Platonism – Lesson 31

Table of Contents

• Arguments about concepts: Plato versus Aristotle
• Myth and historical truth
• The reliability of the Bible, “Did it happen or not,” and foundational conditions for binding faith
• Reasons for the commandments, the Sabbath, and Maimonides in the fifth root
• Religious apologetics, Nachmanides, and religious postmodernism
• Political narratives, the Palestinians, and the New Historians
• Why it matters to prove “this didn’t happen”: psychology versus a metaphysical thesis
• Rashba, Yedaya HaPenini, allegory, and excommunication
• Educational effectiveness as proof: “things that really happened have power”
• The spinach test, David Enoch, and moral facts
• Myth, Trumpeldor, “the mother and her seven sons,” and a mystical add-on
• Changing the meaning of a concept and the debate over “Who is a Jew?”

Summary

General Overview

The text argues that debates over the definitions of concepts actually support the Platonic picture rather than the Aristotelian one, because a real argument assumes there is some objective “something” that the parties are arguing about, not just different ways of using a word. It applies this to the concept of myth and to the modern tendency to disconnect myths from historical truth, and then examines the implications of that separation for religious faith, Zionism, education, and memory. Two possible answers emerge to the question of why people still fight over facts: a psychological answer about educational effectiveness, and a metaphysical answer according to which that very effectiveness points to an objective factual core, which in turn gives further support to Platonism. Finally, an additional implication is proposed: the very claim that the content of a concept changes over time assumes a Platonic view in which the concept is not merely a bundle of properties, but something whose properties can change.

Arguments about concepts: Plato versus Aristotle

The text presents the Platonic picture as one in which a concept has an idea and an objective existence, and the Aristotelian picture as one in which concepts are a convention of a speaking community that groups characteristics under a word. It argues that the moment there is a dispute over the definition of a concept like “democracy,” the very existence of the dispute assumes that there is one idea under discussion, and therefore the dispute makes sense only in the Platonic picture. It claims that in the Aristotelian picture there is not really an argument at all, but two different meanings of the same word, and so the solution is simply to mark “democracy one” and “democracy two” and coordinate the discourse without any substantive disagreement. It adds that in the Platonic picture the definition does not constitute the concept but describes it, and the concept exists even before it is defined, even “from the creation of the world or even before,” just as laws of nature exist before they are discovered.

Myth and historical truth

The text states that myth is not supposed to be judged by historical truth but by literary value, educational value, psychological value, and cultural function, even when it is phrased as though it were describing events. It uses the Trojan War as an example of the distinction between historical work on what happened and a mythic perspective that does not depend on the question “did it really happen.” It argues that this insight has become sharper in recent generations, and suspects that even “those wicked Greeks” knew that at least some of the myths were fictional, but still saw them as a cultural medium from which people draw images and frameworks of meaning.

The reliability of the Bible, “Did it happen or not,” and foundational conditions for binding faith

The text describes debates in the Jewish world about the historical reliability of the Bible, and argues that there is a modern position that sees the Bible as a “founding myth” that does not depend on whether the events “really happened.” It cites Rabbi Amit Kula’s book Did It Happen or Not and criticizes it by saying that the book tries to empty Jewish faith of facts, to the point of a principled claim that someone who does not believe in any historical fact can still be a “fully valid Jew.” He says he is willing to accept stripping tradition of almost every fact, but that there are “a few facts without which” binding faith is impossible, foremost among them the revelation at Mount Sinai as an “interaction with the Holy One, blessed be He” in which the Torah was given. The details are not critical, but the core is. He adds that Abraham and Sarah also matter because the definition of “Jew” is recursive and requires a starting point, and he notes the possibility of beginning with conversion at Mount Sinai, but still sees a major difficulty in giving up Abraham and Sarah. He concludes that without Mount Sinai “there is no Judaism,” only folklore and culture at most, whereas the creation of the world is not, in his view, a necessary condition for the validity of the system, even though he personally believes that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world.

Reasons for the commandments, the Sabbath, and Maimonides in the fifth root

The text presents a minimizing attitude toward reasons for the commandments, and describes “the reason of the verse” regarding the Sabbath as “of a very low type,” in the sense that a person observes the Sabbath because of the command, not because it commemorates creation. It argues that one could in principle celebrate a commemoration of a mythical event even if it did not happen, as long as one accepts the authority of the command itself, and compares this to a Greek cultural celebration of victory in the Trojan War even if there was no such war. It adds that the halakhic / of Jewish law system does not require “the reason of the verse,” and cites Maimonides in the fifth root and the Talmud / Talmudic text in Sanhedrin 21 regarding “he shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away” as proof that one does not derive Jewish law from the reason, even when the reason is written explicitly in the Torah.

Religious apologetics, Nachmanides, and religious postmodernism

The text describes the use of religious apologetics that argues that the Bible is not a history book and therefore there is no obligation to full historical truth, and it cites Nachmanides on the story of creation as saying that “the account of creation has no plain meaning” and is allegory and homily, even before the age of the Big Bang and evolution. It argues that this position allows religious people to “rest easy” in the face of biblical criticism and scientific difficulties, because the text is binding as a “framework” without any commitment to a historical source. It mentions Rabbi Shagar as someone who uses such arguments, and describes the idea of a “range of circles of difference” in which different narratives are not making truth-claims and therefore are not really in conflict. In his criticism, he argues that such a view is effectively atheistic-religious: one can live a religious experience and keep commandments without committing to factual claims, and he notes that Leibowitz “already did this too, for his own reasons.”

Political narratives, the Palestinians, and the New Historians

The text argues that postmodern discourse about narratives allows people to justify even non-factual narratives, and gives the example that “the Palestinians” build a narrative claiming descent from the Philistines even though “there is no factual basis for it,” and that “leftists” justify this by saying “that’s their narrative.” It describes the phenomenon of the “New Historians” and post-Zionism as efforts to show that founding Zionist myths are fabrications, giving examples such as Trumpeldor not having said “it is good to die for our country,” the massacre at Tantura, and the various narratives surrounding them. It adds that at the extreme end there is a loss of criteria for truth to the point of publishing “nonsense” through academic peer review, but he also focuses on those who are doing genuine historical research.

Why it matters to prove “this didn’t happen”: psychology versus a metaphysical thesis

The text raises a central question: if myth is not judged historically but educationally, why is it important to post-Zionists to show factually that the stories are fabricated, and why are the other sides also drawn into the factual argument? It rejects a purely cynical explanation of “publicity and livelihood” as insufficient, and proposes a psychological explanation according to which believing that a story is true increases its educational effect, like the difference between “based on a true story” and fiction. He argues that even if this is psychologically true, it is not an argument that the thing actually happened, but only creates an “educational difficulty” or a temptation toward “lying” for the sake of efficiency. He illustrates his point by saying that even with regard to the Holocaust, there is no principled importance to the factual question as such, except perhaps for its psychological effect, and he returns to the claim that educational need cannot decide a question of truth.

Rashba, Yedaya HaPenini, allegory, and excommunication

The text cites the responsa of Rashba regarding Yedaya HaPenini and his circle as allegorists who read biblical stories as philosophical parables such as “matter and form.” It describes how Rashba issued an excommunication against the phenomenon, including a ban on studying philosophy before age twenty-five, and asks why Rashba was so troubled that he went so far as to excommunicate, since a factual disagreement in itself does not justify such a move. He argues that even if someone does not believe the events were historical but lives with the same halakhic / of Jewish law commitment, the difference is only “one small point” of factuality, and therefore an explanation is needed for the motivation to excommunicate. He accepts that one possible educational explanation is that Rashba feared the masses would conclude “it’s all nonsense, we were fooled,” and he identifies this as a return to the psychological thesis.

Educational effectiveness as proof: “things that really happened have power”

The text proposes a further move, according to which the psychological explanation is not the whole story, because both sides behave as though educational effectiveness is an indication of factuality. It proposes a metaphysical belief according to which “things that happened have power; things that did not happen do not have power,” or at least that factual existence “upgrades or intensifies the effectiveness,” and from this it follows that a binding system that endured for thousands of years hints at a real historical infrastructure. He compares this to his personal argument about morality, according to which the sense of moral validity points to a foundational assumption of God as the source of validity, and distinguishes between a philosophical argument and the pragmatism of “inventing God” in order to educate. He connects this back to myths by saying that value-based and educational effectiveness is perceived as linked to a grounding in objective reality, and calls this another strengthening of Platonism against Aristotelianism.

