The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 2

Table of Contents

• Spanish Jewish religious philosophy and Greek logic
• Maimonides, “Terms of Logic,” and the relation to the thirteen hermeneutical principles
• Ralbag and the claim that the principles are merely supports
• The Nazir: the theory of Semitic-Hebrew logic and its precision
• Reconstructing the lost logic and the gap between the original source and later use
• Commonly accepted premises, accepted traditions, rhetoric, and logical fallacies
• The second Hebrew theory of logic: intermediate and continuous
• Prophecy, the formulation of the thirteen principles, and the historical meaning of hearing
• The expansion of the Hebrew intellect and the renewal of the spirit of Israel
• Listening, logos, and analogy as listening
• A redemptive process and the return of the spirit of prophecy
• Tradition and understanding, and the critique of the division between revelational and rational
• Examples from formal logic and the need to formulate rules
• Remarks on proof, truth, and aggadic literature

Summary

General Overview

The study in “Orot HaKodesh” sets up the tension between Spanish Jewish religious philosophy, which relies on Greek-scholastic logic, and a conception of “Hebrew logic” nourished by the thirteen principles through which the Torah is expounded and by a revelational-prophetic power of hearing. The Nazir presents the basic assumption of the critics of those principles as though there is only one “precise” kind of logic, and argues against that by claiming that there is a second theory of logic—Hebrew, inner, and continuous—which can yield a different kind of certainty. From this comes a critique of familiar distinctions such as revelational versus rational commandments, and halakhic topic versus aggadic literature, and also of the tendency to see any method that is not Greek deduction as somehow “inferior” or as a fallacy, alongside the claim that returning to Hebrew logic is also connected to the renewal of the spirit of Israel and to a redemptive process involving the return of the spirit of prophecy.

Spanish Jewish religious philosophy and Greek logic

Spanish Jewish religious philosophy, which “admires logic,” knows scholastic Western logic—that is, the Greek logical tradition as transmitted in Hebrew translations—such as Maimonides’ “Terms of Logic.” It differs from Hebrew logic as found in the thirteen principles through which the Torah is expounded, whose path is “broken open and exalted,” nourished by spark-like sources and divine connections that are “non-philosophical.” The scholastic view assumes there is only one kind of logic, and from that comes the mistaken distinction, which will appear later, between revelational commandments and rational commandments.

Maimonides, “Terms of Logic,” and the relation to the thirteen hermeneutical principles

Maimonides lists types of syllogisms in “Terms of Logic,” and the statement is mentioned: “And also among other syllogisms there are what are called imaginative Torah syllogisms… and the method followed is only the principles of Rabbi Yishmael,” while clarifying that this is in chapter 14 and distinguishing between Maimonides’ own words and the words of the commentary. The Nazir interprets the statement as hinting at disdain for the principles, but it is also said that from Maimonides himself “no disdain at all emerges”; rather, the reason the thirteen principles were not included in a book on logic is the view that they are not rules of logic but rules of interpretation. It is said that Maimonides understood, “like Ralbag,” that this “does not belong to logic” and is “an arbitrary system,” though he does not go as far as Ralbag’s claim that the principles are “not worth anything even for the Torah itself.”

Ralbag and the claim that the principles are merely supports

Ralbag is quoted as writing: “It was not our practice to connect what we set down to the places to which the sages of the Talmud connected them through one of the thirteen principles… for a person can overturn all the laws of the Torah by means of such syllogisms, to the point that one could use them to declare a creeping thing pure, as the sages of blessed memory mentioned.” The claim is explained as the view that the principles do not generate law, but are only “mere supports,” and therefore one can “turn over” the Torah through them and derive whatever one wants. Ralbag is described as seeing the principles at most as an attempt at something like an axiomatic system that is not univocal—to the point that it is “not even an axiomatic system,” but rather a retrospective reconstruction around a given goal.

The Nazir: the theory of Semitic-Hebrew logic and its precision

The Nazir brings Maimonides and Ralbag in order to reject the foundation of their position, and formulates the goal of a “new precise science: the Talmud of Semitic-Hebrew logic.” “Precise” is explained as a response to the claim that the principles are arbitrary and allow anything whatever, with the Nazir asserting that there is another kind of logic, and that the rules for using it are the principles through which the Torah is expounded. The precision is described as the ability to yield a “single-valued” answer, so that “you can’t do whatever you want with it,” though there is also recognition that over the course of history “this technique was lost,” and today the learning looks more like a “reconstruction” of underlying reasoning from already-given laws.

Reconstructing the lost logic and the gap between the original source and later use

It is said that today the laws are already given, and from them we extract the reasoning, whereas the original creative process was the reverse and the reasoning came before the law. The difficulty in the Talmud, where learning appears as an answer to a difficulty, is explained as characteristic of “stages of reconstruction” among those who no longer know fully how to use the rules. The claim is that we have become even more distant, to the point that even “as an answer” we no longer understand the principles, and this explanation places contemporary use of the thirteen principles as a search for a lost foundation.

Commonly accepted premises, accepted traditions, rhetoric, and logical fallacies

A distinction is cited from “Terms of Logic” between “victorious arguments,” whose premises are commonly accepted, and “rhetorical arguments,” whose premises are accepted traditions, and a difficulty is raised: why divide them if the syllogistic structure is identical and the only difference is the source of the premises? It is suggested that the Nazir is aiming not at the formal value of the syllogism, but at the status of fields like ethics and authority as forms of knowledge that logicians regard as less “precise.” Against this it is argued that there are other paths to certainty as well, and that books on logic tend to define as “fallacies” anything that is not univocal deduction, even though every fallacy works because there is “something true” in it—such as an “appeal to force” or an “appeal to authority,” which do contain a consideration with probabilistic force even if they are not absolute proof.

The second Hebrew theory of logic: intermediate and continuous

The passage is read: “The second Hebrew theory of logic, whose character is intermediate and continuous, the principles through which the Torah is expounded…” and “continuous” is explained as analogical—that is, a logic based on resemblance and comparison and not only on deduction. It is argued that there are three basic forms of thought: deduction, induction, and analogy, and that some scholastics regard only deduction as a “clear” path to truth and minimize the value of the others. A reference is brought to page 84, where it says that the Greek demonstrative syllogism “does not innovate anything; it only analyzes,” whereas the syllogism that does generate something new is “the relation of resemblance and comparison called analogy,” and analogy is described as “the logic of the soul.”

Prophecy, the formulation of the thirteen principles, and the historical meaning of hearing

It is argued that the root of this “soul-logic” is prophetic power, and that the thirteen principles were formulated at the beginning of the Tannaitic period, in a period when “they stopped knowing how to use them,” together with the assertion that “whenever you formulate something, that’s when you stop knowing how to use it.” An interpretation is presented according to which the principles “had always existed” as a living practice, and were only formulated as a method once the ability began to be lost, so that they are a form of thinking, not formal rules for interpreting a code. From this comes the claim that the historical process of hearing the Oral Torah was a condition for transmitting that ability, and that writing, on the one hand, saved it from being forgotten, while on the other hand “increased the forgetting,” including a citation from the Rema about the absence of a “primary teacher,” because “today everyone learns from books.”

The expansion of the Hebrew intellect and the renewal of the spirit of Israel

It is stated explicitly that “the theory of Semitic-Hebrew logic attached to the principles through which the Torah is expounded… through the depth and sharpness of their study, the Hebrew intellect will grow and greatly increase… and the spirit of Israel will be renewed.” The claim is presented as revolutionary, because if the principles are an arbitrary code, there is no intellectual development in them; but if they are real logic, then they are the key to the Hebrew intellect. The difficulty of the thirteen principles is understood as a sign that this is where “the root of all the ability we have lost” resides, and the attempt to understand them is described as a way of reconstructing an intuitive capacity that disappeared.

