Gate Five: Analyticity and Syntheticity in Western Culture — The Postmodern Era

From the book Two Wagons and a Hot Air Balloon by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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Analyticity and Syntheticity in Western Culture: The Postmodern Age

This gate contains four chapters.

1. Chapter 1: The Analytic-Synthetic Paradoxes in Western Culture
2. Chapter 2: Values
3. Chapter 3: Implications for the Attitude toward the Spiritual Dimension of Reality
4. Chapter 4: Real and Apparent Correlations in Political-Ideological Outlooks in Israel

Introduction

The present part is devoted to a discussion of the reality that surrounds us today, through the analytic-synthetic prism presented and developed in the first part. In the third gate, which opened the present part, we dealt with a historical perspective on the development of the struggle between the analytic and the synthetic. In the fourth gate we examined the fundamental concepts of value—equality, the relation between universal and particular, tolerance, openness, and pluralism. In this gate we shall examine the ideas that dominate Western culture in its principal forms, and we shall see that almost all of them reflect analytic foundations.

We shall discuss the social paradoxes that arose throughout the previous two gates, still on the social-ideological plane with which this entire part is concerned. In the next part these same points will be revisited on a more abstract philosophical level.

We shall see here the implications of the analytic position in many varied areas: beginning with its attitude toward values in general, continuing with particular values such as equality and individual rights, and then examining the attitude of proponents of the analytic position toward the spiritual dimensions of reality and toward religion.

At the end of this gate we shall discuss the cultural-political structure in Israel, which, as part of Western culture, also reflects the analytic basis of the outlook and modes of response of the elites leading Israeli society at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1: The Analytic-Synthetic Paradoxes in Western Culture

Introduction

In the third gate a picture was presented of a historical development that leads humanity from a childish-dogmatic stage, through a rationalist adolescent stage that ends at a skeptical crossroads. From that crossroads we identified two ways of entering the third stage—maturity: an analytic-postmodern way, and a synthetic one. Western culture chose the postmodern option, and in recent years one can discern first signs of a dialectical maturity that combines analytic and synthetic modes of thought. At present these have still not crystallized, and at times they appear in rather ridiculous forms under the label of the “New Age.”

This picture created certain paradoxes. We mentioned that communism, which is ostensibly the left pole on the West’s ideological-social map, has extremely right-wing characteristics in our terminology. On the one hand, it advocates total equality, an ideal that, as noted, characterizes the Left, or analyticity. On the other hand, in practice it holds that there is an absolute truth, and it subordinates the individual, even against his will, to ideology and the social idea—conduct that specifically characterizes those of a synthetic outlook. We also mentioned that these paradoxes do not characterize only the communist pole, and we shall see this in greater detail in the present gate and the next one.

In this gate we shall focus on the postmodern age, that is, the period beginning after the middle of the twentieth century. We shall see the analytic-synthetic struggle as it is expressed in our present world. This struggle leads to the contradictions mentioned above, both in the communist pole of the West and in its democratic-liberal and capitalist sectors.

“Politically Correct”

We shall begin the discussion with the liberal-democratic outlook that is increasingly taking over the world. One of the central results of the Western conception of equality and pluralism is the democratic conception. Usually this outlook is regarded as based on the recognition that all human beings are equal, or at least possess equal rights. As I argued above, this conception is based on the feeling often expressed in the saying: “Everyone has their own truth.” This is an analytic outlook that holds that we have no way to decide who is more right or better, and therefore everyone must be given equal expression.

There are democratic conceptions that regard this form of government as a necessary evil, or as the optimal mode of conduct so long as unanimity has not been achieved in society—a state that is sometimes itself regarded as undesirable. It is important to note that we are speaking here about democracy as a worldview. Our concern here is ideological democracy, one that sees democratic government as a value from the outset, and not merely as a necessary evil.

In recent years an ideological tyranny based on this conception has been developing within the democratic world. Anyone who expresses a non-democratic position is denounced and banished from respectable society, as though he had violated some sacred metaphysical axiom. Some call this “the religion of democracy.”[^1] It is enough to tell someone that his words contradict democracy in order to reject them out of hand.

In a broader sense as well, beyond the political-governmental one, anyone who dares express a non-egalitarian position in any sense is condemned in the harshest terms as a “fascist” or a “chauvinist,” someone who must be dealt with by appropriate means. Anyone who dares claim that women are not equal to men, or that homosexuality is a disease, or that not all human races possess equal talents—even if only on the basis of scientific research—is accused of reactionary tendencies.[^2] On most of the West’s major platforms, research that points in such directions does not receive publication at all. By contrast, studies that argue for some basic equality receive resonance, funding, and publication, even when their ideological bias is obvious to all. I am not trying to claim that only one side attempts to bias scientific research in its preferred direction; I mean only to point out that such attempts at bias are not treated symmetrically. A new religion—or a new absolute truth—is taking over the liberal world: equality.

The accepted term for this phenomenon—like the phenomenon itself—is imported from the United States: “politically correct” (P.C.). Today one must not speak in a way that is not “correct”—or, more precisely, conformist—from a political-social standpoint, which usually means that speech must not harm the equal standing of any group or person. Even those who are not explicit adherents of political correctness—which is a hallmark of postmodernism—behave in accordance with it at one level or another, whether they wish to or not. There are things that today one simply may not say, even among people who do not identify themselves as members of the postmodern sect.

There are voices that still attempt to point to differences among human beings, but no one will try to draw practical conclusions from them in the direction of preference. Women must be fighter pilots, and must be employed in every field, even if they are less suited to it. Every partner, including a homosexual partner, is entitled to the same treatment and rights as a heterosexual partner, and so on. This liberal terror is based on the analytic conception that there is no absolute truth, and therefore all are equal. Any claim of inequality encounters instinctive opposition. This is not a substantive objection to the claim itself—which would in itself be positive and desirable—but opposition to the very fact that someone is trying to make such a claim.

In decision-making, as is well known, when information is lacking, decisions are made on statistical grounds. These rest on the assumption that all possibilities whose probability is unknown carry equal weight. In exactly the same way, in the analytic world, which insists that no claim has objective warrant—this, as noted, is the proposed interpretation of the emptiness of the secular-left wagon, the emptiness of the analytic—the necessary conclusion is that there must be equality among all ideologies, among all creatures, and among all groups and population types. There are no differences in intelligence between different races or peoples, even if studies show this statistically, while of course recognizing the existence of statistical “tails.” Even where there are differences that are hard to ignore, such as the fact that men tend to be, and are better suited than women for, certain occupations, speculations are immediately raised attributing these differences to social discrimination and long-standing oppression. Such assertions are not considered speculative and require no substantiation. They are “scientific facts” not open to challenge.[^3]

Before our astonished eyes a kind of new “Copernican revolution” is taking place. Equality, which arises from the inability to decide who is right and which does not allow one to claim anything—or at least to examine synthetic claims—has itself become a binding dogma that is subject to no examination and open to no challenge. It is both a scientific truth and a supreme value.[^4]

In the fourth gate we saw that analyticity ought to lead to a social-ideological monadology, that is, to total analytic pluralism. Here we see that analyticity itself has turned into a sacred synthetic principle, for whose sake it is legitimate, and even desirable, to act coercively. When equality is in danger, there is usually no trace to be found of the common slogans about tolerance and pluralism.[^5]

Synthetic Analyticity: “Bokononism”

One of the well-known objections to total philosophical skepticism points out that the skeptical thesis itself is not in doubt for its proponents. At that point skeptics usually admit—at least those among them who possess intellectual honesty—that skepticism itself is also, for them, subject to doubt. This is, of course, a problematic claim that requires extensive clarification on the philosophical plane. If such a skeptic does not admit this, then he must admit that his skepticism is incomplete, since the skeptical principle itself is, for him, certain. If so, why can other principles not also be regarded by some people as certain? This objection pulls the rug out from under extreme skeptical argumentation.

On the social-ideological plane, however, this intellectual honesty is usually absent. The absence of absolute truth is itself established as the one absolute truth that may not—or at least must not—be questioned.

This is in fact a picture of the same paradox to which we pointed at the beginning of the previous gate, where we saw how the analytic thinker, who claims that everyone has their own truth, proceeds to act as someone with a synthetic position. He too establishes his own dogma, according to which coercive acts are morally illegitimate. This conclusion is the opposite of the one common among those with a genuinely synthetic position. They, as we noted, often claim that in certain cases coercion is permitted, reasonable, and even desirable.

This fact is connected to the paradox described here, which points to the inconsistency of the analytic approach, which in this context operates in synthetic ways. Analyticity tends to fix the analytic principle—that there is no absolute truth—into a claim that is itself treated as an absolute truth, almost religious in character, and certainly objective and binding. The process itself is paradoxical on the logical-philosophical plane, and therefore its social-ideological outcome is paradoxical as well. In the next part we shall discuss the philosophical roots of this process.

In the previous gate we saw that the analytic thinker cannot be open-minded in the way he usually presents himself—and perhaps even truly sees himself. Here we see that not only is he not open-minded; he even tries to impose analyticity itself, in a completely intolerant and non-pluralistic way, on those who hold synthetic approaches.

This phenomenon, which we shall encounter again later on, is reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Bokononism.” In his book Cat’s Cradle,[^6] Vonnegut describes, satirically, a new religion whose prophet—or god—is called “Bokonon.” It is a parody of religion, of its obligations, and of God, created by inventing an imaginary god and describing the obligation to worship him. Bokonon is the god of the religion of godlessness. In our context, Bokononism is the fixation of the absence of values as the one and only binding value. One could say that the phenomena we have described in the Western world, in both its parts—the communist and the capitalist—are precisely Bokononism, except that this time it is not satire. It is reality itself, which quite literally surpasses imagination.