The spinach test, David Enoch, and moral facts

The text brings David Enoch’s “spinach test” in order to distinguish between subjective tastes and objective truths, illustrating the difference between “I don’t like spinach” and knowledge of quantum theory and relativity. It argues that the statement “how good it is that I’m not living in the eighteenth century, because then I would have enslaved Black people” is not ridiculous in the way the spinach case is, because it is perceived as a binding truth, more like a scientific truth than a preference. He connects this to his claim that some values are perceived as rooted in reality itself and therefore receive authority, and expands that the effectiveness of systems of values, religion, and myths hints at an objective basis rather than mere convention. He presents a dispute with moral relativism and distinguishes between the question of what causes a person to behave morally and the question of why morality “ought” to be binding.

Myth, Trumpeldor, “the mother and her seven sons,” and a mystical add-on

The text suggests that figures and actions with moral weight, like Trumpeldor, have power because they realized an idea that has existence in the world of ideas, and therefore they carry a claim and an effectiveness. He gives an example from Bnei Akiva education about “the mother and her seven sons” versus Abraham our forefather, with the claim that Abraham “brought into the world the capacity” for self-sacrifice, and therefore the merit of being first remains his. He uses this to propose a connection between historical occurrence and the intensification of moral power in the world, and even says that this is “Platonism with another pinch of mysticism added.” He also addresses the claim that the world changed morally regarding slavery, and presents the change in perception as an event that affects our perception of “moral facts.”

Changing the meaning of a concept and the debate over “Who is a Jew?”

The text presents as a second implication of Platonism the possibility that a concept changes over time, and argues that in an Aristotelian world, a change in properties is a move to a different concept, not “a change in the same concept.” It states that in a Platonic world the concept is the thing itself and its properties can change, and therefore one can speak about a change in the content of a concept. It gives as an example the debate over “Who is a Jew?” and attempts to define “secular Judaism” through characteristics such as Hebrew, Amos Oz, army service, and concern for the Jewish people, and asks why people insist on using precisely the term “Jew” rather than another term. It argues that this very insistence on the same term, together with the claim that the content has changed, points to a Platonic view, because it assumes that it is “the same concept” despite changing characteristics. He concludes by linking this to the fact that it will be the subject of the continuation in Elul, and presents the changing concept as further evidence for Platonism “against the usual intuition.”