Listening, logos, and analogy as listening

The analogical capacity is described as something non-visual, and therefore difficult to persuade people of by ordinary logical means; it requires “listening to what is inside the things.” It is explained that the resemblance between things is grasped as a kind of inner intuition, but this is presented as apprehending something real in the world, not merely a subjective feeling. The phrases “with ears that are dug open and attentive” and “and it will be heard like the spirit of prophecy” present Hebrew logic as an act of inner hearing that hears the “saying” that exists within things.

A redemptive process and the return of the spirit of prophecy

The following is quoted: “Blessed is the one who renews; free sons will unite in the calling of civic Israel in its holy land; and his spirit will return—the source hewn from the quarry of his soul, the spirit of prophecy.” The process of deepening Hebrew logic is presented not only as intellectual but as historical-redemptive, in which progress in listening and in aligning the intellect with the world actually brings the prophetic capacity closer. It is argued that there is “a correspondence between what is in my intellect and what is in the world,” and deepening the ability to listen is seen as part of the process leading to the return of prophecy.

Tradition and understanding, and the critique of the division between revelational and rational

It is said: “The accepted tradition received from the mouth of tradition does not stand in contradiction to the freedom of understanding,” and the assumption is rejected by which the Spanish philosophical thinkers, following “the Mutakallimun,” divided commandments into revelational and rational. It is explained that the revelational is not “illogical,” but rather “logical in another way,” dependent on a capacity of hearing, and therefore the distinction collapses once one understands that even the rational commandments have a revelational layer. Similarly, the division between halakhic discussion and aggadic literature is rejected as an essential division; instead it is presented as a division of genre and as an “illusion” of understanding without descending to the level of hearing.

Examples from formal logic and the need to formulate rules

Examples are given of formal rules such as “the negation of a universal affirmative proposition is a particular negative proposition,” together with an explanation of how inattention to that creates mistakes such as the “liar paradox” in the formulation “all Cretans are liars.” From this it is argued that formulating explicit rules can help when people get tangled up, even if the rules themselves seem trivial. The example is meant to show how formal formulation restores focus to what the intellect “naturally” already knows, even though on the planes of hearing-based logic there may not always be geometric proof.

Remarks on proof, truth, and aggadic literature

It is argued that there are “true things that are not provable,” and as a logical-mathematical proof of this, the distinction is brought between “true” and “provable” in a formal system under certain conditions. At the same time, Maimonides’ position is cited from his commentary on the Mishnah that “there is no halakhic ruling in aggadic literature,” together with the remark that understanding the reason for this is connected to assumptions about absolute truth and dispute, and the discussion breaks off as the lecture ends.

