Platonism – Lecture 32

Table of Contents

• Platonism, conventionalism, and disputes over concepts
• Censorship versus mockery: a semantic argument that hides a substantive disagreement
• Change in definition as a test for Platonism
• Beauty and morality: disagreement and change as proof of essence, not a refutation of it
• Law, citizenship, and the claim that the argument is not merely legal
• Queerness and “What Is a Woman?” as a laboratory for disputes over essence
• Psychophysics as an example of the limits of measuring subjective experience
• Critique of the fourth stage: arbitrary constitution versus reporting an essence
• Political correctness as a consequence of dismantling linguistic-substantive truth
• Religious and secular: terms created because concepts already exist
• Pirsig, “quality,” and definitional difficulty that does not negate existence
• Foucault: important stages, and then a mistaken leap
• Truth versus cost: the Rabin assassination example and the refusal of pragmatism
• Relative concepts: disabled and wise versus essence and relative regularity

Summary

General overview

The lecture presents an essentialist-Platonic position regarding concepts, arguing that the very existence of disputes over concepts and changes in their definitions indicates that concepts have an existence prior to the lists of features used to define them. Set against this is a conventionalist-Aristotelian position, according to which concepts are linguistic agreements, and therefore a dispute over a concept is usually just confusion that can be solved by separating the terms. He illustrates the claim through the debate over “Who is a Jew?”, through a debate over “censorship,” through the concept of beauty and morality, and later through the phenomenon of queerness and the question “What is a woman?”, concluding with a discussion of the concepts religious/secular, Foucault, and relative concepts like “disabled” and “wise.”

Platonism, conventionalism, and disputes over concepts

The lecturer argues that a Platonic conception of concepts has two expressions that sharpen it: disputes over concepts and changes in a concept’s definition. He explains that if “Jew” is only the collection of features in the definition, then there is not really any argument when one side defines a Jew as someone committed to Jewish law and another side as someone who serves in the army and contributes to the state, because these are actually two different concepts that ought to have two different terms. He argues that if, despite this, the sides experience it as a real argument about “Jew,” that indicates they assume the concept has an existence prior to its features, and the features merely try to capture it.

The lecturer argues that many disputes presented as semantic are really evasions of the substantive disagreement, and therefore one must distinguish between the linguistic term and the concept the word points to. He suggests that if the debate is really about law or citizenship rights, then it should be formulated explicitly that way, rather than insisting that two different things be called by the same name, because that only obscures the discussion. He argues that someone who insists on fighting over the term “Jew” while at the same time claiming the concept has no immanent content is being inconsistent, because the very insistence on the argument shows that he assumes the concept has an essence.

Censorship versus mockery: a semantic argument that hides a substantive disagreement

The lecturer brings an example from the controversy around a “Podcasts of Radical” podcast episode with Knesset member Tzvi Sukkot that was not aired in full, but instead only segments were shown, framed in a mocking way. He says the story barely appeared in the general press and showed up mainly in religious-right-wing media, and notes that someone showed him a discussion by Guy Zoher as a positive exception. He argues against the claim, “We didn’t censor it because we did air segments,” and defines censorship as hiding or preventing the audience from truly listening, even if this is done through a “screen” of fragmentation, ridicule, and labeling.

The lecturer explains that when an interlocutor claims this is “just an argument over the term censorship,” what is really hiding underneath is a substantive disagreement: is the problem merely mockery, or also the systematic prevention of forming a genuine impression of the interviewee’s arguments? He argues that there are cases in which an argument over a term really is pointless, and there are cases in which it disguises a real disagreement over essence, and therefore one has to diagnose what lies behind it.

Change in definition as a test for Platonism

The lecturer argues that a change in a concept’s definition is another indication of Platonism, because if a concept is only a list of features, then there is no such thing as a “change in definition,” only a replacement of one concept with another. He says that a statement like “the concept of Jew has changed” assumes this is the same concept that existed in the past and now appears differently, and only on that basis does it really make sense to speak about change. He presents this as a legitimate claim only if one accepts that there is a conceptual “entity” beyond the definition, similar to an idea that appears in different forms over time.

Beauty and morality: disagreement and change as proof of essence, not a refutation of it

The lecturer argues against the claim that historical changes in the concept of beauty prove there is no essential beauty, and says the correct interpretation is the opposite: the very talk of a “change in the concept of beauty” assumes that this is the same concept crossing different periods, while the features that arouse the feeling of “this is beautiful” change. He distinguishes between beauty itself and the subjective feeling as an indication of an encounter with beauty, and argues that the feeling points to something fixed and eternal even if the features that trigger it vary.

The lecturer argues similarly about morality: the fact that there is disagreement over morality is not proof that there is no objective morality, but proof that both sides agree there is a shared concept of morality and are arguing over its application and guidance in certain situations. He rejects the idea that one can simply “replace words” to eliminate a moral disagreement, comparing it to an unserious attempt to escape a substantive argument by means of semantic separation.

Law, citizenship, and the claim that the argument is not merely legal

In discussion with students, the lecturer objects to the claim that the debate over “Who is a Jew?” arises only from a legal need to decide on a single category for the sake of rights. He argues that if it is merely a legal question, one could define “Israeli” in the law as the category of eligibility, and conduct a vote in the Knesset over which concept should appear in the wording of the law instead of arguing over one word with two meanings. He adds that appealing to the law is sometimes an evasion, because in practice there are study halls, books, and articles trying to define a new Judaism on the basis of the claim that the concept “Jew” itself has changed, and that this is a substantive dispute about what is required of the descendants of Abraham our forefather in this generation, not just a legal wording issue.

Queerness and “What Is a Woman?” as a laboratory for disputes over essence

The lecturer presents the phenomenon of queerness as a context in which Platonic questions are “on the table,” and mentions as a trigger column 497 on the film “What Is a Woman?” by Walsh, which focuses on trying to get interviewees in the gender field to provide a definition of “woman.” He says the film mainly succeeds in “driving them out of their minds,” and that in its first half it contains a “model” philosophical move, whereas the second half is tendentious and mixes in problems of political correctness that are not unique to gender.

The lecturer builds four stages for understanding queer theory: he accepts a distinction between biological sex and psychological-personality gender, accepts full independence between these planes and allows unusual combinations, and accepts the difficulty of measuring gender objectively so that one relies on the person’s internal report. He argues that the real dispute lies only in the fourth stage, where it is claimed that there is no essential criterion for a male or female experience, and that gender identity is a self-constitution that demands binding social recognition.

Psychophysics as an example of the limits of measuring subjective experience

The lecturer uses an example from psychophysics and mentions a book by Daniel Algom in the Open University series to show that there are phenomena for which there is no direct objective measurement at the level of experience, such as the intensity of light as experienced in consciousness versus the intensity of the electromagnetic field. He argues that one can measure field intensity, but one cannot directly measure “how bright” it is for a person, and therefore researchers are forced to rely on reports and build models such as a logarithmic law or a power law. He connects this to the claim that in gender, as in other inner experiences, there is no unmediated access to another person’s experience, and therefore subjective report is a necessary source of knowledge, without that in itself deciding the question of the essential definition.

Critique of the fourth stage: arbitrary constitution versus reporting an essence

The lecturer argues that if queer theorists refuse to give criteria for what distinguishes a male experience from a female experience, they cannot demand that others respect their definition as binding. He distinguishes between a situation in which a person reports what is taking place in his own private domain and a situation in which he “determines for me” the meaning of concepts and imposes a conceptual change. He argues that the reason they get offended and argue is that they too assume there is an essence to man and woman, but they have difficulty defining it, and so they retreat to the claim that there is no definition—and that retreat “shoots them in the foot” and produces the confrontations.

The lecturer suggests that if they had remained in the earlier stages and argued that there is a gender essence and that internal report reveals it, there would in principle be room to respect that, because there is no external way to diagnose the experience. He objects to the comparison between requesting a gender pronoun and asking people to call someone a “cat” or “Miss Universe,” and argues that this comparison arises precisely when gender is presented as an arbitrary choice rather than as pointing to an existing conceptual entity that is hard to define.

Political correctness as a consequence of dismantling linguistic-substantive truth

The lecturer connects the far end of the queer position to postmodern discourse and political correctness, arguing that a system of rules about what one may and may not say replaces a discussion of truth and falsehood with arbitrary rules of respect. He says that if the question were what is true and what is not true, then there would be argument and persuasion, and there would be no need for rules of speech as a substitute. He identifies in this a move that tries to avoid substantive discussion by means of linguistic regulation.

