Halakhic Thought – 5783 – Lesson 16

Table of Contents

• The Yavneh revolution: tradition versus give-and-take
• Politeness, violence, and cynicism versus the question of truth
• Despair of arguments and the birth of “multiple truths”
• A valid argument, premises, and the claim that deduction “doesn’t add anything new”
• Begging the question and the claim that every deductive argument does that
• Deduction, induction, analogy, and abduction: certainty versus added information
• Empiricism, skepticism, postmodernism, and the connection to politics
• Three stages in the development of the concept of truth: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
• Pluralism versus fundamentalism and the claim about a shared premise
• Rhetoric as non-deductive persuasion and the alternative to “popolitics”
• Greece and Israel: philosophical trauma and the absorption of Greek tools into the Oral Torah
• Dating the modern crisis and its implications

Summary

General overview

The text describes the historical transition at Yavneh from a “Torah of tradition” to a “Torah of give-and-take” as a response to the emergence of severe disputes, and argues that the central problem in disagreement is not manners or style but clarifying the truth and the quality of the arguments. It presents a modern despair of reason and of the possibility of persuasion, which gives rise to a pluralism of “multiple truths” and replaces substantive discussion with showmanship, power, and insults. It then develops a philosophical analysis of logical arguments and their relation to certainty and information, and from that arrives at the claim that skepticism and fundamentalism rest on a shared premise that identifies truth with certainty. It proposes an alternative of “synthetic maturity,” which accepts even claims that are not certain by means of induction, analogy, and rhetoric, and prepares the ground for the next discussion about how to relate to disputes in Jewish law.

The Yavneh revolution: tradition versus give-and-take

The text argues that with the move to Yavneh, a fundamental dispute arose between two schools, reaching even extreme clashes and killing according to the Jerusalem Talmud, and that the main concern was the absence of an agreed method for deciding disputes. It claims that until then Torah operated in the mode of a “Torah of tradition,” and that the Yavneh revolution replaced it with a “Torah of give-and-take” by lowering the status of tradition and strengthening logical consideration, voting, and persuasion. It cites tractate Chagigah about Rabbi Eliezer, who is frustrated that they are “reinventing the wheel” regarding something he knows is a law given to Moses at Sinai, and presents this as a sharp summary of the change in method.

Politeness, violence, and cynicism versus the question of truth

The text distinguishes between two kinds of difficulty in disagreement and argues that the question of manners and style is less important than the substantive question of how to relate to the two opinions and who is right. It describes how in public debate it’s easy to slide into talk about manners and hurt feelings when there are no counterarguments, and illustrates this with a story about a panel in which criticism of dishonest presentation of capitalism was replaced by an insult instead of substantive engagement. It argues that cynicism and sharpness are legitimate when they express arguments, and problematic when they replace arguments, and identifies a phenomenon in which form overshadows content and the discussion turns into a show. It adds that even in the past episodes involving Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, the violence and ostracism are not, in his view, the focus of the critique, because the main thing is “the case” and the substance behind them, and he even says that in the sources described, “nobody condemns that violence.”

Despair of arguments and the birth of “multiple truths”

The text argues that a major part of the focus on politeness stems from despair of arguments and from the assumption that disputes cannot be decided because everything is emotion, and so people focus on sharpness and insolence instead of the question of who is right. It uses the example of “popolitics” to argue that panels are built like a gladiator fight on the assumption that nobody will convince anybody, and that everyone “is born and dies with the same opinion.” It describes a social outlook according to which any change of opinion is immediately explained as brainwashing, both in repentance and in leaving religion, in order to avoid discussing the arguments. It presents the philosophical conclusion of this line of thought as the claim that there is no truth and no right or wrong, and from there locates the fashionable “narrativism” of “everyone with his own narrative and his own truth” as the basis for the idea that all we need is to be polite.

A valid argument, premises, and the claim that deduction “doesn’t add anything new”

The text argues that every argument rests on premises, and therefore when a valid argument is presented that leads to a conclusion opposite to someone’s view, he immediately runs to deny one of the premises. It asks what the “secret of the power” of a valid argument is, and illustrates this with the alien who does not understand why from the premises “all humans are mortal” and “Socrates is human” the conclusion “Socrates is mortal” follows. It explains that the conclusion is already contained within the premises, and therefore a valid logical argument does not add information but merely brings out what was already inside. It brings the balloon joke to argue that precision and certainty come together with lack of novelty. It applies this to proofs in geometry and argues that what seems like a novelty is the discovery of something that was already contained in the axioms, and compares a proof to “a key to a safe” that allows one to use what was already “mine” but locked away.

Begging the question and the claim that every deductive argument does that

The text brings the “yeshiva joke” about “and Abraham went” to argue that there are valid proofs that smell fishy because they beg the question. It argues that this does not really undermine validity, but rather reveals that the argument has no persuasive value when someone who disagrees with the conclusion will not accept it as a premise. It goes on to argue that every valid logical argument is like this in the sense that the conclusion is embedded in the premises, and therefore a logical proof “will never manage to change someone’s mind” but can only show a person that he already implicitly holds what is being inferred. It states that the only value of a proof is to draw attention to what a person already “knows” unconsciously, and concludes from this that “proofs for the existence of God can never persuade atheists,” on the same principle.

Deduction, induction, analogy, and abduction: certainty versus added information

The text divides methods of inference into deduction, induction, and analogy, and adds Peirce’s abduction as a movement from particulars to a theory that explains them. It argues that deduction is necessarily correct because it does not add information, whereas induction and analogy do add information and therefore are not certain. It presents a principle of “interplay” between the level of certainty and the scope of the information added, so that the more information is added, the lower the certainty becomes, and uses this to suggest that analogy adds less information and is therefore less speculative than broad induction. It emphasizes that science deals with the addition of information and therefore is always falsifiable, and connects this to Popper’s definition of science and Hume’s problem of induction.

Empiricism, skepticism, postmodernism, and the connection to politics

The text presents skepticism as the basis of empiricism, arguing that reason is not a guarantee of knowledge about the world because it depends on the structure of the human being and does not obligate the world, and therefore only observation is perceived as a basis for knowledge. It argues that direct observation does not produce interesting things, because what is interesting is always the generalizations and laws of nature, which are inductions and not merely a “result of observation.” It describes how from this grows an outlook according to which there is no truth and no possibility of persuasion, and what replaces that is a politics of power and showmanship—“it starts with Hume and ends with Tommy Lapid.” It states that once there is no way to argue and decide, the outlet is struggle, and instead of a discourse aimed at persuasion, what emerges is a discourse whose purpose is “to recognize the narrative” without changing positions.

Three stages in the development of the concept of truth: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood

The text divides the maturation of a person and of a civilization into three stages: dogmatic childhood that accepts authority, rationalist adolescence that demands proof, and adulthood that discovers that nothing has proof that does not rest on foundational assumptions. It presents the tangle of adulthood as the result of two assumptions: “only what is proven is acceptable” and “there is nothing that can be proven,” and from this concludes that there are three ways out depending on which assumptions one gives up or adopts. It defines the first path as skepticism/postmodernism, which adopts both assumptions and is left with nothing. It defines the second path as fundamentalism, which gives up the assumption that there is no certainty and posits a transcendent source of certainty, and argues that its problem is not violence but dogmatism and unwillingness to accept criticism. It defines the third path as “synthetic maturity,” which gives up the demand for certainty and distinguishes between truth and certainty while accepting common sense, analogy, and induction.

Pluralism versus fundamentalism and the claim about a shared premise

The text argues that the sharp confrontation between postmodern pluralism and fundamentalism cannot be resolved because both rest on the same premise—that only certainty is acceptable—and therefore the pluralist cannot cope with a fundamentalist who claims to possess a source of certainty. It argues that the pluralism of “multiple truths” is destructive to discourse, because if every truth is equally correct there is no point in listening or arguing, and the discussion deteriorates into power. It connects this to a public atmosphere of coercion in the name of liberalism and presents it as an absurdity in which liberalism becomes a dogma that requires everyone to agree to “maybe yes and maybe no.” It argues that in practice people always believe that their truth is correct even if they declare that there is no truth, and therefore pluralism does not create peace but worsens violence when there are no tools for deciding.

Rhetoric as non-deductive persuasion and the alternative to “popolitics”

The text distinguishes between deductive logic, which does not change minds, and non-deductive tools that can change minds by expanding information and presenting implications, and presents rhetoric as an art of persuasion that is not necessarily demagoguery. It argues that fundamentalists and pluralists identify any persuasion that is not certain with brainwashing because they identify truth with certainty, whereas in a “synthetic” world rhetoric, examples, and parables are valid tools for drawing attention and bringing about a change of position. It presents the alternative as the ability to fight for a truth one regards as correct even though it is not certain, while remaining willing to listen and be persuaded, and defines this as tolerance that is not pluralism.