We’re in Orot HaKodesh, “The Holiness of Israel.” We opened this last week. We’re really mainly on the last page of page 1, but in truth there’s a connection here, and this is an approach that tries to reconcile Greek philosophy with religious dogmas. What is philosophy? Almost all medieval philosophy is religious philosophy, as we read here at the end of page 1. The Spanish Jewish religious philosophy that venerates reason knows only Western scholastic reason—the school here again means scholasticism—which is the tradition of Greek logic as given in Hebrew translations, like Maimonides’ Treatise on Logic. And that stands in contrast to Hebrew logic as found in the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is interpreted, whose way is open and elevated, nourished by the source-sparks or divine connections that are non-philosophical. There’s a very important point here, I think, which really connects to things we discussed in earlier introductions. I think we already spoke more than once about the difference between Jewish philosophy and Jewish thought. And the Spanish Jewish religious philosophy—basically Jewish scholasticism—that’s what was called Jewish philosophy in its time. It’s really Greek philosophy in Jewish form, Greek philosophy in Sunni dress—not Sunni, I mean not Muslim, never mind—and praying about Jewish subjects, but the tools, the methods, the systems, are methods of Greek philosophy. Those who championed that philosophy—which is basically almost all the people involved in medieval Spanish Jewish philosophical thought, what he calls here “that which venerates reason”—recognized only one kind of reason, namely Greek reason, what he calls here Western scholastic reason, what we called analytical reason, what’s called logic. And therefore, because of that, since it recognizes only that kind of reason, it reaches a distinction whose foundation is mistaken. And he talks about that distinction on the next page, in section 9, between commandments accepted on authority and rational commandments. We’ll get to that in a moment—a distinction between commandments accepted on authority and rational commandments. And Rabbi Kook says that in fact there is no such distinction; it’s an invalid distinction. But what he’s saying here are the foundational assumptions that lead to that distinction, and those assumptions are that there is really only one logic, Greek logic. And here he quotes, for example, from Maimonides’ Treatise on Logic. Maimonides writes there: “And let us not mention other syllogisms called imaginative scriptural syllogisms.” I’m reading note 1 below: “And there are also other syllogisms called imaginative scriptural syllogisms.” There are different translations of this matter. “And there is no need to mention them in what we are engaged in here.” And Maimonides lists all the kinds of syllogisms, all the forms of thinking, and says: besides all that, for us, in our own matters of imagination, there are also these imaginative scriptural syllogisms—but this isn’t the place for them, we’re not dealing with that. “And the way we proceed is only by the principles of Rabbi Ishmael”—that’s already from the commentary, not from Maimonides’ own words. Maimonides says this in the last chapter, chapter 14, of Treatise on Logic. “RMM”—I’m not entirely sure who that is; I think maybe Rabbi Moses Mendelssohn. But I’m not sure. It’s the best-known commentary on Treatise on Logic. Treatise on Logic is Maimonides’ book on logic. He wrote it for some Muslim sage, so he didn’t copy everything from the Torah, as we might have thought. So the Nazir interprets that statement as a dismissive statement about the principles by which the Torah is interpreted. He says the Ralbag thought less of them. Here we see not only that it doesn’t belong to the scholarly, intellectual discussion—it’s something inferior. Certainly it’s something of a different type, something not belonging to scholarly discussion. Later he brings support for this, and later in this note the Ralbag writes—and there you already have actual disdain, so to speak: “It has not been our custom to attach the things we set down to the places to which the sages of the Talmud attached them through one of the thirteen principles. For it was not their opinion that those places were justified by that type of reasoning, since a person could overturn all the laws of the Torah through such inferences, to the point that one could thereby declare a creeping thing pure, as our sages of blessed memory mentioned.” Huh? Like the proof you get with the principles, if they’re drawn correctly. The Ralbag’s claim here is that the principles are not creative; they’re merely textual supports. I know this discussion, although I just can’t believe hearing this about the Nazir—but that’s what he says. It can’t be, it can’t be—even in law it’s not really like that. Fine, the Nazir says this is very difficult, very difficult; both are difficult. We’ll try to understand how the Nazir manages to explain the logic behind it—or what he doesn’t manage to explain doesn’t exist. Exactly about that the Nazir is speaking now. Exactly about that the Nazir is speaking now. The Nazir comes to reject this; he brings them in order to say they’re wrong, all these people of religious philosophy, and he brings their reasoning. Why? Because look, this is really what we saw in the Nazir’s own language on the previous page: in note 1 on the previous page he writes, “From here we shall know to make known and to know, through a new precise scientific path, the study of Semitic-Hebrew logic.” What is this “precise”? Tell me what that means. What is this “precise”? It certainly isn’t something mathematical; it’s not what we usually call precise. The Nazir’s point here is probably exactly against what the Ralbag says here. For the Ralbag, since for him Greek logic was everything, then in terms of Greek logic these principles really do look like a set of rules unrelated to anything, arbitrary alleyways. Tell me whatever you want, and I’ll arrange some derivation for you that will get it out. And in fact—by the way—that’s exactly what they do according to the Ralbag. You tell me what you want, and I’ll arrange a derivation that gives it to me. For the Ralbag, that means that this is indeed what they do, because the principles are only supports and not creative. You tell me what I want, and you arrange the derivation so it comes out that way. And in practice it often looks that way too. Meaning, there’s some opinion that you force because it doesn’t fit otherwise, and then they say no, he derives an analogy from here to there and so on, and it really gets treated as an independent opinion. But what is the logic of the sources? Here’s the logic of the sources. In any event, the Nazir says here that because of this dismissive attitude toward the thirteen principles, basically as something with no content—we talked about that just now, we turned to the vision—this is basically a conception of the thirteen principles, on the one hand, as a set of arbitrary rules of interpretation, a kind of axiomatic system, as we called it last time. But on the other hand, to be an axiomatic system is to say that it’s not univocal. Meaning, it’s not even an axiomatic system. It’s something that claims to be an axiomatic system and doesn’t even manage that. Remember we discussed the Nazir’s attitude to the thirteen principles and what conceptions he wanted to push away? So we said one could understand the thirteen principles as a set of rules for reading the text, some kind of interpretive framework, and then it looks like something like an axiomatic system; that is, the writer of the text chose this arbitrary code in order to embed what he wanted to embed in the text, gave us the code, and through that we decode it. So the code itself has no significance; he could have chosen another code if he wanted, an arbitrary code with no significance. That was the conception we called an axiomatic system. Here the Ralbag maybe understood the principles that way, and apparently so did all those sages of tradition, or those Eastern Jewish sages. And therefore Maimonides writes here that there is no need to mention them in what we are dealing with, because these aren’t rules of logic; they are arbitrary interpretive rules of the Torah, and therefore there is no need to mention them in a book dealing with the science of logic. The commentator does not understand them as rules of logic the way the Nazir is trying to say. And the Nazir, we said, comes specifically to reject that conception and wants to argue that the logic and the principles by which the Torah is interpreted are not an arbitrary code. True, it’s a code through which one can derive laws, but it isn’t arbitrary. Meaning, it’s a code based on some kinds of thinking of a somewhat different sort—not Greek logic, but Hebrew logic. And we said, of course, that this is not meant to replace Greek logic, but to add to it. The Ralbag goes further and says: not only does he see it as such an axiomatic system, but at least an axiomatic system in mathematics is unambiguous. Meaning, you know exactly how to work with it and how to derive new theorems in geometry. I have axioms and I have rules through which I operate on the axioms to derive consequences. But there everything is clear; I can’t derive whatever I want. You can call it arbitrary—though I don’t think it is—but even if we call it arbitrary, at least it’s unambiguous, meaning it’s completely clear what is correct, what is incorrect, what is permitted, what is forbidden. Here, says the Ralbag, at best it’s something like that—but even that the system doesn’t manage to do. Meaning, it’s not even an axiomatic system; it’s just some kind of game that we play after the fact, basically drawing the target around the arrow. So what is it, then? What? So what is it, then, if that’s what it is? According to the Ralbag? Yes. Right. What? Some kind of reconstruction. That’s the Ralbag’s approach. First of all, it’s not entirely explicit. But the Ralbag’s claim here—no, now I’ll speak. Right now, exactly, that’s exactly what the Nazir wants to say. He doesn’t elaborate here because these are only introductory words and he keeps introducing things that he’ll continue later, but we need to understand simply what position he is opposing. He doesn’t just bring things, as we also saw in philosophy; he doesn’t just cite a few philosophers and a few books so we’ll see he knows things. He is trying to make a claim. And his claim is exactly what I pointed out also on the next page: that they are wrong in their fundamental premise. Their fundamental premise is that the only precise thing—the