Religious and secular: terms created because concepts already exist

A student suggests that concepts like secular and religious were created by conscious decision and produced “two essences” with destructive consequences, and the lecturer argues that this reverses cause and effect. He says the concepts exist, and the terms are created in order to express the need to talk about a real disagreement, while external signs like a kippah are “uniforms” that express the division rather than create it. He argues that even if empirically there is a spectrum and it is hard to classify certain cases, that does not negate the existence of the concepts, but at most points to complexity, and one should not infer from difficulty or social harm that there is no conceptual essence.

Pirsig, “quality,” and definitional difficulty that does not negate existence

The lecturer mentions Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the pursuit of the concept of “quality,” arguing that the conclusion is not that there is no quality, but that the Greek mistake is to think that a concept that cannot be defined in a closed definition does not exist. He uses this to reinforce the idea that concepts can be real even when their linguistic definitions are open, vague, or dependent on flexible sets of features.

Foucault: important stages, and then a mistaken leap

A student presents Michel Foucault’s project as the claim that concepts like beautiful/ugly, healthy/sick, normal/deviant have a changing history and therefore have no essence, and the lecturer argues that the important lesson from Foucault only goes up to the “third stage.” He mentions Madness and Civilization and argues that one can learn about ethical-social influences such as Protestant ethics in diagnostic categories, but the leap to the conclusion that the concepts have no meaning at all is an unjustified move into the “fourth stage,” which he calls laziness or stupidity. He emphasizes that the deconstruction teaches important things about changing features and norms, but it does not negate the existence of concepts like sane/insane.

Truth versus cost: the Rabin assassination example and the refusal of pragmatism

When a student speaks about the “cost” of the lecturer’s approach being too high, the lecturer argues that truth is not decided by costs and refuses to subordinate what is true to what is desirable. He gives a personal-public example: after Rabin’s assassination people said to him, “You see what religious faith can lead people to?”, and he replies that there is no legitimate conclusion that one should stop believing in the Holy One, blessed be He, in order to prevent a political-social outcome, because that is surrender to pragmatism instead of clarifying the truth.

Relative concepts: disabled and wise versus essence and relative regularity

In a discussion of healthy and sick, an example is raised in which a person with two hands in a society of three-handed people would be considered “disabled,” and the lecturer agrees that there are relative concepts but argues that this does not mean they are invented. He argues that “disabled” is a concept whose essence is relative to a social standard, and still it has an idea of “not like society,” and he distinguishes between the idea of “wisdom” and the relative title “wise,” which depends on comparison to others. He concludes that there are relative concepts and non-relative concepts, and that even relativity does not require deconstructing the very existence of the concept.

Okay, good morning. We’re continuing the series on Platonism, and I’ll just sync us back up to where we were. After a pretty long detour, I came back to dealing with the dispute over Platonism itself, and I said that a Platonic view of concepts, or of phenomena, has two expressions that can sharpen it. One expression is disputes about concepts, and the second expression is changes in the definition of a concept. Regarding disputes over concepts, I spoke for example about who is a Jew and things like that, and I said that if a Jew is just the collection of characteristics included in its definition, then there really isn’t any meaning to arguing over a concept. Say if I think a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother—leave aside the ethnic aspect—a Jew is someone obligated by Jewish law, the essential definition, not the ethnic one. And someone else says no, a Jew is someone who is a loyal citizen of the State of Israel and contributes to its economy and security. So if the concept “Jew” is constituted by the characteristics I propose in its definition, then there’s no real argument here. We’re simply talking about two different concepts. I’m talking about a Jew and you’re talking about an Israeli, or the other way around, doesn’t matter. We just need to part ways, choose two different linguistic terms, each of which will describe the relevant concept, my concept and your concept, and then it’ll suddenly become clear that we have no disagreement at all. If we’re arguing over the question who is a Jew, and both sides see this as an argument, that means the concept “Jew” is not just the sum of its characteristics. The characteristics are trying to capture or define the concept “Jew,” but the concept “Jew” has some kind of existence prior to the characteristics. The characteristics are its characteristics, but the concept is not the collection of those characteristics. And then, in that situation, you can understand why there’s an argument over the definition. One person proposes a certain set of characteristics to define the concept, and someone else proposes a different set of characteristics. So we have an argument over what the characteristics of that concept are. That’s a real argument. But that’s within the Platonic view, or if you prefer, the essentialist view of concepts, that there’s an essence to a concept, not just an arbitrary definition. But from a conventionalist perspective, an Aristotelian one if you like, there’s really no meaning to arguing over concepts. If we see that we’re using some concept with different meanings, we simply need to separate. You pick one term for yourself, I’ll pick another term for myself, and then the discussion becomes clearer. There’s no point at all in continuing to use the same term to describe two different concepts.

Rabbi, Rabbi, but isn’t it that when we have a discussion about what the important concept is, one of the important concepts, say in Judaism, in the Jewish religion, namely the concept of “Jew,” then the argument is about how to define it, what content to give it, what to fill that concept with? That can be a substantive argument even though it’s definitional.

You’re dodging the problem. What matters is the concept, not the term. The term is a linguistic creature, the word. And you’re talking about the concept that the word points to, that it indicates, which we need to constitute.

No, but what is that concept, that’s what I’m asking?

So you say: someone obligated by Jewish law. And I say: someone who serves in the army and contributes to the economy. Now decide what, in your eyes, is the important thing, and you can call it whatever you want. But if the concept “Jew” has no immanent content, and it’s only a definition or a social construction, then what’s the meaning of the argument?

But it’s not a semantic argument about what the concept “Jew” means in the dictionary, but about what the important thing is, say a debate in the General Staff.

So say that. Then say: whom should we accept as a citizen in the State of Israel—someone who will be a loyal citizen who contributes and serves and so on, or someone who is obligated by Jewish law? But there is no reason for both of those things to be called by the same name. That just confuses and muddies the discussion. No problem, you can talk about that kind of dispute, just don’t hide it behind semantic games. It doesn’t help at all. The debate over the concept “Jew,” you understand, is not really what you’re suggesting. The debate over the concept “Jew”—both sides understand that this debate has nothing to do with the State of Israel. This debate is about the question of what really should describe a Jew today, or characterize a Jew. And therefore I claim that both sides in this debate, even though one side often uses a postmodern conceptual system, relativistic, narrative, and so on, in fact behind the very fact that it argues there’s a different view hiding. It’s not being honest. It’s not being honest maliciously or innocently, doesn’t matter, but it’s not honest. Because it itself understands that there is an essential definition of the concept “Jew”; otherwise it wouldn’t argue. Otherwise it would say: okay, I’ll call mine “Israeli,” you call yours “Jew,” everything will be fine. And then we can discuss whether the State of Israel is a state of Israelis or a state of Jews. Fine, then you can ask why you want to establish a state. That’s a debate which of course isn’t semantic, it’s a substantive one. But there’s no reason to argue over the term. That’s just words. It’s like arguing whether to say “man” or to say “gever.” One is in English and one is in Hebrew—what is there to argue about? If you’re speaking English say “man,” if you’re speaking Hebrew say “gever.” What’s the point of arguing about that? Arguing over words is a pointless argument.