At the beginning of that book, after the declaration “Nothing in this book is true,” the following commandment is cited from The Books of Bokonon (1:5):

“Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”

Democracy and equality, in our parable, are foma.[^7]

Loss of Certainty at the Root of Ideological Paradoxes: On the Mixture of Hellenism and Religiosity

Before the first shoots of postmodernism had ripened, when the West still believed in the great ideologies, there was no less coercion and fanaticism—and at times much more—than that practiced today by holders of synthetic ideologies. The cases of McCarthyism in twentieth-century America are well known. And in Israel as well there were the cutting of sidelocks and struggles between parties in the early days of the state and before its establishment, which prevented people from earning a living solely because of their political-ideological views.

Now, however, when everyone has already “understood” that there is no room for firm and binding ideologies, and we are in the midst of the postmodern age, one might have expected coercion to disappear. Yet before our eyes the process of political correctness is taking place, like a new Copernican revolution.

Moreover, as we mentioned in the previous gate, even today there is a threshold of tolerance that is hardly ever challenged. No sane person would allow his child—or anyone close to him over whom he has influence—to experiment with addictive drugs or with other physical dangers merely because perhaps there is nothing wrong with it and “everyone has their own truth.” That is, everywhere there is a limit to tolerance and openness, something that hints at the existence of some synthetic layer in every person. If so, there is in fact no true analytic thinker at all. The whole question is only where the dividing line lies between truths that are certain and those that are not.

The West, in its current condition, is in a transitional stage, a stage that combines modernism and postmodernism.[^8] At present, claims that belong to both these positions are heard simultaneously, voiced by different people or bodies. Modernism is already in a state of the death of God, but it is not yet willing to draw all the conclusions from that. People still have a tendency to leave some truths standing. A world completely empty of certainty is a very frightening thing, and people are not inclined to face it head-on.

On the other hand, in recent years we have witnessed the entry of skeptical, postmodern arguments into the Western cultural arena. As noted, they are still intertwined with arguments belonging to the previous age, but they already play an important role. This is the ripening of the secular-left approach and a more courageous drawing of conclusions than previous generations were willing to undertake. This approach realizes the Nietzschean scenario: if God is dead, the possibility of any certainty dies with Him. Thus all the modernist ideas are in fact shattered. Modernism, which lives by the contradiction that God is dead while still believing in the existence of alternative certain criteria, carries within itself the seeds of postmodernism.

It appears that in coming generations the implications of the loss of certainty will become increasingly sharp, as can already be seen today. In the same way, one can see even in Israel the transition from the generation of the state’s founding and shortly thereafter—a generation with an ardent Zionist, modernist worldview—to the current generation, which is more post-Zionist, alienated, and cynical in character. This does not stem from a decline in the moral level of human beings; perhaps the opposite is true: people today are willing courageously to draw the conclusions that their ideological forebears ought to have drawn in their time. If there is no certainty and no religion, the sword of doubt is directed equally against every ideal. This is precisely the Nietzschean scenario.

In light of the historical perspective presented in the third gate, one may say that Western culture is under the mixed influence of Judaism and Hellenism. In note 14 in the third gate we pointed out that Hellenism is the root of skepticism and analytic thought. By contrast, Judaism constitutes a root of synthetic thought—or at least a contemporary representative of the mythic roots of the synthetic. In the note to that note, we pointed out that Hellenism, which was wholly analytic and lacked any concept of divinity as a root of certainty, could not survive and remain viable. It was the Roman Empire that spread Hellenism after a religious, Christian worldview had already been mixed into it.

This mixture of analytic Hellenism and synthetic religion continues to make its mark to this day. Even now, the analytic conception is spread in ways that mix into it religious ideas, usually Christian—and especially Protestant—ones.[^9] Genuine modernism is a synthetic phenomenon, for it believes in objective criteria of progress. The problem is that a modernism based on analytic thought, such as Western modernism, which is only a sophisticated development of Greek analyticity, is nothing more than an illusion of certainty destined to shatter, just as Nietzsche foresaw. All absolute truths are bound to reveal themselves as relative. Only a true modernism, based on genuine and not illusory certainty, can survive stably.

The ability of the West to hold on to modernist ideas, even though the basis for their existence disappeared with the “death of God,” stems from the inertia of its religious sources of influence.[^10] This is the chain of development that led to the paradoxes presented above. Capitalist liberalism, like the radical communist Left, driven by analytic motivations, must nevertheless leave some absolute synthetic truths in their world. It is difficult to live without great ideologies. This is both a psychological phenomenon and a result of the mixed influence of Judaism and Hellenism upon Western culture. As a result, statements about the absence of absolute and objective truth receive impressive names such as “liberalism,” “democracy,” “enlightenment,” “equality,” and so forth, and themselves become absolute and binding principles—almost “religious.”[^11]

Nothing prevents these pseudo-modernists, of all kinds, from continuing to cling to such values even in the postmodern or post-Zionist age, after their basis has been removed. As we shall see below, a value, by its very nature, cannot be grounded—and certainly not in a postmodern-analytic world. The analytic is empty, and yet the analytic West continues to cling to these anchors of certainty, which are slowly being exposed as an intellectual fiction with no philosophical basis—and one that cannot possibly have such a basis.

This process of exposure finds expression in a weariness with values. The root of this weariness is not moral degeneration, as various pulpit-preachers are wont to say. It is simply the consistent drawing of conclusions from the same premises that already existed in previous generations. People are no longer willing to cling to values that rest only on inertia. In fact, here we encounter a higher level of intellectual honesty than we saw in previous generations. Those generations, as noted, did not dare draw the skeptical conclusions entailed by the doctrine of the death of God. The modernist “death of God” is nothing but latent postmodernism, which is now coming from potentiality into actuality before our eyes.

There is an entire chain of characteristics of Western culture that are connected to one another through the present description. Some express analytic-postmodern elements, and some express synthetic-modernist elements—usually illusory ones. There are, of course, certain groups that are genuine modernists, but they resemble only externally the pseudo-modernism described here. These people belong to the synthetic side of the map and cooperate with analytic sectors only as a coalition against synthetic wings that are not to their liking.[^12]

To summarize: modernity in its accepted secular sense is an unstable ideological condition that is disappearing before our eyes. Modernity without a deep synthetic basis—usually religious—will necessarily become postmodernity, as Nietzsche described. This is in fact what is happening in the contemporary world in general, and in Israel in particular. Today there is a steadily increasing correlation between religion and nationalism, and between secularism and universalist outlooks. This direction indicates that the source of liberal-postmodern outlooks is philosophical and religious doubt; and, conversely, it follows that the only plausible source for a synthetic outlook is religious faith. Later on we shall point out that this process is also expressed in the fact that what is called the “secular Right” is disappearing from today’s socio-political map in Israel.

Additional Phenomena of Pseudo-Modernism

1. The sanctity of the human being. In Western culture, from the Enlightenment to the present, there is, seemingly without any logic, a blending of an almost mystical conception of the sanctity of the human being, of human life, and of human rights, with a scientific conception of the human being as a creature wholly belonging to nature. In the scientific worldview, the difference between the human being and the surrounding natural world is merely an expression of different evolutionary stages: the human being is a more sophisticated species of ape. Simultaneously, and in full harmony with that statement, the view prevails that the life and rights of this same sophisticated ape are sacred and may not be violated in any way and at almost no cost.[^13]

There are, of course, those who recognize this contradiction, and as a solution they propose moral ecology—eco-ethics—based on obligation toward everything around us, not only toward human beings: living things, and even inanimate objects. This stands in contrast to those who tried to base ecological concern solely on human interests.[^14] In any event, this approach does not yet seem dominant in Western thought. Again, these are the first shoots of postmodern conclusions emerging more honestly and directly from the womb of the pseudo-modernism that tended to deceive itself.

2. Reductionism. Another analytic phenomenon is the socio-psychological reductionism that is spreading throughout Western culture. Here there is expression of the assumption that a person—and especially a child, for example within the educational system—is not really responsible for his actions. This is the result of an evolutionary conception on the one hand, and an analytic one on the other. A person’s motives are determined by experiences and psychological processes he has undergone over the course of his life. The treatment of a disruptive child in the educational system increasingly moves in the direction of understanding and psychological, and at times medicinal, treatment, instead of the imposition of responsibility. Exaggerated psychologism[^15] stems from the conception of the human being as a creature belonging to nature, acting from motives and causes like everything else in the natural world around him.

This phenomenon is tied at the navel to analyticity as well. When there is no way to persuade a person not to disturb others, or to be considerate, because his premises are different, then one can only “treat” him.[^16] There are no binding values we are prepared to educate toward and demand from everyone. See the detailed discussion in the next gate. This is another facet of the fact that in an analytic world there can be no real openness and tolerance.

It seems that the scientific and historical study of social phenomena, and of ideas generally, is also usually conducted under reductionist assumptions. An ideology is examined in the crucible of scientific research in light of questions about the background from which it emerged. The study of the Talmud and of Jewish history as well—what is sometimes called the academic “Science of Judaism”—usually revolves around the background to the sages’ activity, and not around the substantive content of what they said. One discusses the background from which a given sage’s conception arose, and not what his ideological conception actually is. The hidden or explicit reason for this is that such a conception is regarded as his subjective property, and therefore not, in itself, a matter of public concern.

This is one of the foundations of the difference between the academic study of Torah and Jewish law and their study in the traditional study hall.[^17] The study hall attempts to learn from the sages, and not to dwell on their psychological or other motives, or on the background within and out of which they acted. These are regarded in the study hall as irrelevant. According to the analytic assumption, I cannot learn from a particular sage if my socio-cultural background differs from his. Everything is examined against the background of the period in which it was said or created. The study hall, by contrast, embodies a synthetic conception that believes in some level of context shared by all human societies.