word “precise” here meaning something that gives truth and contains no uncertainty—is only Greek logic. And that’s not true. The Nazir’s main claim is that there is another kind of logic, whose rules of use are the principles by which the Torah is interpreted. And that logic is precise, as he writes on the previous page. Precise in the sense that it does indeed yield a single determinate answer. Meaning, not as the Ralbag says—you can’t do whatever you want with it. You can only do one thing with it. Except that—here I’m slipping a bit—as part of the process we discussed in the classes on the Middle Ages, it’s clear that somehow this technique was lost. And we really don’t know how to use these things. And it was probably a gradual process; the loss didn’t start today. That question asked before—I think by Matan—about how in the Talmud you see that suddenly, as an answer to a difficulty, they pull out a derivation—not bringing the derivation as the source for the law, but there’s some law and we have a difficulty, and suddenly as a solution they bring out a derivation. That is true at stages of reconstruction. It’s not true at the source. Meaning, someone who doesn’t really know fully how to use these rules, someone not endowed, so to speak, with complete auditory ability, with complete synthetic ability, with that powerful and clear intuition of where one does this and where one doesn’t, has no choice but to try to reconstruct. And that’s really what we’re constantly doing in learning. What are we doing? We’re reconstructing the system of concepts. We do not create laws by means of ideas. For us, the laws are given, and from them we derive the ideas. Whereas clearly the original creative process was the opposite. When they created the law, clearly the underlying reasoning came first, and in light of that reasoning they established the law. Right. But we today, who do not have those ideas, do not have that intellectual power, that power of Hebrew logic, try to reconstruct it through the laws. The laws are the given data, and from them we try to derive ideas and rebuild that world—perhaps more haltingly, but in some sense rebuild that same world that originally created the laws. So one has to distinguish between using the principles by someone who doesn’t quite know how to use them, and therefore when he encounters some law he doesn’t understand he says: apparently there was an analogy here that he didn’t know about, so we have to say that this is a valid analogy. Today we are even farther from that. I mean, that’s his attempt today. Nobody would dream of inventing an analogy just because he doesn’t understand a certain law. We’re already beyond even that; we no longer grasp how these principles are used, to the point that we don’t even understand them as an explanatory device. Yes. And there are maybe also thirteen principles that are both from themselves and also not, meaning that this is structural logic—there’s something self-generated here, but it isn’t structural logic. And it is logical; in a certain sense it’s reasonable, but it’s not structural logic. So all thirteen principles are not from themselves? No, that’s not the story here, that’s not the point. It’s not something arbitrary. You can say that one may not derive by oneself, but that doesn’t mean that only someone lacking this auditory ability—nobody derives by himself because of this issue, because it needs support—but that doesn’t change the nature of it. In the end it’s logic, in principles that are intellectual principles. Meaning, in the end, the principles belong to a person. A court sitting today, in principle, could take the whole Torah—yes, the whole Torah—could take the Torah, reason by means of the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted, and decide that it is permissible to eat pork on the Sabbath. No problem at all. By means of an analogy. It shouldn’t do that; obviously it won’t. But we wouldn’t be able to tell it that this is not logic. We wouldn’t be able to say it isn’t logic? Yes. Now here there’s room to discuss what it means that a person may not derive an analogy on his own, and what it means with the other principles, and where there are disputes and where yes and where no—but that too has to be understood: what is he talking about? Here there is even a possible thought that a person might derive an analogy on his own, but that already doesn’t sound reasonable at all. Meaning, if you do it just to arrive at some new conclusion—that’s exactly what they don’t want, because maybe the conclusion will be wrong. If you take the whole thing as a rigged game, then what logic is there here? That you’re arriving at a problematic conclusion—you see? There’s something a bit strange here. What? If we say that all the conclusions are laws handed down from Sinai, then is that logical? Of course it’s logical—on the contrary, that fits best. What do you mean? Someone sits on his own and reasons by a fortiori argument and by a general prototype—is that logical? These things were never meant at all to derive new laws; they were meant to reason within what had already been handed down. There is a law; now you make the a fortiori argument that leads to it, you find the verse, the analogy. There is some given datum here. According to the Ralbag, after all, you don’t use the principles to derive a law; the law is given, the Torah gave it. It’s just this kind of game where you find the way the Torah said things and where those things are located. Not that you invent laws from those places, because otherwise you could derive whatever you wanted. Why? Because then why indeed may a person not reason by himself with all the principles? There would be no problem—he would reason and produce new things. Anyway, that really belongs to another discussion, but the point the Nazir wants to make here is that there is another kind of logic in the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted—not only that this is not a non-closed system, as the Ralbag says, but that the Ralbag’s basic conception, that this is a system of thought—and this too we learned—meaning a system with content, and someone who understands how to use it hears something from it and can draw philosophical conclusions from it, logical conclusions. Therefore it is another kind of logic. Obviously it is not defective here. We emphasized earlier that from Maimonides no contempt at all emerges, right? Maimonides says there is no place in Treatise on Logic for the thirteen principles. Why? Apparently because Maimonides understood, like the Ralbag—and that is clear—Maimonides understood like the Ralbag, that this thing does not belong to logic. It is an arbitrary system; you could call it an arbitrary code. In terms of this code, it’s there in order to insert things, but it’s an arbitrary system, so of course it doesn’t belong in a book discussing the rules of logic and thought and wisdom. These are merely interpretive rules accompanying the Torah. The Torah gave an interpretive system to arrive at the same thing—a completely arbitrary matter. But Maimonides doesn’t go as far as the Ralbag and say that even for the Torah it’s worthless. Still, the basic approach of both of them is the same, and the Nazir says both are mistaken. Now we moved to the explanation of the terms. So, “victorious syllogisms” in Treatise on Logic. “Mocking syllogisms,” in modern translation, means rhetoric. Meaning, in Treatise on Logic, for example, where many of these concepts appear, Maimonides defines “victorious syllogisms” as those whose premises are famous or widely accepted. The famous ones, yes—that may be what’s called dialectic. “Mocking syllogisms” are those whose premises are accepted. That’s how Maimonides defines them there: their premises are accepted, meaning accepted from an authoritative person. That is, I didn’t reach this conclusion on my own, but there is someone here whose authority I have reason always to believe, or can believe, and from him I receive it. And Maimonides discusses syllogisms there, saying there are victorious syllogisms and mocking syllogisms. Here it isn’t clear what he means, because the syllogism built on those premises is the same thing. The whole difference is only where I know the premise from. For example, first premise: it is forbidden to murder a person. Second premise: Shimon is a person. Conclusion: it is forbidden to murder Shimon. Fine? So the structure of the syllogism is exactly the same whether the premise comes from widely accepted beliefs or from accepted authority. It changes nothing. “Widely accepted” and “accepted” differ only in where I know the premise of the syllogism from. So I don’t really know why Maimonides divides them into two kinds of syllogisms. But I think the Nazir here does not mean the syllogism itself but the character of that kind of discussion. That is, discussion in the realm of widely accepted and accepted premises is a kind of discussion that, in the eyes of the logicians, in the eyes of the Spanish philosophers, is considered inferior. Why is it inferior? Because it’s not logical, it’s not precise, it’s not Greek. But the Nazir argues against that—that is really a kind of introduction from the Nazir’s side—that this is not true. Meaning, there too there are methods—we might call them precise—in the sense that they yield one result and are sealed by intellect, so as to reach truth. Also in the sphere of what Maimonides calls “widely accepted truths”—for example morality. Maimonides calls that “widely accepted.” For the Nazir these “widely accepted truths” are not merely “widely accepted.” Meaning, you can know that they are true, not because it’s famous in the world that they are true or because society agreed not to do this, but because there is a logical rule that can lead me to the conclusion that it is forbidden to murder. Yes, the system of syllogisms, the system of logic, the system of victorious and mocking syllogisms as a method. As I wrote earlier. And therefore I think—that’s why, why does Maimonides there divide among several such categories? He says first of all there are widely accepted and accepted propositions, and syllogisms from the widely accepted are called victorious syllogisms. Syllogisms from accepted premises are called mocking syllogisms. Yes, but that’s exactly what I don’t understand. Why make two different logics here? The logic is one. Even if we accept these categories of accepted and widely accepted, why does that make it a different logic? No, it’s the same thing, the same logic; there aren’t two logics here. That’s why I say I think the Nazir doesn’t mean “logic” in exactly the same sense as in Treatise on Logic. That is, he doesn’t