It reminds me—just yesterday I had an argument with someone, I don’t know if you saw in one of my recent posts, I talked about the podcast that wasn’t aired, a podcast that wasn’t aired. It was called something like Radical Podcasts, apparently a fairly extreme left-wing group, who invited Knesset member Zvi Sukkot for an interview, and in the end they didn’t broadcast the podcast with him, but rather took clips from it, and before each clip they put in some mocking discussion by two people sitting there in the studio, and that was it, that’s what they did. Now in the press this of course didn’t appear. Meaning, not at all. It only appeared in the religious-right part of the press: Haredim 10, Kipa, Srugim, Channel 7, Ice, yes, that whole crowd. In a completely categorical way. Someone later showed me that on Guy Zohar’s program there actually was a discussion about it. That’s really a nice exception, another point in his favor. In any case, the claim in the religious-right press was that this was censorship—they didn’t air the podcast. Now the host I corresponded with, I know him, and I scolded him. So he said to me: no, no, we didn’t censor. We broadcast what he said, just in a somewhat different way, but what he said we filmed and aired. First of all, I’d bet that’s not true. The total number of minutes there, in my opinion, didn’t amount to a podcast. They chose certain clips and mocked them. But beyond that, I argued in a debate with someone else—my exchange with him I ended at some point—but in a debate with someone else I claimed that there was… he sent me that the religious-right media that reported this had simply misled the public, because the podcast was in fact aired. It was just aired in a different form, but nothing was hidden, as the host Jeremy Fogel said: we didn’t censor. And both in what I said to Jeremy Fogel and to that other guy I argued with, I said they absolutely did censor him. So what does it mean, censorship is only not broadcasting? I said censorship means hiding what he says, or not allowing listeners to hear what he says. Now, that can be done in several ways. It can be done by simply not airing it, and then people just can’t hear. And it can be done by placing a screen in front of it. A screen that doesn’t allow listening—not mentally, not psychologically, not for all sorts of reasons—interrupting, ridiculing, and so on. That too is censorship. It’s censorship in the sense that you are not allowing the audience really to hear what the person is saying. Now, the claims were that he came off too well, so they didn’t air it. Meaning the expectation was that he’d be a complete idiot, and he wasn’t a complete idiot. And there were also various other interesting explanations there. But what do you learn from this? You learn that their goal was precisely not to let people be impressed by the quality of his arguments. Meaning, censorship. So the fact that you did in practice air it—even let’s say, suppose I accept, and I don’t accept it, but even suppose I accept that they aired everything and just broke it up or something—that is censorship in every sense. It’s exactly the same censorship as not airing it. You’re not allowing people to hear what he says, only you’re not doing it by not broadcasting; you’re doing it by means of some mental, emotional, psychological, I don’t know exactly, labeling kind of masking—whatever you want to call it. So that too is censorship.

So he said to me: fine, our argument is becoming semantic, we’re just arguing over what censorship is. Because he also said to me: after all, I agree they were wrong. I’m only claiming that the term “censorship” doesn’t fit here. So I said to him: you’re wrong, and I’m bringing this here as an antithesis. You’re wrong. We have a substantive disagreement. I’ll tell you why it’s substantive. Because you say they were wrong because they made fun of him. Not because they censored him; they made fun of him. That’s true. I argue that besides making fun of him, and that therefore it was wrong, it was also wrong because they censored him and didn’t let people listen to him. So here it’s no longer an argument over terminology. Here it’s a substantive dispute. And many times there’s an argument over a term that hides a substantive disagreement behind it. But sometimes the argument over the term doesn’t hide a substantive disagreement behind it. It’s just an argument over a term. And therefore it isn’t always easy to diagnose when we’re in one kind of situation and when we’re in the other kind. But notice that many times an argument over a term really needs to be examined for its meaning. The very existence of an argument says one of two things: either there’s some real disagreement hiding behind the terminological dispute, or the argument is really not about a term but about a concept. Meaning, the concept “Jew” is tied now to other implications and disputes. The concept “Jew” apparently has some kind of existence even before the definitions, and we’re trying to capture it, to define it through a certain set of characteristics. And we have a dispute, but now it’s already a real dispute. The question is whether the set of characteristics that defines it, that characterizes it, is the set I propose or the set you propose. And that’s a dispute. We can’t say, okay, you call yours “Israeli,” I’ll call mine “Jew,” because we’re talking about the same concept. It’s not only the same term, it’s the same concept. So what’s the point of calling it by two different names? We have a dispute. It’s like saying: I’m arguing whether it’s worthwhile to enslave Blacks and not give them human rights and civil rights or not worthwhile. But okay, it’s just an argument about the meaning of the concept “morality.” You call this “morality” and I call this “morality,” so let’s call that “forality” and call this “morality,” and part as friends. You understand that’s not serious. It’s not serious because we have a real argument; it won’t help here to part on a semantic basis. To part by saying okay, we’ll define another concept for you, use a different term, I’ll use this term, and everything will be fine. The dispute over what is moral is not an argument over the meaning of a word. It’s an argument over what the word indicates, points to. And that something really exists, and if I see it this way and you see it differently, then we have a dispute and have to conduct it. You can’t say okay, you choose a dictionary term, one word, I’ll choose another word, and we’ll part as friends.

So the first characteristic of Platonism is that you can argue over the meanings of concepts. The moment an argument takes place, we are essentially in the Platonic world. And that’s a very important point. Because in the argument over who is a Jew, for example, the people who propose the newer definitions, let’s call them that, less traditional ones, very often rely on the idea that the concept doesn’t really have a meaning—we’ll constitute it. A kind of Aristotelian view, let’s call it that—we essentially constitute it. But you understand that this pulls the rug out from under their own claim. If that’s so, then invent yourself another word and constitute it. Constitute “afra.” Why are you taking my word and giving it another meaning? That just muddies the discussion, there’s nothing in it—you can do whatever you want, but it’s simply unnecessary. Meaning, to argue over that—what is there to argue about? If you’re proposing one dictionary and I’m proposing another, a dictionary is an instrumental thing. It’s meant to enable us to communicate. So let’s agree on a shared dictionary so we can speak. What’s the point of arguing over which dictionary to use? So in that sense, arguments over the meaning of concepts hide Platonism behind them.

The second characteristic of Platonism is change in the definition of a concept, and for the same exact reason. If someone wants to claim—let’s go back to the concept “Jew.” Before I was speaking about the argument over what a Jew is, but let’s say I agreed with those who now propose a different definition: a loyal citizen of the State of Israel, that is the new definition of… of “Jew.” Let’s say I agreed to that. What does it mean? It means the definition changed, because once that was not the definition of the concept and today it is. What does it mean that the definition changed? After all, if the concept is nothing but the collection of characteristics that define it, then it’s not that the definition changed. You’re simply talking about a different concept. For some reason you’re calling it by the same name, but it’s a different concept. And therefore, in a non-Platonic world, in a world where concepts are conventions, social agreements, there’s no meaning to speaking about a change in the definition of concepts. Fine—you can decide that from now on we use another dictionary and give the word a different meaning. Fine, that’s just a dictionary matter, it’s not interesting. But if you tell me no, it’s the very same concept itself, only I’m claiming that its definition has changed, that today it should be defined differently from how it was defined in the past, then you’re basically saying in your subtext that it’s the same concept. Today’s concept is the same concept that existed once, only today it appears differently. Again, I’m not arguing against that claim. It’s a legitimate claim—if you’re a Platonist. Meaning, if you’re a Platonist, you’re basically saying there is such a thing as “Jew.” It’s an idea existing in the Platonic world of ideas. Once it appeared on earth in one form. Today that same idea appears on earth in a different form. That is the claim of the people who say this. It’s a claim one can discuss, agree with or disagree with, argue about—but it’s a claim one can discuss. Why? Because you’re essentially creating some entity that exists beyond the collection of characteristics. So just as one can argue about it, to see whether those characteristics really are characteristics of that entity or not, whether it has other characteristics—that was the earlier context, the context of direct argument—one can also talk about the context of change. And it’s for the very same reason. If you say that the very same concept appears differently and needs to be defined differently, that essentially means you recognize the existence of a concept prior to its definition, prior to its set of characteristics. And if that’s so, then yes, one really has to discuss it, argue about it. Whether we’ll succeed in arguing or not, doesn’t matter, but there is room for dispute, there is meaning to the dispute. But if you understand things in a conventionalist framework, a framework in which concepts are conventions, there really is no such concept as Jew or democracy or whatever—these are definitions that we created for our use. A change of definition is simply moving to a different concept. There’s no such thing as changing the definition of a concept. You can use the same word for the other concept, but you are talking about a different concept, not the same one.

So these two characteristics, dispute and change, are indications of Platonism—even among people who perceive themselves, and maybe others perceive them too, as definitely not Platonic. And I’ll bring more examples of this in a moment.

Rabbi, for example, let’s talk about the concept of beauty, right? Surely the Rabbi agrees that the concept of beauty has changed throughout human history. Thousands of years ago certain things were considered beautiful and others unimaginable, and today it’s different—in aesthetic beauty, material beauty, plastic beauty, and certainly musical beauty. Now, clearly there too, music that today sounds wonderful once sounded awful, and even today among different peoples and different groups. So all those differences and changes that occur actually prove there’s nothing essential here. There’s no essential Platonic beauty; it’s all in people’s perceptions.

Exactly the opposite. You missed the whole thesis. Exactly the opposite. If there really were no essential beauty, then why are you telling me that then beauty was like this and today beauty is otherwise? Then that was beauty and this is poffy. But it’s not the same thing that changed? Something changed? Nothing changed. You can say what I enjoy. I used to enjoy this and today I enjoy that, no problem. But if you tell me that concepts of beauty have changed, you’re essentially telling me that the concept of beauty applies both to what was then and to what is today, except that once it appeared in a certain form and today it appears in a different form. So there, you just said that the concept of beauty is something beyond the characteristics or definitions you give it today.

