The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 12

Table of Contents

• [0:01] The difference between visual and auditory thinking according to the Nazir
• [1:12] Form as a mode of perception in Plato and Aristotle
• [4:38] Scientific classification and characteristics: perception from the outside
• [8:01] The Nazir places matter higher than form
• [17:35] The parallel to matter and form in Kabbalistic sources
• [28:41] The opposite of form: matter and the divine utterance
• [30:01] Formal nominal logic without content
• [31:30] Semitic logic as suited to the mathematical mind
• [33:29] The Stoics versus Greek philosophy
• [38:58] Matter and form in abstract concepts
• [43:11] Defining the concept of a Jew: conventionalist versus essentialist
• [57:09] Truth and representation: what counts as real?
• [58:14] Moving from the publicly accepted good to the intellectually grasped good

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the Nazir’s claim that the gap between visual thinking and auditory thinking is not only between Torah-based logic and Aristotle, but also vis-à-vis Plato, even though Plato would seemingly be closer to the auditory side because of the world of ideas. Plato and Aristotle are grouped together in the Greek-visual camp because both grasp a thing through form, characteristics, and categories—that is, through a scientific kind of perception from the outside—and not through grasping the thing itself. According to auditory logic, matter, in the senses defined in these lectures, is the inner foundation and higher than form, and this ranking is defined as a philosophical and spiritual hierarchy that does not necessarily depend on religion. From this there emerges a picture in which ideas and concepts are not trapped in a separate higher world, but can also exist in this world, and the text connects this picture to the Kabbalistic language of the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and to the idea of repairing matter, and later also to the Hellenic concept of beauty as the perception of form and theory as something born in Greece.

Plato and Aristotle Within the Visual-Auditory Divide

The Nazir argues that Plato, even though he recognizes the existence of forms and ideas, still belongs to the Greek visual camp because he grasps things through their form and not through their matter. Plato describes things through categories, like Aristotle, except that for Plato the categories themselves exist in their own right, and this difference does not change the basic fact that apprehension takes place through general characteristics. Aristotle denies the existence of forms as independently existing things and sees them as a fiction of human cognition, but for him too, grasping a thing proceeds through form and classification and not through the thing itself. Plato and Aristotle together represent a “scientific” perception of classification from the outside, which places one thing opposite another by means of a shared axis of general concepts.

Form, Matter, Characteristics, and Knowledge of the Thing Itself

Auditory logic is defined as an attempt to grasp the thing as such, or through the thing’s matter, and not through the form that is perceived by the senses as descriptions and properties. Form is defined as a collection of characteristics and descriptions that do not belong to one individual essence but characterize many groups, and therefore they are always general. Scientific perception works through classifications and comparisons such as “much” versus “little” and “like this” versus “not like this,” and it assumes a general conceptual system that places each case within an external order. Auditory perception aims at knowledge in the sense of connection and living within the thing itself, and characteristics are seen within it as derivatives and not as the primary means of apprehension.

Anthropology, Description versus Understanding, and Scientific Progress

The anthropological example sharpens the point that scientific perception classifies a tribe according to a general conceptual system, such as types of idols and family structures, in order to compare it to other tribes. Auditory perception is described as living within the tribe and understanding it from the inside without turning it into an object of external categories. The text suggests that the progress of science may have become possible precisely because people gave up on understanding and settled for description, but there still remains the possibility of a deeper and truer perception of the individual as an individual. The central distinction remains between beginning from form in scientific description and beginning from matter in auditory perception.

The Hierarchy of “Higher and Lower” Between Matter and Form

The text adds the point that Plato sees form as higher than matter, placing matter as a lowly base that receives meaning only when form is poured into it. The Nazir, in the senses assigned here to the terms matter and form, argues that matter is higher, more inward, deeper, and more spiritual, because matter is the “owner” of form. This claim is presented as a philosophical and spiritual hierarchy that does not begin with religion and does not depend on accepting belief in the Holy One, blessed be He, although it is said that “spiritual” is viewed as closer to the Holy One, blessed be He, for one who believes that. The text clarifies that the term “abstract” is not equivalent to “non-existent,” and emphasizes the possibility of real abstract existence.

The Nazir, the Concepts, and Remarks on Defining Matter and Form

It is said that the speaker does not have a source in which the Nazir explicitly defines matter and form, and the speaker explains that he is “translating” the Nazir’s method into the terms they had grown used to from the previous year. The text notes that the definitions of matter and form in the senses under discussion come from Aristotle, and refers to the entries “matter and form” in the Hebrew Encyclopedia and to Bergmann’s book introducing the theory of logic. The surprise that these foundational concepts come from Aristotle is presented as not so surprising upon further thought, because the classic Jewish philosophers are described as people whose mode of thought is Greek even if the contents are not always Greek.

The Maharal, Jewish Philosophy, and Jewish Thought

The text describes the Maharal as a key point in the development of what is called “Jewish thought” as opposed to Jewish philosophy in the Greek style, with a comparison to the status of Rabbi Chaim in relation to the yeshiva method of learning. It is said that it seems strange that the Maharal consistently calls form higher than matter, but the resolution is that the Maharal uses matter and form in a different sense from the sense under discussion here. For the Maharal, matter is thickness and corporeality, and form is essence, so his hierarchy does not contradict the hierarchy the Nazir proposes in the terms established here. The text stresses that the concepts of matter and form appear in many books with two different meanings, and in each place one has to identify which meaning is being used.

Ideas in This World: Abraham and Sarah as an Example

The text brings the Nazir’s claim that ideas exist in this world and not only in a higher world of ideas, and presents Abraham our forefather as an “idea” within the discussion of Rabbi Yedaya HaPenini and the debate with the Rashba in the apologetic letter in the Rashba’s responsa. It is said that Abraham and Sarah are not symbols; they themselves are the matter and the form, and that “representation” is not allegory and lesson but rather the “projection” of a concept of full stature that comes from above all the way down below. The speaker adds that he himself would classify Abraham as matter and Sarah as form, but notes that there the classification is presented in the opposite way because of Greek framing. The text argues that many Jewish ideas are formulated, at least in the speaker’s view, in a Greek way.

Kabbalah: Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah, Shattering, and the Repair of Matter

The text identifies Beriah with creation ex nihilo and with matter as the thing itself, Yetzirah with form and with the world of angels, and Asiyah with the state in which form is grasped within matter, so that one gets a “complete object” of matter plus form. It is said that before the shattering, the world of Yetzirah and the world of Asiyah were on the same level, and only the shattering lowered the world of Asiyah beneath the world of Yetzirah. The text claims that the shattering “caused us to become a bit Greek,” in that forms became abstract and the body seemed more existent than spirit, and it cites the Ari’s description of Adam before the sin as someone who had no body, only soul. Even after the shattering, the world of Beriah is described as higher than the world of Yetzirah, because the thing itself precedes its form and is “more existent” in the true sense.

