying he was locked in (your solution to peer disagreement), because he simply didn't think of it.
In any case, as I understand it, the explanation for 2 is modus tollens, MT.
But 1 I don't think I understood at all. (And if I did understand, this is thinking that needs external knowledge, no?)
It depends how you get to God. If it is through physico-theology, then indeed it is based on knowledge. But if you rely on intuition, then not necessarily.
But what is the difference between sensory cognition and intuition on your view? Why should the latter be more reliable than sensory cognition? It too is a kind of cognition on your view, isn't it?
And moreover, most people think that sensory cognition is more reliable, as evidenced by empiricism…
Thank you!
Because sensory cognition is carried out by organs that were formed evolutionarily. Intuition is part of the intellect and is not necessarily based on organs or on evolution.
People think many things. So what?
I really assumed you'd probably say that, but I never understood your idea here:
1. After all, you agree with interactionist dualism, and the brain is much more complex than the eyes, so if there is reason to suspect the visual system, then all the more so, a fortiori, there should be reason to suspect thinking.
2. And from the opposite direction: where exactly did thinking spring from if it is not connected in any way to evolution?!?
3. Why do you assume that we are coordinated with the ideal world…? How is that different from the physical world? Especially since our whole body was created arbitrarily. (And all the more so.)
3. Are you assuming some interesting laws of souls that you haven't written about in any post or book? (Maybe this is connected to God.)
Thank you very much!
It seems Ariel Zilber would have been happy with this answer:
"A soul is absorbed into a body, female or male—what difference does it make, that's not the main thing(?)…"
Thinking is done in the intellect, not in the brain. The intellect uses the brain in some sense. I assume there is a fit because that is what my intuition tells me. By contrast, with regard to cognition it does not help that this is what it tells me, because the question is why it tells me that and on what basis (after all, the system was built arbitrarily).
But the "intellect" is connected to the brain even on your view (see your book The Science of Freedom), and therefore the question is: why assume that the brain is correct, and on what basis? Presumably when the brain is not functioning well, the intellect doesn't work very well either.
And besides, what justifies the fit between the intellect and the world of ideas? After all, remember that 50% of you was built arbitrarily, so why not assume that the remaining 50% was built that way too…? If it's God, then you don't need the whole proof you constructed.
The intellect makes use of the brain, but there is no reason it cannot grasp things and insights on its own (the synthetic a priori).
I think we're repeating ourselves. We can disagree.
Indeed 🙂 It's just that this points to a certain conception of dualism and several other things that follow from it, and the Rav has never written about these matters in an orderly way. And in all the answers on these topics, it feels like you're avoiding a clear response.
By the way, you didn't write what the justification for this is. I assume you'll say that you have no further justification; it's simply that the difference is that you have no information that the intellect is incorrect—that is, there is a negative doubt here as opposed to a positive one (following the assumption of evolution).
I don't think this is connected to dualism.
Exactly. Which shows that there is no need to go over it again.
Okay, is there any chance that at some point you'll write a systematic post on your approach to the accessible spiritual world, the intellect and the ideas, the relation between the soul (and the intellect) and the body, brain and intellect, and so on?
How you understand their existence "were it not for" God, etc.
Is there a new post? Or has the Rav stopped writing as of Rosh Chodesh Elul? 🙂
It's not clear to me that there's enough substance here. I'll think about it.
Okay, there doesn't always have to be meat—I thought you were a kind of vegetarian 🙂
It's just that, to the best of my knowledge, there is nowhere that you address this systematically. At least that's what I've heard people say. Maybe you hint at it in some article not accessible to the general public, like in an academic journal.
As I understand it:
1. The criticism of Kant is not Shestov's but Zeitlin's introduction to Shestov's thought.
2. The difficulties concerning Kant are not Zeitlin's but Kant's critics'; therefore Zeitlin writes that in certain places in Kant's words it is implied that the relation between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon is causal. From this it follows that, in his understanding, other sources imply a different relation.
3. Zeitlin describes Schopenhauer's system as a relation of embodiment and garb of the will, not a causal relation.
4. Zeitlin quotes Shlomo Maimon. Presumably he knew his approach. According to Bergman, for Maimon one can assume a fit between the senses and the intellect if we assume that thought and cognition are not two separate worlds, but rather that the senses are an embodiment of intellectual rules. The world is an embodiment of intellect.
5. The Nazir as well quotes Shlomo Maimon in his notes.
6. Maimon did not think that this solution resolved David Hume's doubts for him.
7. At least in Maimon's approach, there is also the advantage that it solves the "hard problem of consciousness."
8. If we hold that the world is in consciousness, then we have reason to accept a fit between the senses and the intellect, and there is no need for faith in God, as indeed atheistic idealists held.
9. Zeitlin also uses intuition; that is why he quotes Goethe: "If the eye were not sun-like, it could not see the sun." Likewise, if the soul were not divine, it would not believe.
10. Zeitlin's intuition led him to be less troubled by the intellectual rules of science, and more by man's 'longing' for what 'is not here.'
Good evening!
Perhaps what Zeitlin means is that there is therefore some kind of existence, and insofar as it cannot be explained by philosophy, which fails from within, it should be explained by God?