But here it changed completely, it totally changed, turned its skin into something else entirely.

It did not change completely. What was preserved? What was preserved is that same raw intuition of what beauty is. When you encounter beauty, you feel a certain kind of sensation: “this is beautiful.” Okay? Now you can then go and ask yourself what the characteristics are of the thing that produce in me… that sensation. And those characteristics are completely different from the characteristics of what produced that sensation five hundred years ago. But the sensation is the same sensation. Because otherwise it wouldn’t be a change in the concept of beauty, it would simply be two different concepts. That’s exactly the point.

The sensation is epistemological, it’s in me.

Absolutely not, no. If the sensation were in me, then you’d basically be talking about the question of what gives me pleasure. Fine. This once gave me pleasure and now this gives me pleasure; this gives you pleasure and that gives me pleasure. When you talk about the concept of beauty, about the changes the concept of beauty has undergone, then you’re talking about the concept of beauty, not about the person. A person’s feelings are indications that he is encountering something beautiful. It creates in him some kind of sensation. But beauty is not a sensation; the sensation is an indication that you’re now encountering something beautiful. And that is something fixed and eternal. The characteristics of the thing that produce this sensation in me can change from place to place and from time to time and so on, and that is exactly the point. Very often people, like what you said before, very often take the existence of disputes or the phenomenon of change in the definition of concepts and infer from that that there really is no such thing as concepts, only constructions, social conventions. And I claim it’s exactly the opposite. Both change and dispute are indications that there is something real, not that there isn’t. Exactly the opposite. It’s like all those who say that once there’s an argument over morality, that means there is no objective morality. Nonsense. The fact that there’s an argument over morality is proof—not only does it not prove the opposite, it’s proof that both sides agree there is objective morality. And they have a dispute over what it says in certain situations. It’s a dispute over how to implement morality, or what the characteristics of morality are, or what its concrete directives are in certain situations. But the fact that both of us are talking about the concept “morality” and arguing over what it tells us to do in this situation means that we are both talking about the same concept. Because otherwise, what’s the argument? And therefore this is a point that, once you understand it, I think is terribly simple. But the problem is that a lot of people are not aware of it, they don’t understand it. A lot of people keep repeating again and again the same outlook, the same argument, which is simply the opposite of the truth. The argument that says that once there is a plurality of views or change, it means there is no essence to the concept. Exactly the opposite. Exactly the opposite. Only—I want to sharpen this maybe a bit more.

Rabbi, can I just ask for a moment? Even if the concept is a convention, we argue because we have to reach a legal decision—who is a Jew. We can’t invent twenty thousand words.

No, then you don’t need to argue. So let’s vote on which word we’ll use, and we’ll dedicate another word to the other concept, everything’s fine.

No, but we have to determine who is a Jew, because we can’t define who is a Jew with twenty thousand different words.

No, instead of arguing over the question who is a Jew, define in Israeli law that the one entitled to rights is not “the Jew” but “the Israeli.” That’s all. What’s the problem?

Fine, but it needs defining, and who is an Israeli?

So define it. In the end it has to be one unit, one word.

So define it, everything’s fine. But why do you need to argue over a word? I’m not… I’m arguing that I need one word in the law and that word is one single unit.

No, you’re arguing over the law, not over the word. You’re arguing over to whom rights should be given, you’re not arguing over who is a Jew. No problem, argue. But don’t tell me you’re arguing over who is a Jew. That’s also not true, by the way. The argument over who is a Jew is not an argument over whom the law will regard as a Jew. There’s a real dispute here. The secular pluralist batei midrash, whatever they are—they’re trying to define a different concept of Judaism—they are not servants of the legal world. They’re not trying to define what the law refers to as a Jew. They claim that the concept “Jew” has undergone a change.

The Rabbi says you can simply take one different word and another different word and another different word. Right. And define in it what we want, if this really isn’t a conceptual dispute. But in the end we need one law. We can’t have twenty different batei midrash…

No, in order to have one law, let there be a debate in the Knesset whether the Law of Return should say “Jew” or “Israeli.” There, vote and decide. But what’s the point of using the same word in two meanings and arguing? I’m not saying the substantive dispute shouldn’t be argued about—argue about it. But don’t map it onto a semantic argument; that’s unnecessary.

It’s about who is included under the law, in the end.

Right, so no problem. Then define a Jew as someone obligated by Jewish law, and an Israeli as a law-abiding citizen loyal to the state, and so on. Okay. Fine, but that’s the debate. And then argue in the Knesset what will be written in the law. Will it say that a Jew is entitled under the Law of Return, or that an Israeli is entitled under the Law of Return? That’s perfectly fine. Because there there’s no confusion. There the concepts we’re using are clear. But when the law… says “Jew” and we all agree that it should say “Jew.” What we’re arguing about is who is a Jew. That’s an argument over a word. And you’re not really arguing over a word; you’re arguing over what the law should be. Argue over the law, not over the word. Exactly as I said before, it’s also not true that you’re arguing over the law. You really are arguing over the concept “Jew.” That’s a mistake. It’s a mistake people make once I place them in front of this picture—“No, no, we’re arguing over what the law will say.” Nonsense. The dispute is not about the law. The dispute is really over what a descendant of Abraham our forefather is supposed to do in this generation. In the end the law has to use one word. And then we need to define who falls under that word.

So hold a vote in the Knesset over which word to use.

Fine, but once we use a certain word, we need to define who falls under that word.

No problem, then define it. And if you think that’s not… and that’s what the argument is about. We want to define, I want to define…

No, if the argument isn’t about that. I explained—the argument is not about that. Because if you’re proposing two different definitions for the same word, that means the word isn’t an agreed word in the discourse. So define two words, each one attached to one of those definitions, and now argue which of the two words will enter the law in the Knesset. Perfectly fine—that’s a completely legitimate dispute. You can’t argue over the meaning of the word. What does that mean, to argue over it? It’s just a word. You’re arguing over what the law will say, not over the meaning of the word. That’s one point. And two, you’re wrong that the dispute is about the law. It’s not connected to the law. The dispute is over the question who is a Jew. That’s the dispute. Resorting to the law always happens when the person suddenly finds himself at a dead end and I show him, “Listen, you’re arguing over the meaning of a word, so let’s define two words and part as friends.” “No no no, I’m talking about the law—what the law says and to whom it gives rights,” and so on. That’s an evasion. The dispute isn’t there. People don’t set up batei midrash to define a new Judaism in order to understand the law of who is a Jew. That’s just not serious. In other words, batei midrash are established, books and articles are written and everything—for what? To say that the descendants of Abraham our forefather in this era don’t need to observe the Sabbath or not sort on the Sabbath, but rather need to serve in the army, pay taxes, and be moral. That’s the claim. Now we need to understand what that claim means. That claim basically means that the descendants of Abraham our forefather are a distinct category and there are certain demands that stem from that, and we have a dispute over what demands stem from that. That’s a real dispute. That can be discussed. I have a position on it, but here I hear an argument. But that’s on the assumption that there is such a category. It’s not a word. The word points to a category. That’s why I’m not willing to swap the word, because that is the word that points to that Platonic idea and to that category. It won’t help to switch words. That is exactly the point.

Now the perhaps best expression—confusing, but I think also sharp—for this issue is what I think Menachem noted here at the end of the previous class before we went into the break, and I said I was going to deal with it: the phenomenon of queerness. In the phenomenon of queerness these things are right on the table. Shoval—Menachem is the family name, sorry, Shoval. In the phenomenon of queerness these questions are really on the table. That’s what’s nice about this phenomenon—maybe the only nice thing about it—but what’s nice about it is that it really is a good practical test case. In other words, it’s a context where you can sink your teeth in when we deal with the issue of Platonism.