The Descent of the Torah into Material Life and the Meaning of Repair

The text offers another angle on the statement that the Torah descends into the life of matter and seeks to elevate matter rather than live in asceticism and distance from the world. Repair is presented as connected to the fact that matter has a higher root, and therefore there is meaning to the work of repairing matter and not escaping into the world of forms alone. It is said that someone who recognizes only the “world of Yetzirah” without the “world of Beriah” will prefer ascent to form and give up on repairing matter, whereas the proposed approach seeks to elevate the perception of matter and return to auditory perception. Repair is described as ceasing to be visual and returning to being auditory.

The Acropolis, Theory, and the Theater of the World

The text moves to the “letter heh” and presents the Acropolis as the place where theory and gazing were born, describing this as the “theater of the world.” Theory is explained as being connected to description—that is, perception through descriptions, characteristics, and form, and not through the thing itself. A formulation of the Nazir appears: “Indeed, Hebrew auditory logic, and also the new nominal Semitic logic that is drawn after Patha logic, says that things are not as they appear or as expected. Form is not the foundation; the inward is hidden within.” The text identifies that inner foundation with what is here called matter, or with the “logos” or the “divine utterance” within things.

Nominal Logic, Semitic Logic, and the Stoics

The speaker proposes understanding “nominal logic” as formal and mathematical logic that stands independently of content, such as an inference of the type “if x is y and y is z, then x is z.” It is said that there is an apparent tension between the earlier identification of analyticity with Greekness and the statement here that Semitic logic is suited to formal logic, and the speaker distinguishes between discovering the abstract law within things and turning formal inference into the only path to truth. The text attributes the founding of formal logic to the Stoics and notes that later the Nazir identifies in them more Hebrew tendencies than Greek ones. The Greek problem is defined as attachment to form and to formal law instead of entering into the interior in order to discover the inner logos.

Form as Idolization and the Fabrication of the Idolatrous Soul, and Matter as the Inner Foundation

The text cites the expression “the fabrication of the idolatrous soul” and describes form as idealization and as a fiction that is produced when an idolatrous soul looks at the thing. A reference is brought to Bacon’s “New Organon” and to the sentence: “And more correct still is matter, the inner foundation,” together with a formulation that links patterns and the changing of patterns to pure action and the law of action or movement. The speaker tries to explain that form in the classical sense is fictitious, and only if one calls the “laws of action” forms does the term take on a different meaning, but the more accurate formulation is to call the inner foundation “matter.” It is stated here explicitly that concepts too have matter and form, not only objects.

Matter and Form in Concepts: The Example of “Jew” and the Debate Over Definition

The text presents a distinction between a conventionalist view, in which a concept is only shorthand for agreement on a definition, and an essentialist view, in which the concept itself exists and the definition is only its form. In the example of “who is a Jew,” it is argued that in the conventionalist view the argument is pointless, because each side is simply using the same word for a different definition, and one could just replace the name and end the dispute. The very emotional intensity of such arguments is presented as proof that people feel they are arguing about the same concept that precedes its definitions, and that the purpose of the argument is to find which definition describes it more correctly. “The matter of the concept” is defined as that “what is it really” which cannot be conveyed as just another definition without falling back again into form.

Hellenic Beauty: Light, Idea, Correspondence, and Form

The text quotes: “Light is beauty… the beautiful and the good, kalokagathon in Greek wisdom,” and presents Hellenic beauty as bound up with order, coordination, and the fitting together of forms, “the radiant beauty of the idea in whose image the world is engraved as form.” Beauty is defined as deriving from correspondence, and in the Hellenic version the emphasis is on correspondence between external forms, colors, and proportions. It is said that Greece placed great emphasis on aesthetics and on beauty as part of a worldview that prefers tangibility and externality, and that it is connected to the tendency to concretize the abstract and to grasp what exists through what is visible. The text also cites the expression “the beauty of Japheth in the tents of Shem” in the context of the value of Greek wisdom for Jewish wisdom.

Auditory Beauty, Platonic Love, and Wholeness from “Above All the Way Down Below”

The speaker adds the suggestion that there is an auditory kind of correspondence, which is the internal fittingness of a thing to itself—that is, a proper expression of the inside on the outside—and not external proportions between limbs and colors. Inner beauty is described as a familiar experience that succeeds in “projecting itself outward” and does not depend on correspondence between separate forms. Platonic love is described as a state in which the connection remains in the world of ideas, whereas the Torah-based conception is described as demanding wholeness that encompasses the entire full stature from the highest layer down to the lowest realization, and not as remaining in the abstract. In this way, the concepts of beauty and love serve as an example of the fact that the abstract is not a destination of escape but a source that must be realized.

The Blurring of Boundaries Between Truth, Beauty, and Good

The text argues that for the Nazir, the accepted distinctions between the three foundational domains in philosophy—truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, good and evil—become blurred and draw close to one another. The example is the possibility of saying of a definition that it is “beautiful,” because beauty stems from the fit between the form and the thing it defines, and this links aesthetics to truth. The text notes that the connection between good and evil and truth and falsehood also arises from Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed regarding the sin of Adam, and similarly from Nefesh HaChaim, with a description of the evil inclination moving from the outside to the inside. The Greek conception is presented as one that separates the domains and sees them as independent, whereas the Semitic direction is presented as one that channels them into an inner likeness.