mean logical syllogisms based on premises of one kind or another; that changes nothing. Rather he means the widely accepted and accepted propositions themselves. That is, discussion in the field of ethics, in the field of morality—that is what Maimonides calls discussion in the sphere of the widely accepted. And in such a discussion, I cannot prove to you that I’m right, because everyone knows that it is forbidden to murder. That’s all I can tell you. I can’t develop an argument proving to you that it is forbidden to murder. Therefore Maimonides sees this as an inferior type of argument. And apparently in that sense I think such an argument is indeed inferior in Maimonides’ eyes. And likewise when I say that I received it from my rabbi, someone one can rely on, someone authoritative and trustworthy—that too is still not a proof. It may be a basis for accepting things, but it is still less than proof. Okay? That’s really what the Nazir means. I don’t think he means Greek logic based on assumptions of this or that type; that makes no difference. But against that the Nazir argues that these things too can be known in a precise and correct way. I don’t have an orderly philosophical or logical argument as when I prove theorems in geometry—but that doesn’t matter; there are other ways too. Aha! Fine, you said good things, very good things. So I can come and say this, right? I don’t have an orderly philosophical-theological argument the way I prove geometric theorems to you. But that doesn’t matter; there are other ways to reach certainty. And that’s what happened to me and to my people. Good. Fine, let’s end with that. Now one remark: at a certain stage, in books of logic there is a list of fallacies—logical fallacies. You can call them demagoguery, failures in demagoguery. When someone wants to sell some idea for which he has no proof, or doesn’t know how to handle it properly, he uses all sorts of rhetorical spices to persuade the listeners. And then there are all sorts of fallacies. It’s right there in the logic book; at the end there’s a list of fallacies. And it’s really interesting to see what gets called a fallacy. There are some fallacies that really are just nothing—they don’t even ring true, they’re banal. But most of the fallacies people actually do fall for—one example is the “appeal to force,” as it’s called there. What is an appeal to force? You go to some senator and say, listen, vote for this law because several thousand of your voters really like it. So first of all, if the senator is persuaded, it’s not by the arguments; he isn’t persuaded because he was convinced the law is correct, but because he really wants to be reelected. True, there are thousands of people who want this law, but that doesn’t make the law correct. From the senator’s standpoint, that may persuade him, but it’s still a consideration that will lead him to vote for the law because he wants to be reelected. Fine. Now, that’s not such a serious fallacy because he usually knows exactly why he’s doing it; he isn’t confused. It’s not that “force” persuaded him, that they managed to convince him that the law is correct when it isn’t, but rather they persuaded him to vote for the law even though he doesn’t believe in it, because there is another consideration for which he will vote. So that’s why I say that if we look carefully at these fallacies—and this is something I learned once from a friend of mine—if we look carefully at all these fallacies, in each case it works because there is really something true in it. Every such fallacy—let’s take another one, an appeal to authority. “Even Einstein says we need to reduce inflation,” I don’t know. Einstein is an expert in physics. If you tell me what he said in physics, then we’ll agree that that has some evidentiary value. But if you say, “Even Einstein thinks inflation should be reduced,” then what standing does Einstein have in economics? Very nice, but he’s just a layman in that field. So if he says it, maybe it’s worth thinking about—in fact I think even there there’s something to it. In the end, all the things that books of logic simply exclude—what happens there? Logic books come afterward to explain to you what is definitely correct. That is, clear, unambiguous Greek logic, deduction, right? And somehow with some writers—it varies, there are some who are less zealous—but some writers are sure that anything that isn’t that is a fallacy. Do you understand? So they bring a list of arguments that persuade you even though they aren’t that kind. The axiom that every human being in the past thought this way—that a person feels it that way; a person doesn’t feel this intuitively. Yes, of course that would be called a first-rate fallacy, and all sorts of things of that sort. Anything that isn’t of that kind gets put on the list of fallacies. And I think that’s unjustified. Exactly. And that’s exactly the point. If you’re coming to study logic, then fine. But one has to understand that this is not a fallacy in any way. It’s simply a means—like what we read here—a thing that in this case might be lesser. Lesser, as Maimonides or the Kuzari would say, that syllogistic or rhetorical reasoning is lesser in the sense that it is not absolute. But it is not a fallacy. And again, that’s the same point—the Nazir here brings exactly this point. Why do they say these things are inferior, maybe even dismiss them altogether, like Maimonides? Because they think that the only way to reach truth is the Greek logical way. So naturally anything that isn’t that is indeed less. But if you recognize that there is another way to reach truth, not always by neat, closed, analytical paths, then who says it is less? On the contrary, maybe it is something—as we wrote here and will, with God’s help, discuss further—that is not less at all. And likewise we find this in all the examples I gave you from those logic books. They too, in seeking to arrive at the study of absolute, mathematical rules, ended up captive at some stage to the notion that only that sort of thing counts as an argument. It makes sense that Einstein carries more weight than I do even in his own field, and even in his own field where he is the expert—there is a good reason to say that. Not to say it’s absolute, not to say it can’t be refuted, but there is some probability here: if they’re thinking about the same matter, it is reasonable that he’s right, no? It’s reasonable. There’s no definitive answer here. No, what I’m saying is: if I get up on a stage and shout to a crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, even Einstein says one should wait within four cubits,” am I a demagogue? No. There is a reasonable argument here, one that certainly has some validity. Meaning, if the only argument that doesn’t count as demagoguery is one made only of analytical arguments, then we’re wasting our time and our blood—let that be clear. I mean in the negative sense of the phrase. It’s not that it neutralizes all rhetoric—there’d be nothing left there. And these are the only kinds of things that can be—this we already discussed. These things sound simple when you say them, but one has to be careful not to be captive. Many times we are captive inside conceptions that are worth examining from time to time. Fine. Fine, let’s move to section 4. “The second Hebrew science of logic, whose character is structural and continuous, grounded in the principles by which the Torah is interpreted, and in Hebrew founded logic as compared with Greek-Aristotelian logic in its abstraction, will serve as a basis for understanding the new Jewish religious philosophy, in continuity with earlier generations and with its first, original, essential continuation.” First of all, what does the term “essential” mean? That’s a key term in this book. “Continuous” means analogical. There is later “parable-like”; that’s something else. “Continuous” means continuity—it is a kind of analogy. This is analogous to that; it resembles that. “Parable-like” is a bit different; we’ll discuss that later. And this is really a return to the poles we discussed earlier. The Hebrew logic has an analogical character. That is exactly what we said before. Here comes the resolution to section 3—sorry, it isn’t written there, but is really only written here. Fine? So it isn’t repetition; I’m repeating myself. Section 3 justified the scholastic logic, meaning that only the Greek is the precise thing, and all the rest is lesser, if anything at all. And in section 4 he explains that it is not so. Meaning, he says that the second Hebrew science of logic is not like scholasticism; rather its character is structural and continuous—that is, analogical. And the point is what we discussed already: there are three forms of thinking—deduction, induction, and analogy. Three basic forms of thought. And those analysts or scholastics, however you want to call them, basically think that deduction is the only path to clear truth, and the other two are really inferior paths, if they count at all. And here he says that the principle he establishes—the second Hebrew logic—recognizes the validity also of continuous thought, that is, analogical thinking. Induction is basically a kind of analogy. More or less. Induction too? Induction too is a kind of analogy. It’s very hard to create a hierarchy among them. We’ll discuss that, both here later and later on. But it’s very hard to rank which is superior. At first glance it seems that deduction is the most agreed-upon thing, seemingly. Deduction is supposedly the most correct thing. Meaning, it is absolute, certainly correct. If x and y are two horses called such-and-such, then every horse is certainly like that. If x and y are two horses, and y is a horse, then clearly x is a horse. That’s the most basic deduction. But if I’ve seen two horses called Jonathan and David, can I infer something more about horses? But you won’t be able to infer from the universal. What? But if you can’t infer from the universal. You see that it’s a universal—that’s an incorrect claim. If even once the premise is incorrect. If I assume the universal, I’m not inferring the universal. The universal isn’t universal. So I don’t know whether that universal exists at all. If you need to assume the universal, then you don’t need to prove it; it’s obvious. Seemingly simple. Fine. About this analogy, let me just give you a reference on page 84—you don’t have the books. “At the foundation of ancient Greek logic, created in archaic Greece in times of its first and great embodiment, the exemplary relation does not renew anything but only analyzes—logical and exemplary analysis—maintains and restores what is already known, as for example the syllogism. However, the