Last time we talked about disputes over concepts, and my claim was that contrary to what people usually think, the very existence of disputes over the definition of a concept specifically supports the Platonic picture, not the Aristotelian one. The Platonic picture says that there is, in fact, some kind of idea; the concept has some sort of objective existence. Aristotelianism says that this is basically a convention, yes, an agreement among the community of speakers to define a certain set of characteristics as a concept, but it doesn’t have existence in any objective sense. And what I said was that once we see that there is a dispute over the definition of a concept, that means that there is something specific in the world, the Platonic idea, around which the dispute revolves. Meaning, I think democracy is this way and you think democracy is that way. But in the Aristotelian picture, there really is no such thing as democracy; it’s just a word that gathers under it a collection of characteristics. Now if someone else proposes a different collection of characteristics as the definition of the word democracy, then we don’t have a dispute. We’re simply using the word democracy in two different senses. So let’s agree that you’ll call yours democracy one, I’ll call mine democracy two, just to synchronize our conversation, and that’s it. That doesn’t really amount to a dispute. Only in the Platonic picture can we understand, or make sense of, disputes over definitions of concepts, because only in that picture the definition does not constitute the concept—the definition does not create the concept—but rather the definition describes the concept, while the concept exists even before I defined it and before I understood it. According to the Platonic view, the concept of democracy existed from the creation of the world—or even before it. The fact that we discovered it only in recent generations changes nothing. Meaning, according to Aristotle we created the concept in recent generations; according to Plato it was always there, we’ve only now discovered it. That’s somewhat similar to scientific progress, where little by little we discover more and more laws of nature, or phenomena, or whatever it may be, but it’s not that those laws of nature didn’t exist until we discovered them. They always existed; it took us time to discover them. That’s basically the situation with concepts in the Platonic outlook, and therefore the disputes that exist regarding definitions of concepts—once you say there’s a dispute, you’ve basically said that there is something here that we are disputing. Because there’s no point in arguing over the dictionary definition of a word. Let’s agree on a common word and move on; there’s nothing we’re really disputing there. Therefore, the existence of disputes actually indicates Platonism and not Aristotelianism. That’s the claim in short. I want to show some implication of this, one that may even be more current, but first I want to talk a bit about the concept of myth. I think this insight was always around, at least for some people, but in recent generations it has become much sharper and has been written about and understood—that a myth is not supposed to be examined through the prism of historical truth. When I want to investigate the Trojan War—if I’m a historian and that interests me, fine, then I’ll try to research whether there was a Trojan War or not, what exactly happened there, and whether the description we have is accurate or not, but that’s the work of a historian. When we look at the Trojan War as a myth, our perception of that story is completely different. It is not meant to describe a historical event, and it also won’t be judged by the historical question of whether it really happened or not. A myth is judged by its literary value, its educational value, and so on. How does the Rabbi define myth? What? How does the Rabbi define myth? I just did, if you like: something that is judged through its narrative and educational value. Meaning, it’s some sort of story—we all know, what is a myth? Some kind of story that does not pretend to convey historical facts to us, even though superficially it’s phrased as if there were a story here of historical events; and in fact its value is literary, educational, psychological, whatever. Okay? So that’s the contemporary conception, at least, of the concept of myth—though I suspect that even the wicked Greeks were aware that not all their myths, all their mythology, were really stories that actually happened. They too understood that at least some of them, or all of them, were fictional; but for them this was some sort of cultural medium—I don’t know what to call it—intellectual, psychological, within which our culture functions, within which our discourse takes place, from which we draw our images, we latch onto mythical figures, and so on. So that seems to me the accepted contemporary conception of the concept of myth. Therefore, many times when there is a dispute—if I move to the Jewish field—there are often disputes over the question of the historical reliability of the Bible. And to a modern ear—or postmodern, if you want—many people say: why is that interesting? Meaning, in the end, okay, so it never happened, or some story like that, or the whole Bible never happened. As far as I’m concerned, the value of the Bible is some sort of foundational myth, an educational myth, and that is completely detached from the question whether these things really happened or not. There is a book by Rabbi Amit Kula called “Was It, or Was It Not,” and I wrote a critique of it on my website—though for some reason they decided not to publish it; they asked me to write a review of it. And I argued that in his book he is trying to empty Jewish faith of facts. Meaning, he wants to claim that you can be a committed, fully legitimate, kosher believing Jew without accepting any historical fact. That is, he himself says in the book that he’s not claiming that he personally doesn’t believe in any historical fact; he only claims that in principle, even someone who doesn’t believe in any historical fact is still a fully legitimate Jew. Meaning, he keeps qualifying it and saying, “Don’t conclude that I’m there,” but I argued that such a model is a model of a legitimate Jew. Jordan Peterson made a career out of that. Okay, I’m not familiar with that aspect of him. In any case, the claim I made against him in the review was that I’m willing to accept emptying our tradition of almost any fact whatsoever—but there are a few facts without which it would be hard to function, or not hard but impossible. One fact is the revelation at Mount Sinai. Now I don’t care at the moment what exactly happened there, what was given there, and what pyrotechnics there were around it. But if there was no interaction with the Holy One, blessed be He, in which He gave us the Torah, and this whole story is just an educational myth, then goodbye, I’m moving to Kamchatka—I have no interest in taking part in this mythical game. If someone wants that, health to him, but he is not a believing Jew and he’s nothing of the kind; he’s simply living in a Jewish movie. And probably—though this is less unequivocal—Abraham and Sarah too. Yes, them too. If we understand that they too were only myths, then there’s a bit of a problem in defining the concept Jew, because the definition of the concept Jew is recursive. That is, a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or converted according to Jewish law. Who was the first Jewish mother? After all, you need to begin this recursive process from some starting point. So it is commonly said that it was Sarah. So if Sarah never existed, how does this recursive definition begin? Therefore here too one could perhaps say that the conversion at Mount Sinai—which of course also never happened, on this view—the conversion at Mount Sinai began the chain, and one need not assume that Abraham and Sarah really existed. But I think that assumption too is very hard to give up. Mount Sinai, in my opinion—to give that up simply means there is no Judaism. There is Judaism as folklore, as culture, but it’s not… What about the creation of the world? Do you hear? What about the creation of the world? What about it? Nothing. I don’t see anything that would depend on that. Suppose the creation of the world was exactly as the most hard-core atheist thinks—so what? The Holy One, blessed be He, still came and gave me the Torah, and now—that’s it, from here on the game begins. Unless He has to be the Creator of the world because otherwise something is missing. Maybe. Meaning, if in your opinion His command has no authority unless He was the Creator of the world, then maybe you’re right. But someone else can come and say that he sees authority in the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, even without His being the Creator of the world, and that is not a necessary condition. There may be someone who thinks that fact is important too, but I don’t see here some condition without which the system doesn’t exist. And again I say: that’s without getting into the question of what I personally think. Personally, I do think He created the world, and I think this is not a myth—again, not the details of creation, but the very claim that He created the world. Fine. But in this context I don’t think there is some necessity such that someone who thinks otherwise is outside the camp; he does not meet the basic conditions. Not outside the camp, again, not in the sense of condemning him—if that’s what he thinks, that’s what he thinks; why would I condemn him? Rather, he simply does not belong to the system of committed Judaism, that’s all. But the Sabbath—when people say Sabbath, the Torah says “For in six days…” The reason given by Scripture is a very low-level kind of reason. I keep the Sabbath because the Torah says one must keep the Sabbath. The fact that the Torah says it is a remembrance of that myth that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world in six days—fine, that leaves you with a nice taste in your mouth. When you keep the Sabbath, do you always remember the creation? No. I don’t sort on the Sabbath because it is forbidden to sort on the Sabbath. The fact that there is some reason given by Scripture, that the Sabbath was given as a remembrance of what happened in the six days—fine, okay, in my view that’s really not at all a critical matter. No, I really wouldn’t mind at all saying that the myth of creation is a myth; it’s not really true. But as part of the story within that myth, or the story-world, as they call it—the narrative, yes—within that framework, I am also told that the Sabbath is a remembrance of that story, yes. If in Greek culture they had established a remembrance of victory in the Trojan War, even though the Trojan War never happened, there would be no problem celebrating the annual day of victory in the Trojan War every year. Fine, that doesn’t disturb anything so long as you accept the authority of the command itself. The reason is a separate matter, especially since we do not derive Jewish law from the reason given by Scripture; and according to Maimonides in the fifth root, we do not derive Jewish law from the reason given by Scripture even where the reason is explicitly written in the Torah—for example, “He shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away,” concerning a king. In the Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin 21, there is a dispute among the tannaim, and Maimonides says that one of the tannaim holds that we do not derive Jewish law from the reason given by Scripture even where the Torah itself writes the reason, where there’s no concern that the reason is wrong—that is the first tanna, and Maimonides rules like him. So in general I don’t have to be troubled by the question of reasons. In any case, then the relation to… Rabbi, but even if there was an event in reality, in the end it’s still a myth. Many times—let’s not argue whether that means all the time or not—but I don’t know, the Egyptians celebrate the day of victory of the October War. They created a myth that it was a tremendous victory. We look and say: idiots, you lost badly; you started from perfect