Basically, the Nazir argued that the difference between visual and auditory modes of thought is not only a difference between Torah-based thinking and the thinking of Aristotle, but also vis-à-vis Plato. Even though Plato is supposedly much closer to the auditory mode of thought, Aristotle does not recognize the existence of forms. For him that is not something real. It’s some kind of fiction in the imagination of human thought or cognition. Plato, on the other hand, does recognize it, and he constructed for himself some sort of world of ideas in which ideas exist. So ostensibly that is a view a bit closer to the auditory approach. But even so, the Nazir argues that Plato still belongs to the Greek, visual side of the equation. So we explained this by saying that Plato, exactly like Aristotle, grasps things through their form and not through their matter. That is, we said that auditory logic is really an attempt to grasp things through the thing in itself, so to speak, in Kant’s terminology, or through the matter of the thing and not through its form. Not the way the senses work, since the senses basically work on the form of the thing, or take in the form of the thing, and that form perhaps exists only there, as we also discussed. But auditory logic, according to the Nazir, is really another kind of grasp, not only a different kind of thinking but also a different kind of cognition. And that cognition turns not to the form of the thing but to its matter, that is, to the thing itself, to that one thing that the form characterizes. Form means characteristics, right, characteristics, descriptions of the thing, qualities of the thing, that’s the form of the thing. And the thing itself is that one thing which those characteristics characterize. That one thing can be either a substance or a concept, as we said. So in that sense Plato is still on Aristotle’s side, because Plato too, when he tries to describe things, describes them through categories, exactly like Aristotle; only with Plato the categories also exist in themselves. That’s the whole difference. But still, when he tries to grasp things—we can use another term we discussed—he tries to grasp them scientifically. From an external perspective. A grasp of classification: what is this thing in general terms? After all, what are a thing’s properties, its characteristics? The basic nature of properties and characteristics is that they do not belong to one single thing, one single substance. Properties and characteristics always characterize a group of things, right? Blue is something that characterizes many blue things. Square, good smell, bad smell, beautiful, not beautiful—all sorts of general categories. These are basically the categories we use in order to describe a substance. When we want to describe the substance all the way through, we try to find the totality that, as much as possible, will describe only it. But that totality is made up of a collection of characteristics, a collection of qualities, each of which is really a general concept. And therefore—and we talked about this a bit—on the one hand, this is what also makes it possible to classify substances one against another, rather than relate to them as a thing in itself, to live it, as it were, and know it apart from everything else. The entire scientific mode of thought is a mode that tries to set one thing against another, to say that this object is such-and-such and that object is not such-and-such. This object is much and that one is little. This society is like this and that society is not like this. In other words, it is always trying to classify things against one another, to arrange them in some order. But every order presupposes some axis common to all of them. Therefore every order really presupposes some characteristic, or description, or attribute, or part of the form—and each such thing is a general concept, a concept that characterizes many things. And therefore it is always an external grasp. It is not a grasp of the thing itself. When you try to grasp the thing itself—we spoke about anthropology with the example we gave—then it means living within the tribe and not trying to classify it by asking whether it believes in idols of this kind or idols of that kind, whether its family structure is like this or like that. Those are always the scientific tools for looking at things, in order to classify this tribe against other tribes. How do you do that? You use a general conceptual system that, as a conceptual system, is valid for all tribes. Each tribe occupies a different place within that system: this one has many idols and this one few idols; this one has a family unit of two and this one a family unit of eighteen. But in all of them you are speaking in the same terms—that is, terms like family unit, or idols that this tribe worships—those are general concepts. And now I try to find where this tribe is located within the general concepts. That is a scientific grasp. It is a grasp that comes from outside, trying to grasp the thing through concepts, through forms. By contrast, the auditory grasp is a grasp that does not pass through the characteristics. The characteristics are derivative. The characteristics are not the means of grasping. I am trying to grasp the thing itself, to understand what it is, and to sense it, let’s call it that—even not to sense it, but to sense it intellectually, to grasp what it is. And after I have grasped what it is, then maybe I will also understand the characteristics better, maybe. Although as for applying that to the general characteristics, I’m not sure it really helps. And we spoke a bit about the possibility that scientific progress became possible precisely because we gave up understanding and settled for description. But still, there is here a deeper, truer grasp of the individual as an individual—not how he stands in relation to the others, but himself. To understand what he himself is. That is a completely different grasp. It is a grasp that turns to the matter, not to the form. The form is something that perhaps somehow emerges from that, but I grasp the thing itself, not the way it appears to me. Afterwards it also appears to me. But I begin from the matter, not from the form. And the scientific grasp begins from the form. Now in this classification both Plato and Aristotle are on the scientific side. They are really the ones—Greece is what gave rise to modern science. Culturally and substantively, it came from there. It came from there because both Plato and Aristotle essentially represent a grasp of the thing through its characteristics. There is some dispute between them about the significance of such characteristics—whether these characteristics are things or whether they are forms of our own perception—but that doesn’t matter. They still grasp the thing through its characteristics and not through the thing itself, not through knowledge in the sense of connection. So in that sense, as we said last time, both Plato and Aristotle are on the side of visual thought. Maybe one can add something else, another point that may be no less important, and there may even be some connection between it and the previous point. Plato grasps form as the higher thing, higher than matter. And that doesn’t sound surprising to anyone used to the books of medieval philosophers, and even of the Maharal—they always grasp it that way. But in the senses in which we are using the concepts of matter and form, I think it is completely clear that in those senses the Nazir claims that matter is higher. In the senses in which we defined matter and form, matter is higher. Matter is the thing that owns the form. I am not speaking of matter in the sense of a collection of molecules and form as the square they happen to make, but matter and form in the senses we defined last time, right? Matter and form in the senses in which we defined them—in those senses the Nazir claims that matter is higher. And here too he is really against both Aristotle and Plato, just as on the previous point. Because Plato too, who believes that the ideas exist, that the categories, that the forms of perception or the characteristics are things that exist, places them in some higher, more spiritual world. That is, from his perspective the Platonic view is that there was some prime matter, right, that’s what people usually know from Platonism. Aside from Platonic love, what people usually know from Platonism is that there was some prime matter lacking qualities, lacking form, and then form was poured into it. Fine. But the connotation is that matter is really lowly, and when it received form it became real, actualized, meaningful. In other words, form is the higher thing that comes to expression by characterizing matter. Matter is the way form is realized, but form is the higher thing, just as the Maharal writes on almost every page, and Jewish medieval philosophers generally write in that direction too. And here too, in this respect, this is another point on which Plato and Aristotle both stand on the visual side and not on the auditory side. It is a point somewhat connected to the previous one, but it is still different. And really, according to the view the Nazir proposes, of auditory logic, that view says that matter is higher. And again, anyone used to the terminology I mentioned before feels somewhat bothered by statements of this sort, but one has to internalize well the definition of matter and form that we are