Greece and Israel: philosophical trauma and the absorption of Greek tools into the Oral Torah

The text describes Israel’s encounter with Greece as traumatic not only because of idolatry but because of questions like “who told you? prove it,” which tradition alone did not know how to answer. It presents Rabbi Eliezer as representing a “Torah of tradition,” saying “this is what my teachers told me,” in contrast to Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Akiva, who bring arguments and advance a Torah of give-and-take. It argues that in the end “it is all in accordance with Rabbi Akiva,” because Rabbi Akiva combines tradition with interpretation and reasoning, and defines this as a “dynamic tradition” that is neither a “hollow pipe” nor invention from nothing. It describes Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah as someone who can argue with the sages of Greece because he has the tools of give-and-take, and brings “the beauty of Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem” and the translation of the Torah into Greek as an expression of the fact that the sages understood that from the encounter with Greece they had received logical thinking and analysis. It connects this to Maimonides, who begins with “Words of Logic,” to Ramchal with his books on logic, and to Rabbi Yitzhak Kanpanton as figures who saw logic as the basis of the Oral Torah.

Dating the modern crisis and its implications

The text places the endpoint of the West’s “adolescence” around the middle of the twentieth century with the collapse of logical positivism, and explains the rise of postmodernism as a reaction to despair of science and of humanity after the Second World War. It argues that the expectation that pluralism would bring peace was disproven, because in a world without discursive decision-making violence increases, and it describes this as a situation in which “the moment you have no way to argue, you have to fight.” Alongside postmodernism, it presents the flourishing of fundamentalism in the same period as another path of maturation, and concludes that there is a third way of “synthetic” modernism that is prepared to live without absolute certainty and with claims of common sense. It ends by saying that this whole introduction is directed toward the next discussion of “how to relate to disputes in Jewish law and in general,” which, he says, will come next time.

All right, last time we talked about—we finished the topic of how disputes came into being. I spoke about how, in the transition to Yavneh, somehow a fundamental dispute suddenly arose between two schools, to the point of extreme clashes in which they killed one another—again, that’s according to the Jerusalem Talmud. And what was troubling there was that there was no agreed-upon method for solving the problem, for deciding disputes, because until then Torah had functioned in the mode of tradition, a Torah of tradition. And the revolution of Yavneh essentially replaced a Torah of tradition with a Torah of give-and-take. In effect, it was decided to stop, or at least somewhat reduce, the standing of tradition, and to increase or strengthen the standing of logical reasoning, of debate, of voting, of persuasion. And we saw the Talmud in Chagigah, how Rabbi Eliezer is frustrated that they’re there reinventing the wheel when he actually knows that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai: Ammon and Moab tithe during the Sabbatical year. They argued over it, reached a conclusion, and happened to reach the correct conclusion. But why are you wasting your time? You could have come and asked me—I would have told you directly. So I think that sums up this revolution of Yavneh quite well.

So now we’re already in the world of tradition. I’ve left history behind; now we move to the essence. Up to this point it was history. What do we do with disputes? There’s a difficult question of how to relate to this whole issue of disputes, to the two sides of a dispute, and here I want to distinguish between two kinds of hesitations or difficulties that arise in this context.

Sometimes what bothers people is the question of manners, violence, I don’t know—how you conduct a dispute on the level of personal character traits and so on. In my view, that question is far less important than the substantive question. Meaning: how do we relate to the two opinions in a dispute? Are both correct? Is one correct? I don’t know—how do we determine who is right?

The question of manners, in my eyes, is a question that it’s very easy to slide into when you have nothing to say about the substance. Meaning, the moment that—just now I was telling a friend—I was on some panel, doesn’t matter, with a woman who presented a very strong socialist position, and I told her that she was presenting the dispute dishonestly. She was presenting capitalism unfairly. You’re allowed to disagree, but don’t put things in their mouths that they don’t actually say. So she was immediately terribly offended—how could it be, how can I say she’s dishonest, and so on and so on. And then I understood that she had no counterarguments. Once you have no arguments, the best way out is to be offended.

Or once you have nothing to say about the dispute, immediately you say: “You’re impolite,” “You’re cynical,” “You’re violent.” Now I say: okay, maybe all that’s true, and one should be polite, and it’s not advisable to be violent—violence is forbidden. All true. But first of all, the important question is: who is right? Leave me for a moment with the question of whether I’m polite or not polite.

People think cynicism is a bad thing. I told them: in a place where cynicism serves to express arguments, excellent, I’m completely in favor. In a place where cynicism replaces arguments, that’s problematic. But it’s problematic not because it’s cynical; it’s problematic because there are no arguments. Meaning, if you say something without reasoning, then why are you writing it? Do you want to write poetry here? This is not a stage for writing poems. Meaning, if you want to make arguments, with great pleasure—present them cynically, fantastic. Write sharply against your opponents—there’s no problem, gladly. But it has to be a cynical form, or even a violent form if you want, for expressing arguments. You can be less cynical, less violent; you can argue about the dosage. But that doesn’t bother me in principle, as long as you’re raising arguments.

Many times cynicism and violence replace the arguments, and that really is problematic. Therefore, as far as I’m concerned, manners and one form or another are less interesting. What interests me is the essence, the content. And then I have a problem when people tell me I’m impolite just because you have no arguments.

That’s a very important point, because somehow in our public discourse today, here in Israel and generally in the world, people are constantly occupied with the question of how you conduct the dispute, and nobody relates to the question of the quality of your arguments. Suppose I express myself in a very exposed, violent, non-containing way and all that—but I raise good arguments. So leave it alone; address my arguments, and afterward scold me for not being polite.

There’s some kind of ignoring of the arguments themselves, or of the question of who is right. For many people, the question of who is right is irrelevant. For me it’s very relevant, but for them it’s not relevant at all. The question is who was sharper, who was more whatever—yes, it’s some kind of show, a television show. The question of who said more correct arguments—many times you can be very sharp, but your arguments are worthless. And maybe your arguments are wonderful and you’re not sharp, but you present good arguments. Somehow people let the form overshadow the content. And in my eyes that is very problematic.

So when I talk about the issue of dispute and managing disputes, I’m not talking about manners. By the way, not in the previous classes either, when I spoke about the history, about the formation of dispute. I don’t think the question of the violence with which Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer behaved—or the violence that was used against them as a response—is the important thing. The important thing is the substance behind it. If you’re not listening to arguments, you deserve to be treated violently. That’s what they’re saying here. Nobody condemns that violence. They threw him out, they excommunicated that one, they removed that one from being president of the Sanhedrin, afterward they brought him back when he accepted their opinion. You can’t get more violent behavior than that. Okay? Fine—but they had a good case. And if they had a good case, then leave it—the tools you use are less important.

And I think this is a very important lesson for our own time as well. First of all, check what the person’s arguments are. Do you agree with him? Do you disagree? Do you have counterarguments? Do you not? After that, let’s see whether he’s polite or not polite, whether you’re polite or not polite, what you do, how you present things. I don’t care how you present things—first let’s hear what you’re saying; after that we’ll see how you present it. And for some reason there is almost no attention to the substantive question. What is the person actually saying? Is he right? Does he have arguments? Does he not? It’s not interesting. The question is whether he’s polite, whether he listens, whether he—just absurd.

And part of this is the result of a certain kind of despair about arguments, despair about reason. People feel that you can’t really decide disputes—who is right and who isn’t—because it’s all emotion, and you can’t decide who’s right and who’s not because it’s all emotion. Therefore what matters is only who is sharper, who is more cutting, or who is less polite or more insolent, and people ignore the substantive arguments.

And it always reminds me of that TV program—there used to be a popular program once, Popolitika, on television, years ago. I don’t know, I think it hasn’t existed for years now. But there used to be such a program. Tommy Lapid sat there, and Shelly Yachimovich, and Eichler, and all those people. They sat there, and everyone clucked their tongues about how impolite they were, mocking one another and their interviewees and everything, and of course they kept faithfully watching the program—watching and crying, as they say.

Now I really thought to myself: why the lack of manners? And it really was pretty disgusting in that program. And I thought: why is it like that? These were not stupid people. Why is it like that? And my feeling was very clear—I think anyone who saw it, and in many programs it’s like this, only there it was especially blatant—that it was obvious to everyone that nobody would persuade the other. That was obvious. You invite two people to a panel not so that one of them will persuade the other; it’s a gladiator fight so that we can enjoy the way they grapple and see who’s sharper than whom. That’s all. There’s no question of who will persuade, who will raise good arguments I hadn’t thought of—no, obviously not. Somehow the simple assumption is that each person is born and dies with the same opinion. You can’t change people’s minds. Arguments are the last thing that can change a person’s mind. Maybe demagoguery, maybe a bit of brainwashing.

Whenever someone changes his mind, people immediately assume it’s brainwashing, because of course it couldn’t be that he changed his mind because he heard a persuasive argument—that can’t be, so apparently he was brainwashed. And this is the sort of attitude you get in those “return to religion” seminars, for example. If many people become religious, immediately all their friends understand that they’ve been brainwashed, because it can’t be that somebody was persuaded—it can’t be, because arguments don’t persuade anyone. By the way, on the other side too—it’s the same. If someone becomes convinced that he no longer accepts religion, immediately they say: obviously, they brainwashed him; it’s his desires; “Israel sinned only in order to permit themselves sexual immorality,” and all sorts of things like that. It’s all avoidance. There are arguments—deal with the arguments. Is it true? Is it not true? What are you saying?