opening conditions and barely survived with the Sixth Army. So that too is some kind of myth they created for themselves, an interpretation of the Yom Kippur War as a huge victory. You’re mixing levels of discussion. One level is the question whether there was a war. There was a war—that’s a historical story. The question whether there was a victory—you can say that’s a myth. By the way, I’m not entirely sure. But with Mount Sinai—I’m not comparing, God forbid, but theoretically one could say there was something, but its meaning, its authority… That’s exactly what I claimed. That’s all I claimed. So that can also be ninety-nine percent myth? I already said, and I said it earlier too: when I say there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, I’m not referring at all to the surrounding details; but some sort of interaction with the Holy One, blessed be He, that conveyed to us some of His will, has to be there in the background. What exactly, which desires, what pyrotechnics—fine, I’m not getting into the details at all. As far as I’m concerned, that is the historical core. Everything beyond that you can call myth, or mythical details surrounding the historical event; it doesn’t matter what you call it. That’s the claim. Now, in the context of the creation of the world or the historical reliability of the Bible, very often religious apologetics—and apologetics not in the sense of defensive, yes? factually I too in some cases use arguments of this kind—that I am not committed to the historical truth of the Bible, because it does not purport to be a history book describing the historical facts for me. It is basically some sort of educational myth. Nachmanides writes this about the account of creation; and he says it long before we had the Big Bang and evolution and science and all sorts of things that force you into apologetic corners. He says the creation account has no plain meaning. He says it is only a parable, only homiletics, only something that in my language I would call a mythical description and not a factual, authentic, historical description. So he says this already in the twelfth or thirteenth century, long before you had to say it because of scientific attacks. Now, again, I am not saying the Bible did not happen; I am only saying that the claim that the Bible did not happen need not trouble me. Either it’s true or it isn’t, but it need not trouble me because through my lenses today I can accept the Bible as a foundational myth. I said: except for a few isolated facts where I don’t think that is possible—the revelation at Mount Sinai, our father Abraham, what I spoke about earlier. So this conception of myth is definitely present in contemporary discussions as well. Therefore very often there is actually a resurgence of this mythical religious conception against the attacks that were common in the modern, modernist world. In the modern world, when biblical criticism and all the critical and scientific approaches began, they attacked our tradition—both the Bible and the Oral Torah—through factual investigation and showed this can’t be, and it was otherwise, and it didn’t happen, and all kinds of such and such difficulties. And after this postmodern conception of myth was formed—it’s not exactly postmodern, but that’s generally how people are used to referring to it—then the religious can rest easy. They don’t need to be troubled by those difficulties because they are not supposed to be making a claim about the reliability of the text or the tradition. They say: this text obligates me; it is the framework within which I operate. But I am not committed to its having a historical source, to its being a reliable description of history, of facts. Rabbi Shagar, for example, tends to use this kind of argument in many contexts. He basically says that the religious conception is located somewhere on the circumference of the circle of differences—that’s one of his expressions. A circle is a collection of points all equally distant from the center. And basically postmodernism sees the various narratives, the various forms of discourse, the different beliefs, and so on, as things that do not make a claim about truth. Rather, all these kinds of discourse are just different modes of relating, none of which is really making a claim about truth, and therefore there is no dispute among them. They are all on a circle whose points are all equally distant from the center. If, say, the center is a metaphor for truth—no one is making a claim about truth; rather I choose to live this way, this is my narrative, and so on. And in critiques I wrote and talks I gave also about his conceptions, I said that an outlook of this sort is basically an atheistic outlook. You are basically an atheist, just an atheist who lives within a religious atmosphere, a religiose one, or something like that. There are not a few atheists like that. There are many atheists who report—artists, or even scientists and philosophers, or just ordinary people—who say: I am an atheist; if you ask me whether there is or isn’t a God, there is no God. But I live in an experiential, emotional, subjective world that is very religiose, religious experiences. I stand in relation to those religious experiences; maybe I can even observe all the commandments—it doesn’t matter of which religion—by virtue of that religiose world, without committing myself to the factual claims that underlie the matter. That is basically the application of the conception of myth to the postmodern picture. And that supposedly rescues all the bizarre conceptions that people always attack with various rational and empirical difficulties. They say: forget it, I’m not committed at all to rational truth or factual truth; I have a narrative and everything is fine. The Palestinians are built on this. They are direct descendants of the Philistines and they hold all kinds of carnivals once a year celebrating their Philistine heritage. There is no factual basis for it, but all the leftists explain to you: what’s the problem? That’s their narrative. Everyone has his own narrative. That’s why it is also very important for them to explain that for us too it is only a narrative and not a factual claim, because then that places all of us on the same circle of differences, equally distant from factual truth. Now, this—what this is—is the description of the contemporary mythical conception and some of its implications, which in part are perceived as optimistic implications, because then I need be less distressed by all sorts of difficulties directed at me. So I can live more calmly and not be troubled by biblical criticism and not be troubled by philosophical difficulties and not be troubled by science, by evolution, by the Big Bang, and by all sorts of strange and varied questions, because I am not committing myself at all to claims of fact. This is to empty the tradition of factual claims. Leibowitz also basically already did this, for his own reasons. The question that arises here, which bothered me—I’ll perhaps send you on WhatsApp the article I wrote about this matter; I no longer stand behind every word of it, it was many years ago, but I still think the essence remains—there is a very interesting phenomenon in this context. And by the way, this phenomenon has faded somewhat since I wrote the article; when I wrote the article it was at its height, afterward it subsided somewhat, and that’s interesting—I’ll return to that point in a moment. The phenomenon of the new historians. The new historians, which is a global phenomenon, but existed also in Israel as part of postmodern criticism, or post-Zionist, postmodern, post in general, the culture of post—they point out that the foundational Zionist myths, or the foundational Jewish myths, are myths; they are not really things that happened. Hence there are all sorts of studies explaining that Trumpeldor cursed in Russian and did not say, “It is good to die for our country,” or all kinds of things like that; the massacre at Tantura and all kinds of things—whether there was one or wasn’t one, fine—but they prove that all sorts of stories on which we build our intellectual infrastructure, both Jewish and Zionist, were never there; it’s just a story. And historical studies publish articles and so on. The most extreme among them of course do not even claim factual correctness for their own articles, because they are essentially arguing against the very notion of factual correctness, so they have completely lost the question of criteria; meaning, there are no criteria. You can write whatever you want and everything is fine. And we know—they even conducted experiments on publishing academic articles in various fields, and such articles got through, by the dozens: complete nonsense articles by people who wrote them as a joke on the system just to show that they had basically lost the ability to critique an article, because they have no criteria. So all kinds of articles that were simply absolute nonsense passed academic review and were published in academic journals. There are interesting experiments on this; I wrote about some of these cases on my website, and there are more cases. In any event, I’m not talking about that extremism. I’m talking about the phenomenon called post-Zionists, or post-Zionist historians, or postmodern ones, who at least in some cases do historical work and try to show that the Zionist story is not really factually true. Let’s talk about Trumpeldor. Trumpeldor cursed in Russian, he didn’t say “It is good to die for our country,” if he existed at all. So the question that bothered me when I saw these things was: why is that important to them? Meaning, what was shared by the post-Zionist historians was that they had a non-Zionist ideology—not historiography. Meaning, historiography is one thing and values are another. Right? So at the level of values they were non-Zionist. Fine, that’s one dispute. What does that have to do with your historical methodology? Meaning, why is it important to you to show that Trumpeldor cursed in Russian if you are post-Zionist? Can’t you be post-Zionist if Trumpeldor said “It is good to die for our country”? And conversely, if Trumpeldor cursed in Russian, can’t I still be an enthusiastic Zionist? Why not? After all, the myth of Trumpeldor is not judged through the question whether it was factual truth. It may have been, but that’s not the role it plays for us; the role it plays for us is mythical, it is educational. Now even if Trumpeldor never existed, or existed and cursed in Russian, or whatever happened—so what? I use this mythical story to educate people, young people. And in that sense, why should I care whether the story happened or not? Why is this myth judged through the question whether it is factually reliable? Why is that important? And you, as post-Zionists or postmodernists, should be the first to explain this to me. After all, you yourselves carry the banner of severing myth from facts. So why is it so important to you to prove historically that the foundational stories of the Zionist movement are fabrications? Why is that important? If they were not fabrications, then what? You can still be post-Zionist. And if they are fabrications, I can still be an enthusiastic Zionist with all the fabricated stories, so what? After all, there is no connection. An educational myth has a literary, educational, cultural role; it is not a history book. You taught me that—you, the post-Zionist or postmodernist, taught me that. So if you taught me that, why do you then invest all your energy in doing historical work and showing me that I am factually wrong? Why is that important to you? I’m not talking about whether you’re right. They need publicity and a livelihood—what’s not clear about that? Fine, okay, that takes it to a low place. And we can—meaning, you can explain everyone in low terms if you try; that’s not difficult. And to some extent maybe that’s true. But I still think there is also some point here that is a real point. Meaning, this isn’t merely a cynical matter of searching for a livelihood, though maybe that’s mixed in too. There is probably something genuine here—that’s my assumption. The phenomenon is too widespread or too powerful for it all