So the trigger—I wrote about this in column 497, four-nine-seven—was around the film called What Is a Woman? This one Walsh, an American conservative, made a film in which he tries to track down the definition of the concept “woman.” He goes among gender experts and all kinds of gender departments in universities, street interviews, interviews various doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, all kinds of different people, trying to get from them a definition: what is a woman, in their opinion? He doesn’t really succeed. The only thing he succeeds in doing is driving them out of their minds. I mean, some of them simply demand that the interview stop and walk away. They get offended. What are they offended by? He didn’t say anything, he just asked them what their definition is. They couldn’t produce a definition, and we’re talking about a professor whose main occupation is gender. That’s the field he researches. And he asks him: what is… explain to me what gender is, what your field is, what is a woman? He has no clue. He doesn’t know how to define such a thing. And there were really embarrassing moments there. He torments some of his interviewees a bit by cinematic means, yes, someone starts saying nonsense and spinning around himself, so he starts speeding up his speech and presents him as blah blah blah—and he really is blah blah blah. And I think the second part of the film is very tendentious. He packages a lot of problems there with political correctness and the new discourse that aren’t specifically about gender. But the first part, in my opinion, is masterful. It’s masterful because we have here a pure philosophical move. And that’s what many of both the viewers of the film and the interviewees in the film don’t really understand. They don’t really understand the point of the film. I want to sharpen it a little, because it’s very much connected to our discussion.

So before we get to the streets of New York and San Francisco, yes, the bastions of political correctness, I want to make a little introduction. The initial foundation of the discussion begins with the fact that when we talk about man and woman, we can distinguish between two levels of reference. There is the biological level: chromosomes, genetics, sex organs, and so on. And that—yes—that is the sexual difference. There is woman and man as sex, or female and male if you like. And there is woman and man as gender, not as sex. And what does that mean? A male personality and a female personality, with male characteristics and female characteristics. And that is something different from the sexual characteristic. The sexual characteristic deals with the biology of the person, and those characteristics deal with the psyche, the mental, and so on. First of all, that’s a first distinction.

Second distinction—I’m building the queer theory right now, but along part of the way I also agree. I want to sharpen where I stop agreeing. A second assumption: there is independence between these two planes, or at least not complete dependence. There is correlation, but not full dependence. What does that mean? There can be a person who in terms of sex is defined as a man, but whose personality is feminine, whose gender is feminine. And there can be a woman in the sexual sense who has the personality, the gender, of a man. There can be. Maybe it’s a minority; with most people there is some kind of correlation. Sometimes this is called gender disorder, but such a thing exists. Well, yes, calling it gender disorder is almost an internal contradiction in queer theory, because on their view it isn’t a disorder at all. So why call it a disorder? It’s simply one of the combinations. There are four combinations; there are two combinations that are not the usual ones. Why is that a disorder? Fine, then they’ll tell you it’s a disorder because it bothers people and they want to have surgery to fix the situation. Because it bothers them, not because it’s a disorder in the clinical sense. Fine.

Dysphoria? Is dysphoria a disorder?

Yes. Well, I don’t know the literal meaning of the word, but yes, that’s the translation. So the second claim is, if so, that there is independence, or dependence that is not absolute, between sex and gender. That’s the second claim. By the way, I’m willing to agree with both the first claim and the second claim. I think that’s almost factual.

In a certain sense—maybe one comment—in a certain sense, there are things in which we depend on a person’s report. For example, there’s a field in psychology called psychophysics. There’s a nice book by Daniel Algom in the University on the Air series that deals with this field; it’s fascinating, worth reading sometime. Because it exposes a point many people aren’t aware of. When I ask the question: what is the intensity of the light I see? Can that be measured objectively? People will say: of course—put in a meter for the electric field, check the intensity of the electric field. Then you know the intensity of the electric field, and that’s the intensity of the light. But no, because the concept of light is a concept that exists in my consciousness, not in the world. In the world there is an electromagnetic field. When my eyes encounter an electromagnetic field, a sensation is created inside my consciousness of light, color, according to wavelength, and so on. Now when people ask me what light intensity, what intensity of light do you experience? How illuminated is this room? That question has no measurable answer. Only I can answer it. And I can say this intensity, another intensity, in terms of my inner sensation. No physical measuring device can confirm or refute what I said, because no one has access to that inner subjective consciousness of mine. You can measure field intensity, but you can’t measure how bright the light is in my consciousness.

Now, the assumption is that this reflects that—but notice: when you ask people, say I increased the field intensity by four times—if the field amplitude is doubled, then the field intensity increases fourfold. Okay, so the field intensity increased by four. The question is: by how much did the intensity of light I experience in my consciousness increase? It turns out it doesn’t increase by four. Not only does it not increase by four; since it’s not measurable, we have no way to do this except ask people: tell me, by how much does it seem brighter to you? If you try to think how you yourselves would answer such a question, there’s no real way to answer it. You just throw out a number—twice, three times, five times. You have no real way to answer that. Even you yourself—I’m not talking about the question of how I answer “how much light do you see?” I’m asking how you yourself answer it. You have no way to answer it. And yet people are interviewed, the outside light intensity is increased fourfold, and they’re asked: tell me, by how much did the light increase? So you get some answers—say one says one and a half times, another says twice, the third says seven times, whatever—and then they take an average, and there’s a debate among researchers about the relationship between the subjective answer and what happened in the physical world. Some say it’s a logarithmic law, others say it’s a power law, and the question is which power, what the power index is, what the exponent is. So the claim is that light intensity in the subjective sense is the log of field intensity, or it is field intensity to the power of one and a half or the power of 2.2. Okay? It’s either a power law or a logarithmic law, and there have been debates for years. Today I think the tendency is more toward a power law. Again, I’m saying this is a somewhat undefined concept. Not only is it unmeasurable, the person himself can’t really give a good answer. So even this average—I don’t know exactly what it means. Meaning, it’s not… because the answer a person gives about himself is not really an answer one can treat quantitatively. But what I want to show through this is that there are certain phenomena in which we have no choice but to rely on the report of the person experiencing the phenomenon. We have no objective way to measure what he’s talking about—to give feedback, prove, refute, confirm what he says. There’s no way. That’s what he says, that’s what I have. It’s like psychology: when a psychologist treats a patient, he relies on what the patient says. He doesn’t… he has no access to know what the patient experiences. The patient tells him what he experiences, and he feeds off that; you have no direct access. Today, through neuroscience, they try to get around this, and the claim is that some things at least can be seen in brain imaging, or in monitoring, EEG and such things, you can see what’s going on in his brain, and in a certain sense that can confirm his reports or not. Doesn’t matter; that only pushes the problem one step back, it doesn’t really solve it. In principle, the claim is that you rely on someone else’s reports.

Now when you ask yourself what the person’s inner experience is—whether it is the experience of a man or a woman—and let’s say that is what matters in defining his gender as male or female. Not his sex, his gender. On that plane, you rely on what he says. You have no direct way of examining his experience. You may be able to see some characteristic responses of his to situations and so on, but that’s pretty weak. In the end, you basically rely on what he says. And therefore, that in itself does not mean there is a problem with queer theory.

Now here is the third assumption. I said the first assumption is that there is a difference between sex and gender, between the biological sex and the social/psychological gender. The second assumption is that the dependence between these two is not absolute. Someone can have one kind of sex and another kind of gender, and vice versa. The third assumption: we have no way to define gender through objective measurement. A particular person’s gender—not the concept of gender, but what the gender of a particular person is—you have to rely on that person’s report. Because the question is what experiences he has inside himself. You don’t really have any way to get to that, like the light example I spoke about in psychophysics. That’s the third assumption, and I agree with that assumption too.

So I adopt all three of those assumptions. And notice that most of the arguments on the issue of queerness and gender and so on revolve around these. They revolve around one of those first three assumptions. Conservatives usually don’t accept any of them. But in my eyes that is simply ignoring facts. I think these three assumptions are factual assumptions and there is no reason not to accept them. They’re very reasonable and sensible. I don’t think people—even regarding the third assumption, when people report to me that they have feelings of being a woman—I don’t think they’re lying. Maybe they’re deceiving themselves, maybe living under a mistake, I don’t know, various constructions and so on. I don’t think they’re lying. So that’s the third assumption.

But we don’t stop there. Because now the question is not how I define the specific person before me as having a masculine or feminine gender. Rather: what is a man or a woman? What is the definition of that gender, woman or man? Or in other words, when you ask me whether my inner experience is the experience of a man or a woman, give me tools. In other words, tell me: if you experience A, B, C, then you’re experiencing a male experience. If you experience D, E, F, then you’re experiencing a female experience. Now I’ll look inside myself, see what I experience, and then I can tell you whether I experience a male experience or a female experience. Because you can’t get to that. But now notice: I’ve reached a fourth layer of the discussion. Is there something defined that I need to experience in order to report to you that my experience is a male experience or a female one? And the queer answer is no. No. You basically constitute your own gender identity. And if a person chooses a feminine gender identity, then he is a woman. And everyone has to respect that and address him as a woman and so on.