Except that there’s an assumption that you can’t decide an argument with arguments, you can’t persuade someone to change his opinion. A person is born and dies with the same opinion. Those who continue more radically actually draw an even further conclusion. They basically say: well then, there is no truth. There is no truth. Everyone is equally right. What is truth? What I believe is just something inside me—in my psyche, in my genes, in my culture, I don’t know where—but it’s some totally arbitrary thing. It’s not the result of arguments. So you understand that the conclusion that comes out of this, if you continue it philosophically, is that there’s really no such thing as truth. There’s no such thing as being right. So of course no argument can ever change your mind, or persuade, or decide who is right and who isn’t. There is no such thing as right and wrong. That’s just taking the conclusion hidden in the previous stage and putting it honestly on the table.

From here, of course, comes the narrativism that’s become so fashionable lately, and the multiplicity of truths, and everyone with his own narrative and his own truth, and so on. Yes—there’s no standard for aesthetic judgment, no standard for ethical judgment, no standard for who is politically right and who is wrong—none. Everyone is equally right. You just need to be polite to each other, that’s all, and keep hitting each other politely. “And why did you bring that out? It’s a sign that you brought something out of her.”

I think part of this—actually, maybe not part, maybe the main thing in my view, because I look at reality with a philosophical, logical-philosophical eye—I really think this is there, even though most people are not aware of it. The problem is this. Maybe I’ll get a little ahead of myself. The problem is that when you want to make an argument for some conclusion, you raise an argument, build a few premises, and infer the conclusion from those premises, okay? Suppose the argument is a valid argument, right? So if the argument is valid and I suddenly discover that you’re presenting me with a valid argument whose conclusion is the opposite of what I think, what will I do? I immediately run to the premises of the argument and announce to you that I don’t agree with one of the premises. Right? That’s the simple route—unless you made a mistake in logic and the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. Fine, but let’s say you didn’t make a mistake in logic. Then I disagree with one of the premises.

So there really is no way to be right or wrong, because every argument is always based on premises; there is no argument without premises. Now then, how can you succeed in convincing me that I’m wrong? After all, I can always say: fine, you assume those premises—I don’t agree with them.

I’ll say more than that. When you raise a valid argument, why exactly should the person you’re talking to accept the conclusion? What is the secret of the power of a valid logical argument? We all have the same tools, and suppose I say to you—you’re doubting whether Socrates is mortal, yes, that’s the argument they always bring in philosophy—and I tell you: look, all human beings are mortal, that’s premise one. Socrates is a human being, premise two. Conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Okay? Now why, as a result of this argument, do I expect you to change your mind—that is, to admit that Socrates is mortal? We’re using the same tool, the same framework, we have the same logical tools. I’m not asking why logic is correct. Fine, we all share the same logical tools. But I’m asking a different question: where does the flowing of the conclusion from the premises come from? Not why I think it follows—why it really follows.

Let’s picture it more vividly. An alien comes to you. The Little Prince lands on Earth, okay? You meet him; he’s riding his baobab, and you tell him: welcome to Earth, there’s a very interesting philosopher here named Socrates. “Oh, interesting, nice, I’ve never heard of him.” Then you say to him: listen, you know, but Socrates is mortal; he’s going to die at some point, so you’d better hurry and meet him. “Oh really? Is that so? Why do you think he’s mortal? Why do you think he’ll die soon?” So I tell him: look, all human beings are mortal. He says: okay, I don’t know them, but if you say so, I accept it. And I say: Socrates is a human being, meaning he’s one of the human beings. Fine, okay, I’ve never met him, but if you say so, okay. Well, fine—if so, Socrates is mortal. “Wait, why?” Yes, I accept it, I understand that all human beings are mortal, and I also understand that Socrates is a human being. But why do I have to agree that Socrates is mortal? He doesn’t understand.

Now try to think—how would you explain it to him? How—after all, he’s mistaken, right? How would you explain to him that he’s mistaken? It seems obvious that he’s mistaken, but how do you explain it?

“Based on our experience as human beings over the course of history, we’ve seen that all human beings…” He accepts proposition one. You want to convince him. He accepts both premises. He accepts the premise that all human beings are mortal. He accepts the smaller premise, the larger premise. And the smaller premise is that Socrates is a human being. He doesn’t accept the conclusion. Someone who doesn’t accept the premises—that’s a different discussion. He does—he accepts the premises and doesn’t accept the conclusion. You tear your hair out, but what are you going to do with him aside from institutionalizing him?

“Maybe the second premise is part of the first one?” No, it’s not part of the first one. It’s independent. Meaning, from the second premise I say that Socrates is part of what I said in the first one. That’s it. Not that the second premise is part of the first, but what you seem to mean is that the conclusion is actually contained within the premises. There isn’t anything in the conclusion that goes beyond what was in the premises. So if you accept the premises, then obviously you have to accept the conclusion, because it’s already in there—you already accepted it. Do you understand?

When I say all human beings are mortal, what have I really said? I’ve said: Jacob is mortal, Elijah is mortal, Ahmed is mortal, Socrates is mortal, and Robert is mortal. Okay? I just abbreviated it and said: all human beings are mortal. But if I cash it out into small change, then once you agreed that all human beings are mortal, one of the little coins there is “Socrates is mortal,” because Socrates is also one of the human beings. So you’ve already accepted it. You can’t say that you accept it but don’t accept it.

But this is very interesting—notice. What this actually means is that the secret of the power of a logical argument is that it doesn’t innovate anything. Meaning, there is nothing in the conclusion beyond what was already in the premises. It always reminds me of the joke about the hot-air balloon—you know it? In mathematics they tell it about themselves, doesn’t matter. They say: two people got lost in a hot-air balloon. For days they wander around, they have no idea where they are. They see someone plowing a field below. One of them shouts to him: “Tell us, where are we?” He looks up and says: “Above my field.” So the guy up in the balloon says to his friend: “The man down there is definitely a mathematician.” For two reasons: first, what he said is absolutely precise. And second, it doesn’t help us at all.

Now what’s beautiful about that joke is that those are two sides of the same coin. That’s exactly right. The mathematician doesn’t help us at all; the mathematician is precise and says certain things because they don’t help us at all. That’s exactly why mathematics has that power—because it doesn’t innovate anything. Mathematics, or logic—for example, mathematics is a case of logic—in a logical inference there is nothing in the conclusion that wasn’t already latent in the premises. All logical inference does is simply help you extract more and more information from the premises, information that was already in them. There is no new information you can arrive at by means of a logical argument. A logical argument does not add information.

And therefore, when I give you a logical argument, the conclusion is certainly correct; everyone should accept it. But that doesn’t help me at all, because it will never add something that I didn’t already have once I knew the premises. There is nothing in the conclusion beyond what is in the premises. If there were something in the conclusion beyond what was in the premises, then the logical argument would not be valid. Then I wouldn’t have to accept the conclusion even if I accepted the premises. Meaning, the secret of logical validity—why is a logical argument valid? Because it doesn’t innovate anything. Really.

Now what does that mean? After all, geometric propositions certainly teach us something. We learn geometry in school. I wouldn’t have thought that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. I learned it in class and understood it. So now something new came to me. Except that not really. Because when they proved it to me in class, what did they say? If you take the four axioms of Euclidean geometry, from them I can show you that the sum of the angles is 180 degrees. Or in other words, what the proof did was show you that in fact you already knew it before, you just weren’t aware that you knew it. It’s found within the premises that you already knew—you were just not aware of it.

“Neither Platonic nor anything else—that’s the truth.” It’s not connected to any worldview, neither Platonic nor Aristotelian. It’s simply the truth. We have here the class on ancient philosophy—Plato has the theory of recollection, and this is exactly what—

No, no. In the theory of recollection here I mean it in the philosophical sense, not the psychological one. I’m claiming that of course you learned something new. There’s value in what you learned in class. But what you learned in class, you accept it because you understand that you actually knew it beforehand. Not that you’re recollecting, not that you really knew it once before, but you understand that it is included within the premises that you had already agreed to earlier. You just didn’t notice that it was included, and the teacher helped you understand that it was included there—or the proof did.

What a proof really does is like a safe. I have a locked safe, and inside it there are many things, and they’re all mine. The safe is mine, but as long as I don’t have the key to the safe, then it’s mine theoretically, but that doesn’t help me at all—I can’t use it. Someone gives me a key to the safe. Did he give me something that I didn’t have before? Nothing. But he enables me to use, or to become aware of, what was already mine before. Logic is a key to the safe, that’s all. The premises contain all the information that I will eventually reach through the proof. It’s already there. I really know it. I know it, I’m just not aware that I know it. The logical or mathematical proof merely helps me become exposed to information that was really already mine. It opens the safe for me, that’s all. Yes.

That was the promo for the fact that in the end it’s not only logical. Wait, I’ll get to that in just a moment.

Now, think for example—there’s a famous yeshiva joke: how do we know every Jew should wear a hat? “And Abraham went.” What, “and Abraham went”—he went without a kippah? A Jew like him didn’t walk without a hat, right? Well, if Abraham walked with a hat, then we his faithful descendants who walk in his ways certainly have to walk with a hat. Yes, my uncle used to say that Abaye and Rava studied in Yiddish. Obviously. Because they knew how to learn. And whoever knows how to learn learns in Yiddish, yes, obviously.