to be just some cynical matter of looking for a livelihood. There is probably something here. Rabbi, Rabbi, couldn’t one perhaps say that yes, everything can be a myth. About anything you can say it’s a myth and the main thing is the literary value, and to a large extent we understand there’s a lot of truth in that. But there are essential things where it really does matter ontologically whether they happened or not. Events of certain kinds of human suffering—whether they happened or not, that’s a different world. To say they happened when they didn’t, or heroism—that’s all from the same field—it matters to know whether it happened or not. Meaning. I agree, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I said—suppose we talk about the myth of all those who gave their lives over the generations for sanctifying God’s name in Ashkenazic Jewry. So if I say—if someone comes and tells me, listen, honestly I don’t much care whether there ever was Ashkenazic Jewry at all, and whether they gave their lives for sanctifying God’s name—you understand there’s a difference here. No, I don’t understand that there’s a difference here. What difference? What, if there’s a myth that people did this but in fact no one gave their life, then the whole heroism story never happened at all? So what? I want to educate people on the basis of a fictional story. It’s an educational tool, a didactic tool. What’s the problem? We use fictional stories to educate in many contexts, not only in the religious context. And worse still—according to your view these are fictional stories—but I use them to educate. What’s the problem? Why not? But you’re saying the education will be received better if people believe it’s true. If one says… That’s only a psychological question. Yes, that’s already the first step toward the solution. Meaning, you can say to me: true, in principle myths need not be judged on the basis of whether they were factually reliable, but it has psychological value, because if people believe it really happened, then the educational effect will be more effective, more significant. No, no, but if we’re talking about heroism, about sanctifying God’s name—if, say, we make the extreme claim that no one ever sanctified God’s name anywhere in history, no one ever withstood the trial, it never happened, it’s all myth, Abraham didn’t exist and Isaac didn’t exist and Moses didn’t exist and Joseph didn’t exist and no one existed. And none of the righteous people you had in history existed either—they never existed. We’re talking about a concept we imagined but that doesn’t exist. There isn’t one. It never happened. And then who says such a thing is even possible? But there is a big difference between saying there was, כביכול, divine revelation in this matter and saying there wasn’t anything at all. Then who says it’s possible? No, no, you’re mixing things in here. I said that as for divine revelation, in my opinion one cannot relate to it as myth. That’s something else. I’m talking about things that have an educational role, not a factual role. If they have an educational role, then why should I care whether they were factual or not? Don’t mix these two things together. I said there is a category, admittedly a narrow one, of claims about which I will not say—will not accept the claim—that they were only myth. But most things—what’s the problem? Why should I care about saying that the entire Bible never happened at all? When I was a child there was a book called Citation for Valor, a book by that name. When I was a child there was a book called Citation for Valor that described acts of heroism and all those things. Now if I come and educate a child with that, and he reads and is very impressed by Elbaz and all the others, and then I tell him, “Listen, the truth is it never happened; it’s a story I invented in my mind,” then you’re back to psychology, and I already said— No, no, but I’m asking whether it’s only psychology or whether he says, “Wait a minute, something essential has changed here.” What’s essential? Because when you say there is the possibility of a divine… that’s all. No, no, but it’s less effective if it didn’t happen. I think it ends with what the Rabbi said about revelation. If I say there were no such people at all, that there is no possibility of such people, then basically it’s not that there is no possibility, but rather that there weren’t. No, don’t tell me there is no possibility—that’s your decision. But there weren’t! I want to educate my child so that he will be the first, that he will indeed do it. So I use fictional stories to motivate him to do it. But there is a difference whether there stands before him a real Elbaz who once lived and did such a thing, or whether there was never any such person and I’m making him up. That is the psychological difference, that is the psychological difference, that’s all, nothing more. What you mean to say—what was also raised earlier—is that perhaps this matters for psychological effectiveness. This education will be more effective if the child really believes the story happened. I think it’s also for a person himself, not only for others and not only for education. Even for a person himself—if you believe, that’s still psychology. The claim—basically the conclusion that follows from that, if I accept the psychological explanation—the conclusion is: don’t tell the person being educated that it didn’t happen. That’s all. But there is no connection; meaning, the fact that I need it for educational purposes is not an argument for the fact that it happened. Those are two entirely different things, and therefore it doesn’t really solve the problem. Even if it’s true that the educational or psychological effect is stronger if it happened, that is not an argument for the fact that it happened. Fine, so what should I do? Now I’m in an educational bind, because the myths on which I want to educate did not happen. So I have to work harder educationally. But because of that am I now going to decide they did happen? Factually they didn’t happen. So what, for psychology’s sake I’m going to decide they did happen? So there’s the lie. Exactly—that’s precisely what I’m doing: I lie, I say they happened so that the education will be more effective and everything is fine. In a hundred years, when people talk about the Holocaust—in a hundred years, when people talk about the Holocaust, doesn’t the Rabbi feel there is a difference between teaching it as a real historical event or as just some narrative thing? You keep returning again and again to the same question, and I will return again and again to the same answer. Yes—it doesn’t matter whether it happened. It doesn’t matter. The claim—unless psychologically, and that I’m willing to accept, that it works more strongly if it happened. Like the difference between a movie based on a true story and a fictional movie. For me, a movie based on a true story is stronger. Somehow it does something to me if I know these things really happened. Fine, but that’s a psychological question. In principle, in and of itself, that is not an argument for the fact that it happened. Or in other words, I’ll formulate it this way: if both sides—the post-Zionists and the Zionists—are arguing about the factual question, then there’s something problematic here, mainly on the side of the post-Zionists, since they should have said: it may be that factually this happened, but conceptually we oppose Zionism. Now if they want this also to be educationally effective, or to weaken the effectiveness of Zionist education, then fine. But why—how is it that they always also manage to—meaning, that historical research indeed proves that really it didn’t happen? There is some very problematic correlation here between the factual findings and the worldviews—by the way, on both sides. And that calls for interpretation. I’ll show this from another angle. Look, there is in a responsum of the Rashba—there appears a long responsum, or even several long responsa, concerning Yedaya ha-Penini. He was a student of the author of HaHashlama, and he and his group were allegorists. That is, they related to the stories of the Bible as allegories. Abraham and Sarah were not really people who actually existed, but rather a parable for matter and form, philosophical concepts, and so on. Meaning, they understood the Bible in an allegorical way. There was Philo before them and so on; meaning, there is such an allegorical tradition regarding the Bible. Now the Rashba issued a ban against this conception. And he says that the ban is not to study philosophy until age twenty-five, something like that, because philosophy confuses people. It’s interesting, by the way, that he didn’t forbid it altogether, only until age twenty-five. In any case, what was this ban of the Rashba trying to achieve? Or why? Why was the Rashba bothered by this phenomenon in the first place? Now let’s say that the Rashba even thinks that the events in the Bible really did happen, and that Yedaya ha-Penini is factually mistaken. That still doesn’t justify putting him under ban. There’s a dispute, an error—okay. What, would Beit Shammai put Beit Hillel under ban because they’re wrong? Or the other way around? You have a dispute—argue. If you manage to convince him, fine; if you don’t, also fine. Why impose a ban? If he imposes a ban, that means he saw some kind of illegitimate dispute here—not just a dispute between two positions. That’s one thing. The second thing is the very fact that you imposed a ban—what is that? Do you really think I’m now going to give up my views because you banned me? This is what I think. What do you want me to do? If I do not believe these events happened, then as far as I’m concerned they did not happen. So you ban me, and now I’m under ban. What, do you think that because you banned me I’m now going to believe they did happen? The question is how I perceive the facts. If I perceive the facts this way, what good does this ban do? That’s a question I have no answer to. Fine, maybe it’s a ban meant for fools—I don’t know. Those who are impressed by bans. But the first question is really interesting. Why was this so important to the Rashba? And you see that this question is basically very similar to the question I raised regarding the post-Zionists. Because what I am proposing to the Rashba, basically, is this: forget it, treat the Bible as an educational myth. So it didn’t happen. But Yedaya ha-Penini is committed to everything written in the Bible: the laws, the stories, and he will teach the stories to his children, everything; he lives exactly like you. Except for one small point: he does not think it was a historical fact. And that’s all. From there on, everything is exactly the same. It reminds me that in neuroscience today they know that when we imagine a situation or some person before our eyes, what operates in our brain are exactly the same neurons that operate when that person is actually present before my eyes. There is one small difference that gives me a clue that this is a real image standing before my eyes and here it’s an imaginary image that I imagine inside my head, inside my consciousness. But that’s a side signal. The image itself is held by exactly the same set of neurons. Okay? So if I apply this now to the post-Zionists or to the Rashba’s ban, then basically I’m saying: what’s the problem? The Bible will activate exactly the same neurons, educate in exactly the same way, create the same commitment—everything the same—except that on the side there won’t be the signal that it really happened; rather, it’s an educational myth, not a historical story. The fact is there were people who thought that way. Maimonides, regarding the story of the angels and Abraham, or the dreams, says it was basically a dream. It didn’t really happen in reality. And that doesn’t bother him. He studies that passage, he teaches from it, everything is fine—but it was a dream. And one could say it wasn’t even a dream. It was a literary creation of the biblical author. It wasn’t even someone’s dream. What difference does it make? I don’t see a principled difference between saying this and saying that. By the way, Yedaya ha-Penini and the allegorists really do rely on