using here. I think that in this sense it is entirely obvious to me that this is so: that matter is something more internal, deeper, more spiritual, more basic, higher—all the senses usually attributed to form, here I would attribute to matter. Yes. Are there explicit definitions of matter and form according to the Nazir’s book? I don’t know of any. I don’t know. And the Nazir in general brings in form here from time to time, as we see, but he looks more at perception and at seeing and hearing; he doesn’t speak so much about the aspect of matter and form. I translate it this way because we got used to speaking in these terms last year, so I continue using them, but I think this is what he meant as well. I don’t recall a place where he defines them, defines these concepts. But these definitions do appear, and that’s what we discussed last year. These definitions, astonishingly—and this is the next sentence I was about to say, so I’ll just continue—their source is Aristotle. That is the surprising thing. In other words, the definitions of matter and form—not sure if they originate with him, but the earliest source I know for this is Aristotle. These definitions of matter and form are as we define them. And therefore what is interesting here is the next point. Whoever can and wants can also read in the Hebrew Encyclopedia, under the entry for matter and form; you can look there. Matter—in the entry on matter and form, under matter. And in Bergman’s book on Introduction to Logic—I’d have to look it up, but I remember that there too there was a definition of it. That definition appears there as well. He talks about the principle of individuation—what we defined, what we talked about regarding matter and form last year, so we mentioned that section in Bergman. I think it’s a bit before that, but I’ll look for it later. In any case, whoever is interested can find the definitions there. These are not definitions I invented. They are definitions I use, but I did not invent them. And astonishingly, the one who founded them is Aristotle precisely. But if you think about it for another second, it’s not astonishing at all. Because there is another surprise that comes up here: with the philosophers we are already used to the fact that they go in Aristotle’s footsteps and are Greek in certain respects. The philosophers among our own people, yes—Maimonides, Rav Saadia Gaon, Duties of the Heart, let’s say in its more philosophical sections, and so on—they are plainly Greek philosophers. In their mode of philosophical thinking—not always in the content, but in the form of their relation to things—it is Greek. But the Maharal is supposedly the antithesis. We talked last year in the introduction to the Maharal about the difference between Jewish philosophy, if such a thing exists at all—I tend to say it doesn’t—and Jewish thought. And the Maharal is really perhaps the founder of this discipline called Jewish thought. There were traces of it earlier too—that is, he did not create it ex nihilo; there were things before him, it appears also among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), in Torah commentators here and there, in the Akedah. But what? Nachmanides. Yes, right, but I think that as for what it became today, it is in the same sense as Rabbi Chaim. Rabbi Chaim too did not come out of nowhere, and yet he is regarded as a cornerstone in the development of the yeshiva method of study. The Ketzot already started it before him, and… in other words, everything happens somewhat gradually. And there are points from which one can nevertheless somehow refer to them as starting points. I think the Maharal is undoubtedly such a point. And precisely with him it is strange, in light of these determinations of the Nazir, to discover that he consistently calls form the higher thing. The soul is form, the body is matter. But those two perplexities obviously go together. The Maharal, of course, speaks of matter and form not in our senses. The Maharal speaks of matter and form really in the sense that matter is the thickness, the coarseness of the thing, practical materiality in the broad everyday sense. And form is its essence, let’s call it that. It is almost close to being the opposite. It is not exactly the same thing, and we also discussed that last year, but it is very close to being the opposite of the way we use the term form. And therefore, although these concepts appear in both senses in many books, and one has to get used to knowing in each place in which sense matter and form are being used when deciding which is higher and which lower—and that is not simple at all—but precisely because the Maharal speaks of these concepts in a different sense, that’s fine, it need not disturb us. Then indeed matter in the Maharal’s sense is the lower thing and form is the higher thing. But matter in our sense—and Bergman defines Aristotle’s matter and form this way. Although in Aristotle there are places where it may not look this way, Bergman takes this to be the meaning of matter and form in Aristotle’s teaching, yes? But precisely for that reason Aristotle is on the other side of the equation, because even though he defines matter and form this way, he still takes matter as lower. Form is so spiritual and exalted—and it doesn’t even exist, right? That is, it’s some kind of fiction. But matter is the passive, dry thing, you understand? In exactly the same sense as Plato. And with Plato the form exists, but it exists in a higher world. It is ostensibly a bit less spiritual than Aristotle. With Aristotle it is so spiritual that it is not even an existing thing at all—he does not call it existing. Plato is willing to call it an existing thing, but in a higher world, the world of ideas. It is a more spiritual, deeper, more basic thing. So precisely because Aristotle and Plato use matter and form in the Platonic sense—I’m not completely sure, I don’t know—but precisely because they use them in this sense of matter and form that we are talking about, precisely because of that they are on the other side of the equation. Because despite using these concepts of matter and form, for them matter is less important—sorry, form is more important, deeper, more spiritual. And therefore in that sense they grasp things through their form; the form of things is the way to grasp them. And about this we spoke last year, that from here there derived the whole aesthetic outlook, if you want to call it that. I am not talking specifically about art, but about a mode of looking at things that one could call an aesthetic way of looking at things, which grasps them through their characteristics. Which basically says that, say, a Jew—the concept Jew—is whoever satisfies definition A, B, C. The view that says the thing is simply the collection of its characteristics—that is the thing. There is nothing beyond the collection of characteristics; there is no thing itself. Because form is everything. That is, matter maybe exists, I don’t know, but either it is a fiction or it is matter in the Maharal’s sense. But there is nothing behind the form, nothing that persists even if the form changes. And we spoke about this last year. So in that sense this is another point on which both Plato and Aristotle are on the visual side of the picture and not on the auditory side of the picture. There is here a display, let’s call it that, not a picture, part visual and part auditory. A picture is a visual thing, yes. Yes, exactly, a mode of presentation. So that I understand: what is the meaning of this ranking of higher and lower according to Rabbi and the Nazir? Is it a religious idea, something like that? No, not necessarily. It is a reality, not specifically religious. It doesn’t begin with religion and it doesn’t end with religion. It is a philosophical ranking, more spiritual. What does it have to do with religion? True, if you believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then you understand that spiritual means closer to the Holy One, blessed be He. But there is a difference here, a difference on an entirely philosophical plane. You don’t have to accept that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, in order to understand this distinction. Is the matter, the thing itself, something lower? The thing itself, yes, certainly—it is an abstract entity. By abstract entity I do not mean non-existent; that is precisely another identification that comes from the Greek position, according to which to say abstract is to say nonexistent. But that is exactly the point: it is abstract and yet it exists. And it exists in an abstract way. It is not a concrete object, it is something more spiritual. I don’t know how to define spiritual—it is a basic concept, and basic concepts are hard to define. Maybe from this there also follows another difference we saw between the Nazir and Plato—the Nazir’s view as opposed to Plato’s—which we have already noted in several places, I think, regarding the existence of… the Nazir proposes a view according to which the ideas exist in this world, not in some higher world of ideas. Abraham our Patriarch, for him, was an idea. Remember when he spoke about Rabbi Yedaya HaPenini? He spoke there about his dispute with the Rashba, there in the apologetic letter in the responsa of the Rashba. He spoke there about the view of Abraham and Sarah as matter and form. These are not symbols. He means it literally. It’s not that Abraham and Sarah are symbols. Abraham and