Even in literary criticism and analysis, there is almost no attention today to the moral and value positions of the writer and of his heroes. Criticism—even when it does not define itself as postmodernist—focuses mainly on artistic, formal, or psychological aspects of the work. A. B. Yehoshua, in his book The Terrible Power of a Small Guilt, points precisely to this issue and tries to propose a synthetic alternative. He proposes moral criticism of literary works—that is, he commits a cardinal heresy. As Yehoshua himself writes in his introduction, the root of the distorted condition prevalent in literary criticism lies in the feeling that no one has the authority to judge morally and evaluatively people and worlds different from his own. On the principled level this is a postmodern position.[^18] Psychology replaces morality, principles, and values.

Psychologism in literary analysis, as well as reductionism in the historical analysis of scientific, moral, and other positions, stems from an attempt to detach the content of the positions and arguments under discussion from the existential plane and move it to an academic plane that imposes no obligation on the learner. He is interested only in knowing the sage’s views, not in learning from them. Put differently: to study about them, not them.[^19]

In the previous gate, two kinds of discussions between religious and secular people were presented. There I described a similar phenomenon of trying to shift the discussion to the academic plane, where there is no obligation to draw conclusions. As we saw, in the academic world one studies about ideas, not the ideas themselves. This is also the character of most attempts at religious-secular dialogue. There is no attempt to “learn” in the full sense, only to “learn about,” academically, so that Heaven forbid one side should influence the other.[^20]

Nietzsche, in his essay On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,[^21] discusses in detail the phenomenon of historical reductionism—see there especially chapters 5 and 7. He notes that the historical analysis of any phenomenon detaches it from life and makes it irrelevant. One should remember that Nietzsche is speaking against the background of his own period, which was the embodiment of modernism. Even then one could detect the first shoots of the analyticity that would grow extreme and come to fruition in the postmodern age. Nietzsche explains that the relation of any phenomenon to others, and the analysis of its similarities and differences with them, do not allow one to understand the phenomenon itself, or its principled relevance to life. In fact, this is the difference between scientific understanding and essential understanding of phenomena.

3. The barrenness of debates. We have seen that analyticity does not recognize the possibility of persuasion. Everyone has their own truth, in accordance with their own premises. It goes without saying that the endless debates in politics and the media, in Israel and in the West generally, are never resolved. No one expects anyone to be persuaded in an argument, or even to learn anything new. At the same time, the brawling—which is usually conducted purely for entertainment—is accompanied by talk about openness, pluralism, and the duty to listen to the other’s opinions.

The deep reason for all forms of “pop-politics” of this kind—see the previous gate and the note there—is not bad manners. There is a basic inability in an analytic world to listen and to be persuaded. This inability is rooted in a philosophical conception, not in poor table manners. There is no point in pretending that I am listening when I do not know how to do so, and do not believe in it or am not philosophically prepared for it. Everyone starts from different premises, and therefore there is no chance of a fruitful dialogue between the sides that will lead to a change in basic assumptions.

4. Alienation and violence. Continuing the previous point, it seems that analyticity is also the reason for the increase of alienation and violence in Western society. One example is the culture of political-media discourse discussed above, but the intention here is also actual physical violence, in its various forms. When one cannot conduct dialogue and try thereby to persuade the other—and that is the state of affairs in the analytic-postmodern world—frustrations are created. Western society contains an alienation that stems from the impossibility of creating a connection between people, and between worlds, except through conquest and cultural domination. This alienation also leads to violence.[^22]

5. The spiritual search. Another phenomenon belonging to this same family is the search for spirituality now widespread in Western society generally, and in Israel as well. This expresses an unquenched thirst for certainty in a cultural world in which certainty is greatly lacking. People place their trust in all sorts of charlatans and frauds whose entire ability lies in projecting a mystical atmosphere of certainty and of truth supposedly beyond all doubt. Many travel to Oriental and “primitive” cultures—in modernist terms—in order to find there a bit of syntheticity. This is the meaning of the “New Age,” which also finds expression in a very extensive and very marketable literature.

At the same time, the more consistent among the adherents of the analytic position accuse all holders of the synthetic approach of charlatanism. Absurdly enough, this accusation is pinned on them specifically because of those charlatans, whose status and popularity derive from the demand of postmodern Western skeptics for the commodity they supply: illusory certainty. Genuine syntheticity is not charlatanry at all. It is specifically bewildered analytic thinkers, who are unable to identify genuine spirituality, who bring about the flourishing of fake mysticism and charlatanry. This says nothing at all about genuine and rational syntheticity, which suffers specifically because of these phenomena from an image of charlatanistic mysticism.

Another phenomenon from the same family is the flourishing of astrology. There is no respectable newspaper that does not from time to time publish an interview with an astrologer, along with astrological predictions. These certainties, or these phenomena, have a far lower scientific basis than religious positions—if such things can be measured at all. The secret of their appeal is that they demand nothing in return for the certainty they provide, and hence their popularity, unlike religious faith, which also entails personal obligations.

In Israel of the 1980s and 1990s, almost every self-respecting army graduate had to go through some kind of questing journey, often accompanied by spiritual, or pseudo-spiritual, experiences. At times this tendency finds satisfaction through various mystical cults that flourish in this period like mushrooms after the rain. The low spiritual level of modern man, as described above in the chapter dealing with the decline of the generations, finds its spiritual satisfaction in shallow pseudo-spiritual experiences, most of which are probably nothing more than illusions.

6. Science. Science also plays an important role in this system of survival. In a world where there is no objective system of coordinates, very many people recognize science as an objective and necessary mode of cognition of reality. There are philosophical challenges to this, of course, but society as a whole does not dare deny the last means to certainty still left in its hands. Any statement, however foolish, that wraps itself in a “scientific” cloak is surrounded by an aura of sanctity.[^23] All the various systems of knowledge—even those that are plainly not truly scientific in character, such as psychology, education, and other similar fields—try to resemble science in their methodology and their image, in order to enjoy that same atmosphere of respect, awe, and sanctity from which science benefits. The expression “the Church of Science,” used by sociologists of science, captures this atmosphere well.

This is another facet of the same postmodern phenomenon that we called above “Bokononism.” The analytic person needs an anchor of certainty in his disintegrating world. Science willingly supplies it. It should be noted and emphasized that science itself rests on a synthetic system saturated with unjustifiable premises. But analytic thinkers, captive to the Bokononist spell, do not think at all about the general synthetic meaning involved in viewing science as a path to truth.

7. Art. Another phenomenon that can be pointed to is the growing place occupied by art in modern culture. Art holds so dominant and important a place because it provides an arena in which there is legitimacy for expressing the subjective, for being impressed by works, for making claims and responding to them, without commitment to rigid and objective rules.

This is a substitute for synthetic thinking, which is not legitimate in the philosophy of the contemporary Western world. Existentialism too, in its various forms, is often nothing more than a similar kind of outlet—the result of despair over philosophies of great and objective truths.

One can say generally that the ideas of postmodernism, which are so essential to the contemporary world, are discussed more in the context of art and criticism than in philosophical contexts. In that setting one can say anything absurd with an air of learned importance, without any commitment to its content, its meaning, or its consistency.[^24]

In this framework, art itself also undergoes a process of deconstruction, a breaking of rules. One of the best-known heralds of postmodernism is Derrida, who founded the school of deconstruction, centered mainly on literary criticism and on the criticism of texts in general. The hermeneutic problem—the difficulty involved in a reader’s attempt to understand the author’s intention, just as a viewer of a work of art tries to understand the creator’s intentions—has disappeared. Derrida determines that there is no need to understand at all. There are likewise no rules for creating or evaluating a work of art. The reader and interpreter determine the rules. They themselves become both the measured object and the measuring rod.

Many in the Western world identify spirituality with art. Treating the artistic experience as a lofty spiritual experience—even if we speak of classical art—amounts to lowering spiritual concepts to a level that the spiritually diminished Western person can recognize. He is unfamiliar with genuinely spiritual forms of cognition or perception, and therefore, from ignorance, identifies the spiritual with the artistic.

The root of the confusion lies in the fact that every experience, of course, takes place in the spiritual part of the human being, and in that sense every experience is indeed spiritual. In that banal sense, even the cognition of facts, or the enjoyment of chocolate, is spiritual at the end of the process. But even within the world of experiences there is a divine-spiritual part, and a lower part. In Judaism, spirit is connected to the intellect, not to what medieval literature calls “the imaginative faculty.” The imaginative faculty, associated with art and imagination, is characteristic of Hellenism. It was the Greeks who emphasized imagination, linked to aesthetics and to externality in general. That is the source of Greek experience and Greek spirituality. In Judaism, by contrast, the common source of spiritual experience is precisely the intellect. At this point the West chose to draw nourishment specifically from Hellenism. In the West, spirituality is connected to imagination—art, ecstatic experiences—and not to intellect.

Summary: The Dual Polarity at the Roots of Western Culture

Let us now summarize what has been said so far. We have seen that the paradoxes described above are found throughout the West, in all its sectors—in communism and capitalism, in socialism and liberalism. Their common root is that the human being is a creature that cannot live without certainty. This is not merely a psychological claim, but a philosophical claim to the effect that every person has some recognition of such objective truth, even if he insists on denying it. Every human being is synthetic inwardly, even—and perhaps especially—if he declares total analyticity. I am not reducing philosophy to psychology; on the contrary: this psychological fact, which makes it impossible to live without certainty, is not a basis but specifically a derivative of the philosophical fact that each of us senses intuitively—that such truth really exists. Absurdly enough, the “liberal religion,” and the equality at its base, are the true opium of the masses.