That’s a very important point, because when I describe it this way, notice that there are really four distinct stages here. In the first three, in my view, they are completely correct. But the sting is in the fourth. Not in the first three. Because queer theory is not the first three things. The first three things are the platform that makes queerness possible, or the necessary condition on which queerness can be built. And maybe queerness exposed them or sharpened them, because we weren’t aware of those first three levels a hundred years ago. By the way, I haven’t even spoken yet about sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is yet another thing, parallel to one of the first three stages, let’s say, but it interests me less right now. I’m talking about gender, not sexual orientation. The dispute over queer theory is only on the fourth plane, the real dispute. Even though most people conduct it on the first three planes.

And this is the sting that the film puts its finger on, and this is what people don’t understand. Even people who saw the film don’t understand it. This Walsh guy who made the film understood very well the structure I described here. And he set out to investigate the fourth question, not any of the first three. He asks a person—in several places in the film he interviews someone who is a gender expert, yes, a gender scholar—so tell me, what are the definitions of gender? He says it’s complex and there are many characteristics and this and that. Fine—give me. And there are debates about it—fine. Tell me what you define. Not what the whole world defines. Tell me what you define. Or in my own language: I ask a person whether you are a man or a woman. So he says to me, I feel that inwardly in gender terms I’m a man. Okay, I ask myself: what do you feel in order to feel like a man? Meaning, how do you diagnose yourself? Not how do I diagnose you. How do you diagnose yourself when you examine your inner experiences—why do you call those inner experiences male or female? According to what? What is your criterion?

At that point all their claims dry up. Because the moment you say: I feel empathy, compassion, maternal feelings toward children, and so on—that’s essentialism, not allowed. Things like that. You understand? They really shoot themselves in the foot. The claim is that there are no, cannot be, and must not be, essential characteristics of man and woman. There aren’t any. Not that they’re internal and inaccessible to me, and only the person can report them to me—that’s the third level, which I accept. That’s true even of light, which is a physical thing, a physical phenomenon altogether, not a psychological one. There too there is the same distinction, and it’s a simple distinction. It’s obvious. Subjective things are not accessible to objective external measurement. And that’s perfectly fine, I have no problem with that. The fourth step is the problematic one. Because the fourth step doesn’t deal with the question of how I will measure what you feel. It deals with the question of what you should feel. You yourself, tell me your position. Even if there’s a debate—someone else will say you should feel X, Y, Z; someone else will say you should feel A, B, C. Fine. What do you think? Not what others think. What do you think? You won’t get an answer to that from the queers. And more than that—they’ll insist that no answer should be given, there is no answer to it, because what I decide is my gender. It’s an arbitrary decision. I say arbitrary; they won’t say arbitrary, but that’s basically what they’re saying.

So what’s the problem with that? What? I didn’t understand what the problem is. After all, they claim there is no essence, and if you put a title on it then it acquires an essence, so there is no essence—everyone should feel whatever they want, and preferably not stick a label on it, or invent one.

Good. Your last sentence captures the matter. No problem—I’m willing to accept the first three stages. I’m not willing to accept the fourth stage, but that’s a dispute. You can say: I think there’s no feminine or masculine essence that can be identified. Fine. That’s a position I can accept or not accept. But if so, then you have to understand that I have another position, and I have such-and-such a definition. And you can’t demand that I respect your definition if you yourself say you have no definition and decide it arbitrarily. Why should I respect that? Why should you—do you understand that now we get to the more practical arguments—that if he wants people to call him a woman, then I’m supposed to address him as a woman. Why exactly? I see him as a man. Why do I have to respect his world of definitions? Let him respect my world of definitions. Why is he allowed to impose on me while I’m not allowed to impose on him? Or I’m not even imposing—I’m speaking as I understand things, and he’ll speak as he understands things. What’s the problem?

But if the Rabbi asks himself honestly, why does this really bother them? After all, I haven’t really seen such people but…

I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you exactly why. Can I say what I think? In my opinion it’s because culture is so coercive upon us and influences us, and even if you’re not the most radical queer—when culture tells you “she” and you feel “he,” or the opposite, I know—then it’s hard for you, because you have to work on yourself in order to remain faithful to what you decided you feel, because everyone tells you you should feel otherwise, and that comes at a very high cost.

No, it’s not feeling otherwise. That’s exactly the point. Nobody tells you to feel otherwise. Feel whatever you want. The question is what to call it.

Yes, but that’s bound up with it. The concept carries a lot of implications.

A lot of implications? Fine, then say there aren’t implications. That’s exactly—we’re back to the same argument we had before about who is a Jew. Exactly. That’s why I’m showing you that this is an expression of that earlier discussion. And I’ll tell you what I think bothers them. I think it bothers them because they’re trying to present an Aristotelian worldview, but deep in their hearts they’re Platonists. They all understand there is an essence to man and woman. They all understand that. Only what? They don’t know how to define it, because it’s too fluid a thing. Now, I know that in psychiatry and in medicine too there are definitions that are more flexible, vaguer, where they tell you you have a certain illness if you have at least six out of ten symptoms. In psychiatry it’s more common, but there are also such definitions in bodily medicine. Now in the world of man and woman, in the world of gender, we all understand that there are feminine traits and masculine traits. Nothing unusual. And that doesn’t mean that if there is an exception then that woman is a man and not a woman. Why? Because this definition is a more open definition. There are several characteristics—six characteristics out of ten, I’m just throwing out a number here, or fifteen out of forty, I don’t care at the moment—that are enough to define this vague concept called “woman.” But there is such a concept and it has a definition. The fact that it doesn’t fit exactly into our words, and therefore we need to use open-definition techniques—some subset of characteristics out of a much larger set—that only means we have difficulty squeezing things into our language. It does not mean there is no essence to male or female gender. And if there were no essence, nobody would need to be offended here and nobody would need to argue. If I’m returning exactly to the same point I discussed about who is a Jew—they’re offended and they argue because they too understand there is an essence. There really is such a thing as man and woman, and not everyone can decide for themselves. Only what? It’s hard to define. And once it’s hard to define, then you experience a feeling that you’re a woman, and I believe you. I don’t think he’s lying. He experiences the feeling of being a woman. He doesn’t know how to offer definitions. So he claims there are no definitions, and his critic says, “You’re talking nonsense. There are definitions and you don’t fit them; the definitions are sex.” They are both wrong. There is sex and there is gender. And gender doesn’t have definitions in the sense that you can’t fit them neatly into language. But that does not mean there is no such concept as woman and man. The concept exists as a Platonic idea. Its characteristics are characteristics that need to be defined in an open way. They can change. They can be disputed. You see—both the dispute is here and the change of the concept, the two aspects I spoke about at the beginning. Why? Because we’re dealing here with a concept that has Platonic existence. And precisely because of that, one can begin to argue.

If the queers were intelligent—they usually aren’t particularly—if they were intelligent they would understand that they need to claim exactly the opposite in order to gain queer recognition. They should argue: there is an essence of man and woman, and I’m telling you that in my essence I am a man, or a woman, or whoever. Now that is something I’m supposed to respect because I don’t know what’s going on inside him. I rely on his report. Why don’t I respect that? I don’t respect it because he wants to claim, “No, there’s no essence inside me; I want the right to constitute my own gender.” Fine, I dispute that. This is not a diagnostic problem where I don’t know what he feels inside. We have a dispute. I claim there is an essence of man or woman. Don’t use the concepts “man” or “woman” when they have an accepted usage. Call it something else. If someone wants to define himself… if someone wanted us to call him a cat, would I have to call him a cat? If someone wants me to relate to him as a beauty queen, then now—even if he’s ugly beyond belief—am I obligated to relate to him as a beauty queen? What lies at the base of these questions? What lies there is that being a man or woman is like being a cat or a beauty queen. There is such a thing. Only with “cat” or “beauty queen” the definitions are better; with “man” or “woman” the definitions are more complicated. But not because there’s no such thing, rather because we have difficulty defining it. And the queers want to make life easy for themselves—“No, there is no such thing. It’s constituted. I’m not trying to define this hard-to-define concept or claim that it exists in me; rather there is no such thing. A person has the right to declare himself whatever he wants and society must respect it.” This is of course part of the whole deconstructive discourse, what’s called postmodernism or the new criticism or all sorts of things of that kind.