So what’s the problem with this proof that every Jew must wear a hat? It’s a bit tricky. There’s no problem. This proof is a valid proof. Let’s build the premises. First, it says “and Abraham went”—it says it, right? Now I assume a premise: a Jew doesn’t walk without a hat. So Abraham, who was a Jew—if it says he went…

No, no, for our purposes he was a Jew. He was the beginning of the recursion of the definition of Jewishness. In the end he’s a Jew, and a Jew always walks with a hat. Okay, fine—you can’t use that as a premise too. Ah, that’s the problem. Do you understand? I’m now going to present you with an argument. It says “and Abraham went,” factually it says so. I assume that every Jew must walk with a hat. Premises are allowed—an argument always has premises, right? Now I also assume that we are supposed to do what Abraham did—we walk in the ways of our elderly father. So if so, it’s obvious that every Jew must walk with a hat. QED. This is a valid proof.

But still—what’s the problem here? Why does it smell fishy? Because this proof assumes what it wants to prove. What does that mean? You want to prove that every Jew must walk with a hat. One of the premises you used was that very thing itself. You say: “A Jew like him didn’t walk without a hat.” What does that mean, “A Jew like him didn’t walk without a hat”? Because a Jew doesn’t walk without a hat. Meaning that every Jew must walk with a hat. Meaning that what you want to prove, you assumed as a premise in the argument.

Okay, so then it’s simple. P implies P is a trivial argument. If your premise is X, then of course the conclusion X follows from the premise. It just has no value. Why is it valueless? Because if someone doesn’t agree with the premise, he won’t be persuaded by the argument. Why? Because one of the premises of the argument is the conclusion, and that’s exactly what he doesn’t agree with. So if he doesn’t accept it as a premise, you also won’t manage to persuade him of the conclusion. Meaning: it’s a valid argument, but it’s simply valueless.

Now I’ll tell you more than that: every logical argument is like this. This argument sounds funny to you? What about Socrates? There you laughed less. It’s the same thing. There too, it’s the same thing. Why is every logical argument valid? Because it assumes what it wants to prove. Because the conclusion you reach at the end, you actually already assumed at the beginning. It’s just that sometimes it’s a little more sophisticated, as in geometry, and it’s harder to see how exactly you get the theorems from the axioms—but that’s why you study in class and see how it comes out of there. But it’s there. It’s there, only more sophisticated, that’s all.

So in effect, a valid logical argument and begging the question are synonymous. In logic they always teach that begging the question is a fallacy. There’s a list of fallacies, and in a logic course you study a list of fallacies, one of them is begging the question. Utter nonsense. Begging the question is simply another name for a valid logical argument. A valid logical argument always assumes what it wants to prove. If that’s a fallacy, then there are no valid logical arguments.

But still, why is the argument worth something at all? Indeed, begging the question sounds valueless. It’s a valid argument but a valueless one. Why? Because if we’re arguing about the conclusion, then what’s the point of presenting you with an argument that’s supposed to persuade you, when one of its premises is the conclusion we’re arguing about? I won’t be able to persuade you, because if you don’t accept the premise, you also won’t reach the conclusion. So it’s valueless. So what’s the point?

Except that there are sometimes situations in which you don’t notice that you accept the conclusion, and the logical argument can help you notice it. For example, when we study geometry. When we study geometry, they prove to us in class that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. That’s a novelty. I think for all of us it was a novelty when we learned it, right? But after they prove it, I actually discover that I knew it indirectly. I knew it through the foundational premises, but I knew it—I just wasn’t aware that I knew it. That is the value of a logical proof, and its only value. A logical proof can do only one thing: draw my attention to something I already know. That’s all. It can never change an opinion—a logical proof. More than that, it brings something out from the subconscious. Exactly, right. Meaning, things I know implicitly, without awareness, the logical proof can bring them to the forefront of consciousness, present before me the fact that I already think this.

So, for example, proofs for the existence of God can never persuade atheists. But that’s not a feature unique to proofs of God’s existence. No proof can persuade someone who doesn’t agree with its conclusion. No proof. Because every proof always assumes the conclusion inside the premises—sometimes in a sophisticated way, but it’s always there. And if you truly, truly don’t agree with the conclusion, no logical argument will succeed in persuading you. Unless the argument shows you that you actually do agree with the conclusion. Maybe you thought you didn’t agree, but suddenly you discovered that you do. That’s the only way to be persuaded by a logical argument.

Now, just to complete the picture—once, maybe I abused two hitchhiking soldiers. I was driving many years ago, poor guys, all they were thinking about was getting home. Twenty-five years ago. Maybe by now they’re professors of logic, I don’t know. Back then they were eighteen. I gave them a ride from Bnei Brak to Yeruham. I was going to teach there in the yeshivah. On the way I happened to be dealing with a topic in Bava Kamma that required exactly these issues, with “if a hundred is worth two hundred” and all that, and it’s exactly this topic. So along the way I presented it to them.

I told them that in logical arguments people basically distinguish among three types of arguments: analogy, induction, and deduction. Deduction—let’s start there. Deduction is the logical argument from the general to the particular. All human beings are mortal; a private case, Socrates; he too is mortal, right? From the general to the particular—that’s deduction. That is an argument that is necessarily correct, a valid argument. “This is the most annoying course in all of philosophy.” I don’t know, okay.

Anyway, so that’s from general to particular. From the particular to the general is induction, right? I know something about one case, another case, and I make from it a generalization to the whole class of cases. Okay? And from particular to particular, or from general to general, is analogy. Okay?

Now usually people think these are three different forms of inference and that’s that. More or less they cover all the forms of inference that exist in logic—or so people think. Some talk about abduction, but abduction is a kind of induction. What is abduction? Peirce basically invented it. Abduction is going from particulars to the theory that explains them, not to the general rule.

For example, I saw that when I let go of this object it falls to Earth. Okay? Now I saw that the same thing happens with this one too. Those are two particular cases. Now I can generalize and say: all objects with mass fall to Earth. That’s induction—from the private cases to the class. But I can say that what causes them to fall to Earth is a force of gravitation that every mass exerts on every other mass. And Earth exerts on this mass, like any two masses, a force of attraction, and therefore they fall. That is an explanation of those phenomena. From that explanation it follows that indeed every object with mass will fall to Earth. But what I did here was go from the particulars not to the general rule, but from the particulars to a theory. And the theory already generates the general rule. From particulars to theory—that’s abduction. Abduction is an explanation of the particulars. Induction is the move from particulars to the general.

The assumption is that usually behind induction there is always some sort of abduction. Why do you assume that these particulars hold for the whole class? Because apparently there is some theory saying that everything belonging to this class behaves that way. Okay? But in logic, since Peirce, people distinguish between abduction and induction. Fine.

So we have three kinds of inference. And ostensibly, of the three, which is strongest? Deduction. Right? Because from general to particular, it’s certain, it’s definite. Which are less strong? Induction and analogy. Which of those two is stronger? Analogy? Well, simply speaking, I think analogy is stronger. Simply speaking. Why? What’s the difference between analogy and induction on the one hand, and deduction on the other? Deduction, as I said earlier, is necessarily correct because it doesn’t add information. Right? The information we had in the premises is found in the conclusion. No new information. Therefore it is certainly correct. Analogy and induction are two modes of inference that add information.

Suppose I know that this falls to Earth, and from that I infer that this too falls to Earth. That’s analogy. Now the assumption is about this—this is my premise. The conclusion is about that—this is additional information. It wasn’t in my hands at the beginning. Therefore it’s not certain. “The premise about the phone?” No, by ‘premise’ I mean I discovered it—it doesn’t matter—but that is my premise. And from that premise I inferred the conclusion about that. Now the conclusion about that is not contained within the premise about this. That’s an expansion. There’s more information here. And once there is more information, it is no longer certain. My certainty in logic comes from the fact that there is no additional information in the conclusion beyond what was in the premises.

In effect, there’s a philosophical uncertainty principle between the level of certainty and the amount of information added. Their product is a constant. Meaning, if—just a second—if I add no information at all, zero additional information, then I get infinite certainty. If it adds information, you pay for it in the currency of certainty. That’s the game. You want certainty? Give up information. There is no way around it.

Now, as a result of that, all kinds of claims arise. If you want, call it empiricism; if you want, call it skepticism—those are also synonymous. The claims basically say: you can’t really accept claims based on analogy or induction. Because maybe they’re true? Hume’s problem of induction, right? Who says it’s true? Maybe it’s your own fantasies—you’re built in a certain way. Yes? As Mark Twain says, the world owes you nothing; it was here first. Fine. The fact that you think in a certain way—does that mean that this is also how things happen in the world? Why? The fact that your mind is built in a certain way is no guarantee whatsoever that your conclusions really describe what happens in the world. That’s the basic skeptical claim, really the basic empiricist claim.

The claim of empiricism basically says that thought is not a basis for information about the world. The only basis for information about the world is observation. What lies behind that? Behind it lies that skeptical claim which says that if you think in a certain way, it’s because you’re built that way. But the world owes nothing to the way you are built. And that’s why everyone wonders how Hume could be such a great skeptic and such a strict empiricist, which seems like a contradiction. But it isn’t. Empiricism is based on skepticism. They are two sides of the same coin.