Sarah are themselves the matter and the form. It’s not symbolic, it is that itself. It is not some literary description of the concepts; it is the thing itself. In other words, the form too is something that exists here. The ideas, the concepts, are represented by people, but the word represented that I am using here does not mean representation in the sense of allegory and what is allegorized, or sign and signified. Rather, these are the legs of the concept whose head is up there and whose legs are down here. Its projection into the world of action, into the lower world, is Abraham our Patriarch—for the concept of kindness, for example, or for the concept of form, as they classified them. By the way, even with matter and form—I would call Abraham matter and Sarah form. And they call Abraham, if I remember correctly, form, and Sarah matter, because the classification is Greek. The classification is Greek. Even Jewish ideas are formulated in a Greek manner, at least in my opinion. A conception—this is not an accusation. I mean, there may be Jews who think this is a correct conception; I don’t. But this is not blame here, this is not blame, it is description. Important Jews—I’m not coming to… One more remark, yes, so maybe let’s try to finish what I wanted to say. So the ideas, according to the conception the Nazir proposes, unlike Plato, do not exist up there; they exist here, or at least here as well. Why? Because form is not something higher. Form too is something real, and matter too is something real. And in fact, in many senses matter is more spiritual, higher, more abstract than form. So you do not build for form some higher world while matter goes on down here; rather, forms too exist here—forms in our sense. And anyone who has heard this before—in the esoteric tradition they speak about the world of Formation and the world of Action: Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah. Today the order is descending: Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah. But before the shattering, the world of Formation and the world of Action were on the same level. Only the shattering caused the world of Action to fall below the world of Formation. And in the introduction to the Maharal we identified these worlds too with these mechanisms of matter and form. We said that Beriah, Creation, is creation ex nihilo—that is matter, the thing itself. Yetzirah, Formation, comes from the root of form. In the world of Formation too there exist separate forms, angels. Angels are generally associated with the world of Formation; they are also in the world of Creation, but generally in Formation. Formation is from the root of form, giving form to the matter of Creation. Creation is creating the thing itself. The thing itself was created ex nihilo; therefore it is Creation. Creation is ex nihilo—that is matter. Formation is giving form to matter. And the world of Action is when form is grasped in matter, so there is a concrete object, as we know it today—that is the world of Action. All the Kabbalistic triads are built this way: kindness, severity, beauty; wisdom, understanding, knowledge. All the triads are really built this way. So in fact there the conception, the way we grasp it today in the world of repair, is a conception in which the world of Formation is above the world of Action. The world of forms stands above the world of things. Yes, it is as if higher, ostensibly. But first, you have to remember that before the shattering they were on the same level. The shattering caused us to become a little Greek. But second, it is only to become a little Greek. Because one has to know that above the Platonic world of forms, as it were—the world of Formation—there is the world of Creation. In other words, the world of Action is not the matter. The world of Action is the completed object, matter plus form. Above it is the world of Formation, which is the world of—I’ll call them Platonic ideas by way of a certain analogy; I don’t think it is exactly that, but roughly speaking. But above that there truly is the world of Creation, because the world of Creation is higher. The thing itself is the owner of the form, of the characteristics. It is that thing which has, which is characterized by, those characteristics and descriptions. So obviously it precedes them. It is deeper than them, higher than them, because it exists more than they do—exists in the true sense, not in the sense of complete materiality. It exists more than they do; it is closer to the Holy One, blessed be He. In other words, the world of Creation stands above the world of Action. So even after the shattering, when Formation already looks like something higher, the forms became abstract. Forms today are something abstract. That happened in the shattering. Adam before the sin, as is known, had no body at all—at least according to the Ari—he had no body, only soul. He had soul and higher; he had no body. There, form—the soul, which today is thought of as part of form, part of the abstract—form was the thing itself, not something abstract. Today the body is as if the thing, what we think exists, and the spiritual things are something abstract, up above somewhere. That is really a somewhat Platonic conception. But one has to remember that even after the shattering, if you look a little through the world of Formation, still higher there is the world of Creation. It is still higher. Because the thing itself precedes its form. Matter in itself—not the complete object. The complete object, matter plus form, is the world of Action, the lower world. But the thing itself, pure matter, is higher than pure form. A point that is important also in this context. It sounds from this Kabbalistic parallel that matter here is really the names by which each and every thing was created. The utterance, yes, the names perhaps, the utterance, what is happening here, the logos or the inner utterance. We’ll get to that in a moment. And perhaps this also gives another perspective on what people always say about the difference between Judaism as a religion and many other religions. I don’t know if all, but many others. That the Torah descends into material life. The Torah supposedly wants us to elevate matter and not to live detached in some abstract spiritual world—yes, not to marry, to become ascetics, and all the other things you’ve presumably heard about many times already. Perhaps this gives a somewhat different picture to that banal and overused statement. It is true—I do not mean it is false. There are overused things that are true; that happens. The point is that if you really grasp that matter has a higher root than form, then there is meaning to repairing matter. You are not dealing with form; form is not the higher thing. Matter is the higher thing. And your task is to take matter in its lower conception and understand that really this is that matter, not this matter. That is what it means to repair material things. Someone who thinks there is no world of Creation, only a world of Formation—why should I repair matter? I’ll just get there, where the form is, and I’ll be there. That is the spiritual ascent, the higher life, the loftier life, the more spiritual, the more religious—whatever you want to call it. The fact that the Torah demands of us to elevate matter is because it grasps that matter itself really has a root above. You are not creating something out of nothing by lifting matter upward. There is already such a thing as matter above. What you elevate is your conception of matter. You create a more refined conception and return to grasping matter itself. Or you return to being auditory. You stop being visual and return to being auditory. That may be another way of looking at all kinds of repair-work. Let us move to section 5. Acropolis. “Lift up your eyes on high and far away, for here is the festival of contemplation, the theater of the world. Here theory was born.” We already said that theory comes from the idea of description, and description is exactly looking through descriptions, through form. Description and characterization and all that—that is the form of the thing, not the thing itself. That is why the scientific product is also called theory, because science describes things through their properties, through their forms. “So cries the modern Baselite Jewish philosopher”—that’s not Herzl—“from the heights of Hellas as he turns to the mists of the north.” Some Jew named Yoel. Fine. What he wants to say here is that theory, contemplation, the mode that uses seeing and not hearing, was born in the Acropolis, was born in Greece, yes, that is the theater of the world. “However, Hebrew auditory logic, and also the new nominal Semitic logic that is connected to developed logic, teaches that things are not as they appear or are expected. Form is not the foundation; rather, it is the hidden inner one.” Form is not the foundation—we already saw that. Again, form is not the foundation; matter is really the foundation, in our language. I think he repeatedly returns to form, but for him the antithesis to form is not matter. I don’t recall any place—and this is related to what Dvir asked earlier—not only does he not define things as matter and form, he does not use the concept of matter in the sense in which I am using it. But that is just terminology. That is, the opposite of what he calls form he does use in this sense. The opposite of what he calls form, what he calls, say, logos or utterance, I took the liberty of calling matter. Fine. That is basically what he calls the divine utterance, the thing that is the thing itself. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world through His utterance, right? When we listen in Semitic logic we are listening to that utterance that still exists within things. It is the things themselves—not merely that it exists within things. The utterance of the Holy One, blessed be He, is the thing itself. And the way I grasp the utterance is the form of the thing—its properties, how I understand it, how I grasp it, how I relate to it. Yes. I think he means empty, formal logic. That is, mathematical logic. There is logic in what people often call, on the street, logic—things that are logical, things for which it makes sense to think that Picasso’s paintings are beautiful, say. Right? But that is not logic. Nominal logic—that is nominal logic. I think that is what he means, not a hundred percent sure because I don’t know the term, I don’t know what it is. But I think what he means to say is the laws of logic themselves, not logic clothed within a thing, but the logic that says if X is Y and Y is Z, then X is Z, regardless of the question what X is, what Y is, and what Z is, right? That is logic pure and simple. Nominal logic without the contents, which really are irrelevant to the logical layer of the matter. The contents add nothing to the logical layer of the matter; the logical layer stands on its own. It is a kind of abstract thing. I made a remark somewhere that it is worth bringing here, now that I’ve unpacked this. Ostensibly, mathematical logic—we usually always treated it as the form of Greek thought, right? This is analytic logic; analyticity is the Greek approach. This is a remark for those who were more present in last year’s classes, and maybe less so for those who joined this year, but it does not contradict what we are saying now. What he says is that Semitic logic, Semitic logic, actually fits this formal, mathematical logic. Semitic? What does Semitic mean? Hebrew? Well, Semitic, Jewish, like anti-Semitic. Why is it Semitic? Why that term? No, why does it matter that it is Semitic logic and also mathematical logic? Maybe it’s about names? I don’t see what Semitic logic means, I don’t understand. Again, I don’t know such a term. That is no proof, because I don’t know nominal logic either. But nominal logic I can understand what it means. I also don’t know—maybe he coined that term here, I don’t know. But that one I can understand. Nominal logic—I think I am right, because that is just the plain meaning of the words. But what is Semitic logic? I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll just note the point for those who may be bothered by the identification of analyticity with Greekness. We identified analyticity or mathematical thinking with Greekness, but abstracting events into a general logic is not a Greek act. True, later on to decide that something is true only if it has a mathematical proof—that is a Greek decision. But mathematical logic itself, the perception that within things there is some abstract law shared both by the statement that all human beings are mortal and Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal, and by some statement like all books are red and this thing is a book, therefore it is red—right? If this thing is a book, then this thing is red. So these two statements, which deal with completely different things, actually have one abstract inner content in common—a logical law lying at their foundation. And the abstraction away from the thing as I see it and the attempt to discover the law within it, the logos, the utterance within it—that is not a Greek act. That is in fact what the Stoics did, and later we will see that following various scholars he identifies them more with Hebrew tendencies than with Greek ones. So it is not by chance that they founded the logic that was later put to very good use by the wicked Greeks. But the act of logic—again, I am taking that same thing whose inner face I do not know, attributing it to some generality or some instance that I know from elsewhere, and on that basis deciding its content. Then again I try to hang onto the form and not its interior. In other words, I do not go inside in order to discover whether this book is red or not. I say, ah, this—so in that sense it really is Greek. That is the comment I made earlier; you just don’t yet know enough of the discussions we held last year. True, you are right: in that sense it is really Greek, and that is why I made the remark so there would be no confusion. But in the sense of discovering that within things there is such a law—not the inference itself whereby, because of that inference, the book turns out red—that is Greek. The Jewish mode, as it were—and of course this Greek inference is valid and legitimate and desirable also for Jews; the only issue is not to see it as the whole picture. That is what is Greek here. The Greeks think that this alone is the way to get at things—that is what is Greek about it. But Semitic logic, by contrast, would mean that one should look at the book and understand that it is red, not because of formal considerations. If every X is Y and A is X, then A is also Y. That is embedded in many statements that seemingly have no relation to one another. So again: to look into the inside and not at what appears. That is another layer of relation to logic or mathematics. And on that layer it is indeed an auditory act. It is really no accident that the ones who founded—Aristotle began it, but the ones who founded logic as we know it today, formal logic, were the Stoics. We will see later—he himself, in one of the upcoming sections—putting matter inside form. Exactly, exactly right. That is precisely the point, that is what he says. I once read an article or two by Jews connected to Mercaz HaRav, so I know what idealization means; otherwise I’d just be standing here helpless. “The fiction of the idolatrous soul.” Form is basically something that is an idealization, a fiction created when an idolatrous soul looks at a thing. That is already his conception, not the Greek conception. That is his claim. Form is not the thing itself; form is, in some sense, a fiction created in the idolatrous human being. The thing itself is what we called matter, or what we called utterance. “And so says the New Organon”—that is Bacon’s New Organon; we already mentioned him—“The forms are fictions of the human soul, unless the laws of action are called forms.” Here I am not one hundred percent sure I understand what he means, but I think he means to say: unless you use the term form in a sense different from ours, say in the Maharal’s sense, then fine—that is already very close to our concept of matter. Maybe “unless the laws of action are called forms,” because then the forms are really not fiction. “And more correctly”—here in fact the term appears; I had forgotten—“and more correctly, matter, the inner foundation.” Matter is the inner foundation, not form. I just said I didn’t remember; apparently we will study this in broad survey. “Its patterns and changing patterns are pure action and the law of action or movement.” As for what the inner foundation really is, what is more correct to say—there are two possibilities. At least that is how I understand the sentence. This sentence is a bit complicated, but if I understand it correctly, what he says is this: form in the classical sense is fiction. It is a fiction, as Kant basically said. Kant too said that form is found only in our consciousness, not in the world. What is really in the world is the thing in itself; that is what truly exists. Therefore matter is what truly exists; form is a fiction. And so says the New Organon: it is a fiction, unless the laws of action are called forms. That is, if by the word form you mean the second sense of form that we discussed at the beginning of the class—the Maharal’s sense, for example—then right, form is the real thing and not the fictive thing. But if not, then it really is fictive. But, he says, more correctly, don’t call it form. The Maharal, as it were, uses less accurate terminology—that is what he means here. He is not talking about the Maharal, but we called it the Maharal’s form, yes, that is what we called it earlier. “And more correctly”—the more correct way to define it is either that form in the Maharal’s sense is the right thing, because as we said earlier, it is not exactly the same thing. It is not simple just to reverse the concepts of matter and form, simply to switch them, so that what we called matter we now call form. It is not the same thing; these are two slightly different things, and we discussed that a bit last year. I can’t go into it now; maybe we will come back to it. “Matter is the inner foundation; its patterns and changing patterns are pure action and the law of action or movement.” Here again I’m not one hundred percent sure what the sentence means, but maybe he means what he said before—that same law within the thing, like the logical law in the previous section. The law too, in a certain respect, is also matter; it is the thing that exists, the essence, the thing itself—but not form in the external sense, rather in the internal sense: the law of the action or the law of the movement, not the movement itself and not the action itself. Fine. Let me go through the rest of my notes here, my comments, I