Response to Rabbi Michael Abraham’s Column / Noam Oren (Column 515)
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for the podcast “The Metaphysical Circus,” hosted by Jeremy Fogel. My interview is a kind of response to previous interviews Jeremy conducted with Rabbi Michael Abraham (hereafter—Rabbi Michi) and with Tuval Rosenzwajg (both of whom I consider friends). To my delight, Rabbi Michi took the trouble to respond at length to my remarks, and so I would like to repay the favor—by responding to his words with the respect they deserve. I hesitated for quite some time over whether to write an independent column in response or to copy Rabbi Michi’s column and reply to each and every claim. The great advantage of the first method is that I can present a structured, clear, and consistent argument in favor of my position. The disadvantage is that I would not be able to address all of Rabbi Michi’s remarks and would be forced to select a few claims and respond to them. Therefore, I chose to take both approaches together. Here I will write a relatively short column responding to the main points of Rabbi Michi’s piece and, at the end, add a file containing all of Rabbi Michi’s words with my comments interleaved throughout the text.
I will open this column with a concise presentation of my claim, and then turn to the main critiques that Rabbi Michi directed at me and at my claim.
My Claim
To understand my claim (and to respond to Rabbi Michi’s remarks) it is important to begin with a methodological note. There is a difference between a definition and a characterization. A definition is entirely arbitrary (from now on I could define the word “lion” as a green, winged entity. From that moment, in my language all green flies are kinds of lions). By contrast, a characterization is an attempt to describe an existing phenomenon accurately. Thus, if I wish to characterize lions, I must turn to the appropriate disciplines (biology, zoology, genetics, etc.) in order to find the appropriate features of lions. Hence, characterization is not arbitrary at all. In addition, a characterization can be partial, whereas a good definition ought to be exhaustive. For example, it would be correct to characterize lions as animals with a mane, but it is clear that this is not a full characterization. By contrast, if we were arbitrarily defining how we use the word “lion,” we would be providing a description that captures all lions and only lions (in our language).
With this preface, we can come to my claim. My claim is that religious faith is not the acceptance of a specific proposition or a set of beliefs (there is a God, there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, the Messiah will come, etc.) as true, but something else. In other words, in my view, the religious utterance “There is a God” is closer to “There is a God!” when shouted at a soccer match than to “There is a God” when stated in a metaphysics class after a systematic walkthrough of the ontological argument.
It is important to note two components of my claim. First, my claim is negative. That is, I am arguing what religious faith is not, and I am not committing myself to what it is. Second, my claim is not intended to define what religious faith is, but to characterize the human phenomenon called religious faith. If so, my goal is to describe an existing phenomenon (even if not exhaustively). In this sense, my project is descriptive in nature—I am trying to describe reality as it is, not as it ought to be. I am not claiming how religious faith should look, but how it is in fact expressed in the world. Nevertheless, as I have written and explained elsewhere, even if one accepts what is called the “naturalistic fallacy” (according to which descriptive facts alone cannot justify moral judgments), it seems that descriptive accounts still have a place within normative (moral) discourse and argument.
The kind of evidence required to support descriptive claims differs in nature from the evidence required to support normative claims. Whereas to support normative claims one must use the “eye of reason,” to support descriptive claims one must use actual eyes; we must look at the world around us and use our senses in order to identify and characterize the phenomenon in question. Thus, for example—to substantiate my claim that religious faith is not identical to scientific/philosophical belief, we will need to find a feature of religious faith that does not exist in scientific or philosophical belief. That would suffice to show that we are dealing with two different human phenomena (though further work would be needed to prove that religious faith does not involve any adoption of a claim about the state of affairs in the world). In this response, I cannot enter into all the empirical evidence, since that is not the purpose of this piece. My goal here is to respond to Rabbi Michi’s remarks. I am writing the full substantiation of my claims in other frameworks (I attempted to do so in the interview in question. I also wrote about this here and in my MA thesis. In addition, I am currently working on several more papers in the field).