Skepticism says that when you use reason to gain information about the world, you are doing something unsafe. Because the fact that you’re built in a certain way—you’re built that way for all sorts of reasons—so what? Why does that mean that the conclusion you reached is true? And therefore the empiricists say: only observation. Rational reflection is not a basis for knowledge about the world. Only observation. Meaning, the basis of empiricism is skepticism. Two sides of the same coin.

As a result, this narrativist approach is born—or what people sometimes call postmodernism. Yes? The approach that says there is no truth, or everyone has his own truth. Because really, everything you can know about the world—except maybe direct observation, but direct observation never yields anything interesting. What is really interesting is always the generalizations you make on the basis of observations: laws of nature, general insights. The fact that this specific phone is sitting on the table is true, but it’s not interesting. It’s a trivial fact. What is interesting? Interesting insights about the world always involve some kind of rational inference and not merely observation—including laws of nature, of course.

Laws of nature—anyone who thinks they are the result of observation simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Laws of nature are generalizations on the basis of observations. You begin with observations, but from the observations you generalize and create a general law of nature. That’s why there is Hume’s problem of induction. The laws of nature are not the result of observation, scientific laws. Nonsense. Whoever says that doesn’t know what he’s saying.

And therefore what happens as a result is that people really cast doubt on things; they basically say: fine, then you can’t believe anything except perhaps what we saw. There are those who say that even what we saw can’t be believed, because one can cast doubt on that too. But even the more moderate skeptics, the so-called empiricists, really cast doubt on everything that is not the result of direct observation. The true empiricist skeptics—not those who call themselves empiricists but aren’t. Okay?

So from here comes this conception that there really is no truth, no one is more right than another, and no one can persuade anyone else. Because persuasion is based on argument, argument begins from premises, and if we disagree on the premises, what are we going to do? There is no way to persuade each other. And I’m not talking about a basic premise like whether there is a microphone here or not. Fine, observation can settle that. I’m talking about the interesting things—not the specific, private, particular facts, but general insights, okay?

And from here comes pluralism and everyone with his own truth, and from here comes politics. It starts with Hume and ends with Tommy Lapid. Immediately—it’s obvious it comes from there. A kind of conception that says: no argument will persuade me, because every argument is based on a premise that contains the conclusion we are disputing. So obviously nobody will be persuaded by means of a logical argument. So what are we doing here on the program? Wrestling with one another, laughing at one another. To persuade or be persuaded is not really an option.

And there is a philosophically weighty claim here. It’s not just bad manners. There is no way to persuade one another—that is the real claim. And therefore what one needs is to treat one another politely, listen to one another, respect one another, and continue to disagree. There is no reason in the world—all these conversations and encounters people try to arrange are usually done only to get to know the other person, not in order to be persuaded. To be persuaded is almost a dirty word in such meetings. To persuade and to be persuaded—that’s preaching, that’s a dirty word. What you’re supposed to do is get to know the other person, his narrative; he’ll get to know you; then you’ll come out hugging and everything will be wonderful. But to persuade—heaven forbid, what kind of thing is that? To persuade?

“But when there are debates and similar things among other people, then maybe, I don’t know, this priest and this rabbi won’t switch their opinions right now, but a person who’s on the fence and undecided—there it could be…” I’ll say more than that: I think sometimes even the priest or the rabbi changes his mind. But in people’s conception that seems impossible. I claim it does happen. I think those people are mistaken—in that they are mistaken, in that one can be mistaken in general. But the atmosphere in which these things are conducted is that everything runs on manners on the one hand and sharpness on the other—who comes off sharper, who puts on a better show. Nobody really raises arguments in order to persuade, and nobody places any hope in someone being persuaded. It’s a game. Just a game.

And therefore this claim of multiple truths is so destructive. People think pluralism is a good basis for creating attentiveness, openness, dialogue. That’s nonsense. Pluralism destroys all that. Pluralism in the sense of multiple truths—yes, plural means multiple. And if there are multiple truths, then there’s no point in listening, no point in raising arguments in order to persuade or be persuaded. In any case, everyone is trapped within his own foundational premises and the conclusions that follow from them—unless he has a mistake in logic. Fine, that usually doesn’t happen; very rare cases. A simple mistake in logic, where you didn’t infer the conclusion correctly from the premise. Usually our disagreement is about our foundational premises. So what? We’ll still have them after the argument.

So the pluralist, postmodern claim—however you want to call it—is a very powerful claim. It’s not so simple to deal with it. Since I’ve already done all this introduction, maybe I’ll keep going a bit. This is all an introduction to—an introduction that’s needed.

Look, I’ll present it anyway in a somewhat historical context. One can divide the development of thought in the West—or however you want to call it, even the relation to the concept of truth in the West—into three stages. I’m talking about the West because that’s more or less what I know, but it seems to me it’s really true only there. Three stages. More or less chronologically too, of course not sharply and so on: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. And I draw an analogy to the development of a private individual. There too: three stages—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It happens in a very similar way. And of course I’m speaking about philosophical maturation, not psychological. Psychology doesn’t interest me. I’m talking about philosophy.

What does that mean? In the stage of childhood—let’s talk about the individual person, and later we’ll move to the world. In the development of an individual, a child asks: will the sun rise tomorrow? So his father says yes, and he says okay, I’ve learned something new: the sun will rise tomorrow. Meaning, he assumes that if father said it, father knows. He accepts what the adults or the teachers or the parents or whoever say—the rabbis, the shamans, I don’t care who. But he accepts it because they know, the wise people know. Okay? That’s the dogmatic stage. The stage of childhood.

What happens at the point when the child becomes a teenager? Well, “point” of course—it happens on a continuum; I’m only sharpening the issue. What happens when he becomes a teenager? In the transition between childhood and adolescence? He starts asking himself: wait a second, who says they know, actually? Maybe not? Suddenly the child who has matured a bit begins asking: wait—who told you? Prove it. Maybe that’s not true? Questions—it’s a kind of adolescent rebellion, right? Adolescent rebellion basically says: I stop being dogmatic. From now on, I’m a rational person. From now on, if you don’t bring me proof, go look for me somewhere else. I no longer accept things just because you said so. Come on, show me a proof. I accept only things with proof. Okay? So we’ve moved to the stage of adolescence.

After adolescence, the teenager reaches adulthood, he matures. What happens there? He suddenly discovers that nothing has proof. Nothing. Nothing in the world has proof. Why? Because every proof is based on premises. There is nothing you can accept as proven unless you accepted the premises. But then I ask: why did you accept the premises? If you as a teenager categorically don’t accept things for which you have no proof, then you won’t accept anything. Because every single thing for which you have proof is based on foundational premises for which you have no proof. And if they have proof, go further back, it doesn’t matter. It will begin at some point where you have some propositions, basic premises, for which you have no proof.

And whoever accepts only things for which he has proof quickly discovers that he can’t accept anything. Right? Nothing. That is the stage of maturity. Meaning, adolescent rebellion ends in the disappointment of adulthood. I thought I would be rational, I’d accept only things for which I have proof, I’d stop accepting what my parents, teachers, or whoever else say. Everything by the light of reason—I’ll examine it. What has proof, I’ll accept; what doesn’t—then I’ll be a rational person.

“But there are some things that do have proof, no? Like the fact that you exist, all that move of Descartes.” So you studied philosophy, right? Then understand that he said nonsense. There is nothing—listen, come on, we managed to refute—on that specific point, I can’t refute—come on, we managed to refute Descartes. I have a series on my website if you want, explaining why Descartes is not right. Not that he’s wrong in the proof, but that his proof is what Kant called an ontological proof. Meaning, he claimed that his proof was a proof not based on premises. That’s what made it special. Understand: why does he say “I think, therefore I exist,” and not “I walk, therefore I exist”? That too is a valid argument. If I walk, then I exist, because otherwise I couldn’t walk, right? Someone who doesn’t exist can’t walk. So why is “I think, therefore I exist” special? Why not “I sit, therefore I exist,” “I am tall, therefore I exist”? Those are all valid arguments, right?

What is special about “I think, therefore I exist”? The answer is: reason and reality themselves. The very fact that a person somehow observes the world from the way he looks at it—“You need a premise”—so this very fact, he says, means that basically—come on. If I assume that I walk, from here I infer that I exist, because otherwise it couldn’t be that I walk if I don’t exist. And is it true that if someone walks he has to exist? Of course—someone who doesn’t exist can’t walk. “I walk” means that someone walks, right? “Walk” is a verb, a verb with a subject that the verb describes.

“He compares it to a dream…” No, no, the dream is something else. You’re now talking about the stage of doubt—his methodic doubt. I’m now talking about the solution, the answer to the doubt. And the answer to the doubt, the cogito, is the beginning of the answer. And why his idea? Descartes was a rationalist. Descartes’ great project was not to prove that God exists. His great project was to deal with empiricist skepticism. Therefore he had to present an argument that was not based on premises. Because if it’s based on premises, then the empiricist jumps on it and attacks: how do you know the premise? And you want to arrive at a result that is a claim about the world without observation. Right? That’s the task of the rationalist. Empiricism began to flourish in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Descartes came to answer it. It was the last death-rattle of medieval rationalism, because he was trying to present an argument not based on observation. I don’t need premises to reach this conclusion. That’s what Kant later called an ontological argument. Anselm’s proof for the existence of God is an ontological argument. Descartes’ cogito is an ontological argument. There are several ontological arguments.