Therefore, a person who tries to be postmodern and deny every kind of certainty is condemned, as Nietzsche wrote, either to collapse or to finding certainty for himself in an indirect, strange, and esoteric form. The postmodern world arrived at its fake concepts of certainty through the Copernican revolution, or the “Bokononism,” described above. Equality, founded on the inability to know anything, became necessary knowledge. The nonexistence of absolute and certain truth was itself established as such a truth. There is no need to describe how, in the communist world, the values of irreligion and equality themselves became a kind of binding religion. Thus modernism survives in the age of the death of God. Thus too, in exactly the same way, were born the “religion of democracy” and the “civil religion” in the Western-secular world.

We pointed out that Western culture, in all its sectors, contains a mixture of analytic ideas rooted in Hellenism with synthetic ideas, usually repressed, rooted in religion. These make possible a hold on a false modernity, giving the feeling that certainty still exists even after the “death of God.” Analyticity is expressed in the academization of one’s relation to the other, in place of a relation of involvement and understanding “from within.” We saw that analyticity is expressed in alienation and violence, in reductionism of all kinds, in an exaggerated attitude toward science and art, in an inability to conduct real and open dialogue, in the development of eco-ethics, and so forth.

On the other hand, synthetic influence is expressed in the attraction toward spirituality—sometimes fake spirituality—in humanism, which has its roots in the modernist age but does not manage to disappear along with it, and which grants “sanctity” to human life and rights even against the background of evolutionary conceptions. Such influence can also be seen in attempts to impose the analytic principles themselves, what we called “Bokononism,” or, somewhat cynically, “the Copernican revolution”—that is, the fixation of pluralism, which represents uncertainty, into a new certainty. From this grow the “civil religion” and the “religion of democracy,” and above all the liberal terror called “political correctness.” All of these are phenomena synthetic in their essence.

These two factors of influence live together, despite the basic contradiction between them, only by virtue of the deep inner recognition of every human being that there really are synthetic truths, or certainties. In every person there is an aspiration toward the transcendent, which cannot be dismissed as a mere psychological illusion. This aspiration stems from a deep intuitive sense that such a transcendent layer really does exist. It is hard to believe that there exists any person who is a true skeptic, or a genuine postmodernist. There are certainly quite a few who declare themselves such, but that stems from various motives, and at times from errors in self-understanding.

This naturally raises a question: if in truth everyone is in practice synthetic in outlook, why should we define the analytic figure, which is only theoretical, and criticize it? Is this not simply setting up a straw man on the intellectual firing range so that we may attack it? We dealt briefly with this question in the introduction to this part, and we shall continue to discuss it in the next gate, and even more so in the tenth gate. Briefly, we may say here only that there are some who perceive themselves as such a “dummy,” even if in truth this is not their real condition, and therefore it is important to examine the logical status of this “dummy.” This may help liberate Western man from a distorted self-understanding. Beyond that, it is a theoretical pole—or archetype—that constitutes one of the roots within each of us, and therefore it is important to discuss it in its own right as well.

Chapter 2: Values

Introduction

As we have seen, despite the analytic basis of Western culture, the modern Western world adopts values that seem, ostensibly, like synthetic truths. In order to discuss the “Copernican revolution” that turns uncertainty into supreme certainty, we shall take a closer look at the values advocated by holders of analytic approaches. The general labels that can be given to these values are “democracy” and “equality.” To deepen the discussion further on the meta-ideological plane, we shall now examine the concept of a “value” itself, and its relation to the concepts of “democracy” and “equality.” As stated, these two currently constitute the central value-foundations of contemporary Western society.

What Is a “Value”?

Yeshayahu Leibowitz often refers to the concept of “value.” In his book Faith, History, and Values,[^25] there appears an article discussing the right of a sick woman to request and to carry out disconnection from life-support machines. In the course of his discussion there, Leibowitz writes as follows:

The moment I ask: why is it forbidden to take the life of a human being?—that prohibition loses its force, because it cannot be justified. Basic principles of value, the very concepts of good and evil, obligation and prohibition, are not anchored in reality at all and cannot be rationally grounded. Their validity derives from human agreement, and that agreement is required neither by reality nor by logic; it stems from our desire to uphold that principle.

The greatest minds in human thought have already pointed this out, both among Jews and among the nations. Here I shall mention only two: the greatest believer, greatest legal decisor, and greatest thinker in Judaism—on the one hand; and one of the greatest thinkers in Christianity—on the other. The interval between them was five hundred years, and they lived in worlds vastly different in place, framework, and intellectual and emotional orientation. I quote:

“By the intellect man distinguishes between truth and falsehood, but good and evil belong to accepted opinions and not to intelligibles” (accepted opinions = what is conventionally accepted among human beings), “and in what is necessary [that is, what exists in objective reality] there is no good and evil at all, only truth and falsehood.” Thus speaks Maimonides in Guide of the Perplexed, Part I, chapter 2.

And now the second citation, translated into Hebrew: “There is nothing in the world that is just on grounds of reason… Custom determines justice, which has no other reason than the fact that it is accepted. That is the secret of its authority. The attempt to ground it in principle—that is, in logical reason—destroys it.” These are Pascal’s words.

The right of a person to live is a non-rational principle. Since it is non-rational, it cannot be rationally delimited—that is, one cannot set limits or boundaries to it. Let us take a counterexample, and from the affirmative we shall learn the negative. The prohibition against driving in a built-up area at more than fifty kilometers per hour has a rational basis: driving faster than this endangers the driver and endangers others. This law is not a postulate; it follows by inference from a certain reality and from objective data. Since its basis is rational, it can also be rationally delimited—that is, one can examine how far its validity extends and when it lapses. For example, it may be that this law is intended for daytime hours, when traffic is heavy and the danger of collision is very great, whereas at night, when the danger of collision between cars is small, perhaps the prohibition can be cancelled, or a driver may allow himself not to be so strict about it. So much for a law that has a rational basis. But if a law has no rational basis and is an absolute postulate, I cannot discuss the possibility of limiting it and say: up to here it is valid; from this point onward it is not valid.

If someone asks me: why should we not pull the plug on Karen’s respirator and let that poor girl die, since her life has no value and she is a terrible burden on her surroundings?—if I am asked this question, I answer the questioner: why should I not eliminate you as well, if in my eyes your life has no value either, and not only that, but you are a great nuisance to me?

To the question: why is it forbidden for me to eliminate you if your life has no value in my eyes?—there is no answer except that I am not permitted to eliminate you even if your life has no value, and even if your existence is a nuisance to me and to the world, because the postulate that one may not take a human life is not susceptible to rational delimitation. If that postulate protects you, and therefore I may not eliminate you, then it protects that girl as well. Logically, I cannot say that the prohibition against killing a human being applies to me only regarding you, whereas assisting in that girl’s death does not count as killing.

This long quotation exhausts the basic discussion of the question what a “value” is. A value is always an end, never a means to something outside itself, and for precisely that reason it cannot be justified. The value itself is what provides the justification for actions intended to attain it. A value that has a justification is not a value but a means for attaining some other value. Value-based, or moral, reasons are usually structured as an explanation of what goal—that is, what value—we shall attain through a given action. For that reason, one can present reasons only with regard to actions intended to attain values, not with regard to the values themselves. To ask for a reason for values is, in effect, to ask that they be presented as means to attain other values. Such a request is analogous to asking for a justification of the basic laws of logic. Every justification itself uses the rules of logic; it is therefore clear that one cannot demand a justification for the laws of logic themselves. See further discussion of this topic in the third part.[^26]

It should be noted here that Leibowitz interprets the intention of Maimonides and Pascal in a conventionalist way—namely, that value is determined by human agreement. This is an approach that specifically allows values to be changed by renewed agreement. It seems that the original intention of Maimonides—and perhaps also of Pascal—is human recognition, not human agreement. It is something imposed upon them.[^27] This is especially plausible in light of the fact that both thinkers quoted here held a religious worldview.

Are There Values in an Analytic Worldview? Democracy, Pluralism, and Equality

Viewed in this way, the very concept of “value” seems to be something that adherents of an analytic position cannot accept at all. And even if they do accept it, this can only be on a personal basis that ought not to bind others. The concept of “value” contradicts the analytic conception, inasmuch as it posits binding and absolute content, almost religious in character, and certainly with no proof. An analytic approach can only determine empirically that if one wishes to attain a certain goal, the recommended way to attain it will be this or that. The analytic thinker has nothing to say regarding the goals—the values—themselves. It is clear that within an analytic conception there is no room for demanding that others act according to any binding values whatsoever.

In such a state of pluralism, in which different value conceptions of societies or individuals live side by side, one must stabilize a framework that preserves this state of affairs. As we saw in the words of Sternhell and Bechler cited above, within an analytic society there are no brakes against violence and immorality. Thus, in a “Bokononist” fashion, the democratic framework was created. In such a framework, the only offense that exists is injury to the other—sometimes even indirectly—and failure to recognize his right to act as he wishes.

It is clear that democracy and pluralism are only frameworks and means that allow each individual or group to live according to its own values. From Leibowitz’s analysis it follows that pluralism and consideration for the other and for his rights are not values at all. These are only means by which each person can realize his goals, which are his real values. As we saw, means are never values. According to this perspective, the value for whose sake democracy, equality, human and civil rights, and the like were created is in fact the aggregate of the subjective values of each individual. Put differently: the central value—and perhaps the only one—is simply the absence of values itself. The ultimate goal is that no one should interfere with another’s doing whatever he wants and sees fit to do.

We thus return to the claim raised above: Western society, in that Bokononist “Copernican revolution,” has turned the assertion that there are no values into the central value, and in fact into the only value that has binding significance for everyone. This is the fixation of the anti-value called “pluralism”—or the meta-value called “democracy”—as the one and only binding value.

This is the paradoxical meaning of the widespread contemporary attitude that uncertainty and hesitation are themselves valuable states. Thus too was born the “religion of democracy.” The need for certainty created a reality in which many people are prepared to fight for this valuelessness, investing great resources and enormous energies. As noted, even coercion is considered legitimate for the sake of pluralism and equality. This is the Western analogue of the communist paradox of a society prepared to kill and torture millions of individuals for “their own welfare.” The entire Western world, both the capitalist West and the communist East, turned placing the individual at the center into a collective value to which all individuals are subordinated.