relation that renews something not previously known is the Semitic relation, the relation of resemblance and comparison, called analogy.” Here Rabbi Kook explains in more detail the distinction he makes here briefly: that Greek logic is a logic that, true, is precise to the utmost, and therefore also does not let us soar; whereas the second logic is one that maybe is not precise to the utmost but is the only one that can actually teach me something, and that is analogy, Semitic logic. He adds a few more points here. Rabbi Kook will deepen all these points later; I won’t linger on them now. But the citation about earlier generations and the continuation and the first source of this—that is prophecy—is really the short version of how this Semitic logic reaches us. But today we feel pretty distant and disconnected from it. The thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted, their whole matter is merely indicative—that is, we don’t know exactly what to do with them. Usually we don’t even understand how those Tannaim did it; usually we lack the knowledge. But the way to re-enter this is to understand that we do not need to invent it, but can be nourished from some historical continuity that begins in the world of prophecy. The prophets apparently knew the thirteen principles in an absolute way. They knew exactly what this meant, how to use it precisely. It is a kind of prophecy. Semitic logic is really rooted in prophetic power. After the prophets and the Men of the Great Assembly, they also formulated the thirteen principles. The thirteen principles were formulated at the beginning of the Tannaitic period. They began to formulate the principles, and that happened exactly at the period when people stopped knowing how to use them. Whenever you formulate something, it’s when you stop knowing how to use it. What is completely obvious to me, I don’t formulate. We already discussed that. Sometimes they don’t formulate the whole inquiry, even though there is some method sitting somewhere in the background. It’s just obvious: it’s like this, that’s it. We who come later need to explain the teachings and the conclusions and the inquiries and all of it. Usually, whenever people begin to formulate something or try to define it, that’s a sign they don’t understand it. If they understand it, they use it and that’s it—they don’t analyze it. So again, all kinds of scholars can come and explain to us that the principles were formulated at the start of the Tannaitic era and came from Hammurabi or who knows where. Hammurabi was much earlier—I just wanted to say from all sorts of places. But the interpretation I think is correct—and exactly from scholarship you can’t prove it one way or the other—is that these things existed from the beginning of time; only their formulation as valid principles—that is, the Tannaim arranged and formulated them as a method. But they existed earlier, and people used them all the time, and used them precisely as a distinct logic. It was a form of thought. And that’s what I’m trying to explain—that the principles are a form of thinking and not formal rules. Because if they were really formal rules for interpreting the Torah, then it would be absurd to say they were formulated at the beginning of the Tannaitic era. It would be absurd to say this is a method given together with the Torah, meaning the way to read the Torah. But that is exactly the point, and the scholarly conception that the principles were formulated later. Precisely from the perspective that these are rules of Semitic logic, they existed all along. When people expounded Torah, they needed these thirteen principles. And at a certain stage, when we somewhat lost this ability, or saw that it was beginning to be lost, they formulated them as rules in order to preserve it. Today even the formulation—also according to our logical categories, which simply also in… Why do we need formal logic? It’s not difficult, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s much more than that; there are things here that are trivial, almost all of them are quite simple. If Maimonides wrote this book, I don’t know. Let’s say there is some value in explicit formulation. Sometimes when you get tangled up, you go back to the written rule and use it to refocus on what naturally you already think. For example—say one of the things Maimonides deals with is the square of opposition. For instance, the negation of a universal affirmative proposition is a particular negative proposition. What does that mean? If I say, “All human beings are mortal,” right? That is a universal proposition, whose subject is all human beings, and it is affirmative, that they are mortal—not “they are not mortal,” but “they are mortal,” right? A universal affirmative proposition. What is the negation of such a proposition? That there exists some human being who is not mortal. Meaning, that is a negative proposition—that he is not mortal—and “there exists” makes it particular. Not “all human beings are not mortal,” but “there exists a human being who is not mortal.” Right? So the negation of a universal affirmative proposition is a particular negative proposition. Fine? Now every one of us knows this; this isn’t some novelty Maimonides taught us. But you’ll see that people fall into error here all the time. And the simplest example of this—why I chose it—is because it’s a simple case people get wrong. They often talk about the liar paradox, right? Some Stoic says, “All Cretans are liars.” Then they say, “Wait—if all are liars, then he’s a liar, and if he’s a liar then he’s not a liar, and if he’s not a liar then he’s not a liar”—nonsense, of course, not true, not a paradox at all. Because the negation of “All Cretans are liars” is that there exists at least one who is not a liar, not that all are not liars. Just that there is at least one who is not a liar. Right? For example, his cousin. The speaker himself may indeed be a liar, but his cousin isn’t. To say, “This statement is false”—that is the real liar paradox. To say, “I am a liar” is a paradox. “I am a liar”—what does that mean? Always? Not always? Explain, so it’s clear what you mean. “I am always a liar”—every statement I say is false. Even then, in my opinion, no, that’s not a paradox. Why not? Because in that statement, for example, right now, you are indeed lying. And do you know why you’re lying? Because yesterday you said one true statement, so it is not true that you are always a liar. Understand? So it isn’t a paradox. It simply means that yesterday you said one true statement and all the other statements you said are false. Right? I am lying when I say that I am a liar. So the fact that you’re lying is not a paradox. Not every liar is paradoxical. You’re simply a liar, right? The statement you’re saying now is false, you’re right, and that’s all, on the face of it. If I am lying when I say that I am a liar. No, you’re not always a liar. Right now, at this moment, you are indeed lying. I understand what you mean—if you mean permanently, then continue the sentence exactly, but you have to explain. If I say “I am a liar,” you haven’t explained what you mean. Explain what you mean and I’ll tell you whether it’s true. But if you say, for example, “This sentence is false,” a sentence that refers to itself—Sentence A: Sentence A is false—that is probably a genuine paradox. Why am I bringing this? It’s a classic example. There is logic here that everyone really understands; after all, it’s logic we all know. We all know that the opposite of “All Cretans are liars” is not that all are truth-tellers. That is not the opposite of “All Cretans are liars.” The opposite is that there is at least one who is not a liar. Right? So why does everyone fall for this paradox? Everyone falls for it because they don’t notice this rule. Now when you formulate this rule explicitly, sometimes that helps. Because you—wait, let’s check this formally now, let’s pause. I’m already tangled up; let’s try to check it like a computer would. And sometimes, when you get tangled up and step outside for a moment, and someone has written a few rules for you, that helps us. Fine. There, enough of an error for a sixteen-year-old; maybe for Maimonides that was enough of a mistake to justify spending time on it. Fine. “The Semitic-Hebrew science of logic, attached to the principles by which the Torah is interpreted, will serve as an introduction to the methods of halakhic midrash, and its foundation lies in the ways of the Talmud, through whose depth and sharpness of study the Hebrew intellect will grow and continue to grow, the Hebrew intellect will grow and continue to grow, the Torah will be magnified and glorified, and the spirit of Israel will be renewed.” Passages like this—I’m always putting the later before the earlier, so it sounds repetitive, but when you read it inside you’ll see it isn’t repetition. I’m just getting ahead a bit. The Nazir is essentially claiming here—he continues here, and I think for the first time explicitly—that the thirteen principles enlarge the Hebrew intellect. That is a revolutionary claim. What do you mean? The thirteen principles are those arbitrary rules through which I interpret the Torah, so what intellect is growing here? Nothing grows. If I learn some set of rules for decoding someone’s code, fine, if I discovered the code myself that might develop the mind. But if he gives me the key to the code, and he gives me the page from which I’m supposed to read the message, then what develops? Nothing develops. I used it, understood what he wrote, and moved on. Here the Nazir says exactly the claim we already anticipated, of course, several times, in order to understand what he is fighting against. Here he says: the thirteen principles are not arbitrary. The thirteen principles are what enlarge the Hebrew intellect. These are the rules used when one works with the Hebrew intellect. And he hints at even more than that: by trying to understand them and use them, we can attempt to recover for ourselves that auditory capacity that was lost. We really see that with the thirteen principles we get stuck there perhaps more strongly than anywhere else. These are the passages in the Talmud that are least clear to us—the derivations. The underlying reasoning, all in all, we can more or less manage with. There may be ideas that are less clear or more clear, but generally one can manage. The thirteen principles are really the foggiest point, the least clear to us, the most obscure and far from us. That is a sign that there lies the root of the whole ability we lost. Therefore the attempt to understand what lies there is the key to trying to reconstruct that ability. And