“But Descartes can be refuted… Anselm can be refuted…” I don’t think you’re right, but that’s another discussion. Ontological means just conceptual analysis. You analyze a concept, and from that you reach an ontic claim about the world, about what exists in the world. You don’t need to assume any premise. That’s called an ontological proof in Kant’s formulation.

“If we take, say, the triangle, what obligates me to believe that God as a concept exists?” No, no, don’t drag me there—I wrote a book about it. A book, you can read it—the fifth section of the book is a very detailed discussion of the ontological proof. No, I don’t want to get into that because it’s a lot, there are many corners there. But I do want to explain, because the cogito is an important point.

Descartes’ claim—why does he say “I think, therefore I exist” and not “I walk, therefore I exist”? It’s the same argument. His novelty is not in the move from “I think” to “I exist”; that’s trivial. The novelty is that the proposition “I think” is necessary from itself, unlike “I walk.” From that point on, you can prove from either of them that I exist. But to prove on the basis of a contingent proposition that I exist—that doesn’t help at all. If you prove on the basis of a necessary proposition that I exist, then you’ve done the job. Right? So the novelty of Descartes’ cogito is not in “I think, therefore I exist,” but in “I think” being necessary.

Now from there one can infer that I exist. But why is it necessary? Because if I think that I’m not thinking, I’m still thinking—that too I’m thinking. That’s his claim, briefly, doesn’t matter. But again, I won’t get into that either—there’s also an article about it on my website if you want. You can see there why I don’t accept it. It’s all there. Yes, yes, that’s not our subject here. I’m happy to talk about it, but it’s not our topic. I am aiming toward our topic.

So what I really want to say is that the teenager, at the end of the Enlightenment period—that’s exactly Descartes, post-Descartes, the post-Cartesian stage—what happens there? You suddenly discover that there is nothing you can prove without foundational premises. And foundational premises you can’t accept, because they don’t have proof; therefore you can’t accept anything.

“Rabbi, the article on Descartes—do you maybe remember what it’s called?” Send me an email or something, I’ll have to look for it. Or search my website, you’ll find it immediately. Descartes’ cogito—you’ll find it. Fine, thanks.

So the claim is that at the end of the Enlightenment one moves to adulthood, to the point of maturation. You suddenly discover that nothing has an unconditioned proof. In short, there are no ontological arguments in the world. Okay? That’s Descartes’ disappointment—I mean, not his, but the disappointment of those who understand better than he did.

So now what do you do in such a situation? Look, there are three possibilities for what you do in such a situation—three ways to mature. How do I know there are only three? Logical analysis. What leads to the tangle of adulthood? Two premises. Premise one: only what is proven is acceptable. Right? Only something with proof can be accepted. That’s the teenager’s premise. Premise two: there is nothing that can be proven. Conclusion: nothing is acceptable. Right? That’s the tangle.

The tangle is based on two premises. To get out of this tangle, if you adopt both premises, you are a skeptic. That is one way to mature: to draw the conclusions, remain with both premises, but understand what they mean. The teenager didn’t understand what they meant. The adult understands that if you want absolute truth, if you want only certainty, then you’re left with nothing and become a skeptic. That is the skeptical adult, or the postmodern adult, or the narrative adult, or whatever you want to call it. That is the first kind of adult.

And there are two other possibilities. One can give up a premise—not remain with both premises, but give up premise A or premise B. Okay? To give up premise B means saying: excuse me, I’ll start with giving up premise B. Giving up premise B means: it’s not true that I cannot have certainty about anything. True, logic won’t give me certainty about anything, because logic is always conditional on foundational premises. But maybe I have ways above logic—reason, or whatever—that will give me certainty. I call that fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism? Yes, fundamentalism is the maturation alternative to skepticism. What does the fundamentalist say? I have some transcendent source—religious, prophet, God, revelations, I don’t know exactly what, the rabbi, the rebbe, whatever it may be—that serves for me as a source of certainty, and therefore I am certain of my path. I don’t give up the premise that only what is certain is acceptable. But I do think it’s possible to attain certainty. True, not through logic, but by means that are, I don’t know, above logic, above reason, something like some spiritual charisma—whatever formulation of that sort. Meaning, my certainty comes from that source. In other words, there is a way to attain certainty. The premise that there is no way to attain certainty is false. That’s giving up the second premise. So the fundamentalist is someone who matures by giving up the second premise. Okay?

The skeptic is someone who matures by adopting both premises. What remains? The one who gives up the first premise. Who gives up the first premise? The one who says: it’s not true that only what is proven is acceptable. I am willing to accept claims about which I have no absolute certainty. Notice: that is the only way to live in a way that is not skeptical—to accept things as correct without needing exalted transcendent sources of one kind or another, but to remain within ordinary reason, yes exactly, and still not be skeptical, meaning still to adopt things as—I call this synthetic maturity, in Kant’s language. They are synthetic judgments; that is basically what characterizes them.

“Ah, that’s the million-dollar question.” But for the moment I’m only sketching the directions. The claim is basically that the only way—in our world for quite a few years now, in the last generation—there has been a very sharp confrontation between postmodern pluralist society and fundamentalist society. And the reason this confrontation cannot be resolved is that both sides sit on the same premise. Both rest on the premise that only what is proven is acceptable. That is agreed by both sides.

Only, the fundamentalists say: I have a source that gives me certainty, and therefore I have acceptable truths. The postmodernists don’t accept that exalted source, and therefore they say: basically, everyone has his own narrative; there is nothing truly acceptable, truly valid, truly binding. But both agree that only what is proven can be acceptable.

And in that sense, the pluralist has no way to deal with the fundamentalist, because the fundamentalist says: what do you want from me? I have a source of certainty. Maybe you don’t recognize it, maybe you don’t know it—that’s your problem. But you have no way to deal with me, because I can rely on it, it’s certain, and I can accept it.

Now the synthetic adult, the third kind of maturity, basically says that I do not accept the premise shared by the other two—the fundamentalist and the pluralist. I do not accept that only what is proven, or only what is certain, is acceptable. No—common sense is also good. Or in the earlier language: analogy and induction are also good. I am not shaken by Hume’s problem of induction. Even something that is an induction—true, it’s not certain, but it’s common wisdom, common sense. I am willing to accept it. For me it is acceptable. And whoever doesn’t accept that, in my opinion, is mistaken—not with certainty, but mistaken. Truth and certainty, in other words, are not synonyms. That is basically what distinguishes the synthetic adult from the fundamentalist and the pluralist. Because both the pluralist, surprisingly enough, and the fundamentalist identify truth with certainty. Only certainty is truth.

Because both share the same premise, they have no way out, and the argument simply shifts to power struggles—and that is exactly, or to a kind of power wrestling. There is no way, like Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, who killed each other because there was no way to conduct a discussion and reach a decision.

Now in a synthetic world I can raise arguments—notice, arguments that are not deductive logical arguments, but arguments of analogy and induction—and it turns out that you can change your mind even if you didn’t agree with me at the beginning. In deduction, that can’t happen, because the conclusion is always latent in the premises; if you didn’t accept it, the argument did not transform you. Okay? But in analogy and induction, that can happen. With arguments of analogy and induction I can try to show you in various ways that your premise is not correct. And this is not a logical argument, because a logical argument would show you that you never really believed it. I don’t mean that. I mean to convert your outlook—not show you that you never thought that way, but no, you did think that way, and I will change your mind.

By the way, this field called rhetoric has gotten a bad name. It’s treated as synonymous with demagoguery. But that’s not true. Rhetoric, as opposed to logic, is precisely the art of persuasion by non-deductive means. Except that the fundamentalists and the pluralists think there is no such thing, because for them only logic, only certainty, really exists. So they perceive any persuasion by analogy or induction as brainwashing, as demagoguery. Therefore for them rhetoric and demagoguery are synonyms. But in a synthetic world, that’s false. Rhetoric is a way to bring a person to change his mind, to see that maybe he was wrong.

Now that way is not logic. It is closer to literature than to logic. I describe a situation to him, I try to place him inside the situation, I show him the implications of the outlook he holds, and suddenly he understands that he actually does not agree with that outlook. That can happen—sometimes yes, sometimes no. I won’t always succeed, but I can. Persuasion is possible; not every persuasion is brainwashing. That is basically what I want to say. And that is the alternative to Popolitika.

Yes, raise arguments that are not certain—but they make sense. And if they make sense, and the other person is attentive, you can persuade him or be persuaded by him. It is not true that every persuasion is brainwashing or that one cannot be persuaded. No—one can, if one gives up certainty. If one says: I don’t insist specifically on persuasion at the level of a logical proof. Analogy and induction are fine too. Demonstrations, examples, parables, all sorts of things like that. That is not brainwashing, not demagoguery. It is simply a way of drawing attention to something.

By the way, in the broader world, if I make the analogy between the three stages in the development of the individual and the development of our civilization, then in the world—in the West in general—it began in a pagan, childish world, where whatever the sorcerer said, or whoever said it, was probably right, like the child. That is the dogmatic stage.