Another note I wish to make is that, like any description of a complex human phenomenon, my description of religious faith is a rough generalization. That is, I am trying to describe how religious faith typically appears. If there are individuals or religious streams for whom my description is not accurate—that will not constitute evidence against me, since I do not deny that possibility at all. This is akin to claiming that “a lion is an animal with a tail”—a claim about lions in general and about the “normal” instance of lions. But clearly, someone who says this does not commit to the proposition that every single lion must have a tail, for there could be a lion with a genetic mutation that affected tail growth, or a lion whose tail was, Heaven forbid, torn off in an unfortunate accident.
I have finished my introductory remarks. I will now turn to respond to Rabbi Michi’s critiques.
Response to the Critiques
In Rabbi Michi’s piece one can find several different critiques of my position. I will try to categorize them into distinct critiques and respond to each in turn.
Critique A: Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology
A central critique that recurs several times in Rabbi Michi’s remarks is that my claim in particular, and the discussion in general, does not pertain to philosophy at all but to psychology or sociology. I must admit that I do not understand this critique. Personally, I do not care what the name of the discipline I am practicing is—be it philosophy, psychology, or shadkhif. I engage with what interests me and leave it to others to categorize my work under the proper discipline.
But his critique contains an additional component. He is not merely claiming that I am doing psychology/sociology, but that I am engaging in something unimportant. As he writes:
“And if you are not making philosophical claims but remain in the realms of psychology, then what has that to do with philosophy?! There is no reason to invest energy and effort in this, or to invest in an intellectual analysis of these phenomena.”
This, to my mind, is an outrageous claim. The attempt to understand and characterize the nature of religious faith is of enormous importance in so many domains. Religious faith plays roles on many planes—psychological, moral, social, political, and so on. Therefore, beyond the fact that a deep understanding of a broad human phenomenon is interesting in its own right, such understanding may help us solve problems that exist in all the domains I have just mentioned.
Critique B: Interpretive Paternalism
Rabbi Michi, and many others, argue against me (and against other philosophers who hold similar views) that our position is implausible because it contradicts the reports of religious people themselves. For if you ask religious people whether the statement “There is a God” is an ontological statement about the existence of an entity called God—it is likely they will answer “yes.” If so, who are we to tell those religious people that they do not actually believe what they say they believe, and that their faith is an expression of identity more than it is a claim about the state of affairs in the world?
I answer this critique on two levels. First, as I wrote at the outset, my claim is a rough generalization. I do not deny the existence of people whose religious faith functions exactly like their other philosophical/scientific beliefs (it seems to me that Rabbi Michi is indeed an example of such a person). Therefore, it is possible and even likely that in certain cases my claim will not hold. Even so, I do think that in the vast majority of cases my claim is correct, even if many religious people would deny it.
In the attempt—mine and that of many other philosophers—to characterize religious faith, there is a paternalistic dimension. We are trying to characterize religious faith, and we are aware that many religious people may well not accept our conclusions, and we are untroubled by that. But I think this lack of concern is justified. For (here I rely on the words of D. Z. Phillips) just as there is no reason to think that a good person will be able to supply a good moral theory, and just as there is no reason to think that a good artist will be better at supplying a good theory of the “beautiful,” so too there is no reason to think that a person filled with religious faith will be able to describe well what religious faith is. To do that, one must examine how religious faith functions in the world and see whether it truly is “the endorsement of a set of propositions,” or whether it is something else. And, as stated, I am trying to show that religious faith simply does not function like scientific, philosophical, or mathematical belief. It is simply something else. I spoke about this only a bit on the podcast, but this is the bulk of my daily work.
So as not to leave matters in the air, I will provide an example—consider someone who says he does not believe that walking under a ladder brings bad luck. Yet this person systematically avoids walking under ladders, and when he accidentally ends up walking under a ladder, his anxiety spikes significantly. Would it not be reasonable to say that this person does, in fact, believe that walking under a ladder brings bad luck, despite his repeated declarations that he does not? It seems to me that the answer is clearly yes.