Maimonides. They simply took him one step further. But they do rely on these conceptions of Maimonides. In any case, I think this ban is fairly… it has logic. In the end the people are made up of all sorts of levels of education or perception or understanding and so on and so on. So once there are people who begin spreading these kinds of theories, then some level of people at least will say: if that’s so, then it’s all nonsense—they fooled us. So you’re going back to the psychological thesis, basically. Yes, yes—the educational issue, certainly. So they want to impose a ban so that the effectiveness of the educational myth will be higher if that myth is really factual. Yes, but we asked—we said, why does there need to be a ban? Because of the psychological thesis. Yes, because of the psychological thesis. So that’s the question—the same question and the same answer. So I’m asking why he wanted to impose a ban. I said: yes, I agree. The psychological thesis may answer the question about the new historians and perhaps also about the Rashba. But you have to understand that the psychological thesis is a need. It is not a factual argument. Now if the truth is, say, that the Bible did not happen, then the fact that there is an educational need to assume it did happen does not change the facts. If factually it did not happen, then it did not happen. Meaning, the educational need is not an essential or relevant or substantive argument regarding the facts. True. Therefore if someone thinks it did not happen—so you have an educational need; what do you want from me? Fine, but that’s what I think. Convince me it happened—excellent. If you don’t convince me—then that’s what I think. What do you want from me? I understand that you can—you see that there are some problematic implications. I also see there are problematic implications, but what can I do? In my view, that’s the truth. It reminds me—you know, after Rabin’s assassination there were all sorts of voices in the public saying: look where religious faith can lead people. To fanatical acts, to murdering a prime minister, all kinds of things of that sort. So I had occasion to speak with people, and I asked them: tell me, what exactly do you expect me to do now as a result of those arguments? Stop believing? Because it’s dangerous and can lead to murder, therefore what? Now I have to stop believing in God? Now He doesn’t exist because of that? What does this have to do with facts? I say that factually He exists, and factually—or normatively—His commands obligate. That’s what I think. Now you say these ideas have dangerous consequences. Okay—so we need to think how to prevent the dangerous consequences. But you cannot subordinate what I think on the factual level to the expected dangers of what I think. You can’t demand of me not to believe because it might turn out dangerous. Or to tell me: if you believe, notice, it may be dangerous, so take care to handle the dangers or prevent them. But you can’t demand that I not believe because of that. Exactly the same thing I claim with respect to the Rashba. What does he want? For Yedaya ha-Penini to believe that it happened and existed even though he doesn’t really believe that it happened and existed, because otherwise the educational effectiveness will be damaged? What kind of demand is that? I want to say—apparently, and maybe this is what Shmuel wanted to say earlier; I stopped you because it was getting repetitive, but now I want to return to what Shmuel said earlier and maybe that’s what you meant—apparently, and I mean first of all as a matter of fact, both sides feel that if this myth is effective, and works, and has force, and it is right to educate by it, then it probably also happened. Meaning, that is an indication that it happened. The educational effectiveness is not merely psychology. The educational effectiveness is an expression of the fact that probably at least some core, or some framework, really existed historically. Because if that were not so, then the educational effectiveness could not be what it is. And I claim that this is not merely a cynical use of facts in order to educate, in order to increase educational effectiveness. There is here, if you want to say, a philosophical belief, a metaphysical one, which says that if there is educational effectiveness, then it is probably based on something that really happened factually, historically. It’s a kind of mysticism. Only things that really, truly happened can function effectively on the educational level. And again I say: I’m not talking about all the details, but at the principled level there is some such property of the world—I don’t know, of what—metaphysical, which says that things that happened operate, things that didn’t happen do not operate. Not in an all-or-nothing way, but they operate more or less. Okay, that is basically the point. And therefore the Rashba basically claims not only that thinking it didn’t happen will harm the educational effectiveness, but that if the system truly obligates us, and if we really keep it for thousands of years and it creates commitment to the system, then it probably really happened. And that is an argument in favor of the fact that it happened. It is not an instrumental argument that says: look, if you don’t believe it happened, then we have an educational problem. If we have an educational problem, we need to deal with it. But you cannot change your beliefs because of that. He is making a substantive claim against Yedaya ha-Penini: if it is educationally effective, then you are mistaken—it really happened. And therefore I still don’t understand the point of imposing the ban, but I do understand why he wanted to impose the ban. I said: the second question I don’t know how to resolve; the first question perhaps I can offer a resolution for. Logically it reminds me a little, logically, of the proof from the Torah that one must wear a hat, a head covering: “And Abraham went”—is it conceivable that he went without a hat? Right. It’s the same kind of argument, taking egg and chicken. A very similar argument, but not the same one. Similar, yes. Not the same one, because here I really think that if something—call it a claim in psychology that testifies to history. I’m basically saying: if psychologically it is effective, then historically it probably worked—it happened, sorry. Okay? Now this is a claim; one can examine it, one can dispute it, all fine—but it is a claim, there is nothing circular here. I’m making a claim. Okay? It’s like—you know what, just one second to sharpen it further—I have one of the proofs, in my eyes, for the existence of God, namely the authority of morality. After all, without God there is no authoritative morality. That’s my claim; I’ve elaborated it in many places. Now many people argue against this that it’s Abraham and the hat. It’s basically an instrumental or pragmatist claim, if you will. I am supposedly producing God in order to have authoritative morality. God is—yes—the opium of the masses, as Marx said. He is basically invented in order to persuade people to act morally or to give authority to moral rules. And that really would be pragmatism, a rather contemptible one, I would say. Meaning, that would be a bad philosophical argument. But my claim is not like that, even though it sounds very similar. And so that is the same answer I’m also giving you. I’m not making that claim. I’m making the claim that without God there is no authoritative morality. That’s clear. Because without someone who legislates, all the rules of morality are my own decisions. As Rabbi Siborsky already told me in sixth grade when we were—okay wait, one second, let’s leave Rabbi Siborsky for a moment, let me just finish the argument. Because chances are he said something incorrect. I don’t know him; I’m saying that just like that. But what I want to claim is this: my claim is that I intuitively understand, or in my conscience, or in my moral perception, that morality really is authoritative. Morality is binding. Now I ask myself retrospectively: what does that imply? I say: look, if there were no God, there could not be authoritative morality. But I think there is authoritative morality, so apparently I am implicitly assuming that there is a God. That’s the claim. Now you understand that this claim is not a pragmatist claim. A pragmatist claim would say: look, I don’t know that there is authoritative morality, I want there to be authoritative morality. In order for there to be authoritative morality, I will invent the concept of God; that way I will educate people, and then people will behave morally, because if there is no God in this place they will kill me. So the claim would basically be that I invent God for pragmatic purposes—pragmatic in the elevated sense, meaning in order to produce moral benefit, not personal benefit or my own personal interests. I am not making that claim, even though it sounds very similar. I’m making a genuine philosophical claim. I’m not inventing God. I infer that He exists because the fact that I feel in every fiber of my being that morality is authoritative—and authoritative morality cannot exist without God—therefore that feeling apparently testifies that I also perceive that there is a God. And He commands me in the rules of morality. You understand that this argument is a philosophical argument in favor of the existence of God. Now one can of course say: look, your feeling that morality is authoritative is itself an illusion. Fine—we have a dispute. But if I think that’s not an illusion, but something real, then I can infer from it the conclusion that there is a God. Every argument is built on its premises, and if you do not accept the premises you won’t accept the conclusion. That is not a flaw in the argument. But I’m saying there is an argument here built on a premise, and it derives from it a conclusion, and this is not pragmatism. It is something entirely different. And therefore the difference is enormous, and it is the same difference I am talking about here regarding myth. Meaning, one can say that I create a myth out of nothing, I lie basically—holy lies, as they say—in order to increase educational effectiveness. That is pragmatism. But if I claim: no, once I see there is educational effectiveness, people devoted themselves to the system, are committed to it, it has endured for thousands of years, and so on and so on—then I infer from this that probably the factual infrastructure on which the system is built really did exist historically. That is not a pragmatist argument. That is not a holy lie. It is a philosophical claim. Again, one can reject the premises and therefore also the conclusion, but it is a philosophical claim. Whoever accepts the premise will also have to accept the conclusion. What this basically means is that there is—and here I come to the Platonism of the matter—basically the claim underlying all this is that when I speak of an educational myth, it will be effective if it has some basis in objective reality. Or in other words, one cannot simply invent concepts and have those concepts be effective. Or let’s formulate it differently, now in terms of Platonic concepts—say, the concept democracy. The fact that people are so convinced that democratic values are important values worth fighting for, and that someone who does not believe in those values is a problematic person whom one must fight against, and so on—that means the concept democracy is not a concept that we constituted. It is not a conventionalist concept. Rather, it has some root in objective reality. Or, if you prefer, in the Platonic world of ideas. And because it has some mode of existence in reality itself, that is also where its effectiveness comes from on the evaluative, moral, psychological, pedagogical level—whatever, in all those contexts. Meaning, the Platonic claim now confronts the Aristotelian claim by means of an argument. And I want to claim that if Aristotle were right, then one could not educate through these things. Or one could not really—as I said earlier—argue about democracy, but one also could not believe in the authority of democratic values. Yes, if you remember, I mentioned the spinach test of David Enoch, where you ask a child—a