Then adolescent rebellion arrives. Adolescent rebellion can basically be marked in Greece, say—doesn’t matter, broadly speaking; Greece too is centuries, but let’s say that’s where it crystallized. The rational conception: there logic became institutionalized, in something like Aristotle’s Organon and so on. Rational, scientific thought—to the extent it existed then, doesn’t matter, but that’s where it began to gain an independent standing, not just tradition received from our teachers. That’s not the only reason to adopt things; our own reasoning, observation, science, philosophical judgment—those count too. And this threatens dogmatic, religious societies.

That’s why the encounter of Israel with Greece is so traumatic in the eyes of the sages. Because the sages lived with the conception of a Torah of tradition, as we discussed earlier. And then they encounter—and it’s around the same period, a little earlier—they encounter, say, Hillel and Shammai, with Hillel and Shammai already almost in the Greek period. Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai are a bit later. And suddenly they encounter a culture of adolescents who ask you: wait, who told you? Prove it. Do you have a good argument for that? So your rabbi said it, or your father said it—so what? He said it. Such arrogance. Who says it’s true? This is the “who told you?”—adolescent rebellion.

And the sages don’t know what to do with it. They don’t have the tools to deal with such a thing. Because in a Torah of tradition there are no arguments. Exactly as I described in previous classes. Rabbi Eliezer says: wait, this is what my teachers told me. So Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Akiva and all of them bring him arguments. What does he want with your arguments? My teachers told me—this is the truth, period. Why are you confusing me with your arguments?

“Most likely your ‘correct’ is not correct. Why? Because…” “Because they didn’t bring the arguments of adolescents—they all based themselves on…” That’s not true. It’s exactly like scientific law is based on observations. That’s not true. There’s a component there that comes from your reasoning. Take tradition, as we discussed with Rabbi Akiva, who combined those two things. You take tradition, but you give it interpretation, you add premises of your own, and then you reach your conclusions. And someone else can reach other conclusions. Yet you still need to start from the tradition. Fine—just as in science you start from observation. But the fact that you start from observation doesn’t mean you are an empiricist.

I said at the end of the previous class that in the end, after Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer, the entire Torah is Rabbi Akiva. Right? “All of it is according to Rabbi Akiva.” Why? Because Rabbi Akiva tells us: I take the tradition from Rabbi Eliezer—he learned from both of them—and I take the interpretation and reasoning from Rabbi Yehoshua. Rabbi Yehoshua explains to me the laws I learned from Rabbi Eliezer, with his difficulties and analyses. And the tradition, in the end, as it passed down to us through Rabbi Akiva, is a tradition of dynamic interpretation. I spoke about this last time. Dynamic tradition. Not tradition as it had been conceived until then—as a hollow pipe.

And that’s exactly the point. It’s not either invention or frozen tradition. No. There is dynamic tradition. I spoke about this with the Stradivarius and all the examples I brought in the previous class.

And the claim is basically that the encounter of the sages with the Greeks was traumatic on the philosophical level, beyond the issue of idolatry—which of course was strong—but on the philosophical level, because they had no answers to the Greeks’ questions. And when you have no answers, you fight. You can’t deal with them. There are a few stories about Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah—interestingly enough, the same Rabbi Yehoshua who raises arguments against Rabbi Eliezer, against the authority-based traditionalism of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Yehoshua, the man of arguments. And he is the greatest of those who debated the sages of Greece, with the elders of Athens, yes—with all Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah’s debates against them. Same thing. Because he was the only one who could talk to them. Because he has a Torah of give-and-take. He does take their tools and use them to interpret the tradition, understand it better, and then he can present some opposing position.

Rabbi Eliezer and the earlier sages didn’t know how to deal with it. All they could do was fight them. They were lost in front of them. Therefore the Talmud says, “The beauty of Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem”—the Torah is translated only into Greek, not into any other language. Why? Greek specifically—they were the worst ones, weren’t they? No. Because in the end the sages understood that they had received a great deal from the encounter with Greece. All rational, intellectual thinking, analysis—it all came from there. And that is what advanced Torah to the stage of the Oral Torah. Now there is a Torah of give-and-take. Now one can begin to speak.

Maimonides begins with terms of logic—that is an introduction, for him, to learning. A logical introduction. Ramchal too has a book—I don’t remember what it’s called—The Way of Understanding, yes. I think Ramchal even had two books on logic. He too viewed it as a source, as did Rabbi Yitzchak Campanton—they also saw this as the basis of the Oral Torah. I think they exaggerated a bit, but the idea is that the Oral Torah is basically the application of Greek methods to the tradition we received of the Torah. But this is a very deep use of Greek methods, not merely technical. There is something here that changed the Torah. That is what Rabbi Eliezer refused to accept.

So that is the confrontation of the adolescent with the adult on the global plane, on the historical plane in general, between Greece and Israel. Okay?

Now when the adolescent comes to the adult, says to the adult, to his father, to his teacher: tell me, who told you? Prove it. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe the opposite? Very classic adolescent questions. But if I remember correctly, in another class on the hermeneutical principles, we said there is some analogy to the rules of logic. That is something we did have from Moses at Sinai, at least in principle. And that is exactly the point. It was given Greek conceptualization, and therefore only with Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael does it begin to receive names and become an organized list of rules. Because they lived exactly in that period—they lived in the stage where a Torah of give-and-take begins to emerge. The use of Greek rules in Torah study begins. So the conceptualization of what we received in tradition—and we did receive the principles in tradition—putting it into the logical framework of rules, that happened only then. And that too is another expression of this whole point.

“But before that there was no use made of it?” Use was made of it, but not by means of explicit rules—rather, naturally. I spoke about this. It was not conceived as a logical system. Therefore one couldn’t really argue, and therefore they reached that catastrophe in which they killed one another because there was no real way to handle it. There were no conceptualizations, no logical rules to handle it. What do you do with such a thing?

And tradition too—that means it wasn’t understood, as I said then as well. I said that Rabbi Eliezer himself didn’t really say anything he hadn’t heard from his teacher. He lived in the illusion that that’s how it was. Now I remembered—I gave the example of my uncle about the grandfather and grandmother who studied in Yiddish, because he too knows they didn’t study in Yiddish. “A root.” Yes, I said that today too. But he too knows they didn’t study in Yiddish; still, his ethos is that they studied in Yiddish. He knows they didn’t. That’s the difference.

The claim is that the adolescent comes to the parent or his teacher and says: who told you? Prove it. Maybe the opposite? What do you answer him? What I can answer him is: listen, common sense says this. “I’m not interested in common sense—you’re talking nonsense. Give me a proof.” Right? That’s what the adolescent asks. He wants proofs. How does he see me when I speak to him that way? He sees me as the child he once was, who accepted things just like that because he was dogmatic. Right? That’s how he sees it. He doesn’t understand that I’m in stage three; I haven’t gone back to stage one. He thinks I got disappointed and returned to stage one, where I accept things just because someone said them.

Then he says: you’re dogmatic. I, on the other hand, will be wise. I accept only proven things. I don’t shave on someone else’s beard; I shave only on my own beard. Okay? I can’t explain to him—and every parent experiences this despair—I can’t explain to him that it’s very sensible. Grow up, and you too will understand that it’s sensible. You’ll understand that proofs aren’t everything. There are things where it’s common sense—you understand that they’re true. I have no proof, but it’s true. Okay?

So that is basically the claim: the adolescent reads the adult facing him—after all, he hasn’t yet gone through this stage, he doesn’t know this stage. Which stages has he gone through? Dogmatic childhood and adolescence. So from his point of view, the adult is probably still stuck in the childhood stage, accepting things just like that without proof. He doesn’t understand that there is a third stage. Therefore there is no way to answer him. Exactly as with Greece and Israel—there was no way to answer, no way to conduct the argument.

In the end what happened was that the Greek tools were absorbed into “the beauty of Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem.” It entered. And then suddenly you begin to conduct discourse in a Greek way, one could say. Okay? Then perhaps you can even begin to answer the adolescent, because you are speaking his language. But as long as you don’t do that, the adolescent thinks you are just a dogmatic child.

So what happens? Adolescent rebellion basically begins in Greece, broadly speaking. Of course this is a much more complex process, but broadly speaking it begins in Greece. Where does it end, in your opinion? Where is the point of maturity reached? The end of adolescence—maturity slash despair? Kant? I’d maybe say Nietzsche. With Nietzsche, with Nietzsche. In my eyes, even more with the mid-twentieth century. Mid-twentieth century, when positivism broke apart.

What is positivism? Positivism is basically adolescence in its purest form. I’m not willing to accept anything for which I have no proof. Everything else is pseudo-statements, as Tarski says. You’re not saying anything. You’re just saying nothing. And this is the most extreme approach: what cannot be proved and defined mathematically does not exist. There is no such thing.

Now what happens in the middle of the twentieth century? In the first third to middle of the twentieth century, a very big crisis takes place, one that cultural historians don’t always manage to understand. They attribute it to the Second World War. Postmodernism is born. It was born earlier, but it gains its force after the great rupture of the Second World War. Despair of science, despair of man. Exactly. Exactly.