Similarly, I think that when examining the nature of religious faith, we see that people do not believe religious propositions in the same way that they believe scientific/philosophical propositions. Moreover, the difference is not merely quantitative. That is—it is not just that they believe scientific/philosophical propositions wholeheartedly and religious propositions only partially. The nature of the belief is entirely different. We are dealing with a different human phenomenon.
To sum up this critique—I concede that there is a paternalistic dimension to my claim. But it seems to me that this is justified paternalism.
Critique C: The Nature of Analytic Philosophy
Throughout his column, Rabbi Michi levels many accusations at me and at various figures associated with analytic philosophy, all revolving around the claim that analytic philosophers tend to “play with words” and nothing more. I must admit that I simply do not understand where this accusation comes from.
For example, he claims that for analytic philosophers any coherent position (i.e., a position that contains no contradictions) is a legitimate position. I do not know a single philosopher who thinks this. True, many analytic philosophers (though not all) hold that a necessary condition for a theory to be true is that it be coherent. But of course, for it to be true it must also correspond to reality, not merely be coherent. Thus, for example, the theory that the President of the United States is Benny Gantz is a coherent theory (there could be a possible world in which this somehow occurred). But it is obviously a false theory, since Gantz is not the President of the United States.
Another example is his claim that I, and many other philosophers, suffer from “the analytic fallacy whereby what cannot be justified empirically or logically is not true and, of course, does not exist—at least in the ordinary sense of ‘true’ and ‘exists.’” Again, this is an accusation whose basis I simply do not understand. The position he presents was common among analytic philosophers more than seventy years ago. Today, I do not think there are many philosophers who hold it—certainly not the ones he cited.
In short—his accusations against analytic philosophy are indeed interesting, and I certainly agree with much of them. They are simply not directed at analytic philosophy but at imaginary people.
Critique D: Atheism in Disguise
Rabbi Michi claims that I, and other thinkers who take similar positions, are actually atheists in disguise. We do not believe in the existence of the religious God, and in order not to exit the religious community (or something of the sort), we distort the meaning of the concept of faith, thereby enabling ourselves to count as religious and believing people.
My response to this critique has two parts. First, I am not an atheist—at least not in the ordinary sense of the word. I think there is a God, and I believe that some of the arguments for His existence are quite persuasive. However, as I said on the podcast, I think that from there to faith in the religious God (and certainly the Jewish one) the distance is great, and I do not think that philosophical arguments can bridge that distance convincingly. As part of this, I do not think I can justify my religious way of life by philosophical means. But, as noted, I do not think that a religious way of life in general (for me or for many others) stems from philosophical reasons at all, since we are not dealing with the adoption of a practice derived from conviction in a metaphysical theory.
Moreover, I actually think that Rabbi Michi is the atheist in disguise. For, on my view, religious faith is not the adoption of some ontological claim about the world, but something else (regarding the nature of that “something else” I am less certain, though I am attempting to outline general lines in my research). If I am right, then it seems that Rabbi Michi, whose faith is merely the adoption of some claim or other about the world, is not a person of faith in the religious sense of the word. In other words, there is nothing whatsoever in common between Rabbi Michi and the faith of Israel Saba.
So far I have responded to the main points of Rabbi Michi’s column. In the attached file you will find the full text of Rabbi Michi’s column along with my responses and comments to all the different claims raised in it.
My response appears in the comment down below here. Michael Abraham
Discussion
First point: it seems to me that you are creating a private language. You write: “There is a difference between a definition and a characterization. A definition is something completely arbitrary […] whereas a characterization is an attempt to describe an existing phenomenon accurately.”
So here is the situation, in a language that is not private, when language functions as a means of communication between its speakers (who use it precisely):
“Definition” – includes only the things defined by it, and all the things defined by it.
One may distinguish between a “dictionary definition” and a “stipulative definition.” (One can use synonymous terms for these.)
In an Aristotelian dictionary definition, for example: “A human being is defined as a mortal rational animal (speaking, thinking)” – such a definition expresses the meaning of the term “human being” in its accepted usage. In the definer’s view, it includes all human beings and only human beings.