And political correctness, by the way, is an expression of this. What does political correctness say? There are rules for how one may and may not speak. What do those rules really mean? If the question were what is true and what is false, then we wouldn’t need rules of political correctness; we’d need to argue and persuade one another and reach a conclusion about what is true—or remain in disagreement. When you create a system of rules of political correctness, you’re basically saying: there is no such thing as true and false. It’s impossible to discuss whether he’s right or wrong. There are rules about what must be respected and how one may speak. Arbitrary rules. In other words, the queer claim, when taken to the extreme, cuts off the branch on which it itself sits. If the queers stopped at the first three stages and said: there is a definition of man and a definition of woman, it’s independent of the sex of the man and woman, and it is also subjective in the diagnostic sense, meaning I can’t know whether you’re a man or a woman; only you can report that to me—that would be perfectly fine. That would be an acceptable claim, a claim I’m willing to accept. Once you make the jump to the fourth plane, saying that in fact there is no definition at all and everyone has the right to constitute his gender however he wants, that it’s an arbitrary matter—that’s where the arguments begin. And when the arguments begin, those arguments are really arguments about Platonism. But if they’re arguments about Platonism, then say so. Don’t talk nonsense. Say that you’re Aristotelian, say that you’re proposing a different concept, and don’t take existing concepts and use them in another meaning, like in the argument over who is a Jew. You’re just muddying the waters. If you want to argue in favor of certain rights—I’m making all the same reductions we made before. Earlier, regarding who is a Jew, someone said maybe it’s an argument about what the law says. Here too one can say: maybe the argument is over whom the law will recognize as a man or woman or as spouses or whatever. Fine—then argue about that. Don’t argue over the question what is a man and what is a woman. Argue over the law. Hold a vote in the Knesset that every person should be recognized according to what he declares, and never mind, don’t call it man and woman. Let everyone fit himself to a clause in the law however he likes, and vote on that in the Knesset. But the argument over the word—what is a man and what is a woman—is an argument over a word. And the moment you claim this is just an argument over a word, you empty your own claim of content.

And by the way, I think that many of them, if they were aware of this analysis, would understand that they really are located on the first three planes. And they really do see themselves as men or women because they genuinely feel within themselves the feelings of a man or a woman. And the fact that externally people don’t respect that is because externally people are mistaken and don’t understand that there are things whose definition lies in inner subjectivity. You can’t see them from outside. Like light, like many other things. And so what happens is a kind of dialogue of the deaf: the critics are unwilling to accept that there are subjective concepts, and the queers, in order to deal with that, say okay, then there is no such concept, I want to define my gender arbitrarily. But both of them run off to bizarre places. There is a real discussion here, and in that discussion the queers are right if they stopped at stage three. If they said, look, my feeling of being a man or a woman is an inner feeling; I report it to you; you can’t understand from outside whether I’m a man or a woman; but there is such a concept as man or woman. There is an essentialism of man and woman. And I feel the essential feeling of a woman or of a man, or whatever. That I would respect—unless he’s lying to me or just wants to get legal rights or who knows what. But if I have no reason to assume that, then I assume that’s really what he feels. But why do you insist that what you feel is actually not something you feel but only something you constitute? The difference is whether he is reporting something to me or determining something for me. Do you understand that if he is reporting something to me, and it concerns his private inner domain, that’s only natural. Who knows what’s going on inside you? Only you can report to me what’s going on inside you. Nobody should get angry about such a thing. You’re reporting to me on things inaccessible to me. What’s the problem? Just as you report to me whether you love or hate someone. Could I say you’re lying? Why would I say that? I can’t know whether you love or hate him, so you tell me what’s going on inside you. But if you want the right to determine for me what is a man and what is a woman, then you’re imposing on me. I’m not imposing on you. Then you’re the one in the morally problematic position. You want to impose on me a change of concepts against my own views.

You understand that this final queer leap stems, on the one hand, from intellectual laziness or I don’t know what or incomplete intelligence, and they don’t really understand the difference between the first three levels and the fourth level. But on the other hand, because of that, they choose the easy solution: forget it, I don’t need to define anything for you, I constitute my gender. But in that they shoot themselves in the foot, because that people are not willing to accept. And rightly not. Rightly not. That is exactly the point. And notice that many of the practical phenomena we see around us in the world, in the media, in all sorts of places, are rooted in a philosophical discussion about Platonism. Someone who is aware of the philosophical discussion about the Platonism of concepts, I think, sees the whole picture of these crazy and confusing disputes very clearly. And here is an excellent example of the importance of this abstract discussion about the Platonic and Aristotelian nature of concepts.

Okay, one second, I’ll send the post where I discussed this film on WhatsApp.

Rabbi, thank you. Rabbi, for example, let’s take the concept—how much the influence of a concept creates reality. Here let’s take the concepts “secular” and “religious.” This is the creation—someone decided to create them, and decided it consciously, no matter by whom, and after they were warned that the meaning would be most destructive to create these two concepts, the result after a hundred-plus years is that two such essences have been created and everyone relates to them.

You’re returning to the same place. You’re returning to the same place where this is a false thing. I believe there are people who believe that this never existed, and if only we didn’t have these concepts…

Okay, but for someone who really thinks they have no basis.

What do you mean “believes”? He doesn’t believe. I mean, he’s a deconstructionist. He says there’s no such thing as secular and no such thing as religious; these are constructions.

Right. There wasn’t—what does that mean? What’s the difference? Everyone keeps commandments on one level or another, the essence of faith isn’t entirely clear to anyone. And if there were no kippah, then we’d get rid of all this separation.

You’re falling into exactly the same mistake as the queers. You’re moving from stage three to stage four. You move from lack of—or difficulty in—defining, and by the way here there isn’t even difficulty in defining.

No, look Rabbi, Rabbi, suppose there were no such concept—

Wait, wait. Even if I grant what you’re saying, that there is difficulty in defining here—I don’t grant it, but let’s say I did. The easy solution you find for yourself is to say: okay, then there is no definition, it’s just a social construction.

No, it was a crime to create this concept.

That’s a mistake, a conceptual mistake. What does it mean they created this concept? This concept exists.

No, three hundred years ago there was no concept of secular, nor two thousand years ago.

There was also two thousand years ago; it just didn’t appear. Just as the concept of a democratic state existed two thousand years ago; it just didn’t appear. And when it appeared, everyone understood there was such a thing.

And then they decided to obey it and create two peoples.

What do I care now—you’re talking to me about the consequences. The consequences are world war. I’m asking what is true. What do I care about the consequences? I’m asking what is true now. You cannot harness truth and falsehood to the consequences you happen to desire. There are destructive results to this, what can you do, but still what I’m saying is true.

No, of course, of course. I’m trying not— not pragmatically. I’m saying, suppose there were no such concept, there is no such thing as religious-secular and there are also no kippot, no obligation to wear a kippah, nobody wears a kippah or everyone wears one because it’s hot. Doesn’t the Rabbi feel that even then we all still wouldn’t be—our whole life is separation; from the moment a person comes to us, even before he opens his mouth, we already classify him into one of those compartments? And we wouldn’t have had such two compartments because…

You’re reversing cause and effect. Of course there is religious and there is secular, and in a very simple definition even—that here isn’t any problem of definition at all, it’s much simpler than the queer case. But people need terms in order to express existing concepts, so they create terms in language. Not concepts—terms. The language is what gets created, but the language is created because there is a real need, because there are religious people and there are secular people. And in order to talk about that you create the species, the words, the terms “religious” and “secular.”

Right, and after that you create external expressions—kippah and no kippah, and all sorts of things of that kind.

The dispute is not because of the external expressions; the dispute is because there is a disagreement between religious and secular people. The external expressions are only like army uniforms. They are merely the expressions of the two disagreements of these two groups. They do not create the disagreement.

So I’m saying, come, I’m asking an almost empirical question. I’m almost asking an empirical question whether if the Rabbi thinks of some secular person—maybe for me he’s even secular—with whom the Rabbi speaks, could he not have been classified as religious?

No, empirically you’re right. So what? I claim there are such concepts. Fine, it’s harmful. Maybe it wasn’t good to go around with a kippah and the best thing would be…

No, that kippah created an essence, that kippah created an essence.

But the issue is what is true, not what is useful.

No, but that kippah created the supposedly correct essence.

No, it did not create it, no. The disagreement between religious and secular people was a disagreement over whether to close streets for you on the Sabbath or not. Is that connected to kippot? I would go out demonstrating in the street to close roads on the Sabbath without a kippah; I’d be dressed as a secular person. Then there wouldn’t have been a disagreement?

