Introduction to Part Four

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).

Part Four

The Synthetic Position

This part contains an introduction and three gates:

1. Introduction to Part Four
2. Gate Eleven: The Synthetic Alternative
3. Gate Twelve: The Synthetic A Priori in a New Sense
4. Gate Thirteen: The Synthetic Position in the Study Hall

This part brings the book’s line of argument to its conclusion. It is devoted to presenting and characterizing the synthetic position, and proposes it as a better alternative to the analytic position, whose shortcomings were presented in the previous part.

In the previous part we pointed to the defects, limitations, and internal contradictions inherent in the analytic position. Even someone who has been convinced that one cannot be a genuine and consistent analytic thinker unless one adopts a truly skeptical approach may still wonder how human beings nevertheless accept any truths at all if not by way of proof. How can one think in an orderly fashion except by means of basic definitions and the derivation of conclusions from them—that is, in the manner in which an axiomatic system is constructed? Is there any other model of thought at all? Seemingly, any acceptance of a claim without proof is an arbitrary process. That is precisely what analytic postmodernism argues. What is the alternative to this claim? Is there some other process by which one can adopt positions or claims without proof?

Conversely, we have already seen that even axiomatic thought is not immune to criticism. From an analytic point of view, it too requires some grounding that lies outside it. We pointed out that it is unclear on what basis the rules of logical inference themselves are accepted, and likewise the axioms laid at the foundation of any specific system of thought. Thus, although the axiomatic mode of thought is a highly tempting model for describing our thinking, it is clear that we cannot make do with it alone. It requires some supplement of a different kind—a synthetic one. In what follows we shall move one step beyond the critique of analyticity carried out thus far. Here we shall try to point to the synthetic alternative and, insofar as possible, also to describe it positively.

By its very nature, the analytic approach is much easier to characterize than the synthetic one, because it is more formal (logical), sharper, and easier to define. That is its advantage, and as we have already seen, it is also its drawback (see the hot-air-balloon joke at the beginning of the book). Even so, in what follows we shall try, as far as possible, to illustrate and somewhat characterize synthetic thought, cognition, and cognitive functioning.

Up to this point in the book, the synthetic position—and especially the synthetic mode of thought—has remained fairly vague. The characterizations have been mainly negative: the synthetic approach does not accept the claim that non-analytic arguments and non-analytic modes of knowing are invalid. Put differently, it is willing to accept even unproved claims as true. Yet what criterion can be used to evaluate such unproved claims? Surely proponents of a synthetic position do not argue that every claim is valid, or even acceptable. We must therefore ask ourselves how the synthetic approach can be characterized positively. How does it actually operate? This question is the concern of the present part.

In some of our discussion, the characterizations will be presented from a Jewish, Torah-based perspective, which is, of course, only one synthetic position among many possible ones. This position—which will be called here, following the terminology of Rabbi David Cohen, the Nazirite of Jerusalem, “Hebrew auditory logic”—will be set against the analytic position, which in that same terminology is called “Greek visual logic.”¹ The term “logic” is used here not only in the narrow sense of logic, but of philosophy in general, including epistemology.² It should be noted that at times we shall use the term “the synthetic position” in a general sense when what is actually meant is the Jewish synthetic position. Nearly all of the arguments we shall raise are general, but it should be remembered that at times—and especially when one tries to identify specific characteristics—there are differences among the various synthetic positions.

Let us add that in the thought of the French Jewish philosopher Henri Bergson there is a very similar distinction between analysis and intuition.³ He too regards intuition as the antithesis of analysis (analyticity), and he too sides with intuition against analysis. As we shall see below, this is ultimately the positive characteristic of auditory logic: a renewed trust in intuition and common sense.⁴

We have already mentioned that the characterization of the synthetic mode of thought has so far been vague, and not without reason. The chief difference between this mode of thought and analytic thought lies precisely in the inability—and the unwillingness—to force thought into the mold of formal rules (such as those of formal logic, which describes the analytic component of human thought). Synthetic thought maintains that not every justification is based on proof, that is, on the use of formal tools that derive conclusions from premises. A positive characterization of the ways in which such justification does in fact occur is problematic. The main purpose of the present discussion is to point out that all of us use synthetic techniques, under various names.⁵ The essential characterization itself will, naturally, be more general.

In the next gate (the twelfth) we shall nevertheless try to advance a little further and point to a more definite direction for a positive characterization of synthetic thought. There we shall see that some of what is usually assigned to the analytic component of thought actually belongs to its synthetic component. More precise and specific characterizations of synthetic thought will appear mainly in that gate.

In the thirteenth gate, which concludes this part and the book as a whole, we shall see that even in the Torah world, within the study hall, the two tendencies—the analytic and the synthetic—both exist and operate. The historical and essential roots of this phenomenon were presented in the third gate. In this context as well, we shall try to point to the differences and significance of synthetic study as opposed to analytic study, and to argue in favor of the synthetic approach.

In light of what was said in the second part about the connection between these two abstract positions and very concrete ideologies in our world, and in light of the marked weaknesses of the analytic position, as presented in the third part, the great importance of clarifying the meaning and characteristics of the synthetic position is self-evident. Here I leave the ideological and practical implications to the reader.

Footnotes