By contrast, in a stipulative definition – the use of the term “human being” will accord with my determination for specified purposes. “Human being” will mean only a moral entity, and every other person born of woman will, in my estimation, be “not a human being.”
“Characterization” – does not require generality and differentiation. “My neighbor is very generous” / “short-tempered” / “dark-haired” – all these are characterizations.
That is how people communicate in Hebrew. What you proposed is, at best, stipulative definitions; at worst, a private language that is subject to the problem of mutual misunderstanding.
Do you accept that?
When you define a work as beautiful while the artist does not think it is beautiful, is that a correct characterization of a beautiful thing?..
The ladder parable is plausible because we have no other explanation. And in fact, the explanation you gave was not the kind you were supposed to give – a subjective explanation. Rather, it was “bad luck” in its objective sense.
In any case, here the explanation the believers give fits very well with their own understanding.
And unfortunately, in your reply you did not address the scientist parable, who is also under philosophical difficulties like the believer. And he too does not know how to deal with them. And that does not mean that he thinks everything is subjective.
It is not clear to me, then, what your dispute with Michi is. You are engaged in realistic characterization, while he is engaged in reasonably grounding a position on arguments—two planes that are unrelated and do not connect.
Noam, many thanks for your response. I will try to address the points you raised, but in the end I will summarize the main point (everything else is not really important).
1. The terminology of definition versus characterization is of course arbitrary. According to what you wrote, a definition is arbitrary and complete, whereas a characterization is partial and essential (not arbitrary). What about an incomplete definition? Why is there no suitable term for that? But I will take your definitions of these terms as a ‘definition’ (in the sense you gave it). There is already a contradiction at the very beginning of your remarks. You say that a definition must be complete and a characterization is partial. But if definition is an arbitrary matter, then who are you to tell me whether to give a complete definition or not? I want to define something arbitrarily in a partial way. Is that forbidden? In your example, I want to define a lion as a creature with a mane, and that’s it. On what grounds do you forbid this?
I am not just quibbling; I am trying to show you that you yourself do not understand the concept of definition as you defined (!) it. A definition is not something arbitrary, except in very specific cases. I discussed this in my columns on poetry and much else. A lion is fully defined by its real characteristics and not arbitrarily, and that is precisely why you did not accept defining it as a creature with a mane. There is nothing to argue about or reject when it comes to something arbitrary. This conceptual preface is incorrect.
2. All you want to say is that your aim is to describe and not to make claims. That has not the slightest connection to the distinction between definition and characterization (which is itself problematic). In my view, your (mistaken) conceptual preface is entirely unnecessary.
3. As I wrote to you, sociological descriptions do not interest me. But for the sake of our discussion here, I will accept that we are dealing with sociology and not philosophy.
4. You wrote, correctly, that to establish descriptive claims one must make observations and rely on facts. That is exactly what you did not do, neither here nor in the interview. Maybe it was done elsewhere, but that makes it hard to argue or discuss. One cannot conduct a discussion without arguments and rely on the fact that you argued elsewhere. What is the purpose of this discussion if no arguments are presented in it? As an aside I will repeat what I wrote to you: in my opinion there are no such arguments, certainly not regarding religious Jews in Israel, and my column is talking about them. I do not know other believers in depth, although in my opinion you are mistaken about them too, but in the religious society that I know, you are definitely mistaken. That is why I assume, although I do not know the arguments and facts you have in mind, that your claim has no factual basis, because it is clearly untrue. But this is a barren discussion as long as the relevant facts have not been presented.
Incidentally, when no factual-observational arguments are presented, it is no wonder that I assume you do not intend to deal with sociology but with philosophy. And therefore it makes good sense to point out that in practice you are indeed dealing with sociology.