think. One more note perhaps, because this is still an important point in the last line—if indeed what I said is correct, that this is really his intention, though I am not one hundred percent sure. Then we also see here an extension of what we have really always claimed, namely that concepts also have matter, not only concrete objects. He says here, “more correctly, matter is the inner foundation.” And when he gives examples, he does not give examples of the matter of some person or of the table; he gives examples of the matter of action, of movement, of not concrete things. In other words, concepts or abstract things also have matter and form, and with them too it is more correct to say that the more internal thing, the thing that truly exists, is the matter of the concept. I don’t remember how much of this—maybe some of you feel a bit detached from what I’m saying, or is it okay? I don’t remember how much I got into this last year with the definitions, because matter and form are concepts that accompanied us a great deal last year, so we really chewed on them at length there. And I’m not sure that for those who joined now I explained it enough. If not, tell me. If we are talking about the matter and form of concepts and not of objects, then we brought an example earlier regarding a Jew, just to sharpen the point. The concept Jew—the concept Jew—is an abstract concept; we are not talking about a particular Jew, right? That would be a concrete object. But the concept Jew in general is an abstract concept. And if one grasps concepts in the Greek way, the analytic way, then what is the concept Jew? The concept Jew is the dictionary definition, if there even is one. It is not something that the definition merely represents or characterizes; the definition is the concept. The concept does not really exist in the same sense that an object exists, right? A concept is abstract; it is not the object. That is according to the Greek, visual, analytic conception—the conventionalist one, as we also called it. That is, there is a convention, we agree, it is a matter of agreement, yes? There is a conventionalist view in philosophy that a concept is really some convention, a shorthand for a set of sentences. Instead of repeating every time the set of sentences that make up the definition of the concept, we invented a word, and now we have an agreement to use it—but that is the whole content of the concept. Whereas the non-conventionalist conception, the essentialist conception, is one that basically grasps the concept Jew as something that has matter. There is such a thing called Jew—not just that there is some person who is a Jew, but Jewishness itself, yes? The concept Jew itself—there is such a thing. It is a certain entity, something real. And the attributes too are entities in this conception—entities of a somewhat different kind, but they too are real. And it has various characteristics. Why is it important to look this way? It matters when disputes arise, because in the conventionalist outlook there is no room for disputes at all. When people argue over who is a Jew, ostensibly that is simply utter nonsense. In the conventionalist view we are speaking about different concepts. For me, a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or converted according to Jewish law—that is my definition of Jew. Your definition of Jew is someone who serves in the army and has calloused hands, say, Chaim Herzog’s definition or “a Hebrew Jew,” fine? Hoofed and split-hoofed. So that is his definition of Jew. So everyone has his definitions. But you understand that the dispute is just idiotic; in other words, then call it “May the Merciful One sustain,” I’ll call it Jew, and redemption comes to Zion. What are we arguing about? Are we arguing over the use of the word? After all, the word has no content; a word is just shorthand for a set of sentences that make up a definition. And since we repeat this a lot in language, we invented a shorthand term. So why use the same shorthand term for two different definitions? That is just silly. People conduct arguments here on such an emotional level that it is shocking to think that the whole business is simply foolishness. How can that be? Unless what? If our emotions really are functioning, one can come and say: right, the world is stupid, and there is something to that too. But on the other hand, I think—as we already discussed—that in every widespread phenomenon there is something true. That is, if we all feel some emotional fury toward someone who says Jew not the way we think, and the other side feels the same, then clearly we grasp that we are talking about the same concept. We are giving different definitions, but of the same concept. Now notice: I just said something that is ostensibly self-contradictory—we give different definitions of the same concept. In the conventionalist conception there is no such thing as different definitions of the same concept; the concept is the definition. What does it mean, different definitions of the same concept? If you think there are different definitions of the same concept, then you are really understanding that the concept is something that exists prior to the definitions, and the definition is the form of the concept—it is the characterizations of the concept, the way it appears to me, that is the definition of the concept. But the concept itself is something that exists even before the definition. Otherwise there is no dispute at all. That is the meaning of disputes. In other words, everyone who argues should know that he is grasping things this way. If he does not grasp them this way, then either he is a fool, or he is talking about something else, I don’t know, or he just wants to fight. But really, it is sheer vileness to argue if one does not grasp things this way. So either you really are foolish, or if you are really arguing, then you probably feel that the concept Jew—even though it is a concept and not an object, ostensibly—it too is something that exists even before the definitions. And we are arguing what its correct definition should be. That is the dispute. So if so, we are talking about the same thing, and we are arguing over what truly describes that same abstract thing more correctly. Now of course there is no point in asking, so wait, what is that thing really? Because what do you expect me to give you—a description, a definition? That is exactly the dispute. The “what is it really” is that same thing we grasp when we say Jew. I have nothing better to say about it. That is the matter of the concept. Fine, I am doing this because maybe for some people this is not yet sharp enough. Some of the people who were here last year—we already dug into this a lot, so it is not a big novelty. But I thought it might add something to understanding what we are speaking about here. So here again we see that abstract concepts also have matter and form, not only concrete things. And therefore from the non-analytic conception there also follows this kind of relation to concepts, not only a mode of thinking but also a mode of cognition. We already spoke about this, and we said that the Nazir somehow connects thought and cognition. He took a bit of all the patterns of… Next time… Yes, that is the pattern we discussed in chapter 1 regarding form, if I remember correctly, of matter and form. I don’t know, because I am not one hundred percent sure what the pattern there was. In chapter 1 we hesitated somewhat about that, I don’t know. Fine. “Light is beauty. The Greek sun shone; the beautiful-good, kalokagathia in Greek wisdom.” Descriptions of good—the good and the beautiful. Good and beautiful come from similar roots in Greek wisdom, in the Greek outlook. “The beauty of the light of the idea, in whose image the world is engraved as form, pleasing in its order, visible in the expanses of space.” Before I go on reading, the basic idea here is actually finished. “Which contains the value of Greek wisdom in relation to the wisdom of the Jews: the beauty of Japheth in the tents of Shem.” Beauty is usually harmony. When we say that something is beautiful, that usually comes from some harmony between something and something else. I don’t know, this thing fits here and so it is beautiful. A thing whose parts fit one another is beautiful. Usually beauty, I think maybe even always—I don’t want to be too categorical because I’m not sure—but it seems to me that almost always at least, beauty is a concept of harmony. Except that harmony too can be done in two ways—forms again, two modes, modes in holiness. Harmony usually, the way it is grasped when one looks at aesthetics, in the aesthetic mode of perception—perception is aesthetics, it is the same thing—is harmony between two forms. That is, the form of this suits the form of that, therefore it is beautiful. The color of this suits the color of that, therefore it is beautiful. Very often one hears such references to a picture, to a sculpture, to all sorts of things, in whatever context people speak of beauty. So he says here that this is what his words mean: “in whose image the world is engraved as form.” That is, beauty stems from imitation, from correspondence—this matches that, imitation because it is the same as that. It suits that, but on the level of form as form. That is the Greek concept of beauty. As is known, the Greeks put great emphasis on concepts of aesthetics and beauty, and of course that is not detached—and maybe we even