This phenomenon, in which holders of the analytic position relate to pluralism in a synthetic and coercive way, expresses itself in various forms. In contemporary Western society we find binding “values,” sometimes even when they are not accepted by the majority of the public. Examples abound in Israel today as well. The courts and the cultural elite teach the public and its elected representatives, often against their will, what is right and what is not. If there are non-democratic tendencies, they are outlawed, even when they pose no real danger to any part of society. One can take this description to an extreme and say that if a situation arose in which the majority of the public did not want democracy, the minority would impose its view on the majority—as long as it could. Examples can be found in Muslim countries where non-democratic parties were democratically elected. In a state such as Algeria, the will of the majority was rejected in favor of the holier truth of democracy. For a moment one may forget that democracy was fundamentally intended only to express the will of the majority of citizens.

For the same reasons, a state governed by Jewish law, for example, is rejected out of hand, without any substantive reference or public discussion. This happens only because it appears to people to lack a democratic character. In such a case there is no need at all to address the matter substantively. Religious views are not presented before the “enlightened” and “open” public because they are dangerous. It is enough to say that they are non-democratic—“benighted,” or “clerical”—for them to be dismissed out of hand.

One may say that although, in the analytic approach, the attitude toward concepts is characterized by conventionalism, the cluster of concepts “democracy,” “equality,” “pluralism,” and the like has become a set of magic terms, about which everyone agrees that they possess substance and not only form. The attitude toward them is essentialist. To say that a certain act or opinion is not democratic is not merely to make a descriptive linguistic-analytic statement. It is a real claim—with a negative connotation, of course. Such a claim alone suffices to reject the position and determine that it is illegitimate. This phenomenon is reminiscent of religious attitudes toward some claim as “heresy.” In a religious society, that alone is sufficient to reject it out of hand.

A situation like this—as in Israeli democracy today—means that the democratic framework within which we act for the sake of values comes to replace the values themselves.

Logic would dictate that in a situation where there are no values at all in the classical sense, there is no point in fighting for the individual’s right to live according to his own understanding. After all, that understanding itself has no meaningful or objective content; in essence it is only a subjective caprice. Why, in such a case, fight for the right of a person to realize such meaningless caprices? Without contents of real significance, the framework that enables life according to those contents also has no right to exist.

A modernist such as Rousseau could agree or disagree with another person’s assertions and at the same time be prepared to die for his right to say and express his opinion. But the contemporary postmodern analytic thinker, who cannot agree or disagree with any opinion, has no reason to die for the other’s right to express it. To the best of his understanding, that opinion has no real significance at all.

Here it is worth noting once again a partly parallel problem on the left side of the social map. Communism too, which ostensibly places values and society above the individual, as we have already remarked, does so only as an intermediate stage until all individuals attain the longed-for welfare and equality. In light of what has been said here, one should add that the entire content of communist values also deals only with frameworks. These are socio-economic values meant to allow the individual to live decently on the material plane. Communism does not deal at all with what that individual is supposed to do in order to reach his perfection once the hoped-for utopian social-economic condition arrives and makes that possible. Here too we encounter a struggle to provide each individual with suitable conditions to live according to his own understanding, while simultaneously holding that this understanding has no meaning or value.[^28]

In Western society there is almost no education toward values. The common use of that concept today refers to education for democracy, pluralism, and individual rights. Education toward values in the classical sense is steadily disappearing from the map. There is no education toward “old-fashioned” values such as honoring parents, gratitude, humility, and even helping others.[^29] Even if someone were to claim that these values are not important in his eyes and that he has other values, let him kindly point to them. Even if such a person succeeds in pointing to some value in which he believes, he will immediately find himself exposed as someone not faithful to the analytic path.[^30]

There are occasionally those who speak of values such as originality, creativity, or self-realization. These are, in essence, values pertaining to the individual, subjective in character. It does not seem plausible that anyone would propose sanctions against someone who does not uphold such “values.” That is, there is no value-demand here in the strict sense of the term. It is more a recommendation for a satisfying way of life than a moral requirement. If so, despite their name, these are not values in the moral sense, but values in the formal sense—that is, ends and not means. In this sense aesthetic values are also values. As stated, the only value for which there is any demand in the strict sense is democracy and the preservation of the other’s rights—usually in the passive sense of non-interference and non-obstruction, not in the active sense of helping the other, involvement, and the like. Values in the broader sense do not exist at all in contemporary Western society.

Once Again, the Empty Wagon

From the description here it follows that a human being lives for no real purpose—at least objectively, even if he himself feels that his life has meaning, value, or purpose—and at the same time the value of life soars to the heavens and receives an importance that appears manifestly disproportionate. It is hard to be persuaded that the pacifism of various kinds that is taking over today stems from a loftier conception of the value or sanctity of life. It is more plausible to see it as expressing a view that there simply cannot be any value for which one should, or ought, to sacrifice life. That is, this is not necessarily an intensification of the value and sanctity of life; rather, it is more an analytic abolition of all other values.

The criticism here is not meant to say that this society is less moral in its conduct, but that it cannot be “value-based” in the substantive sense of that term. Once again we have returned to the emptiness of the secular wagon. Not in the demagogic sense that these are immoral people, or inferior in some way. As was already clarified above, the intention is emptiness of values on the moral-theoretical plane, and emptiness of certainty on the intellectual plane. Within an analytic worldview it is impossible to ground behavior validly on values, because the analytic is empty of values, just as it is empty of every other certainty. By contrast, the behavior of modern society is, at least in some respects, decidedly moral. That itself is yet another expression of the paradox to which we are pointing here.

Despite everything said here—and perhaps precisely because of it—it is important to note that there is a sense that the world is “progressing” in the moral sense. It is already harder to carry out atrocities in the enlightened world without international reaction, whether these acts are committed between states, and sometimes even when they are committed within a state. There are organizations that monitor the condition of human and civil rights in various countries and warn of problems in this area. There is no doubt that such a situation is a substantial improvement over ancient practice, according to which the ruler—or any other powerful force—did whatever he could to his subjects, and certainly to his enemies. In the past there were only power struggles; today there are also moral and international norms that dictate a framework for such struggles.

This is indeed progress on the practical plane, but on the intellectual plane it has no support. Intellectually, it is based on the absurdity of fixing the anti-value as a supreme value. In other words, these are remnants of the ancient and “primitive” synthetic world, which, when they appear within an analytic world that has strong interests in preserving equality, lead the laws of morality to coincide with those interests. This is the basis for the utilitarian conception of morality, which is very widespread in the pragmatic Western world of our time. It is true that on the practical-moral plane—if one looks at social and political behavior—our current world seems incomparably better than earlier periods, although at the individual level there is much room to doubt this. The emptiness lies on the intellectual-theoretical plane, not necessarily on the practical one.

This process of improvement can also be seen as a compensatory reaction. Since there is no value-guarantee that immoral acts will not be committed, because there are no binding rules—see the two quotations from Bechler and Sternhell in chapter 3 of the fourth gate—an irrational conception has developed that fixes commitment to pluralism. This is an alternative and necessary means of preserving social order, and in fact the possibility of living at all. In this framework one can also understand the attitude that borders on sanctity toward law, or toward the rule of law. When a society has no shared values, it is forced to institutionalize a formal system that will prevent the development of anarchy. The real role of legal and democratic systems is to ensure that no values arise anywhere that will be perceived as binding, because then the dangerous situation might arise of an attempt to impose them upon the public.

In summary, the claim here is not that the wagon is empty morally, but specifically intellectually. The claim is that there is no intellectual basis for this moral progress, even if that progress itself certainly exists and is certainly positive.

The synthetic alternative to this emptiness—the “full wagon”—will be discussed below in the fourth part.

Chapter 3: Implications for the Attitude toward the Spiritual Dimension of Reality

We described the West as possessing a culture that is analytic at its foundation, even if at times it dresses itself in modernist clothing. The East, by contrast, represents the synthetic form of thought. In The Wizard of Oz there is a situation in which Dorothy arrives from Kansas, together with her house carried by the cyclone, in the Land of Oz. Immediately after landing she meets the Witch of the North and says to her:[^31]

“Aunt Em has told me that the witches were all dead—years and years ago.”

“Who is Aunt Em?” inquired the little old woman.

“She is my aunt who lives in Kansas, where I came from.”

The Witch of the North seemed to think for a time, with her head bowed and her eyes upon the ground. Then she looked up and said, “I do not know where Kansas is, for I have never heard that country mentioned before. But tell me, is it a civilized country?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Dorothy.

“Then that accounts for it. In the civilized countries I believe there are no witches left, nor wizards, nor sorceresses, nor magicians. But, you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off from all the rest of the world. Therefore we still have witches and wizards amongst us.”

This passage illustrates very well the cultural difference between East and West. It also seems intended to describe ironically the Western sense of superiority—“civilized countries” as opposed to the “primitives.”

The Western world generally does not recognize the existence of spiritual entities, and at times does not even recognize the spiritual dimension within the human being himself. A scientific approach is often perceived as a substitute for “superstitious” beliefs in spiritual matters. The struggle in biology against vitalism—the view that in a living body there is something beyond physico-chemical substances and processes—reflects this tendency.

A similar struggle is waged against teleology in science. Teleological explanations are purposive explanations, such as: a certain part of an animal’s or a human being’s body is built in a certain way in order to function in a certain way. By contrast, modern science advocates causal explanations, such as: this organ is structured this way because it came into being in such-and-such a manner. Teleology appears chiefly in biology and at times also in physics, and the struggle against it reflects that same analytic tendency.[^32] Vitalism and teleology are today regarded as irrational approaches, even mystical ones.