And this postmodern despair says: we see where grand truth leads, and therefore we adopt a conception of pluralism, multiple truths, everyone with his own narrative, in the hope that now everything will be all right, nobody will try to murder anyone else because everything is—what became clear? In such a world people murder one another even more. Right? Because once you have no way to argue, then you have to fight. What can you do? If everyone has his own truth, I do believe in my truth. You can’t sell me forever that my truth is wrong, because I know that it is right. So what do I do? I have no way to deal with you, because in your method you are right and in my method I am right. So we will quarrel and fight. The outcome is a power-based outcome.

By the way, that is how what is called the progressive world today came into being—the so-called liberal coercion. Where does it come from? It comes from here. And you always tell them: look, where is your liberalism? Why don’t you allow Haredim to hold separate events for themselves? That’s what they want. Isn’t that the peak of liberalism, what I would expect from a liberal public—let them do as they understand; nobody is forcing anything on you. No, they won’t let them. Why not? That’s not liberal.

Now liberalism—the question mark, if a question mark is like this, if you stretch it, it becomes an exclamation mark. Your question, liberalism, which supposedly says maybe yes and maybe no, can become an exclamation point. Everyone must agree that maybe yes and maybe no. And whoever does not agree with that is a heretic. And he must be persecuted with religious persecution. So it turns into dogma.

What? Exactly, exactly. That is the absurdity here. The expectation was that this would bring the longed-for peace and “the wolf will dwell with the lamb.” But as Ben-Gurion said: I yearn for the stage where the wolf will dwell with the lamb—provided that I am the wolf. “The wolf will dwell with the lamb”—in the end the wolf will eat the lamb. There won’t be peace there. At least—not forever. Right, it won’t last. Why? Because everyone—don’t tell me stories—everyone believes his own truth is correct. You can give speeches forever saying there is no truth and everyone is right and everyone has his own truth—that’s all nonsense. In the end you are convinced that the truth is yours.

“Until they put on the table the proposal to cancel the pride parade in Jerusalem…” No, I’m saying that canceling the pride parade is a more problematic step because you’re trying to impose on others. That’s why I intentionally brought the example of separate events for a public that wants them. I’m not trying to impose on anyone, but let me behave as I see fit. No—they won’t let you. Canceling the pride parade is more problematic, because they’re marching, and okay, what do you want from them? There you are imposing on them. And that is a more problematic argument. I can understand a liberal who disagrees with that. He’ll say: what do you mean? They want to march, let them march. But how can I understand a liberal who imposes his own behavior on me? In what sense is he a liberal? He is liberal only toward those who think like him. That’s not liberalism.

Yes, the answer is yes, of course—but that is exactly because there is something very problematic here on the philosophical-logical level of this conception. Therefore I say: it’s not bad manners. It’s not that they just happened to slip, and they’re not consistent, and by mistake, I don’t know what. There is a logical-philosophical problem at the foundation of this conception. If you are a true skeptic, you can’t do anything. You can’t even think what you think. And nobody is really willing to be there. Not only not willing—he doesn’t really believe it.

“Wait, Rabbi, so you don’t see the connection between everything that happened in the Second World War and despair of man, and…” No, that’s an explanation on the historical-sociological plane. But I said—I’m speaking on the philosophical-logical plane. And in my view the root of the matter is on the philosophical-logical plane. Because in the end people saw, on the one hand, look where a very dogmatic stance that believes in Nazism or Communism or whatever leads—all those led to horrors, and that’s true. But the alternative leads to the same horrors. Because you have no way to deal with ISIS, no way to deal with Putin, no way to deal with anyone. Because what do you want? Everyone has his own truth—that’s his truth. What do you want?

Yes—so “defensive democracy,” and all sorts of tricks like that, which basically come to explain why I am not a liberal. And all sorts of concepts that come to whitewash the inconsistency. Because no, you can’t be consistent in such a situation unless you don’t allow yourself to say or do anything, think anything—be some sort of Buddha, I don’t know. The Western person can’t be in such a situation, after all. It doesn’t work. Exactly.

And he also thinks he is right. There’s a very nice book on Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis. It’s a collection of three essays. It was published in Hebrew. It’s by a Mexican psychiatrist whose name I’ve forgotten, and by Erich Fromm, the well-known psychologist, and by Suzuki—D. T. Suzuki. He was a Japanese scholar whose whole business was explaining Zen Buddhism to Western ears. That was his specialty. There’s an essay of his there. Among other things, Suzuki brings two poems. One by Tennyson, I think, and the other by Bashō, some Zen poet from the eighth century or something.

And Bashō says there: “Oh wonderful flower between the cracks of the wall, how beautiful you are, and I could stand here forever and look at you,” something like that. And Tennyson says: “Oh beautiful flower in the cracks”—not exactly the same, but close—“Oh beautiful flower in the cracks of the wall, would that I could take you and pluck you and bring you home, and you would adorn my house for the rest of my life.” And it’s such a beautiful description of the difference between East and West. The Eastern Buddhist passivity versus the neurotic Western activism. Max Weber, the Protestant Western neurosis. The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev did something similar…

“The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev did something similar regarding differences in power—that the East symbolizes more the feminine force, while the West is more the masculine force.” I don’t know, one has to understand what he meant, but maybe it’s the same thing—you call this feminine and that masculine. “What’s the name?” The Russian philosopher who wrote a book called The Fate of Russia. “What’s his name?” Nikolai Berdyaev. Nikolai Berdyaev. For you.

Okay. Anyway, in his book The Fate of Russia this is something he basically does—he explains why the Russians adopted German bureaucracy. He says the Russian, because Moscow absorbed the Tatar-Mongol thing, which is Eastern, basically became a kind of—there was more expression of the feminine, passive force, the great landmass that Russia made, such that if Russia was to act, it was first because the Germans came, symbolizing the strong masculine side, and imparted a culture… “Mother of Protestantism, Germany.” That too. Fine, he nevertheless hates the Germans. “Today Berlin reminds me simply of one giant military camp.” Okay, well, many would agree.

Anyway, back to our topic. What I really want to say, since our time is already ending, is that exactly the same processes are happening in the wider world. In the middle of the twentieth century, the first third to the middle of the century, we reach the endpoint of what began in Greece—that whole Enlightenment period. What happens from then on? Three ways of maturing. Exactly what we said for the individual person.

One kind of maturity is postmodernism—therefore it is born there—which is skepticism. Skepticism is adopting the two premises and remaining with both, right? What are the two? Only certainty is acceptable, and nothing is certain. Right? The two premises together lead directly to postmodern skepticism.

The second kind of maturity is fundamentalism, which also flourishes, amazingly enough to many people, beginning in the middle of the twentieth century. Okay? This is basically a conception that says: we have some divine sources, and therefore we will kill everyone who doesn’t think like us. Now in my opinion, by the way, the problem with fundamentalism is not its violence. That is a symptom of the problem. The problem with fundamentalism is its decisiveness, its unwillingness to place its thesis under critical examination. In principle you can be a fundamentalist even together with Mother Teresa. Because she is a fundamentalist—she is not willing to put her morality to critical examination. So she is a fundamentalist, and she won’t murder anyone. Because they are unwilling to accept critical thought.

“Or a pacifist fundamentalist?” Exactly—and there are many like that. You can be a pacifist who bombs Serbia. Right, for example. Maybe—but that’s already really inconsistency. But there are pacifists, for example Brit Shalom that existed here in the land, on the left—Magnes and Buber and all those people, Gershom Scholem—the movement of left-wing intellectuals before the establishment of the state, who wanted to concede to the Arabs and all that, recognize them and all that. It’s a movement of suicide in the name of pacifism. They opposed war, and when you are under threat and oppose war, evolution will already make sure that pacifism doesn’t survive. Therefore pacifism obviously doesn’t survive. Pacifism simply has no evolutionary ability to survive because it gets wiped out. Therefore pacifism will never be a dominant position.

Anyway, the third path of maturity, the synthetic path, is basically what was called modernism before postmodernism. It is basically the conception that says: I am willing to accept common wisdom, common sense, as a true claim. Not certain. And therefore I perhaps relate tolerantly to other conceptions, I listen to them, but I don’t think they are as correct as my conception. Still, I’m not sure they’re wrong. Maybe I’m tolerant but not pluralistic. I don’t think there are multiple truths. I do think my truth is not certain, and I do not identify truth with certainty. Because analogy, induction, rhetoric—these too are tools for adopting claims, not only logical proofs and not only certainty.

And I think the only way truly to deal with fundamentalism is this path, not pluralism, which is what people first thought. Because pluralism sits on the same premise as fundamentalism. The only way is to deal with the premise they share: that not only what is proven, or not only what is certain, is acceptable. I am willing to fight for my truth even though I know it is not certain, but I still think it is true. Until someone persuades me otherwise, I’ll listen carefully—maybe they will persuade me otherwise. But that doesn’t mean that if I’m not persuaded, I won’t fight for it. Not only what is certain is acceptable, binding, and valid. Okay? That is the conception I call synthetic.

Now next time—I’m not getting to it now—all this was a conceptual introduction, part of the conceptual introduction, to the issue of how to relate to dispute in Jewish law and in general. We’ll get to that next time. Thank you very much, Rabbi. Thank you.