5. What follows from your remarks is that a believer who seriously means to claim that God exists (a factual claim) is like a lion whose tail was torn off in an accident. That is, of course, utterly absurd and completely baseless. I do not know which religious people you are talking about, but they are certainly not the ones I am talking about and know. As I wrote in the column, such statements characterize various intellectuals (following Wittgenstein), and I also added a joke at their expense. But if you really mean to make such a radical claim, then facts are most certainly needed to support it. You cannot simply declare such a thing.
6. I do not know where you got the claim that I criticized you for engaging in sociology. There is no hint of that in my remarks. I only noted that fact in order to sharpen the discussion. The discussion was presented as belonging to the realm of philosophy (that is also the field in which you study and work), and on that I commented that it is sociological and not philosophical.
7. You defend paternalism, but as I wrote to you, I am not opposed to it in principle either. There are even columns here in which I speak in praise of paternalism. I certainly agree that there are situations in which I will understand Mr. So-and-so’s views better than he himself does. But in order to offer a paternalistic interpretation, good evidence is required. In your remarks there is no evidence at all, not even bad evidence. It is like someone saying that he believes in God, and you interpreting him as not believing at all, but rather meaning that he plays soccer, since in his language believing in God means raising one’s left horn. Perhaps that is true, but one must provide some evidence for this strange use of language that you assume exists in his case.
8. It is hard to enter here into a discussion of analytic philosophy, but the demand for consistency is certainly not their essential characteristic. That is a demand of every philosopher. What distinguishes an analytic philosopher is that he deals only (or mainly) with the question of consistency. But one who focuses on consistency naturally neglects the question of truth. Incidentally, this is also true in Talmudic scholarship, among the Briskers. They have excellent analytic ability, and precisely for that reason they cannot decide what the truth is and therefore are stringent in order to satisfy all opinions. When one demands consistency and examines only that, the result is that any consistent doctrine is equally acceptable. Clearly this is a simplistic and imprecise description, but within the framework of a side comment in a column that is not about this, it is entirely correct. Incidentally, the departure from this picture is when the analytic philosopher becomes a sociologist, that is, when he checks people’s use of the term in question, and through that determines what is “correct” and what is not. Analytic analysis in itself cannot give you the truth or falsity of a claim (unless it contains an internal logical contradiction).
9. You claimed that I accuse you of holding that whatever is not empirically or logically grounded is unacceptable, and you argued that this is not true of you, or in general. But your remarks here prove the opposite. For in order to validate your claims, you need sociological facts, that is, observation. This is not a philosophical argument but a sociological theory. So there you have it: by philosophical tools you do not reach a decision about what religious faith is, since for you any consistent interpretation would be acceptable.
10. I did not understand how you agree with my accusations if they are directed at imaginary people. Incidentally, my accusations do not attack the analytic philosophy that I know and value, but what I called the analytic approach. It is not at all imaginary; in fact it is very widespread among philosophers.
11. I did not deal directly with your own belief but with the belief of the person you describe (which indeed fits quite a few academics in these fields). That person is an atheist in disguise. But you hint that this also describes your own approach, and add that nevertheless you are not an atheist in disguise. About that I wrote that if this is your belief, then you are indeed an atheist in disguise. You do not believe in God in the factual sense (that He exists) but in some other strange sense. This reminds me of those who interpret Maimonides in Hilkhot Teshuvah 5:5 as saying that God’s knowledge is not like our knowledge, and that in this way he solves the problem of divine foreknowledge and free choice. To that I ask: either way, if that knowledge is something else, does He have knowledge in the sense familiar to us? If yes, then what was gained by shifting in the direction of “knowledge” in another meaning? And if not—then again nothing has been gained. He simply does not know, and that is all. Why should I care that He has something else that is also called knowledge, just to confuse us?!
12. I think I made it quite clear that when I speak of atheism I mean “a-theism” and not “a-deism.” After all, you wrote that you accept my arguments in favor of the existence of a philosophical God (deism), so how can I say that you are a philosophical atheist?
13. Observing commandments for reasons unrelated to the existence of God and to obligation to His commandments is not observance of commandments. Just as sitting in a pergola that resembles a sukkah is not fulfillment of the commandment of sukkah. In order to fulfill a commandment, one must do so out of commitment to the commanding source (and of course belief in His factual existence and in the binding force of His commands). Ahad Ha’am, even if he had kept every detail of halakhah so that we would survive as a people and a culture, would not have fulfilled a single commandment in his life. That is essentially the religiosity you describe. From my perspective, such a person does not count toward a minyan and is not a believer (not a theist).
14. Of course, if one defines (and does not characterize!) a religious person as someone who does not believe in God, then I am an atheist. That is part of the wonders of arbitrariness and of analytic wordplay (which you claim does not exist, while you yourself demonstrate very well that it does).
To sum up, my main claim beyond all the details is that your thesis amounts to making a paternalistic factual claim without bringing a shred of evidence for it (you claim to have brought evidence elsewhere). By the same token, I could claim that you are a member of Neturei Karta, because when you say that you study philosophy, in Neturei Karta language what you really mean is that you are a follower of ‘Shomer Emunim.’ It is simply that the meaning of words אצלך אחרת מהמקובל (in fact, in my opinion the accepted meaning is different from what is accepted). Would you accept such a claim? It is simply an absurd argument.
I want to respond to one of philosopher Noam Oren’s arguments. He wrote:
“Can Michi criticize an atheist who has read all of Rabbi Michi’s books, and even so is simply unable to believe that the claim ‘God exists’ is true?”
As I understand it, Mr. Michael Abraham thinks that his philosophical arguments are true, and a truth that is not too difficult to understand.
That is, if an atheist does not accept the arguments as Michi presents them, then presumably he is stupid, or wicked, or biased.
There is, admittedly, the theoretical possibility that he “made an innocent mistake,” but that is unlikely, because according to Michi’s philosophical arguments the truth is so very clear, and anyone who wants to will arrive at it.
Of course, Mr. Michael Abraham is very mistaken, and his philosophy is far from being such an obvious truth.
One can easily show the holes in all his philosophical arguments (of course he denies them).
Still, the best evidence of this is what happens on the ground. Hundreds of thousands of interested people have been exposed to his arguments on YNET and on various platforms (have you ever seen anyone who received a more serious platform in order to persuade people of God’s existence?), and I do not recall hearing even one story about someone who was convinced (and even if there are a few isolated cases, that is truly a tiny number). Moreover, it has been met with indifference and apathy, and quite a few educated and intelligent people have even come out and shown how mistaken Mr. Michael Abraham is (Dr. Ido Hadi, Dr. Gadi Alexandrovich, Dr. Yair Razak, and others).
Apparently the right way to reach the Creator is the immanent approach to which philosopher Noam Oren hints. The cognitive element that exists within all of us.
Anyone who wants to arrive through philosophy—that is completely legitimate, and excellent.
Any believer in the Holy One, blessed be He, is excellent.
But still, for people who support the philosophical method, do not be surprised that your method does not succeed in bringing people to repentance.
Sometimes it even causes a great desecration of God’s name, as in the case of the blog owner—Mr. Michael Abraham.
I have never encountered anyone who has shown that Michi is mistaken, and usually if claims do reach him (from every shade of the spectrum—wise and foolish alike, bizarre as well as rational, believers and atheists, Torah scholars, boors, and ignoramuses; his debates with them here on the blog and in the comments, and on other platforms including Ynet that you mentioned, are the main evidence), he responds and answers. It is possible that someone wrote something regarding Michi’s arguments and Michi is still unaware of it, or he knows about it but it is on the level of cheap demagoguery and the chanting of mantras, declarations, and curses of the lowly kind common in the stalls of the “sunflower-seed crackers” party and in backgammon games, so Michi relies on the intelligence of the readers, who know how to identify this on their own, and saves his valuable and busy time by not addressing them. But none of this shows, and certainly does not prove, that Mr. Michael Abraham is mistaken. I would be happy for such links—please put at least one of them here so that I can examine it myself and decide, or verify it with him; then perhaps you will be able to make such statements with backing, which at present you do not have.