In the Western world the positivist approach still rules by inertia, recognizing the existence only of things susceptible to precise description and definition. By contrast, as I already noted above, the peoples whom modernists classify as primitive actually live these spiritual dimensions very intensely.

There is also a perspective from the Torah tradition on this state of affairs. The war against idolatry waged by the Torah and described in detail in the Bible is perceived by modern man as an anachronistic war against primitive beliefs that we are incapable of understanding. The real reason for this is not that such things do not exist, but rather the mode of perception of Western man, which is derived from his analyticity. Whatever I do not see and do not understand, or cannot define precisely, does not exist. Nahmanides, in his commentary on the portion Aḥarei Mot (Leviticus 16:8), attributes this epistemology to the Greek—Aristotle—and writes:

I cannot explain further, for we would need to silence the mouths of those who seek wisdom in nature and are drawn after the Greek, who denied every matter except what was perceptible to him, and arrogantly presumed—he and his wicked disciples—that everything his speculation did not attain is not true.

It is true that there is no scientific recognition of this kind of thing. Usually the very few attempts to investigate the existence of spiritual phenomena by scientific method—for example in parapsychology: psychokinesis, telepathy, and the like—fail. The common conclusion drawn from this is that everything is charlatanry. But another conclusion is also possible—not necessarily the correct one, but certainly a possible one: such phenomena exist, but the method for discerning them is not scientific.

Above, in the second gate, we saw that the analytic and synthetic approaches differ from one another also in their epistemology. People in primitive societies relate to the whole range of phenomena they experience as real phenomena. We have become accustomed to classifying some of them as illusions, mystical, or at most psychological. This stems from the dulling of our spiritual perception, and not necessarily from any sort of progress.[^33]

Idolatry does not stem from mere stupidity. It also arises from a developed spiritual ability that perceives the inner-spiritual dimension even in inanimate objects. The Torah commanded us to fight the deification of these spiritual dimensions, but not the recognition of their existence as such. In Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 64a, it is described that the Men of the Great Assembly, seeing that the public could not withstand the battle against idolatry, abolished the impulse toward idolatry. Since then human beings have no such inclination. We tend to think that this abolition signifies our ascent to loftier rational heights. The truth is that this abolition by the Men of the Great Assembly describes the loss of our ability to sense spiritual things, and as a result our inclination toward idolatry also vanished. In order to fight the deification of these dimensions, our ability to sense them was abolished, and the price we paid for that was the low spiritual capacity we possess today.[^34] This is also why, as we saw in the previous chapter, people today perceive artistic experience as the only spiritual experience, or at least the highest one. They simply do not know anything else.

The Judaism of Eastern lands, which was less exposed to Western rationalism—to the “civilized countries”—preserved this spiritual ability to a greater degree, and therefore is often accused by Western Judaism of being primitive and superstitious. In all societies in which idolatry still exists, a higher spirituality has, absurdly enough, been preserved than in the Western world we know. This is why there is that attraction, which I described above, toward the Far East and other remote places. Mystics such as the South American Castaneda or the Bukharan Gurdjieff possess that same authentic spiritual capacity, which many of those who encounter them or their books find so impressive.

It is worth noting that the term “primitive” has two meanings that seem at first glance different: primordial and outdated—not advanced and not developed.[^35] The term “primordial” does not always carry a negative connotation. To describe something as primordial is sometimes to express that it is inner, or deep. Something that comes from the deepest layers of the soul is also called primordial. Deep within us there sits a synthetic layer which is indeed older and apparently less developed and less rational, but on the other hand deeper. The axis of time and the axis of depth are not two wholly separate axes.

As described above, along the time-axis of world history the analytic conception develops at the expense of the synthetic one. Along the depth-axis within each of us there is a parallel process. This is the analogy we laid out above between the development of the individual and the development of society as a whole. Even in the structure of the brain stem, as scientific research in the last century has claimed, there are layers that represent earlier stages in human evolutionary development. The brain is built as a collection of such layers. The latest layer does not replace its predecessors. It can only add to them, because it comes on top of them, not in their place.

The human psyche, too, contains such layers. The analytic thinker imagines that the modern layers come in place of their “primitive” sisters. But the truth is that they come on top of them, and complete them. The combination of all the layers together creates the wholeness found in the synthesis of the analytic and the synthetic. This, in my opinion, is the meaning of the historical process described in the present part: the union of the analytic and the synthetic into mature ripeness. See above, at the end of the third gate.

In recent times the Far East has begun to interact with the Western world. For example, there is an interesting book called Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis,[^36] which shows lines of similarity between Western depth psychology and ideas from Zen Buddhism. The interested reader is referred here to the three essays printed there and to their introductions, in order to understand better the differences between the alienated Western approach, which sharply separates subject and object, and the Eastern one, which merges with nature and senses it from within.

These interactions are the beginning of a deviation from the Nietzschean path, back toward the synthetic. Sometimes this is called “the rise of fundamentalism.” It should be noted that the term “fundamentalism” can be understood on the same two planes as primitiveness.

Let us conclude this brief discussion with some very sharp claims raised by the Vilna Gaon against Maimonides. Despite Maimonides’ status within the Judaism of law and thought, the Vilna Gaon attacks him sharply because he senses that there is here a grave and fundamental mistake—one made by all those called “rationalists,” even within the classical world of Jewish law. Thus the Vilna Gaon writes, referring to what Maimonides wrote, and what the Shulchan Arukh—the Code of Jewish Law—wrote following him, that it is permissible to whisper over a scorpion sting on the Sabbath because such whispering is of no use at all:[^37]

But all who came after him [after Maimonides] disagreed with him, for many incantations are mentioned in the Talmud, and he was drawn after philosophy; therefore he wrote that sorcery, divine names, incantations, demons, and amulets are all false. But they have already struck him on the crown of his head, for we find many accounts in the Talmud through divine names and sorcery… and likewise amulets in many places, and incantations too many to recount. Philosophy misled him, by the abundance of what it took, to interpret everything as mere allegory and uproot it from its plain meaning. Heaven forbid that I should believe them, or any of their multitude. Rather, all these things are to be understood according to their plain sense, though they also have an inner dimension—not the inner dimension of the philosophers, which is really externality, but that of the masters of truth, that is, Jewish mysticism.[^38]

The basic assumption of the West is that anyone who believes in such phenomena must bring decisive proof for his claim. But such phenomena are reported in all places and at all times, and therefore it is the denier who is making an unsupported assumption; the burden of proof lies upon him. The existence of not a few charlatans in these matters stems from their non-analytic nature. In chapter 1 we pointed out that this phenomenon is specifically encouraged by Westerners who lack a healthy and developed spiritual sense that would help distinguish true spirituality from false.

To conclude, I wish to bring an illuminating quotation from the Maharal of Prague’s The Eternity of Israel, which describes with striking precision the process as presented here:[^39]

But “‘truth shall be missing’ would imply only that truth would simply be annulled. Therefore they interpreted ‘truth shall be missing’ as meaning that it will become flocks upon flocks and depart. Do not say that the lowly will lie because of their lowliness, and that this would not mean that truth has departed, but only that they do not desire truth—for that is not so. Truth will not be found at all, even among those called good. Therefore it is said that truth has gone away, and truth will not be found. And this is a greater deficiency: if human beings lie because they are not good, truth has not thereby been abolished from the world; rather, creatures are not good and so come to falsehood, and sometimes one may still find a worthy person, and not everyone lies. But in the future truth itself will be removed, and truth will not be found in anyone; rather, every human being will be false. This is a great deficiency: truth itself is not found.”

In this almost prophetic description, the Maharal explains the saying of the sages in Babylonian Talmud, Sotah, that in the future “truth will be missing.” He explains that the intention is not that people will be liars, but that the very concept of truth will disappear from the world. It is interesting that the disappearance of truth is linked linguistically to the notion that truth will become “flocks upon flocks.” This is precisely what we have seen thus far: the absence of certainty, or of truth in its classical sense—that is, the analytic approach—leads to the conception that everyone has their own truth, or their own premises. “Flocks upon flocks” is an apt description of postmodern monadology: every “flock” has its own truth.

Several hundred years before Nietzsche, the Maharal, following the sages of the Talmud, already saw here the process of development of the postmodernism of our own generation. This is a most impressive prediction when one notices that it was expressed in a period in which the concept of truth was taken for granted and all intellectual activity was devoted to clarifying truth and fighting falsehood.

Chapter 4: Real and Apparent Correlations in Political-Ideological Outlooks in Israel

Apparent Correlations

The discussion up to this point has dealt with the West as a whole. In Israel there are certain components that require separate discussion. The first point that deserves attention is the definition of “left” and “right” in Israel. In Israel of recent years, these concepts denote political positions with regard to the conflict with our Arab neighbors. “Left” refers here to those who are prepared, for various reasons, to reach territorial compromise and who recognize the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own. “Right” generally refers to those less inclined to compromise, again for various reasons, and especially to religious people who see value in holding the entire Land of Israel under Israeli sovereignty.

These sectors of the public are usually divided on other questions as well.[^40] For example: whether the state should become a state of all its citizens, or continue to be defined as a Jewish state; whether religious pluralism should be allowed in the country, or an Orthodox monopoly preserved; and other issues that separate Right and Left throughout the world. These questions usually concern economic and social equality between classes, religions, peoples, or sexes.

The question often arises: what is the connection between all these characteristics, and why are they all linked to the axis of “left-right”? Is the correlation between them real, or is it only apparent? See immediately below in note 17. Another aspect of the same question is whether the meaning of “left” and “right” in Israel and in the wider world is the same, or similar, or whether this is merely a shared label.

Note 17: Apparent Correlations

In the body of the text we asked about the connection between the various characteristics of Right and Left in Israel. Not every correlation necessarily points to a real connection. It is worth noting the interesting phenomenon that sometimes there are also correlations that are merely apparent, or lack any principled basis. Let us take as an example a dispute that arose in Israel in 1995, when there was an intention to conduct negotiations with Syria over peace in exchange for returning parts of the Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty.