child says to you: “Good thing I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach I’d eat it, and spinach is yuck.” Right, that’s the spinach test. Here that’s funny. But if a child were to say: “Good thing I live in the twenty-first century and not the seventeenth, because if I lived in the seventeenth century I wouldn’t know quantum theory and relativity”—is that funny in the same way? And the answer is no. Why not? What is the difference between the claims? The difference is that quantum theory and relativity are claims about reality. They are truths that are objectively true. So certainly someone can come and say: what do I care about living in the seventeenth century? I wouldn’t know it; physics doesn’t interest me. No problem. But if someone says it does interest him and it is important to him to know the new findings of physics, there is nothing funny about that. Therefore he does not regret not living in the seventeenth century, because then he would not know things he knows today. There is nothing funny about that. With spinach there is no objective truth here. You don’t like spinach. There is nothing objectively wrong with spinach such that one ought not to like it. So if you liked spinach, what would be the problem in eating it? There is no problem in that. The difference between the claim about spinach and the claim about relativity is that relativity is an objective truth. It exists in the world itself. Spinach is a matter of personal taste, a subjective issue. One person likes spinach, another doesn’t. So now if I ask the question—yes, he formulated this test, David Enoch, in order to ask: what will you say if I apply the spinach test to values? “Good thing I don’t live in the eighteenth century, because then I would own black slaves. But I live today, and I understand that’s wrong, and I treat people properly regardless of skin color, and therefore I’m glad I live today and not in the eighteenth century.” Is that funny like spinach, or does it look more like relativity? I think most people would not find it funny. And this is not a matter of a different sense of humor. They wouldn’t find it funny because they understand that this is much more like relativity than like liking spinach. Because it basically means that we do not perceive values as psychological or genetic conventions, or whatever, which are simply the result of my personal taste: I like spinach or I don’t like spinach; I want to enslave black people or I don’t want to enslave black people. That’s not the same thing. For me, not enslaving black people is a fact—that it is forbidden to enslave black people—just as relativity is a fact. And if they didn’t know that in the eighteenth century, that’s their problem. They didn’t know it not because they thought differently. They didn’t know. And we know today, and I’m glad we know today. I think I already brought this up, and the claim is that the spinach test basically shows me that things which have objective authority for me, like values, are rooted in reality itself. There is something in reality—even despite the naturalistic fallacy—there is something in reality that causes the authority we grant these things. I say the same thing about myths. Religious values, conceptions, beliefs—their effectiveness apparently stems from the fact that there is some factual infrastructure at the base of those values upon which they are built. And therefore to say that the entire Bible never happened at all, that it is all merely an educational myth—beyond the question of how educationally effective that is, and the fact that I may have educational difficulties, and educational difficulties have to be dealt with but say nothing about reality—I want to claim that the very fact that it remains effective through the generations, that people perceive it as obligating them, and give their lives for it, and condemn those who don’t do so, and perceive it as something right—that’s not spinach. That’s relativity, or the enslavement of black people. So that means there is something in objective reality that is the basis of this whole system, and that is a Platonic conception. Meaning, our relation to myth, or our arguments about whether Trumpeldor cursed in Russian or said “It is good to die for our country,” indicate that we are basically Platonists. We do not really perceive our systems of values as something that is an Aristotelian convention. We don’t simply agree among ourselves and then go with it. No—it derives from some place in reality itself; that’s why it obligates, that’s why it has authority. And in that sense this is a further confirmation of Platonism against Aristotelianism. Now, I’ll just open up what I’m going to continue with later. I’m still going to continue this series a bit further. We’re now heading into the break between semesters, so I’ll just connect this to next time. I spoke about black people, about the enslavement of black people in the eighteenth century and how good it is that I live today and don’t do that, and that brings me to the second implication of Platonism. The first implication was: what is the meaning of disputes over definitions of concepts? And I claimed that a dispute over the definition of a concept indicates the Platonism of both sides. Both sides are Platonists, because otherwise there would be no point in arguing. In an Aristotelian world there is nothing to argue about—it’s just a different dictionary, and that’s all. That was the first implication. The second implication is the changing of a concept. Not a dispute, but a change. It may be that a concept has one meaning at a certain time, and in a later generation they pour other content into it. In an Aristotelian world such a process is impossible. Why? Because the concept is nothing but the set of properties that define it. Once you change the set of properties, you are speaking about a different concept; it’s not that the concept underwent a change. Perhaps the linguistic term changed, but not the concept. The concept is the set of properties. If you now put different properties into it, you are simply speaking about a different concept. In contrast, in a Platonic world the concept can undergo change. Why? Because in a Platonic world the concept is not the set of properties. The concept is the thing of which those are the properties. It may be that its properties change over time, and therefore in a Platonic world one can speak about a change in the properties of a concept. I’ll bring just one example to explain what I mean and why it’s relevant. Think about the dispute over the definition of who is a Jew. The religious world is accustomed to define a Jew as someone born to a Jewish mother or converted according to Jewish law. That’s the ethnic definition. What is the substantive, essential definition? Someone committed to Jewish law, say. I think that’s the definition and there is none besides it, but one can argue about that. For now let’s say that is the definition. What do people who want to define secular Judaism propose? There are such people who want to define secular Judaism. They want to suggest that Judaism today is something else: speaking Hebrew, reading Amos Oz, serving in the army, I don’t know what, and caring about the Jewish people. That, they say, is what it means to be Jewish in some secular sense. You ask him: why are you using the term Jew? Use the term Israeli, or the term redemption of the universe, or a term from heaven—why are you taking the term Jew? The term Jew already has a defined content over many generations. Use another word. Why is it important to him to use the term Jew and to argue over it? Because this argument basically indicates that for him the term Jew is Platonic and not Aristotelian. There is such a concept, and he claims that the characteristics of the concept, which were once religious characteristics, have now changed. But it is still the same concept—not the same term, sorry, the same concept—even though the characteristics have changed. Now if the concept were the set of characteristics, then how can you say it is the same concept? Here, different characteristics means a different concept. Once you claim that the content of a concept has changed, you are basically making a Platonic claim. Notice, once again, against intuition. The first intuition says: well, if the content of a concept can change, that means it has no real content; we’re Aristotelians, it’s all agreements. Exactly the opposite. Because the content of a concept changes, and you still perceive it as the same concept that underwent a change—not a different concept. In what sense is it the same concept? If the concept were only the set of its characteristics, then it’s not the same concept; the characteristics are different. It follows necessarily that if you claim the concept changed, then the concept is not the set of characteristics, but rather something—a Platonic idea—whose characteristics these are, though the characteristics may perhaps change over time. One can argue whether that’s right or not, but the very existence of the argument, or the very existence of this claim, is itself testimony to Platonism. So just as I say that a dispute over the definition of a concept is testimony to Platonism, so too a claim about the changing content of a concept also conceals within it, or carries within it, a Platonic conception. That’s what I’ll get into next time, which will already be in Elul. We’re heading into the break now, right, Itchko? Yes, indeed. This issue of slavery versus Popeye—what’s the name of that food, anyway—spinach. I’m not talking about whether it’s funnier or less funny, but in my opinion the argument is—similar, meaning not in terms of humor but in terms of the facts. Just as there is an apparent contradiction in the spinach case, so too if I say: too bad—good thing I wasn’t born several centuries ago because… that argument is also very good; it’s not funny. Why? Because at any given moment I’m missing things that will exist in another hundred years. So why are you so pleased with yourself? Fine, so today you know what people didn’t know a hundred years ago. That is really not the claim. I’m pleased about not living in the eighteenth century, but all the same, in the twenty-fifth century I’d want to live even more. So I also… Right, so I must always also be sorry. No, everything is fine, but not with spinach. There is no real progress there. Spinach is either you like spinach or you don’t—what difference does it make? There is no objective truth there. Yes, right, I said it’s not the same type of humor. I’m just saying that humor is an indication of a philosophical difference. Regarding the fact that we reject the argument, regarding the fact that we treat the argument dismissively—I’m saying that here too and there too there is some bug. Here the bug is that if I had not… There is no bug at all in the argument about the enslavement of black people. He says that in the twenty-fifth century I will be even more moral. Great—then too bad I wasn’t born in the twenty-fifth century. But I’m glad I wasn’t born in the eighteenth century. The fact that I’m glad I have a million dollars means I wouldn’t be glad to have ten million? I’d be even happier, but can’t I say I’m glad I have a million dollars? Why is that a bug? Because we’re talking about something absolute, that it’s good for me not to have been born in that era. So I’m saying this era—right, more than that, and less than what… I’m not talking about something absolute, I’m talking about something relative. The relativity is absolute. It’s better than what was in the eighteenth century, but not better than what will be in the twenty-fifth century. Fine. On the subject of “if there is no God in this place,” which we are discussing, back in the day we had some heart-to-heart conversations about this, in short. There are two problems here. First of all, I think we even mentioned more than once in this framework that religion or faith and morality are not the same thing. It is not necessarily true that every… so to bring a proof that otherwise there would be no morality… I agree that Siborsky is wrong; he is wrong. I agree with you. “If there is no God in this place, they will kill me”—in the simple sense this is a factual claim that says that a religious public or a religious person behaves better than a secular person. In my opinion that is simply false. At least not necessarily. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the question… I’m making a different claim: that in a religious world there is authority to moral values, and in a secular world there is no authority to moral values. That does not mean the secular person will behave immorally. He will behave morally like me; he will just be inconsistent. Because what makes us think this? In the end, if I’m standing somewhere and I can steal or do something, and certainly no one will catch me, why shouldn’t I do it? No, that’s Siborsky, not me. I’m not. Those are the kinds of mistaken mistakes; I entirely agree, it’s nonsense. Then why would a person do it? Why… I’m not asking what will make me behave morally, but what gives authority to moral values even if I do not obey them. Why should one obey them? Not why will I in fact obey them. This explanation that if there is a God then there is a whip and therefore I’ll obey—that is an explanation for why I will do it in practice. That is not the question I am asking. I’m asking why one ought to do it. That is a completely different question, a philosophical one. That’s the person facing himself. What do you mean, ought? For what reason does he do it? Is it because there is some higher thing, or because maybe he has some chemical properties in the brain? I don’t know, maybe something causes him to, even though no one will catch him and… Then you are a moral relativist and I am not. For you it really is like spinach. I’m putting up question marks; I don’t know. Fine. I think otherwise. Okay. Rabbi, in my opinion the proofs the Rabbi brought today for Platonism are all, in my view, really correct when they concern normative matters. In the end concepts get translated into something normative, and morality is a normative issue and God is a normative issue. And in the end, indeed, the authority of morality and all that really does require the existence of something objective, something that really exists and is not… and morality is a normative issue, and God is a normative issue. And in the end we really, how shall I put it, the authority of morality and all that truly requires the existence of something objective, something that really exists and whose existence is necessary. But beyond that, beyond that God, beyond the whole normative moral obligation, all the other things—it could well be that once people talked about demons and today we talk about bacteria, and nobody tries to convince the other what the Sages meant. The concept simply changes; meaning, it doesn’t matter. I agree that there is a difference. But I still claim that despite the difference, it exists here too. My claim is that if Trumpeldor really cursed in Russian, then it probably would not really have had the educational effectiveness that it has. And why? Because for Trumpeldor to realize some sort of value, that value has some existence in the world of ideas. And because of that it is effective for me too. That’s basically the claim. In the end, in the end, I come to—if there was an event of Trumpeldor, like the Rabbi spoke about morality where we don’t disagree, then I think Trumpeldor too, if he did the deed, for me that is a kind of claim upon me, and I feel that claim is real. And that’s what I was talking about. Rabbi, may I ask a few questions? What affects me, affects me—I’ll say more than that. There is a classic activity in Bnei Akiva. We—I heard it at least twice—about Hannah and her seven sons, or the mother and her seven sons. Hannah appears in some source, I don’t know exactly; it’s not clear why she is called Hannah. But the mother and her seven sons, who sacrificed her seven sons there with the Greeks—at the end, to her youngest son before he gives up his life, she says to him: when you go up on high, go to our father Abraham and tell him: you sacrificed one son; I sacrificed seven sons. You had a test, because in the end he didn’t sacrifice Isaac, but I am the deed itself—mine were actually sacrificed. In other words, there is basically a claim here: I am more righteous than you; I sacrificed more than you. And then the question they always ask in Bnei Akiva is: so why do we educate on Abraham our father and not on Hannah and her seven sons? She was a greater martyr than he was. So the claim made there—this is proof from Bnei Akiva counselors—the claim they say is that after Abraham our father did this, he basically brought down into the world the ability, or the power, to give one’s life for sanctifying God’s name. So now it’s already easier. And therefore in the end the merit of being first is still his. Now one can formulate this in a less mystical or more mystical way, but basically I’m making a similar claim. Since this happened at some point in history, that means that something—there is some idea here that was realized in the world. Once realized in the world, that creates greater authority or effectiveness for me too. And even if I had never heard of Abraham our father—I’ll be a mystic for a moment—even if I never heard of Abraham our father, still the mere fact that he did this gives some kind of connection, I don’t know through genes or through what, to that Platonic idea, and causes this educational myth to be more effective. Yes, that’s Platonism with an added pinch of mysticism. Once people stopped enslaving slaves, in reality people saw that, and today it doesn’t even occur to anyone to enslave slaves. The world changed, reality changed. Once people stopped enslaving slaves, it made me understand that if I look at the moral idea, I understand that this is wrong. Before that, people looked at the moral idea and did not understand that this was wrong; they saw it as a reasonable act. So there is something here: the objective event that happened, the war over slavery, caused people to perceive the moral facts differently. No, I want to say as if maybe it’s more than that. Our father Abraham is difficult for us sometimes—we see him as a moral ideal, yet he enslaved slaves. Right. So one may ask: how did such a great figure not understand that it was wrong to enslave black people? But today we understand; the world is different. Relative to his time he was righteous; he didn’t have that new divine revelation. About Noah, the Sages expound “in his generations” either critically or favorably; with Abraham our father, the same thing. Rabbi, can I ask a few questions? First of all, I wanted to ask regarding what we discussed about the authority of morality. So is this basically parallel to the authority of every idea? Meaning, could there be a person who does not believe in a divine source but does grasp ideas as something that exists? Something existing is not binding. For something to be binding, there has to be a source of authority that gives it binding force. Otherwise that’s the naturalistic fallacy. Facts don’t say anything about what I should or should not do. So the democratic value, say, is parallel in that sense to the proof from morality? Yes. Democracy is a moral value, for those who believe in it. So the claim is that the democratic model may perhaps exist. But as something that has binding authority, that demands of me to act or not act in certain ways, it needs a source. The fact that something exists—why does that obligate me just because it exists? So what if it exists? That’s the dispute I had with Enoch in column 456; I discuss it there. Yes, the question whether one needs God in order to give authority to moral values—and he says one does not need Him, although he too is a moral realist. He too believes there are moral facts. That’s exactly the dispute. Meaning, he claims there can be binding moral facts without God. I claim there are moral facts, but they will not bind without God. Say with regard to the concept Jew, which doesn’t necessarily derive into anything practical, yes, as the Rabbi described, there can supposedly be a secular Jew where they discuss the concept itself. No, I’m claiming secular in a sense that obligates me to something. No, but people who really do relate to the concept Jew as an existing object, as a Platonic idea that exists. No—there, if it doesn’t obligate them to anything, then that doesn’t necessarily mean there is a God. Okay, that’s what I wanted to understand. I also wanted to ask—wait, it slipped my mind. I held that question the whole class and now it slipped away. People write things down these days, at our age, on WhatsApp or in the Q&A on the website. In the Q&A on the website is maybe better. Okay, another question from the previous lesson. I remembered, I remembered. Regarding this matter of leaving an impression—if something, some myth, left a practical impression and functions, then that is some kind of pronounced proof of its truth. So just, say, the story of Buddha popped into my head—a very ancient story about that prince and all those things, where we see today how he influences, and a whole culture is built and based on him. And it’s not far-fetched to say that this story didn’t exist and is a story that was written. Not far-fetched—I’m not claiming it’s far-fetched. First of all, I don’t know. It could be that there too something happened, and what exactly happened and what details were added is another matter, as with us. But certainly it could be that there too something happened. Rabbi Kook in “Nevukhei HaDor” says that the traditions of Christianity and Islam too may very well be correct. I didn’t go to those examples because the story of Buddha, for me, is not a theological difficulty; meaning, whether I accept that he existed or whether he didn’t exist—it really isn’t. But I’m saying more than that: even things that are theological difficulties, I’m saying, they too may have existed. More than that, I say even more. So the claim is, first of all, that he may indeed have existed. And second, I’m not claiming deterministically that what didn’t exist doesn’t work and what did exist does work. I’m saying that existence upgrades or increases the effectiveness. Now where exactly the line passes, and perhaps there are other reasons that make something effective—that is certainly possible. This is not an all-or-nothing claim, not black and white. And one can also reject this claim. What I’m showing is what I called a theological proof, or an exposing argument, not an inferential one. I’m claiming: the fact is that people bother to argue about the facts. Why do they bother to argue about the facts? Because both sides feel that the facts matter. Why? You have a value dispute; why do you care what the facts were? So first of all, before I express my own view, I show you that both sides to the argument share one thing: that the facts matter. Is this connected, does the Rabbi connect this to what Rabbi Yehuda Halevi says, for example when he speaks about the authority of the biblical myth, that an entire nation comes and grasps and accepts it and it is supposedly its tradition? He talks about the reliability of tradition. He says that a father does not lie to his son, and if they pass down the tradition to you, it probably happened. I’m talking about something else. I’m talking even without a tradition having existed. This is not the historical reliability of tradition, but rather the very fact that the thing is effective—not because they don’t lie, but because if they were lying it would not work. Meaning, I am not assuming that a father does not lie to his son; I am assuming that if the son accepted it, then apparently the father did not lie. A different claim. Okay, thank you. One last thing, Rabbi—I wanted to ask whether in future classes it might be possible to talk a little about the invention of concepts that are supposedly Platonic, meaning how one relates to concepts. I always think in the context of gender, which is something very common and people specify it and name it. I was planning to talk about that today, but I didn’t have time. That’s the topic of the next class. Great, that’s the topic of the next class. Great, thank you. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom.