"Light from the Hefker": B. On Heracliteanism and Parmenideanism (Column 519)

In the previous column I began to critically examine Assaf Inbari’s thesis in his essay, “On the Language of Revelation.” I will begin by summarizing the main points here, both to sharpen their meaning (following clarifications that appeared in the comments to the previous column, chiefly in an exchange with Hayuta).

Description of the previous column

I opened by pointing to a double meaning in the title of his essay, in the phrase “the language of revelation.” One can understand this in a linguistic sense (a language of revelation), or in a geographical sense (to be on the shore of something—like the seashore—and the “sea” is what reveals itself to us). The difference between the two is the question of whether there really is something (the sea) that is revealed through the artistic or faith language, or whether this is merely a manner of speaking—a discourse that reflects happenings and experiences but without an objective stratum underlying them. Inbari compares the language of art to the language of faith and argues that these are parallel phenomena. His claim is that religious and artistic meaning are the result of a stance—that is, of a person’s approach or attitude—and not of something in reality itself. The very same thing-in-itself can be perceived as a mundane object or as a work of art, and the very same occurrence can be perceived as the hand of providence or as a random event of the world. It is the person who chooses one meaning over the other, and if he chooses the artistic or religious alternative, he is in fact the one who creates it.

The question I posed regarding his words was: is revelation a human experience or attitude, or is there truly something that is revealed by means of this medium? This point hovers over his entire essay, but his position about it is somewhat vague. In my view this is his central theme, and it is what I critique. I must say that in the artistic context this might be a naïve and merely theoretical question, but in the religious context it becomes weighty. If there is something in objective reality that is revealed to us through faith, this means that the experience of faith is based on faith in God—that is, that the believer assumes a factual truth-claim that there is a God. Alternatively, there are conceptions that faith is a subjective state of the believing person and has no ontic basis (among other things, I discussed this in column 513).

Throughout the previous column I tried to show that there is an ambiguity in Inbari’s treatment of the relationship between these two planes. He speaks about a subjective meaning of revelation, yet in certain places alludes to an objective–ontic meaning and then goes back to deny it. I suggested that Inbari leaves this question vague not by accident. To say that there is an objective dimension at the basis of revelation in art (whatever it be—not necessarily God) is to say that there is something objective at the basis of religious revelation as well, since he draws a parallel between them. But in the religious realm this would essentially be to say that God exists. In a secular–atheist picture (I mean a picture without God, even a philosophical God), talk of revelation cannot be interpreted that way. Therefore, Inbari—who, as I understand, is a secular person (I don’t know if fully atheist)—leaves the question vague also in the artistic context, since the religious meaning breathes down his neck. I suspect that he too senses there is an ontic, objective something underlying the revelation he discusses, for without it, it is empty of significant content. But he cannot acknowledge that within a secular framework. By contrast, I claim that we use the language of revelation to describe the sea that lies behind the seashore within which we act and through which that sea reveals itself to us (this is a phenomenon of “revealing and concealing in language,” i.e., through language). See also the short discussion in the comments to the previous column (with the handle “Mimesis”) on the link to the questions of mimesis (in the Platonic sense) and catharsis in art.

At the end of the column I formulated the question as follows: whether and how a “secular revelation” is possible?[1] In order to complete his thesis, Inbari ought to give us an account of this fundamental concept. Without doing so, his words are emptied of content. At the end of the column I quoted his words at the end of Chapter 3, where he hints at the solution he proposes to this quandary via the distinction between being (being-as-static) and becoming (process), rooted in the dispute between Parmenideanism and Heracliteanism[2]. In this column I will try to critically examine that distinction, which begins to be discussed in Chapter 4 of his essay.

Parmenides and Heraclitus

Parmenides grasped reality as being: something that exists statically, before which I as an observer stand and attempt to understand it. My experiences and cognitions are the result of my encounter with that present being. The alternation of properties and the changes I notice pass over it and do not stand on their own (neither in my cognition nor in the world). In other words, there is something constant that bears the various changes, and they happen to it and pass over it. When we contemplate the world and try to understand it, we deal with a collection of entities that reveal themselves to us through their various properties, but our aim is to understand the entities themselves. Heraclitus, by contrast, is known for his dictum “everything flows,” or in another formulation, “you cannot step into the same river twice” (because of the constant flow, on the second time it is already a different river).

It is customary to oppose these two conceptions and say that Parmenides sees reality statically (he of course agrees that it changes, but for him these are its changes—as stated, there is something static at the base whose existence persists despite the changes that pass over it), whereas Heraclitus sees primacy in dynamism. For him, reality is a collection of events or occurrences, and not a collection of entities. When the river has flowed on, the present river is already another river.

After briefly presenting the dispute, Inbari posits its dramatic significance as follows:

The question of which of the two to side with has been and remains the question of questions of philosophy. Every model of reality is either fundamentally Parmenidean or Heraclitean. The opposition between conceiving being as a fixed “is” and conceiving it as constant change underlies not only philosophy but human culture as a whole. The mythologies, religions, ideologies, and arts of East and West are, at base, either Parmenidean or Heraclitean. The question of whether any given culture is Parmenidean or Heraclitean is the most probing question one can and should pose to it. The famous oppositions between “nature” and “history,” between “paganism” and “monotheism,” between “natural law” and “positivism,” between “science” and “faith,” or between “enlightenment” and “revelation,” all stem from this basic opposition whose poles are represented by Parmenides and Heraclitus.

I think he greatly exaggerates the importance of this dispute, especially in philosophy. As I will show below, in my view it has almost no importance in philosophy. Its main significance lies in art and perhaps also in psychology.

At first glance it is easy to grasp the meaning of this dispute. Both sides evoke in us a sense of intelligibility, and on the face of it this really sounds like a very fundamental distinction. I, for example, feel myself entirely on the Parmenidean side of that axis. For me, reality stands before us and we must understand it. Shifting the discussion to fluid, subjective planes of happenings seems to me a kind of evasion. You can already feel the ripples of the question I posed at the beginning of the column: Is the artistic (and religious) experience an occurrence—spiritual, psychological, or otherwise (Heracliteanism)—or does it involve the apprehension of something that exists in objective reality (Parmenideanism)? For me, belief in God is the result of conviction (proofs and arguments) that such a being indeed exists. The feelings it evokes in me are not enough. A revelation without a factual dimension that is revealed through it is meaningless (there is no seashore without a sea, and no language that does not describe anything). No wonder that the distinction between Parmenideanism and Heracliteanism is perceived by Inbari as a key to the kind of revelation he speaks of. In the subtext I detect in his words, this is the solution he finds to the possibility of “secular revelation” (revelation without an entity that is revealed in it).[3]

What is secular revelation? Inbari’s solution

For the sake of fairness I must preface that Inbari does not present the discussion of this dispute as a solution to the question of secular revelation, since the question of secularity—or secularity in general—does not arise in his essay. But to me as a reader it is entirely clear that this is his subtext. He is searching for a possible way to give sense to the artistic and religious experience—that is, to the concept of revelation—within a secular worldview. This is not stated explicitly anywhere, but I am certain it is what led him into this whole discussion.

Inbari uses the distinction between a Parmenidean gaze and a Heraclitean one to argue that what is revealed through art (and through faith) is not an entity but an occurrence. A person discerns some occurrence, or the reflection of that occurrence in his soul, but does not apprehend an object or any objective dimension. His claim is that indeed something is revealed to him, but that something is not an entity; it is an occurrence. As far as I understand, he intends this as a solution to the difficulty of “secular revelation.” Seemingly he proposes a logical way to define a language of revelation without assuming the existence of some factual thing revealed to us. Thus faith, like aesthetic awe, is not a truth-claim and is not grounded in truth-claims. These are occurrences in the soul that reflect an occurrence in the world that reaches us through the artwork, but there is nothing in objective reality that is revealed to us through it.

To examine whether there is truly a substantive solution here, I must return and probe a bit more deeply the foundations of the Parmenidean–Heraclitean dispute.

Another look at the relation between being and occurrence (becoming)

At the outset we must ask: Is the relation between Parmenideanism and Heracliteanism dichotomous? In fact, I will ask whether it is even well-defined at all, and in particular what its ontic meaning is. Are there two opposing theses about reality (ontology, the theory of being), or are we dealing merely with two modes of approaching reality? I note that this very discussion is, of course, thoroughly Parmenidean (since I am Parmenidean). A Heraclitean will content himself with the fact that these approaches fall upon familiar ground for him and have different effects on him. From his perspective there is no importance to inquiring into the factual root of the dispute, so long as these experiences are well-differentiated for him. Since he readily recognizes these two types and the consequences of these approaches across the domains of human inquiry, there is no need to enter metaphysics (ontology is a branch of metaphysics).

I remarked above that when I encounter this dispute, I intuitively know I am on the Parmenidean side of the map. I tend to examine things themselves and their definitions, to seek proofs of their existence, and to investigate their nature. The Heraclitean, by contrast, lets things fall upon his spirit and cognition and act upon them—creating in him experiences and insights in the subjective plane without entering the question of what this says about objective reality. Existentialism turned this option into a philosophical ideology (my opinion of it as a philosophy, and in general, can be seen in column 140, among others). Likewise, it is fairly clear that Zen thought and Hasidism are on the Heraclitean side (and my opinion of them can be found throughout the site). In my Tu BiShvat essay on “Perek Shirah” I brought two poems whose difference relates to Western Parmenideanism versus Eastern Heracliteanism:

Looking closely, I see the nazuna blooming by the hedge. (Bashō, a Japanese Zen poet of the 17th century)

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. Little flower—if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. (Alfred Tennyson, an English poet of the 19th century)

Precisely because of the similarity in the situations, one can see here that the Zen poet stands before reality and lets it influence him in a Heraclitean way (to generate experiences within him). He does not approach the flower itself and does not touch it. The emphasis is on being an observer—that is, a subjective act of the person. This is the stance of placing the flower in a museum and viewing it as a work of art that affects us.[4] The Westerner, by contrast, enters into objective reality itself and tries to understand it in a Parmenidean way (and also tries to subdue and master it: “fill the earth and subdue it”).

I will now try to show that the inquiry (Parmenidean in essence) into the dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus is very important for our purposes here. My claim is that one cannot escape Parmenideanism, even though Inbari does his utmost to do so—and not without reason (this is the root of the ambiguity in his words that I highlight across these two columns).

It is very easy to take Heraclitus into a subjective interpretation, as if everything happens within us and not in the world itself. If so, then indeed we have a completely polar, dichotomous dispute: either there is a world of entities—being that exists statically—or else all we speak of is a collection of subjective (or intersubjective) impressions. But this is not necessarily the meaning of Heracliteanism. In reality we clearly see a collection of occurrences, but these are not subjective events; they are events that occur in the world outside me. The speed of a car or the color of a table are not entities. But both are occurrences that befall entities or properties of entities (the car or the table). It is clear that behind these occurrences there are entities that bear them. The occurrence happens to some entity, and the property characterizes some entity. In addition, it is clear that although an occurrence is not an entity, it too exists in reality (and not only in our subjective cognition). The world contains both entities and occurrences (that happen to entities), for the car’s speed is not an experience generated within us but something in the world itself. Cognition that apprehends it processes data received from the world itself.

If so, when we speak of occurrences there is not necessarily an idealist conception (according to which there are no entities in the world). Idealism certainly leads to Heracliteanism, but Heracliteanism does not entail idealism. On the contrary, idealism is a rather outlandish metaphysical stance, and I know of no one who seriously holds it. Heracliteanism is something quite different. I myself do not incline toward it, but it certainly isn’t outlandish. Heracliteanism is a focus on phenomena, properties, and occurrences rather than on the things themselves to which all these befall. There is no idealist ontic thesis here that denies reality; rather, there is a mode of attention that prefers to focus on occurrences rather than on entities. Hence I wrote above that this dispute touches more on psychology and art than on philosophy.

I will now sharpen my “Parmenidean” claim about the dispute (I did so at length in Two Wagons and elsewhere). I will do this first with respect to properties, and then with respect to occurrences.

A Heraclitean look at properties: What do Borges and Leibniz’s “Identity of Indiscernibles” have in common?

Leibniz argued that it is impossible for there to be two objects with exactly the same set of properties. The fact that these two objects are two and not one means, in his view, that there is a difference in their list of characteristics or properties. Identity in properties implies it is the same object. Therefore, this principle is called the “Identity of Indiscernibles” (when there is no difference in properties there is identity between two objects: they are not two, but one).

Leibniz proved this claim by contradiction: Suppose there are two different objects, X and Y, each of which has exactly the same set of properties {A}. If these are two different objects, then X has the property of “not being Y” (property c) and Y has the property of “not being X” (property d). Thus their sets of properties are not identical, since X’s properties are {A + c} and Y’s are {A + d}. This contradicts the initial assumption that they do not differ in any property. We have reached a contradiction, which means that something in our assumptions is false. If they have the same set of properties, then they are not two objects but one. If there is a difference in properties, they must be two distinct objects.

Anyone with common sense sees that this is nonsense, but it is far easier to say so than to put a finger on the error in his proof. We can see it if we examine the root of the dispute between him and the thesis he attacks. Whoever says that there can be two objects with the same set of properties is assuming that being-an-object is not itself a property. Object X is not the collection {A}; rather, it is that which bears the given set of properties. It is the bearer of properties. Therefore, being a different object from Y is not a property. Being the chair named X is not a property, and therefore not being chair Y is not a property. Having four legs or a backrest—those are properties of the chair; the fact that it is the chair X (X is the name of the chair) is a statement about the bearer of the properties, not itself a property. Leibniz, however, assumes that an object is nothing but the collection of its properties—no more and no less. Consequently, it is clear that there cannot be two different objects with the same set of properties. If they have the same set, then by definition it is the very same object. You can now see that his proof begs the question. He assumes that “being object X” is a property—that is, that there is nothing to the object beyond the collection of its properties. But if I hold the opposing view, then his proof collapses, because on my view, “not being X” or “not being Y” is not a property.