that’s what he means by “the Torah will be magnified and glorified, and the spirit of Israel will be renewed”: that we will return to that spirit that once existed, that intuitive or auditory ability that once existed. And we saw an example of this in one of the recent lessons—not that recent, admittedly—but in one of the recent lessons we discussed “the common denominator.” Maybe you’ll remember when that was. In the yeshiva introduction? Maybe. In any case, with “the common denominator” you remember we saw the move. But with “the common denominator” we learned a principle, namely that it is simply absurd to derive a principle from the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted if you adopt the Ralbag and Maimonides’ conception. There is nowhere to derive philosophical, psychological, or psychoanalytic principles from—fine—if things were just arranged that way. If you want to point here to some conceptual foundation, you are assuming an internal premise that must be noticed. And the hidden assumption is the Nazir’s understanding of what the thirteen principles are. That the thirteen principles are rules by which we truly decode not only the Torah, but the world as well. That is, they are logical rules, rules that help us crack understanding in general—not a code-deciphering tool. “Overlapping with the ways of basic Semitic-Hebrew logic, in order to draw near and elevate toward revelation the spirit of Hebrew logic in ears that are prepared and open, and it will be heard like the spirit of prophecy.” Yes, this is the logos we spoke about: that analogy is also not visual. You can’t see it, and therefore it is very difficult to communicate it to someone else or persuade someone else that I’m right. It demands listening to what is within the things. What we called logos—the word that exists within things. We called it listening because basically the way to arrive at the correct analogy is to try and listen to what is inside the things. What really is their inner structure? How really is this thing similar to that thing? Why is there really some likeness between the two? Rules for analyzing similarity are not rules one can work with by means of accepted logic. We would simply call it intuition. Either you understand that there is similarity between two things or you do not. It is very hard, at least, to persuade someone by logical means that one thing is similar to another. More similar or less similar—rules about where to make an analogy and where an analogy is justified and where it isn’t—these are matters of inner feeling. And that inner feeling is not merely inner feeling, as we said, but rather the perception of something that really exists in the world. That is the listening. “When the new nation rises, free sons uniquely dedicated to Israel’s national calling in the land of its holiness, then its spirit will return to the source from which its soul was hewn—the spirit of prophecy.” So he says that beyond the fact that this will also help us understand the world, it also has redemptive significance for the intellectual process. That is, this seems like an intellectual process. He is coming to explain to us how one should better understand both Torah and the world. But here he says that in fact it is not only an intellectual process, and we will see this later—of course it is a cornerstone of his method—that intellect is not a detached thing. Meaning, the listening, as we already mentioned in the first lesson, points to some kind of correspondence between what exists in my intellect and what exists in the world. When I listen, I find patterns that exist within me, and I find them in the world. That is how I create similarities, that is how I make analogies, that is how I make inductions. So this requires some kind of correspondence between me and the world. That is, everything in the intellect also has a root in reality. There is some correspondence between man and the world, as is known in the books. And that correspondence is expressed on several planes. Also on this plane: the very fact that one can listen at all and make analogies means there really is a correspondence between my inner feelings, my inner intuitions, and what is happening in the world. I draw conclusions about the world by means of my own feelings. What connection is there between my feelings and conclusions about the world? Why can I infer something about the world? I infer something about the world because I assume that these feelings are not merely subjective internal feelings of mine, but correspond to something that is really happening in the world. Something that cannot be grasped by logical or visual means—what he calls here imagistic means—but still has some correspondence, and one just has to sharpen one’s listening ability a bit in order to understand it. And on the other hand, this correspondence is also creative. Meaning, the more I come closer and closer to prophetic ability, the more prophetic ability in practice will simply come closer to me. That is, we will advance more and more in the process—in the process of redemption toward the return of prophecy. Meaning, we are not just carrying out an intellectual process; the intellectual process also corresponds to a historical process. That is, the historical process has intellectual meaning, and vice versa. After the destruction, it says in the Talmud—in tractate Chagigah 12, I think—that after the destruction all that remained to us was a heavenly echo. First of all, a heavenly echo again points to listening. Always “come and hear,” all of it is listening. The plain terminology, the terminology of the Talmudic world, is terminology of listening far more than of seeing. Also “come and see.” Right. And that too is being referred to. It’s not accidental. Why “come and see”? Because in the Zohar there are many “come and see.” And that is exactly the difference between studying Kabbalah and studying Talmud—our Rabbi spoke about this once on another occasion. What is the difference between wisdom… Why is impurity not hidden and holiness yes hidden? Holiness is much more revealed than impurity. Everyone understands what holiness is; impurity they don’t. Right, indeed—neither this is hidden nor that hidden, neither this revealed nor that revealed. “Revealed” and “hidden” are methods; they are not concepts. One mode of study is called hidden and another mode of study is called revealed. And it doesn’t matter what is being studied within them—that is already another question. So Kabbalah, with its “come and see,” is really learning the hidden teaching in a revealed way. That is the whole matter of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai; it’s written somewhere. And Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai revealed this—and according to Hasidut or this latter perspective, he appeared as the last Hasid. The Baal Shem Tov, there is Rashbi, the Ari, the Baal Shem Tov. Yes, yes, on the Chabad website, in fact. There they write things that appear elsewhere too, not only there. And what is written there is basically that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai taught and established the hidden in a revealed way; with him the revealed was built, the Ari built the hint, the hint, yes; the Baal Shem Tov the homiletic. And who is the fourth? Messiah, yes. No wonder I don’t remember that. Fine, that’s one point that maybe we’ll discuss later; at the moment I don’t remember. Rabbi? Yes. Rabbi, does he build the hidden or the revealed? Yes, yes—the secret Semitic logic. Maybe I didn’t emphasize this, but in the introduction he said—not in the introduction, in section 1—there he says that Semitic-Hebrew logic is divided into two according to its students in spirit: the general Semitic logic, found in the principles by which the Torah is interpreted, and then the secret Semitic logic, found in the sefirot of inner Hebrew and Israelite wisdom. Clear? Why call one general and one secret? What is internal? “Secret” means hidden from all; “general” means visible to all. “For the outer listening of the world and for the inward repetition of the inner understanding, the historical repetition according to the oral report comes first and passes on.” The honor of the great rabbi, the true Jewish religious philosopher, who says in the halakhic midrashim and in Mishneh Torah: “They are from oral report; they learned them from oral report.” Interesting that precisely after what he said earlier, he calls him the great true Jewish religious philosopher. Right, that bothers me a little too; I’m not noting it yet—the way he relates to those scholastic sages. But in what sense is this true? After all, it’s partial. We’ll see later in section 2 that they are even mistaken; they draw mistaken consequences from their assumptions. So that’s true. In any case, the point he reaches here is that there is a connection—and this too was mentioned earlier—between the process of historical repetition, or in other words the process of transmitting the Oral Torah. That’s also why this Torah was oral, by the way. This Torah was oral and it was forbidden to write it down. It was forbidden to write it down so that it would be transmitted through repetition, not through sight. But again, we already discussed that reading a book is in a certain sense also repetition, but it is still already more sight than oral repetition. We all know the feeling that there is a difference—you may have seen this sometimes—but there is a difference between hearing a lesson and reading the same thing in a book. The same thing is being said. As the Talmud says: “The reason I am sharper than my colleagues is that I saw Rabbi Meir from behind.” When you see the one speaking, non-verbal messages pass to you. And that is what is called repetition. It doesn’t pass through the ears or through the eyes—well, maybe it even passes through the eyes—but non-verbal, non-explicit messages. That’s why I call it repetition. It may be that it passes through the eyes. Fine? So that is how the Torah originally wanted the Oral Torah to be transmitted. But because “it is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah,” they eventually wrote it down. But again, really it was supposed to be passed orally, because the process of repetition is a basic condition for genuine transmission of Torah. The writing down of the Oral Torah, in one sense, may have somewhat saved it from forgetfulness, but in another sense increased forgetfulness. That is, it pushed us further down the slope of losing our intuitions, because today, as the Rema writes in the Shulchan Arukh: why does he write that today there is no singular primary rabbi? Because today everyone learns from