Two questions were on the table:

1. Is it right to relinquish the Golan in exchange for peace—from a moral, security, or other standpoint?
2. Can the prime minister—at that time Yitzhak Rabin—who during the election campaign in which he was chosen for office had declared that returning the Golan was out of the question, and this was perceived as part of his party platform, retract that promise in light of new data discovered by him after coming to power, and decide to return parts of the Golan to Syrian control?

The first question is a moral-security question. The second is a question in governmental-democratic ethics. It would therefore seem obvious that these are two independent questions. One would accordingly expect a poll or referendum regarding these two questions to reveal four different groups: those who answer both questions positively, those who answer both negatively, those who answer the first positively and the second negatively, and vice versa.[^41]

I do not know of such a poll, but everyone I asked agreed with the assessment that within the population there are not four groups but only two: the first two. That is, almost everyone who answers the first question positively will also answer the second positively. And almost everyone who answers the first question negatively will answer the second negatively as well.

This is an example of an apparent correlation. The different groups divide in their answers only according to their stance on the first question. Someone who opposes the negotiation process answers the moral question negatively—as expected, since that is his position. But, surprisingly, he does the same regarding the ethical question, even though it has no connection whatsoever to his position. The same applies to supporters of the negotiation process. They too, for some reason, answer both these independent questions unequivocally in the same direction. This indicates that the answers do not necessarily represent distinct positions. The answers to the questions are distributed according to the goals the respondent wishes to attain. Someone who supports returning the Golan to Syria for political-security reasons answers the first question positively, and that is understandable. But he also answers the second question positively—even though it has no direct connection to that political view. And the reverse as well. People “shoot the arrow, and then draw the target around it.” This is one example, among many, of an apparent correlation.[^42]

Many other examples of apparent correlations can be given. One is the correlation between concern for Palestinian human rights and a political worldview regarding the peace process. In principle, a person with a staunchly right-wing worldview, who strongly opposes surrendering any territory, could nevertheless be among the strongest advocates of full rights for Palestinians.[^43] Let us bring one more prominent example. Those who oppose the peace process on ideological-religious grounds also generally see little chance of peace actually materializing—they argue that returning territory is dangerous from a security standpoint. Ostensibly, these too are two independent questions. A person can see supreme value in keeping the Land of Israel under Israeli sovereignty while not fearing violations of peace agreements by our neighbors.

In summary, there is a human tendency to view every situation simplistically, so that all considerations point in the same direction. Deciding between conflicting considerations is hard and burdensome work. This is probably the mechanism that leads to what we have called apparent correlations. It seems that this is especially true of holders of an analytic position, who—even if, for whatever reason, they do hold some values—find it harder to weigh these values comparatively. This is often called the “incommensurability of values.” The analytic thinker is less capable of decision than the person with a synthetic position. This is inherent in, and built into, his analytic outlook. The principles of decision themselves are also exposed to analytic doubt.

Another example of an apparent correlation in a different context is the attitude of some in the ultra-Orthodox public, and some ultra-Orthodox thinkers, who see the establishment of the state as a negative religious event and who, for some reason—and independently—also support the position that there is currently no commandment to settle the Land of Israel, a claim whose basis in Jewish law is extremely shaky. It should be noted that there is no necessary connection between the evaluation of the Zionist enterprise and the permissibility, from the standpoint of Torah and Jewish law, of cooperating with a secular public, on the one hand, and the commandment to settle the Land of Israel today, on the other. Therefore this too is an apparent correlation. It is true that most ultra-Orthodox Jews do acknowledge the existence of the commandment to settle the land, but even in the more pragmatic factions one hears formulations according to which settling the land in Bnei Brak is no less than settling the regions of Judea and Samaria, and therefore there is no obligation to go and settle specifically there. By contrast, Religious Zionists generally think differently both about the commandment to settle the Land of Israel and about the importance of settlement in Judea and Samaria, even though these are wholly legal questions and are independent of worldview, whether Zionist or otherwise.

I would like to note here an additional problem in analyzing correlations. When one sees a connection—a correlation—between two phenomena, even if it is not merely apparent, one still has to examine the direction of the correlation. Failures to distinguish the direction of a correlation occur frequently, and not infrequently in scientific contexts as well. There is a well-known joke warning against dieting, since dieting causes obesity. The proof is the simple fact that most people who diet are fat.

When a medical researcher discovers a correlation between smoking and cancer, he must still examine whether the disease causes the person to smoke, or whether smoking causes the disease. Correlation alone does not suffice to establish that smoking is dangerous to health. Clearly, if the disease is what causes the tendency to smoke, then stopping smoking will heal no one. According to such an interpretation of the correlation, its existence provides no basis for warning against smoking.[^44]

As another example, one among many, let us cite a letter to the newspaper Haaretz dated 13.11.98, in which Professor Moshe Gur of the Technion, who advocates increased subsidization of academic studies, wrote as follows:

We need only look around us and compare countries that cultivate their scientists with countries in which there is no strong class of scientists, and we shall understand the close connection between the level of scientific research and the human, cultural, and economic level of society.

Here too one must examine whether engagement in academic research is the cause of the high human level, or its result. It is entirely possible that the high human level that existed prior to the engagement in research is what causes the concentration on research—the point is certainly valid as far as the economic level is concerned. If so, simply looking around us is not at all sufficient to reach Professor Gur’s conclusion.[^45]

We see that beyond the question whether a correlation is apparent or not, after discovering that it is not, one must still examine its direction. The question of the direction of a correlation cannot be solved from the data of the correlation itself alone. Such determinations require additional empirical tests—and sometimes just plain common sense.[^46]

In the first chapter of the first gate, in our discussion of Hume, we saw that from science itself one can derive only correlations, not causal relations. Placing a wooden log in fire correlates with its burning, but the direction of the correlation cannot arise from those observations alone. This is precisely the same point that arises here from another angle. From bare facts, without the addition of common sense, one cannot arrive at the relations between the facts. Therefore in science one tries not to rest content with determining the existence of a correlation, but to show the mechanism responsible for its existence. That mechanism explains why one of the correlates affects the other. From this, of course, one can infer the direction of the correlation—who is the cause and who is the effect. Thus the empirical examination is not necessarily aimed at denying or confirming the very existence of the correlation, but perhaps at examining the mechanism that explains it.

One often encounters similar questions in Talmud study as well. When two sages disagree in a particular legal discussion, and each derives his ruling from different verses, the Talmud immediately asks what each one derives from the verse brought by the other. The assumption is that there is no verse that does not come to teach something. Each of them is supposed to bring a different ruling derived from the verse from which the other learns his position in the original dispute. Such a structure recurs on almost every page of the Talmud. This process necessarily yields additional disputes between those sages that are ostensibly unrelated to the basic disagreement under discussion. In all these cases the learner should ask himself whether there is nevertheless a connection between the various disputes—whether the correlation is not merely apparent—and if there is indeed a connection, which of these disputes is the more basic one, the one underlying the others. In our terminology: what is the direction of the correlation?

In light of these examples, and many others, one can see that the question whether the correlations presented in this text—secular-postmodern-left-analytic, or religious-modernist-right-synthetic—are not merely apparent, and what their direction is, is hardly irrational. Still, it seems that the explanation that will be given for these correlations below shows that they are real, and also shows the direction of the correlation. There is here something akin to finding an explanation for the correlation, as in the scientific process mentioned above, which indicates that it is not apparent and also what its direction is. Therefore there is no reason to despair of attempts to analyze such correlations. Not every ideological correlation is merely apparent.[^47]

The axis connecting all these questions, and explaining these seemingly strange correlations, is the analytic-synthetic axis. Someone who sees all human beings as equal will strive for equality among different peoples as well. He is more inclined to see the situation through the other’s spectacles—perhaps even through the enemy’s. For the analytic thinker it is more natural to ask: “Who says justice is on my side? Perhaps he is the one who is right.” More than that: according to his premises, it is clear that the rival is no less right than I am; we merely act on the basis of different premises. Everyone has their own truth. This is the political expression of postmodernism.

The analytic thinker also sees no justification for shedding anyone’s blood—and certainly not his own—for the sake of any values, since he has no genuine values, and therefore he is less inclined to wars. In the language of the fourth gate, this is not tolerance but pluralism. A value like “the people of Israel” or “the land of Israel,” and distinctions among the state’s citizens on the basis of religion or nationality—all these are, in essence, claims with content, something the analytic thinker rejects out of hand. The analytic thinker does not see absolute justice in any claim with substantive content.

Attempts to argue for the superiority of one type of population, or one kind of family relationship, over others also involve making a substantive—synthetic—claim. Every inequality asserts something about the superiority of A over B. It is important to understand that the analytic thinker does not oppose these claims because of their negative moral charge, but because of the very fact that they claim something. They assume a criterion that allows different positions to be ranked relative to one another, and the postmodernist rejects that outright. We explained that a sweeping absence of positions necessarily expresses itself as total equality. The reverse is also true: every inequality derives from some claim—a claim of superiority—and is therefore rejected by the analytic thinker. This is why all these characteristics cluster around the Left and the Right respectively. The analytic thinker sees homosexuality as equal to the ordinary sexual orientation; female intelligence as equal to male intelligence; the rights of all claimants to sovereignty over the land as equal; the secular position as equal to the religious one; all interpretations of religion as equal; and so on and so forth.

The correlation among all these positions is that analyticity is unwilling to make any synthetic—that is, substantive—claim. It opposes every claim as such, and every particular criterion of value, whatever it may be. This is yet another expression of the emptiness of the analytic, which underlies the correlations to which we are pointing here.