You wrote: “When you define a certain work as beautiful.” “Beautiful” is an adjective that is not sufficient for a definition.
As with “A sculpture is a three-dimensional work of art” – then every three-dimensional work is a sculpture.
If I define “human being” by an Aristotelian definition (“a rational animal”) – then everything that is a “rational animal” is a human being.
There is an Aristotelian distinction between “essence” and “property.” In cases of animals, they apparently cannot be defined by essence but only by property (an incidental trait)—as you suggested: an animal with a mane. A human being can be defined in essence as a rational animal, and in a definition by property—as a laughing animal / a wondering animal / an animal with nails (if I remember correctly).
A correction to the second sentence: the definition is: “A sculpture is a three-dimensional work of art”…
Sorry for intervening in the middle with a side point. The definition you proposed for a sculpture raises a question for me: is Duchamp’s “Fountain” a sculpture? (Beyond the question whether it is a work of art.) I think not.
It seems to me that it is not enough for the work to be three-dimensional; it must also be a creation of the sculptor (= the person who creates the sculpture). That is, the artist must have created its three-dimensional structure from more basic components (this touches directly on my columns about the melakhah of building on Shabbat, column 397).
Is ‘Fountain’ plastic art? In my opinion, no, for the same reason.
In a certain sense, that “work” is more like photography than like plastic art. Taking a piece of reality and placing it as it is in an artistic context, as opposed to painting, where you create the composition yourself. So too with sculpture. These matters were hinted at in my columns about Assaf Inbari, and this is not the place to elaborate.
Your remark is interesting, and in fact perhaps touches doubly on the term “work of art”:
1. If one places the trunk of a felled tree found in a field, just as it is (perhaps that is more congenial than the famous “Fountain”), in a museum—does that turn the exhibit into something “artistic”? Is more not required than that? Is the “artistic quality” only in the eye of the beholder, or does it require an artistic act? Modern art at its height really does make it difficult for us to answer this.
2. A question I have been pondering for a long time (after reading a discussion of this in two writers: Leah Goldberg and Iris Murdoch): does a “bad poem” exist, or is a “bad poem” not a poem? (A bad story—according to one of them—does exist.) In fact, according to Murdoch, there is no such thing as a bad philosopher. He is not a philosopher, at most a “thinker.” And for our purposes, does the term “artist” contain within it an evaluative element as well, so that the phrase “bad art” means “this is not art”?
- I deliberately wrote that I do not want to focus on that question. I neutralized the question of whether “Fountain” is art, and focused on the question of whether it is sculpture. Precisely because of what you wrote here.
Are you claiming that if it is not art then by definition it is not sculpture? See section 2. But you claim, or at least raise the possibility, that it is art (that is what I meant when I compared it to photography, which is also considered art even though it only places a given object in an artistic context), and so the question remains whether it is sculpture. - I think that depends on why the poem is bad. I devoted a series of columns to defining poetry (107 and onward), and I think a more complex answer to the question you raise here emerges from there.
Noam, you did not respond here to what seems to me the most important claim of all: even assuming you are right and that this really is a faithful description of a religious person, that still does not mean there is any justification for such behavior, that is, for halakhic obligation on that basis. If we look for a moment at the example of a person who is afraid to walk under a ladder even though he does not really believe it is problematic—if this is not an actual psychological problem, it is at the very least undesirable behavior, something we would prefer to get rid of if possible. All the more so halakhic obligation—if the Holy One, blessed be He, did not really reveal Himself at Sinai, perhaps one can still justify other practices such as prayer, but how can one justify irrational behaviors like redeeming a firstborn donkey, not eating pork, and so on—not to mention outright conflicts with morality such as not saving a gentile on Shabbat and things like that? To claim that you do not factually believe there is a reason to behave this way, but you act this way because of a psychological inclination, is simply to say, “I am a crazy person,” and one ought to try to get rid of such a psychological inclination.
Regarding the first part, does the rabbi also make the distinction between definition and characterization? Because it seems to me that he simply changed the word “definition” to “characterization”?