books. Once, all you knew was from your own rabbi. There were no books, you read nothing; all you knew was only what your rabbi told you. He truly built you from aleph to tav, your whole understanding, everything, everything came from there. Today you open whatever book you want, look around, get impressed—this one says this, that one says that. And this concept of a primary rabbi—and the fact that there is no such concept—is not a minor deficiency or some technical detail. It is the condition in which the Torah exists. The Oral Torah has turned into Written Torah. Yes, and in a time of need, in order to save the books, it was set aside; so the Rosh and Tosafot write in the chapter “All Holy Writings” on the Sabbath that one may rescue—that too is called. And books that have the sanctity of a book. The Gemara as it exists among us is not even in Assyrian script. These are books that have the sanctity of a book, that may be saved from a fire. The big question there is what “the sanctity of a book” means. It’s not enough that it be words of Torah. So this means—this is a very revolutionary perspective. It’s a dry halakhic perspective in a rabbinic law, but there is something very revolutionary behind it. This thing became an object—a book. It is not simply speech that you wrote down and that’s all, and it remains the same thing. No. It became an object, a book, and it became Written Torah—of course on a lower level. And we lost a lot through that, obviously. Not for nothing was it forbidden to write it. Therefore he says: the condition for auditory ability is historical hearing. Hearing is historical. And the more you hear, the more you are nourished by hearing from previous generations; that hearing also creates your own auditory ability. Since that is how it is transmitted. It is not transmitted through books. And that is exactly the problem. That’s why it was forbidden to write it down. Because books transmit information; they do not transmit the “fifth Shulchan Arukh,” so to speak. They do not transmit how to look at things. So historical hearing is what creates auditory ability as well. “The accepted oral tradition transmitted by the chain of tradition does not stand in contradiction to the freedom of understanding—not like the division between commandments accepted on authority and rational commandments among the Spanish philosophers, following the theologians.” “The theologians” means the mutakallimun. “Nor like the division between halakhic discussion and aggadah among the last generation, both the historians and the Torah scholars.” This assumption—this distinction, Rabbi Kook says—is a mistaken distinction. It is a distinction that is understood as follows: what I heard from my rabbi—I am forbidden to disagree with it. That’s the rule: one must not disagree with things that came through tradition, generally speaking. And supposedly this contradicts the freedom of understanding. So what happens? Where do these claims arise today all the time? “What about freedom of thought? What about all the acrobatics in the studio? You’re bound by all kinds of things.” There is a huge amount to say about how opposite to the truth that silly sentence is. But this conception is mistaken, and it is what leads to the distinction that we all today repeat as though it were obvious, between commandments accepted on authority and rational commandments. He brings a list below of its sources. This distinction is basically understood by those Jews to mean that what is “accepted on authority” has no logic of its own. Meaning there is only one logic, and what we call the rational commandments are those with which reason agrees, and that’s fine. The commandments accepted on authority are the commandments we don’t understand. So if we don’t understand them, then they are not logical. But we don’t understand them because we don’t know how one is supposed to understand such things. If we knew how such things are supposed to be understood, we would see that they too are heard. They are “heard” in the sense that the ability needed to understand them is auditory ability, not ordinary logical ability. That is why they are “heard.” It doesn’t mean they are not logical. They are logical in another way. And once you understand that, the distinction in fact completely collapses. Because even in the rational commandments there is an auditory layer. In the end there is an auditory layer in everything. There are commandments where we have some illusion that we understand them even without the auditory layer, and there are commandments where we lack that illusion. Fine—that’s just a distinction among illusions. But once you know the truth of how things are understood, everything lies on the same plane. And this also exists among the Torah scholars and the historians. For example, this whole discussion people talk about a lot—whether one needs to build thought and philosophy or a doctrine of faith inwardly, or all sorts of things like that—that discussion is not one where one side is right. The very way it is framed is based on an error. Because simple faith does not mean not understanding. Simple faith means understanding in an auditory way. Meaning, to grasp that what someone says—what the rabbi says to me—is true. Therefore I do not disagree with him. That is called simple faith. Not to be an idiot and think that he is not right but I’ll do it anyway because people do things even if they are illogical. Rather—I’m not saying one shouldn’t understand, of course one should strive to understand. One shouldn’t say, “I do it despite not understanding because people do illogical things.” I do it because of the rabbi, and that will also help me understand. The action will help me understand, faith will help me act, and that is the subject of the beginning of the next chapter. So this distinction—that Greek logic is the only logic that exists—leads a person into errors. That is, it is not something neutral on one side. And on the other side, if Maimonides is the great true Jewish religious philosopher, as we said earlier, then one has to understand how somehow this too should emerge from Maimonides, even though Maimonides himself did not understand matters this way. Fine, I really don’t know—that relationship is not fully clear to me. In any case, the whole distinction between halakhic discourse and aggadah—he writes below in note 4—the whole distinction between halakhic discourse and aggadah: you know there are sections that are halakhic discourse and sections that are aggadah, or law and aggadah. This distinction, in many senses, as we once discussed, is more a distinction of genre than of essence. That is, more a difference in style or mode of writing than in substance. Because a philosophical layer, an auditory layer, exists in the legal-discursive parts just as in the aggadic parts. It’s just that in the legal-discursive section there is supposedly—again the illusions—there is supposedly a layer prior to that. Meaning, there is some layer through which one can deal with legal discourse and somehow feel that we understand it even without reaching the true understanding, the auditory layer, the idea standing behind it. That is not the case in aggadah. In aggadah there is no such illusion. It is exactly the same as the distinction between commandments accepted on authority and rational commandments, but the distinction belongs to the realm of illusion. In the end, even the revealed understanding, the straightforward understanding we try to attain in analytical learning, in ordinary Talmud study of halakhic discourse—the foundation of that understanding too lies in the auditory layer; there too there is an auditory layer. It’s just that there we have some illusion that we can stop there and that already counts as understanding something. I once heard a claim that there is even a mathematical proof of this—a very nice claim—why can’t one accept it? Seemingly that’s what you’re saying: this distinction, since it’s based on illusion, is very logical and accepted, so why is illusion logical and accepted? No, the question is whether it was proved by examples from—I don’t know from where. Yes, the examples, I think we already know examples, and we’ll expand on this. Here again, the Greek proof that non-Greek logic—sorry, the Greek proof that Greek logic is not exclusive—I once proved it, and I’ll mention it again from the legal world. A Greek proof that Greek logic is not exclusive: there are truths that are unprovable. There are truths that are unprovable, meaning they have no proof. I mentioned this once before, and these are two different concepts. There is a full proof of such a statement—not here, not in this semester—but there are these steps. So this is really a proof within a formal system, within a logical system—a proof by mathematical means that in every formal system satisfying certain conditions there exists at least one proposition that is necessarily true and at the same time necessarily has no proof. This is one of the more important propositions in mathematical logic in this century. And it distinguishes between the concept “true” and the concept “provable.” It says maybe that is the kind of proof you are looking for. But fine, we’ll see that if one understands it correctly, then that proposition too is not all that important. But that we’ll understand after we understand what he meant. “The open understanding of the sages of Israel”—maybe one more remark, one more remark after all. Maimonides says in his commentary on the Mishnah that there is no halakhic ruling in aggadah. In aggadic matters, even if there is a dispute, there is no such thing as a halakhic ruling. Maimonides says this in his commentary on the Mishnah in several places; I remember three, maybe there are more. And usually people tend to think—and perhaps in Maimonides’ own view it really is so—no, actually one could say that even in Maimonides’ own view it’s not so—that this is because there really is no absolute truth there. You can say it this way or that way, and therefore there is no halakhic ruling. First of all, of course, that assumes that in Jewish law there is absolute truth. A very ambitious assumption. What? That dispute—Maimonides in his introduction speaks about how there was no dispute until the students of Hillel and Shammai became numerous. What about “these and those are the words of the living God”? He doesn’t accept that? Who said he doesn’t accept it? No, one has to understand what “these and those” means according to Maimonides, and that’s a whole topic in itself—how to reconcile these things. That is not, that is not the matter right now. There are only a few minutes left in the class; my apologies.