There were disagreements, I didn’t say there weren’t, God forbid. But it wasn’t colored in advance in such a gendered and…

It was colored, and it was a disagreement between religious and secular people.

Not necessarily; many religious people also think that…

There are Sabbath-observers and non-Sabbath-observers—that’s religious and secular. Not everyone says roads should be closed by force. Those who say… what difference does it make? There is a real dispute here. You can’t say it’s semantic. That’s exactly the point. It’s the same mistake as the fourth queer stage. The fact that the definition is complex does not mean there is no concept. The fact that Robert Pirsig, in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, chases after the concept of quality and eventually reaches the conclusion—some people will read it as though there is no such thing as quality, that it is a subjective construction—but no, that’s not his conclusion. His conclusion is, in the end, that the Greeks messed up our minds by making us think that any concept that cannot be defined does not exist. Not true. The concept exists even though I don’t have a closed definition for it. That is exactly the point. This fine distinction lies at the root of many practical phenomena in life, in the media, in our world of action. It’s a subtle philosophical distinction. It’s the dispute over Platonism.

Okay, Rabbi, may I ask?

Yes.

First of all, thank you very much for the lesson and also for addressing the issue. I was really waiting for the moment we’d get there, and I wanted to ask on top of that. And that also wasn’t exactly my question back then. If, for example, we assume the first three assumptions the Rabbi just presented and accepted, say in queer theory, does that mean that they actually reveal to us that there is some kind of essence—let’s call it the essence of this mix of a man who feels like a woman?

They don’t need to reveal it to us, because you too feel that within yourself.

No, on the second level, that there can be a mismatch. Meaning, I live in a world that has man and woman, but now if…

Yes, of course. Since the report about gender is subjective, I have no way of knowing someone else’s gender. His sex, yes—but not his gender. So I rely on their reports. Yes, of course.

So does that in fact reveal to me a third and fourth concept that need to be added to ontology?

The queer move taught us something we weren’t aware of before, but then it took it one step too far. Without that move I wouldn’t have been aware of the second and third stages, but they took it to the fourth stage. And suppose that combination is reasonable and acceptable, but today it’s known that there are—I don’t know exactly whether this is a definition of gender or of sexual orientation—but there are dozens of definitions. People always say: look on Google and you can choose for yourself in sex or gender from dozens of options. The law of the State of New York has, I think, thirty-two or thirty-three genders, and you are required to address each person according to the gender he chooses. So I’m asking about that: does that also reveal to us that there actually exist…

I didn’t get into all those mixtures there. It may be true. One can of course discuss to what extent the law or society ought to enter into such resolutions. Even if there are thirty-three such nuances, fine. In language it’s complicated, so I use “man” and “woman,” and that’s it, or gender and sex, and that’s it. I’m not now going to get into—fine, one person likes his walls yellow, another likes them red, so I’ll dedicate a word to that? There is such a difference—they like yellow and they like red—so what? One can debate the question of up to what resolution I’m supposed to take account, but the very existence of such differences and such resolutions can certainly be true.

But if a person feels—what is the threshold at which we say that this justifies saying that it really reveals some kind of…

I have no idea. That’s another question. I don’t know how to answer it. That’s the question of resolution I just spoke about.

No, resolution is seemingly a pragmatic question of how we operate.

No, if there are differences between every two human beings, then what—will you define ten billion genders? Every distinct personality is a gender? No. We’re looking for some lines that group particulars into classes, and to those classes we give names. Now the question is: what size of group justifies a name? You can talk about ten billion genders, each according to his own inner experience, each one different from the next, but that’s not useful and not sensible to do, because you use terms precisely in order to generalize. The function of a term is to generalize. If I say you are a man, I’ve assigned you to half the world’s population, so that tells me something. There is sense in defining that concept, man or woman. But there is no sense in creating a concept for your own specific set of characteristics. What does that concept help me with if it is unique only to you?

My question is not about the term but about the concept itself. That is, thirty-something terms in New York—does that necessarily indicate thirty-something Platonic concepts?

No. One can argue about it. It could be yes. That’s the question I’m asking about. I’m claiming that the question of resolution is connected to the question of Platonism. In other words, when you say there is such a concept as man or woman, as a group it is large enough to justify assigning a concept to it, okay? That means that apparently, according to what I determine this sensation, it is significant enough to justify assigning a concept to it. I claim that’s an observation in the world of ideas. I understand that there is some idea behind the phenomenon I’m observing. By contrast, when the phenomenon is this little nuance or that little nuance, it’s more yellow or less yellow—both are yellow. A little more and a little less, those aren’t two different ideas. So the linguistic expressions—that I won’t assign different concepts or different terms to them. But as a Platonist I claim these are only expressions of the fact that there are no different ideas here.

Now if, say, I reduce things again to four options, to four combinations, then when I define “man” I define man as someone who is male both in sex and in gender. Meaning, there is some lack of precision here—so it is indeed fitting…

It’s just a word. It’s just a word. If that’s so, then it’s better to find terminology that won’t be confusing, that’s all. No problem. So here it really is semantics. We agreed there are four groups. Now, if there are four groups, there’s logic in attaching a different term to each of the groups because that makes discourse more efficient. That’s all. To use the term “man” for one of the four groups can simply be confusing, that’s all. But no problem—if you define three additional terms for the other groups and use them consistently, perfectly fine, nothing happened.

Rabbi, Rabbi, something feels strange to me. Still, Michel Foucault’s whole project, as I understood it, was really to go through all the fields of beautiful and ugly, healthy and sick, deviant and normal—in all his books—to show that all these concepts have a history and change over the course of history, and that proves they have no essence. And the Rabbi says exactly the opposite: they have a history and they change, and they have an essence. Up to there I’m with him; in the conclusion I’m not with him. He wrote, you know, ten books just to build that, and the Rabbi with a wave of the hand…

You know how many books have been written on the move from stage three to stage four? You can grind them all up and make Lag BaOmer bonfires out of them. They say nothing. What one can learn from Foucault is everything connected to the first three stages. For example, when he talks about psychiatric diagnostics in Madness and Civilization. There one can absolutely learn from him the Protestant thesis, the thesis that says our psychiatric diagnostics are based on Protestant ethics—on success orientation, on autonomy, autarky, and so on. But the moment he makes the jump that says therefore these concepts have no meaning at all, he moved from stage three to stage four. And here it’s laziness or stupidity. He wouldn’t have liked that.

There is a very high price to the Rabbi’s approach, exactly the point. As a doctor, I say I’m not a pragmatist, but the price is real, because sometimes I try…

The price is real, but truth isn’t prices. You know, it’s like after Rabin’s assassination they told me, “You see what religious faith can lead people to?” So I asked them, “So what are you suggesting—that I stop believing in the Holy One, blessed be He, so as not to murder a prime minister?” What can you do—there are costs. Everything has costs. I do not subordinate truth to desirability. That’s pragmatism.

Here, I can give the Rabbi an example. For example, according to Foucault, the issue of healthy and sick. As a doctor that interests me. We all have two hands. Suppose, thank God, the Rabbi continues to have two hands, but for some reason society as a whole had three hands. All human beings had three hands, also one in the back so they could soap their backs. But the Rabbi, God forbid, has only two. The Rabbi would feel disabled. He would say there is an essence of disability of the kind from which, God forbid, I suffer; I need support and National Insurance and I am miserable. And once society said that in fact it doesn’t have three hands, then the Rabbi returned to being healthy and well and happy and good-hearted. There’s a jump here.

That’s not the essence of disability. First of all, there is the essence of creatures with two hands and creatures with three hands. The essence of “disabled” is an essence that is relative by its nature. I’m not disabled by lacking bird wings. Because society didn’t decide—if society had decided everyone flies with birds…

Right, so what does that mean?

That doesn’t mean the concept “disabled” is invented. It means the concept “disabled” is relative. But that concept has an idea. That I’m not like society. Fine, everything’s okay, that too is an idea. Wait, there’s someone… he jumps 8.90 in the long jump, Bob Beamon—though I think they later broke his record a bit—but yes, he jumps and nobody in the world can do it, so is he disabled? No, he’s not disabled. We are disabled. He has abilities greater than others. Of course there are relative concepts. When I say I’m wise—is there an idea of wisdom? Yes. Is there an idea of “wise person”? No. Because “wise” depends relative to whom. Relative to one person I’m wise; relative to another I’m stupid. There are relative concepts. But the concept of wisdom itself is a concept that has an idea; it’s defined. Okay, I think we’ve drifted a bit. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom, thank you very much.