Imagine we have two drops of water with exactly the same properties (including, for the sake of argument, their position in space)[5]. Drops X and Y have exactly the same set of properties. The fact that one drop is X and not Y (that is, that its name is X and not Y) is not a property; it is a claim about that which bears the properties (the bearer) and not about its properties. Such a stance thus remains possible, and in my opinion, it is also true. Leibniz’s view is very odd, since he speaks of an object as a collection of properties, and one must then ask: what binds them to each other? Why does this collection constitute an object while any other arbitrary collection of properties (e.g., the color of the Atlantic Ocean together with the time of sunrise and the speed of the 8:14 a.m. train from Haifa to Tel Aviv) does not? Clearly, what binds this set of properties is that they are all properties of the same object. That is, there is something in the object beyond the properties, and it is what gives this set of properties a commonality and assigns them to that one group. In fact, the object is everything that is beyond the properties, and the collection that “defines” it are the properties “of it.”

To see this more clearly, look at column 383, where I brought a brilliant illustration Borges proposed for this argument, in his story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Borges speaks there of an attempt to describe the rising of the moon above the river, and says that in an idealist language (one that does not recognize the existence of objects, only of mental–cognitive phenomena), one should say it thus: “It mooned above the continuing flowing.” In such a language there are only verbs without nouns (for there are no objects). The absurdity is obvious. In addition, Borges writes that in another language on that same planet of idealists, any arbitrary collection of properties is an object (if there is no bearer, there is no way to say that some collection of properties is not an object). Therefore, for him, “the cry of the distant bird together with the sea level at Metula” is an object, as is “the color of the flower in my yard together with the birthdate of the upstairs tenant in Leah Goldberg’s A Flat for Rent.” Again, the absurdity is obvious.

The bottom line is that it is not reasonable to speak of the world as a collection of properties without objects, and by the same token not as a collection of occurrences without objects. Every occurrence happens to specific objects, and every property characterizes an object or objects. This brings me to Lewis Carroll, who tells of Alice’s encounter with the mysterious Cheshire Cat, after which she reports:

“I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!”[6]

Anyone reading this smiles with delight. But Heraclitus, if we adopt the banal interpretation of his view, and apparently also Leibniz, should not smile at all. If the world is a collection of occurrences or properties without objects that bear them, then there is no obstacle to having a grin without a cat. On their view, every grin is without a cat. This demonstrates that Heracliteanism does not assume idealism. Of course Heraclitus understands that there are cats and not only grins. The grin belongs to the cat and cannot exist without it.[7] Not only that, one cannot say that the grin exists only within our cognition. The grin is an occurrence in the world itself, and we merely apprehend it. These are the two reasons I presented above for why Heracliteanism is not idealism.

A Heraclitean look at occurrences: integral and derivative

What I wrote about properties must also be said about occurrences. An occurrence is always a change in properties—that is, in the state of some object(s). For example, a body changes position (it has a speed), or another body changes shape, and so forth. In my essay “Zeno’s Arrow and Modern Physics,” I discussed Parmenidean and Heraclitean ways of relating to processes of change. I showed there that one can define the speed of a body by looking at its position at two different instants and dividing the distance by the time it took to traverse it. This is a Parmenidean view of changes of place (in quantum mechanics terms, this is the “position picture,” the static view). On this view, a body’s speed is defined only through a change in its place, and therefore one cannot define a body’s speed at a single discrete instant. At such an instant there is only position, not speed. The basis of this picture is the static view—positions of the body—and the dynamics (its speed) are defined on the basis of static states. This is the operation of the mathematical derivative, the tool that helps us define processes and occurrences on the basis of static states.

By contrast, there is another view (the “momentum picture” in quantum mechanics) according to which speed is a magnitude that exists at each specific instant (and not only over an interval), and the change of place is the result of the fact that the body has a speed (this is the operation of mathematical integration). The integral helps us define static states via dynamic occurrences. This second view has a Heraclitean character, since it sees at the center the process and change the body undergoes, and not its static position that is merely a consequence of the dynamics.

In the aforesaid essay I proposed, via this distinction, a solution to Zeno’s arrow paradox and explained several other claims and phenomena; this is not the place to enter all that. For our purposes, the distinction helps us understand that the dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus is not about the fact of the existence of objects but about where to focus our gaze on the world. There is no disagreement that objects exist and that occurrences happen to them; the only question is how best to contemplate and describe what is happening. Should I focus on the cat or on its grin? Hence I wrote that this is a meaningful question in psychology or art, but not a very important one in philosophy. From here you can understand that when Heraclitus wrote that one does not step twice into the same river, he does not really mean that it is not the same river. He likely means that it is the same river with different properties. Indeed, if one focuses on properties and not on the river itself, then from his perspective we stepped into a different river; but this is not a claim about reality (an ontic claim). The Leibnizian view is adopted here philosophically or methodologically (at most an epistemological claim), but it does not touch the question of what truly exists (“Leibniz for the poor”).