Right and Left in Israeli Politics

Let us now turn to the definitions of Left and Right in Israel. As noted above, it ostensibly appears that these definitions differ from those found in the wider world. In Israel these terms denote attitudes toward political-security problems, whereas throughout the world they mainly denote social positions. In light of our discussion thus far, one can see that this difference exists only on the surface. On the meta-ideological level there is a close connection between the definitions in Israel and those in the wider world. In general: in Israel too, as throughout the world, the Left is analytic and the Right is synthetic. The various expressions of these positions appear in every realm, both social-ideological and political-national.

People of the Israeli Left generally do not seem to feel that they are making a painful concession when they support returning territories to the Arabs. Two different phenomena come together here. On the one hand, they view reality relationally, and understand the rival or enemy no less than themselves. He is as justified as they are. On the other hand, for that same reason they do not assign significant weight to their own positions either. In the age of the end of values there is no confidence in outdated values such as nationalism and homeland. “Left” is faith in the god of doubt and compromise in whom Achilles—the analytic thinker—believes in the prologue.

Even within the Israeli Left there are different shades, which at times raise the question whether there is in fact any single position that can be called “the Left,” or whether this is merely an eclectic joining of different ideas and ideologies. In the following note I shall point to the common ideological platform of the left-wing movements in Israel, again by reference to the meta-ideological—or philosophical—layer common to all of them. That layer is, as stated, the analytic position.

It should be noted that the discussion of the left wing of the Israeli map is only an example. A parallel and very similar description can be proposed for the coming together of various right-wing movements, some of them religious and even messianic, and some secular-nationalist. There too the ideological platform seems different, and the connection exists chiefly on the meta-ideological level. That is, all the ideologies called “right” are based on a synthetic position.[^48]

Note 18: The Socio-Political Axis of Mapam-Ratz-Shinui (the Meretz Party)

An illuminating example of the picture described here—and in particular of the fact that the social Left and the social Right stand on the same side of the map in the essential sense, namely the analytic side; see chapter 1 of the third gate—is the coalition expressed in the Meretz party. This party reflects a coalition that emerged in Israeli politics, and in Israeli society generally, in recent years. It is based on an ostensibly strange union between distinctly left-wing parties—Mapam—and parties of the social right and center—Shinui and Ratz. Today they are all perceived as a wholly unified entity speaking with a single voice. Outwardly, no differences are visible on a party background, except perhaps on the level of personal differences between individual members of Knesset. Most of the public has already forgotten that this is a union of three different parties.

What stands out as common to all members of this united party is opposition to every form of inequality, and especially opposition to religion. To be sure, they all explain that they have nothing against religion or religious people, for they are pluralistic and democratic—and they say this sincerely, not ironically. Such a position is required by the very worldview that says they have nothing against anyone, precisely because they also have nothing in favor of anyone. They preach the absence of claims, not any positive claim. Anyone who tries to assert something—regardless of content—automatically finds himself, in their eyes, on the other side of the barricade.

Here the Left and the Right, according to the accepted definitions in the world, joined the same side of the barricade, and the identity is almost complete. The main activity of these parties lies in opposing the political Right, and in practice religion. Although they always take care to say that they have nothing against religion, it is important to note that they are perceived publicly as anti-religious parties. This is because that is in fact the axis of their activity. Despite the dramatic difference one would expect to see in their socio-economic attitudes, these parties operate in almost complete harmony.

It seems that this reflects the fact that the root of these two worldviews is indeed one and the same: analyticity. The main point shared by all these sides is opposition to every synthetic position. The social differences are quite secondary. This is exactly what we claimed above in chapter 1 concerning capitalism and communism.

It is interesting to note that the transformation of democracy, civil rights, and equality into an ideology with religious characteristics also strongly characterizes the Meretz political axis.[^49] This is a good example of the process we have called here the “Copernican revolution,” or Bokononism, according to which even holders of extreme analytic positions cannot live in a vacuum and therefore fix the absence of values as their constitutive value. We shall describe various implications of this phenomenon in detail in the next gate.

In the first chapter of the third gate we pointed out that communism is not a matter of placing society and its values at the center, but rather of placing the individual at the center, exactly like capitalism. These are two different ways of caring for the individual, and therefore both stand on the analytic side of the divide. The difference between them is only technical: how best to arrive at the state in which the ethos of equality is realized. Opposed to these two outlooks, which are based on analyticity, stands what communism and capitalism tend to define as “fascism”—in our terminology, synthetic outlooks. The political process we have seen here erases all these external differences and isolates and sharpens the most essential struggle of all, the analytic-synthetic struggle.

It is easy to see that today almost the entire Western world is liberal-social-democratic to one degree or another. The differences between the social Right and the social Left are fairly blurred, and in Israel the blurring is almost complete. Since the fall of Soviet communism it has become easier to discern the illusion involved in the picture according to which the social Left and the social Right constitute the essential axis of today’s cultural-ideological struggles.

Beyond the intrinsic interest of the phenomenon and its roots, this provides a good example of the more general principle discussed in the introduction to the book. Looking at the meta-ideological, or philosophical, layer can shed light on the root of phenomena from every sphere: social, cultural, ideological, or political.

In light of the description proposed here, there is no difficulty understanding why the tendency of the socio-political map in Israel is to drift steadily leftward over time.[^50] Regardless of the parties for which people vote, in substantive terms what counted as extreme left twenty years ago is today to the right of center. The reason is that Zionism, as a modernist movement, united genuine modernism, with a synthetic-religious basis capable of stable survival, together with pseudo-modernism that serves as a cover for analyticity. The pseudo-modernism had to disappear and turn into postmodernism—post-Zionism—in a Nietzschean process. The drift of the political map in Israel described above represents the disappearance of pseudo-modernism and the emergence into actuality of the postmodernism that was hidden within it. Only the hard core of modernism—namely, that with synthetic roots, usually religious and only rarely otherwise—is not swept along.

In these years there is taking place in Israel—and in the Western world generally—a process with a clear tendency: all the forces on the political map are drifting into a kind of vast sea located at the center of the map. The term “center” derives only from relative historical reasons. In every substantive respect it is simply the Left.[^51] Today only the religious are regarded as Right—usually “extreme Right,” since, as I remarked, the center is in fact Left. All the other traditional right-wing parties are disappearing in a gradual process. They are being absorbed into the left-wing worldview in all its aspects.

The stable state toward which such a society tends is a division into two components: one religious, the other left-wing. A secular Right is steadily disappearing because it expresses pseudo-modernism.[^52] The phenomenon of return to religious observance expresses, among other things, the realization by people with synthetic positions that one cannot remain such within a secular-left world. A person who recognizes within himself a synthetic position tends to adopt the natural basis for such positions, namely religion. What is called leaving religion is the opposite situation. It is the other side of the same recognition. A person who discovers that he was born into a religious home, but does not find within himself the layer of synthetic certainty, decides to move to the camp that offers him a firmer and more stable social basis for his analytic positions: the secular-left camp.

A practical conclusion: anyone contemplating coalitions between these two supposedly modernist groups—the secular Right and the religious camp—would do well to take into account the unstable state of his partners, namely the fact that they are disappearing. He should not be surprised that his partners change positions and become left-wing, contrary to the rhetoric they once used. There is no betrayal or deception here, but recognition of the fact that they do not have—and never did have—a solid basis for a secular right-wing position.[^53]

This description of ideological-political systems seems in many ways the opposite of what is commonly accepted. Usually the Left is perceived as modernist, and the Right—and religion—by contrast, as fossilized and dogmatic. But as I argued above, the Western Left is based on a pseudo-modernism, a fig leaf for the postmodernity that grows out of it. Statements that oppose religion and modernism are in fact distinguishing between two kinds of syntheticity: one that thinks the world is regressing—a religious attitude; see in the third gate, chapter 2, on the decline of the generations—and one that thinks the world is progressing—a modernist-secular attitude. Both agree that there are objective, supra-temporal criteria by which one can examine the question of whether the world is progressing or regressing. Their dispute concerns only the answer to that question: is the world progressing or regressing?

By contrast, the basic approach of most left-wing movements today emerges once one sheds the illusory burdens of modernity. Then one suddenly sees that there is no binding criterion at all in any direction—apart from the claim that there are no criteria, which alone is binding. This is an analytic approach standing opposite both religion and modernism alike. It is also the coalitionary basis for the joining of various Right and center groups, which are in fact Left—see note 18. The avant-garde of the Left today holds a postmodern outlook. This is an indication of the essential content and direction of development latent in the Left from the moment of its formation, which today is merely coming into actuality in accordance with the Nietzschean scenario.

Summary of the Discussion in This Gate

In this gate we described the implications of the claim that the analytic position underlies Western culture. We saw manifestations of this in psychologism, literary criticism, concepts of equality, and more.

We explained the paradoxes that accompany analytic behavior by arguing that, in order to create an anchor of certainty, Western man adopts the analytic position by synthetic means. This is also the status the analytic position receives, and from that status the terror of political correctness derives—a terror that imposes these analytic positions on society as a whole.

In the end we came to see that historical modernism, which is usually a label for left-wing movements, is nothing but a fig leaf for postmodernism, which grew naturally out of it. The only basis for genuine, non-illusory modernism is a synthetic basis, which in our time is almost identical with religion.

In light of this assumption we also explained the drift on the Israeli political map and the strange coalitions formed within it. Many of the correlations that at first glance seemed merely apparent turned out to have a genuine foundation once one identified the analytic or synthetic platform underlying the positions in question. This is yet another indication that meta-ideological analysis can shed light on social-ideological phenomena that otherwise remain obscure.

In the next gate we shall try to discuss in greater detail the claim that has accompanied us throughout this discussion: that secular-left modernism is false, and in reality is nothing but disguised postmodernism. The conclusion that emerges is that stable modernism can arise only from a synthetic worldview, usually a religious one.