spoke about it last year—that is not detached from the attempt to concretize things, because they grasp things externally. So their beauty too is defined as beauty through external characteristics, beauty of forms. Because with the Greeks there is always an emphasis on external things. They concretize abstract things, therefore they make gods. Their mode of perception is always such that what I grasp exists, and what I do not grasp—as if something more internal—does not exist. For Aristotle. With Plato, we said it exists, but as higher spirituality. But there too I do in fact grasp it, though less directly. By contrast, auditory beauty—and here I am adding my own point—he himself does not give here the auditory antithesis to this Greek beauty. He deals with it somewhat in section 13 of the next essay, section 14, 15, although even there the definition is not exactly this. But in the context in which he is speaking here, I still want to add something that I am not one hundred percent sure of, though I think it follows pretty clearly from his method, even though I don’t know if he wrote it anywhere. I once heard a whole lecture about this from an interesting Jew in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira from Jerusalem. He says that auditory harmony, in the Nazir’s terms—he did not use those terms—is harmony with the matter and not with the form. That is, it is internal harmony—not something I see, not merely metaphorically, but even literally: not that one thing stands next to another and they fit, and therefore beauty arises. Rather, the thing fits itself, not something outside it, not some other form standing next to it. The thing fits itself, it expresses itself correctly, and therefore it is beautiful. So for example, in the earlier example, a definition can be beautiful. A definition can be beautiful. Why is it beautiful? Because it suits the concept it defines. Yes, there are definitions that are more or less beautiful, elegant or less elegant. What are you comparing? It is not a comparison between two kinds of definition. It is a comparison between the definition and what it defines, assuming there is such a thing—and earlier we argued that there is. Fine? In other words, that is harmony with the matter. Sometimes between the form and the matter of which it is the form. I don’t know, maybe there is room to think even of harmony between matters. That I don’t know. Let us leave that aside. What? Right, right. That may be a good example; there is also “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,” and there too there are midrashim that speak of it and connect it to Joseph. The concept of beauty seen in Joseph is a concept of inner beauty and not external beauty. That is, some kind of fit with what is inside, not a fit with what is outside, not a fit between forms. Inner harmony. Even, I think, in the way people speak of women’s beauty. One can speak of women’s beauty in the sense of those models where everything is external. And I don’t know, I really think—I don’t want to say one cannot be impressed by such a thing—it feels a bit repulsive, I don’t know. Inner beauty is much more impressive. It is much more compelling, and I think almost everyone has experienced something called inner beauty. I don’t even know… It is something that succeeds in projecting itself outward. It is not fitting to something else; it is not that this limb is in proper proportion to that limb. That is not the point. That is Greek beauty, where everything is about external measurements and hair color. Rather, there really is such a concept, which everyone knows and feels—Greeks and non-Greeks alike. The only question is where one places the emphasis, that is, what one grasps as more important. And I don’t know, I think everyone senses this concept of inner beauty. Of course it is hard to define, because once again it is harmony between the form and the matter of which it is the form. But it is a somewhat different concept of beauty. It is also harmony, but let’s call it intellectual harmony, not auditory and not visual, or intellectual rather than sensory. Yes? Right. When the Greeks, for example—I mentioned Platonic love earlier not by accident—when they refer to such a thing, to one aspect of such a thing, and call it Platonic love, they mean love that remains on the Platonic plane. There is such a thing. I think one cannot deny that. There is at least such a level of love that cannot be denied. Just as there is such a level of beauty, there is such a level of attachment, there is such a level of love. Love is born from some sort of beauty that you find in what you love—not necessarily beauty in the lower sense, but inner beauty. You feel that it speaks to you; that is, you love it. So Platonic love, even if it exists among the Greeks, is Platonic. That is, it remains again in the world of ideas. So it exists; they do not deny that it exists—Plato at least. Aristotle denies outright the existence of things that are not external. Plato says it exists, but it remains abstract. The Torah’s view, again, is not like that. You do not remain on the level of Platonic love. It is true that on the other hand you also must not construct it in such a way that the Platonic level is absent. In other words, love is a complete thing, but it is complete from top to bottom. That is, from marital relations to the Platonic relation. It does not remain above, because the abstract concepts, the forms, the inner things—they have to begin below. That is precisely the antithesis of the Platonic and Aristotelian conception. Again, the concept of beauty also serves as some illustration of this. According to this conception, earlier we talked about how the Nazir connects logic with epistemology. That is, the way we grasp, say, concepts—conventionalism or non-conventionalism—really belongs to epistemology, not to logic. The question, when you know a concept, what is it that you know? The concept itself or its form? That belongs to the philosophical field called epistemology. By contrast, analytic and synthetic thought, which we discussed last time, and visual and auditory thought, belong to the field of logic—to how one thinks, philosophy, metaphysics, and the like. With the Nazir these two things come together; they are not two separate fields. Not because one derives from the other, and not because one leads the other, and we discussed that in previous years and will return to it. What I just want to add here is that I think we see even more than that. The three basic domains in philosophy are ethics, aesthetics, and logic. Let’s put metaphysics into logic, basically—let’s formulate it differently: the concepts of good versus evil are one domain; beautiful versus ugly are a second domain; true versus false are a third. And true and false can be logical, can be metaphysical; there are truths that are not logical, but that too still belongs to the domain of truth and falsehood. Yes, that is what I mean. In that sense these are three basic domains in philosophy, and usually the distinctions between them are relatively sharp, as much as one can make such sharp distinctions in philosophy. I think that these distinctions too become somewhat blurred in the Nazir. Because you understand that the concept of saying whether something is beautiful or not beautiful is already very much connected to whether it is true or not true. As I said, a definition can be beautiful. Right? A definition is usually either true or not true. That is, it either represents the thing or it does not represent the thing. According to the conventionalist conception it cannot even be that; it is simply arbitrary and that’s that—there is no true definition; this is the definition, that’s it, I defined it, finished. But here we grasp that even the concept of beauty is not entirely detached from the concept of truth. When something expresses itself truly in its form, then there is also beauty in it. That is, beauty and truth are concepts that draw very close to one another. And the concept of good, I think, quite obviously even without this discussion, also comes very close to the concept of truth. Maimonides talks about this too in Guide for the Perplexed concerning the well-known sin of Adam, and also Nefesh HaChaim goes in a very similar direction, astonishingly, between two very different books that on this point go in a similar direction. Before Adam’s sin, the evil inclination was outside, and after Adam’s sin the evil inclination entered inside. That was the serpent. And after Adam’s sin there is a shift there of good and evil from the famous to the intelligible, or the reverse, from the intelligible to the famous. So clearly there is some relation also between good and evil and truth and falsehood. That is, it is not… how far one can identify them is a somewhat complex question; I won’t go into it here. I am only pointing again to a direction that has recurred several times in the Nazir: the apparently sharp distinction between the three basic domains of good and evil, truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness—each time a different distinction among these—becomes blurred. In other words, these things somehow all converge, in the Semitic direction, toward being very similar. It is only Greekness that grasps them as three things each standing on its own and not approaching one another. That is, three domains completely independent of one another. Fine, let’s stop here.