My second claim regarding properties can likewise be applied to occurrences. Even if one focuses on occurrences and not on objects, it is still clear that the occurrences themselves exist in the world, and our cognition merely apprehends and processes them. We saw above that the world contains both entities and occurrences. These do not occur only within us; their source is in the world as such.

The conclusion from all that has been said thus far is that one cannot escape the objective source of our experiences and cognitions, even if one chooses Heracliteanism and flees from entities to occurrences and properties—that is, focuses on them rather than on entities. We can now examine Inbari’s claims about the meaning and implications of the Heraclitean–Parmenidean dispute for our topic.

Back to Inbari

Already at the beginning of Chapter 4, Inbari brings the Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself (the noumenon) and the thing as it appears to us (the world of phenomena, the phenomenon). He writes as follows:

Even Kant, who rejected ontological philosophizing on the grounds that the objective “is” (the noumenon, the thing-in-itself) is not accessible to our cognition—which is trapped in subjectivity from which it cannot escape—did not deny the very existence of “the thing-in-itself.” The objective “is” exists, said Kant, but we have, and never will have, any notion of what it is. Any discussion of it—any ontological discussion—is therefore empty prattle. But again: the very fact that Kant posits the existence of “the thing-in-itself” beyond the world of phenomena of our subjective cognition testifies to the Parmenidean character of his approach. Even if Kant has nothing to say about the “is,” he is not released from the Parmenidean requirement to posit its existence, if only as an unattainable transcendence.

His claim is that Kant was Parmenidean, since he dared to posit the existence of the thing-in-itself, even though he left it undescribed and outside our grasp (the phenomena). This, to him, is Parmenideanism. We see here that Inbari assumes a naïve interpretation of Heracliteanism, according to which there truly is no river, only flow. The assumption that there is a river, even if one does not focus one’s gaze upon it, is already Parmenideanism. No wonder that in his view Heracliteanism provides a sufficient solution to “secular revelation.” Now you need not posit the existence of something that is revealed; his concept of revelation emerges cleansed of any ontic dimension. Later in the chapter he insists that the language of art is not tested by correspondence to any state of affairs in the world, but has a constitutive and independent status. It constitutes its objects rather than being directed toward objects beyond it. This is another expression of the naïve Heracliteanism that Inbari assumes in his essay.

But as we have seen, this is empty philosophical pilpul. Heraclitus himself probably did not mean this, and even if he did—then he was mistaken. If Inbari is trying to claim that the world does not exist—that is, to present an idealist picture—then beyond the implausibility of that picture itself (according to which we all live in a matrix), he must also assume that all of our artistic experience shows that implicitly we are all idealists. That is already a bizarre claim even on the factual level. I know quite a few people who are aware of the philosophical issue of idealism, and yet have adopted a realist stance and still have artistic experiences (and, of course, religious ones). Are all these people unconscious idealists, or merely confused? Highly implausible.

Put differently, one could say that at best Inbari wins a Pyrrhic victory here and in fact throws out the baby with the bathwater. If, to be secular, you must adopt a far-fetched idealist worldview—i.e., deny the existence of objective reality—then even before I critique that picture, the very need to adopt it is a death blow to the notion of “secular revelations.”

Of course, Inbari does this only with the artistic dimension of reality and not with reality itself. But as I showed in the previous column, even with respect to that this is a very strange and puzzling claim. If the artistic and religious apprehension has no source in objective reality itself (that is, entities or occurrences that generate the occurrences within our cognition), then none of this has meaning. It is mere playacting.

It is therefore no surprise that at the end of Chapter 4 Inbari turns to Wittgenstein’s “language games.” He presents revelations as a language game different from the truth-conditional game (propositions about facts). But even for Wittgenstein himself this solution hid a nihilistic despair, for he effectively abandons language as representing something in reality and turns it into a kind of subjective game that has no root in objective reality. Wittgenstein’s picture is an image of the idealist conception in the realm of language and the philosophy of language.

Because this is not the place, I will suffice here with the claim that in my opinion Wittgenstein had no need for this at all. The difficulties with which he grapples—those that forced him to develop this “game theory”—are imaginary. It is the only substitute he found, in his later phase, for the silence with which he ends and sums up his Tractatus (his earlier phase). This is “secularity” with respect to intuition (since as a positivist he refuses to recognize its existence and/or authority), and so he seeks analytic alternatives where none exist. The result is an empty language game in place of real content. Inbari’s situation is very similar. He is unwilling to recognize a revealed entity, and so he develops instead a language game in which one speaks about the thing without positing or acknowledging its existence (we have returned again to column 513, where I also mentioned Wittgenstein and my critique of him). But occurrences befall objects, and beyond that they themselves are part of reality (occurrences happen in the world and not only within our souls, which merely reflect them).

No wonder I am reminded of the “language of faith” coined by Noam Oren (see column 513). There, too, he tried to replace the object (God) with the speaker’s properties or experiences and turned religious language into an empty Wittgensteinian language game. This is precisely Inbari’s Heracliteanism, only in the realm of religion rather than art. As mentioned, for Inbari the two are fully parallel. Indeed, in Chapter 5 Inbari claims that the event at Mount Sinai acquires religious significance regardless of whether it occurred historically. In his view this is merely people attributing meaning to reality and not a truth-claim about it. The arguments I presented there against Noam’s picture are fully parallel to my arguments against Inbari here. I argued there that “faith” in that sense is atheism in disguise, for the “faith” in question is psychological, not ontic. I see no logic in maintaining a system of commandments said to have been given at Sinai if the whole system is a subjective hallucination. There is no point in being moved by a grin without a cat. It is only a delusion. Moreover, an Ahad-Ha’am-style observance of halakhah (that is, observance that does not presuppose God and revelation) will necessarily be devoid of religious meaning (so writes Maimonides at the end of Laws of Kings 8). Here I claim exactly the same: such a Heraclitean conception of art empties it of content and turns it into mere psychology.

In Chapter 6 Inbari reiterates that what is revealed in artistic (and religious) revelation is not a static essence whose existence is fixed and continuous, but rather a series of surprising occurrences that is constantly changing. And again I ask: what exactly is it that changes in them? This change is a change of what? Only of human cognition? If there is nothing there that is changing, this is not change but a kind of subjective storm within me—and we are back to saying this is mere psychological talk. It is a person undergoing inner upheavals that have no external correlate. There are quite a few mentally ill people who undergo various storms, and no one would take that as something meaningful, except perhaps as a phenomenon requiring treatment. The disconnection of the soul from reality is a problem, not a value worthy of analysis and appraisal. Only storms that are rooted in true reality can have real value. If I apprehend something in the reality outside me—whether it be an object or occurrences and properties of objects—then the storm is an expression of something beyond it. There must be something that I apprehend if this revelation is to have meaning worth discussing.

Objects as “ḥefetz” or “devar”

Further on, Inbari notes that the Hebrew term ḥefetz is ambiguous (desire/object), and he takes this to hint that the definition of an entity is a function of our will and our uses of it. Thus he writes, for example, in Chapter 6 about the object “chair”:

I am now sitting on a chair. But what, actually, is a “chair”? What is this thing I have become accustomed to identify as a “chair”? Is it one thing, or a cluster of several things (“legs,” “seat,” “backrest,” “armrests,” “rubber feet,” “lacquer coating”)? And is not each of these things, which together are identified as a “chair,” in turn only a cluster of things smaller than it (slats, nails, screws, nuts, glue, that stain of dirt on the back of the backrest), which are likewise, in turn, nothing but clusters of countless tiny things (fibers, molecules, atoms)?

What causes me to identify this dizzying cluster of things as the one thing that is a “chair” is not inherent in the object itself, but in the interest-laden principles of preference of my consciousness. It is more useful to me, more functional for me, to identify this cluster of things as one thing that serves me in daily life (“chair”); from the perspective of daily, practical life, the “chair” will cease to be perceived by me as a “chair” and will be perceived by me as a “group of sticks and rods” only if there arises in my life an interest other than the interest of sitting—an interest that grants the new identification (“behold, sticks and rods”) greater practical value than the value contained in “chair.” This may happen if I need, say, fuel, or an improvised weapon (sword, shield), or to build some domestic implement (ladder, footstool, shelf)

This is an example of an artistic conception of reality, whose point is attributing meaning to it in a way that has no source in reality itself, but in the stance I choose toward it.

[In parentheses I note that it is not by chance that he speaks of a chair and not of a person. A human being too is a collection of cells, molecules, or even elementary particles. Is a person not truly existent and merely our attribution of meaning to a collection of cells? It is harder to say so of a person, for there is a spirit or soul that integrates and synthesizes his material aggregate into a single entity. A chair presumably has no such spiritual component. The human being is an example showing that such attribution of meaning is not necessarily subjective—that is, not something created solely by our manner of looking, without a root in objective reality.[8]]

Further on he notes that the Hebrew word davar (“thing/word”) is also ambiguous, and he takes this too to hint that the definitions of things are the product of human speech rather than of their objective essence. Both of these arguments (the ḥefetz and the davar) are Hasidic linguistic midrashim—which should not surprise us when we recall that Inbari’s Heracliteanism also characterizes Hasidism.

Later in the chapter he mentions Kant and Husserl, who focus on the phenomenon that appears to us and not on the noumenon at its base. I note that although above he argued that Kant, too, is Parmenidean, here he does not hesitate to use him to elucidate Heracliteanism. This shows that he does not truly need Kant’s doctrine but uses him as an illustration for the phenomena he describes. This is again that very language game he spoke of earlier, and it is no wonder he himself makes use of it. It is very difficult to conduct a Parmenidean discussion with a Heraclitean person. Inbari himself makes claims, yet at the same time blocks counter-arguments, since what we have here is a language game.

I will now try to clarify a bit more my claim against his picture of art as attribution of meaning. For lack of space, I ask your indulgence to let me present only the schema of the lines of argument, and for a full picture I refer to the many columns where I detailed it further.

Between “meaning” and “attribution of meaning”

To focus Inbari’s claim, I will bring a passage from later in Chapter 6 where he sums up his claim about the artistic and religious gaze:

A life of revelation is a life of frequent acts of meaning-making. Frequent—but not continuous. Frequent precisely because it is fragmented, transient, flickering. Only the transient can be frequent. The continuous, the enduring, can occur only once (if there is any sense to the word “occurrence” when it comes to a continuous, Parmenidean, continuity). Revelation is the replacement of an old meaning (the “familiar”) with a new meaning (the “strange”), and this alternation of meanings is an activity without end, because every new meaning can be new only for a time.

Today’s “strange” is tomorrow’s “familiar.” A new interpretation, a new metaphor, a new genre—all are destined to wear out, to erode, to turn from revelation into concealment that will arouse the next revelation. The longing for revelation is not a longing for some particular meaning. No meaning is immune to erosion; as charming as it may seem while still fresh, time will wear it down as usual until it becomes thin, a cliché. It is not some “true” meaning that is revealed at the moment of revelation, as metaphysics claims with pretension; what is revealed is the passage from one meaning to another. The switch itself—not the new content—is the revelation. “Bring out the old because of the new,” not because the new is preferable to the old (“truer”), but because it is new. When this new grows old, the same command will apply to it.

In column 159 I explained that the term “meaning” is sometimes used in a subjective sense—that is, that a person gives subjective meaning to things, a meaning that exists entirely within him. I showed there that this sense of meaning is subjective and therefore empty on the evaluative plane. Essential meaning always depends on a connection between my attribution of meaning and something in reality itself. Things have meaning if I find in them some value in an objective sense; otherwise we are dealing with psychological, subjective claims (that discussion concerned Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy). A person does not invent meaning but discovers it; otherwise, we are dealing with hallucinations.

To understand this better, think about moral values. There is nothing in physical reality that anchors them and gives them truth-value. But to see them as meaning in the subjective sense misses something very deep about them. If that were the case, any moral system would have equal standing, and I could not criticize others who espouse different, distorted, and wicked values. In column 513 I brought David Enoch’s “spinach test,” which illustrates this well. The subjectivity of moral values is illusory, arising from the fact that apparently there is nothing “out there” (in objective reality) that gives them authority or truth. But as I explained there, given reality and the human nature that exists, these are the objectively binding moral values; there are no others. This is true in ethics, and equally true in aesthetics. To give it authority and to give meaning to discussions about it and arguments about good and bad art and the artistic value of a work, one must assume that it has an objective dimension—even though it is a function of circumstances, norms, and human nature.

If I claim that a person has found meaning in something (an object, a value, or an activity), whether ethical or artistic, this means there is a fit to something “real,” objective in some sense—that is, that it has a justification—and not that it just popped up in my consciousness arbitrarily because that is how I am built. I cannot go into details here, and I refer you to that column. I will only add that that column appears within a series that seeks to define philosophy. The series culminates in the conclusion that philosophy is a kind of empirical science based on non-sensory observation of reality. I showed there that such observation exposes dimensions that exist in reality itself, and that we are not dealing with subjective constructions. Such hallucinations can of course occur, but there is little point in occupying ourselves with them so long as they have no connection to some objective dimension in reality itself.

Indeed, the philosophical meaning-making of reality is subjective in terms of the language and paradigm within which it is done, but within these it has objective meaning. To sharpen this, I return to Inbari’s “chair.” My claim is that although its definition is indeed a function of human needs and interests, it must have an objective dimension if this discussion is to have meaning. I argue this on two planes:

1. The definition of a chair is indeed a function of our needs and interests, but still there is an objective claim here. Given our needs, only this is a chair and nothing else. The linkage between the needs and the definition of “chair” is objective.

In column 488 (see also column 143) I argued that in logic the linkage between premises and conclusion is objective, even though both the premises and the conclusion can be subjective. Logic deals only with that linkage—that is, with the argument—and not with the propositions composing it. I showed there that music too has objective meaning even though people’s taste can be (and indeed is) subjective. The relation between taste and product is objective. Therefore, Inbari is mistaken in concluding that all meaning-making of states and objects is subjective. Given a certain environment (which is indeed contingent and accidental), there is good and bad art, and therefore there should be an objective definition of art. This is not just our stance; it is an objective determination, given the stance in question.

2. His account of Kant suffers from a hermeneutic error I addressed at length in column 502 and in columns (494– 496). I showed there that interpreters who see Kant’s doctrine as a limitation, or an inability to apprehend reality as it is in itself, are mistaken. I explained there that the phenomenon is itself an apprehension of reality as it is in itself. Apprehension is bringing reality into a system of concepts, principles, and forms of apprehension that are subjective (or intersubjective). Therefore, the picture obtained in them is not subjective, but rather a description—using subjective language—of objective qualities of things.

This of course returns us to what we saw above: that properties of things and occurrences that befall them are not our subjective experiences, but have their root in reality itself. Properties and occurrences, though they are not entities, exist in reality, and our experiences and cognitions arise from that. They are the processing and presentation of objective reality in our subjective language. But the language of description is not what matters, for the meaning is what is described by that language.

I cannot enter these distinctions in greater detail here, but they are laid out extensively in the columns to which I referred. For those interested and wanting more precision, I recommend reading there.

Conclusion

This is a fascinating and instructive essay that grapples with very hard and very fundamental questions. In these two columns I performed a kind of deconstruction of Inbari’s essay. As I wrote, he does not mention the matter of secularity even in passing, but in my opinion this is what stands behind the whole essay. An unwillingness to recognize a substance beyond matter, or other entities and apprehensions, leads people into contortions like those we have seen here.

To expose this, I had to draw on two meanings of the term “revelation” as it appears in his writing, and I tied its meaning in art to its meaning in faith. In my view this connection stands at the center of the ambiguity in his words as described here. The teasing game he plays throughout between the subjective and the objective, the internal contradictions and the ambiguities are not accidental. My critique of this sleight of hand appears in many other contexts, most of which I could not address here in detail. The reader is invited to expand via the columns and essays I referenced.

This essay is an example of a piece by an intelligent and original person whose arguments and insights in themselves give a sense of coherence, but scrutiny of the framework of discussion reveals that it itself imposes inherent difficulties that I knew a priori could not be resolved—even if I did not locate the exact point in his words. One cannot escape the oxymoron of a secular revelation—that is, a revelation without a revealer. With so many trees—arguments, analyses, learned and clever—it is a bit hard to see the forest; for that, the deconstruction I performed was necessary.

[1] To avoid misunderstanding I repeat here: when I say “secular revelation,” I do not mean to deny the approach that in art the one who is revealed is God. I mean the assumption that there is nothing revealed at all. In the background stands the assumption that in the religious context, if there is someone revealed, it is God.

[2] I write this with one yod and not two, since in my understanding this is the correct way in Hebrew. I suspect that the doubling of the yods is borrowed from English. I already remarked in the previous column about the matter of the alefs and Inbari’s archaic spellings (for our purposes: “Hirakleitos” and “Parmenides”).

[3] The quotation marks are because in the artistic context we are speaking of revelation without any ontic basis. This does not necessarily mean God. I nonetheless call it “secular revelation” because of the religious correlate of the issue. Above I explained why I insist on the link between the two issues (in fact, I claim that he—Inbari—began with it).

[4] Admittedly, in Zen thought the very distinction between object and subject is denied, and it is doubtful to what extent this discussion is relevant to them. In my view, a picture without that distinction suffers from difficulties similar to those I described regarding Inbari’s idealism.

[5] According to physics, the positions of both in space cannot be identical, but that is a physical law, not a logical one. There is no logical impossibility that two objects occupy the same position (as with photons, for example, or any particles called “bosons” in physics).

[6] I added the parentheses because a grin without a cat may exist—for example, if a person smiles.

[7] The Platonist thesis (as opposed to the Aristotelian view) is that a grin perhaps exists as an Idea in the world of Ideas, but even Plato agrees that in our world there are no grins without cats.

[8] More than once (see, for example, column 266) I have pointed out that on the ontic plane, individualism opposes fascism, which sees collectives as existing entities. But I suspect that the individualists themselves do not give up on the notion that a person is an existing entity and do not see him as merely an aggregate of cells or particles. A human being has a different ontic status even in their view.