The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 16

Table of Contents

• The doctrine of intermediaries versus the final idea
• Aristotle, Plato, and the existence of ideas
• Greek contemplative wisdom, sight, and the world of ideas
• Music in Plato as education and as a means to contemplate an idea
• The proposed difference between Plato and the religious-Semitic conception
• The Hebrew, hint, and the breaking of the “final”
• The Logos, the Stoics, and the Alexandrians
• The Platonic Jew, the superiority of sight, and the question of identification
• Attributing action to God as metaphor

Summary

General overview

The text presents a difficulty in understanding the transition from the “doctrine of intermediaries” in the monk to the “level of the final idea,” and argues that the monk wants to distinguish his view explicitly from Platonism. It describes the difference between Aristotle and Plato on the question of whether abstractions really exist, and emphasizes that for Plato the world of ideas is a visible, frozen, motionless world that serves as a model for the living world, which imitates it. It then explains how the Alexandrians mediated between the Platonic Academy and the Stoics through the concept of the Logos, and rejects the scholars’ claim that this is accidental syncretism in favor of an essential, internal explanation close to the Hebrew conception of hint and parable. At the end, a quotation is brought from a philosophical book claiming that every attribution of action to God is only figurative, because God does not act through deed.

The doctrine of intermediaries versus the final idea

The text argues that in the doctrine of intermediaries, the intermediaries are understood as mediating between the One and the many, and scholars saw them as an intellectual invention meant to connect planes that have no relation to one another. The monk is presented as holding that this is not metaphysical speculation but actual cognition, a recognition of the existence of the intermediaries and of the intermediaries themselves. The text stresses that here we are dealing with the “level of the final idea” and not with an “intermediary,” and sees this as standing in contrast to section five and as a transition to the monk’s next goal, to distinguish his proposal from Platonism.

Aristotle, Plato, and the existence of ideas

The text describes Aristotle as speaking about categories and attributes as abstractions and not as existing things, whereas Plato argued that there is a world in which ideas exist. It formulates the question through the example of “horseness” and asks whether it is an abstraction of the intellect or an existing entity, and presents the Platonic position as seeing the world of ideas as an existing world in some basic, undefined sense. It states that the monk distinguishes throughout the perspective of Jewish philosophy between Jewish thought and Platonism, and here he does so explicitly.

Greek contemplative wisdom, sight, and the world of ideas

The text attributes to the monk the definition of Greek wisdom as “contemplative” in the sense of gazing and seeing, and argues that the terminology itself points to a fundamental conception. It quotes a description of the world of ideas as “the anticipated forms” that serve as a model in the work of creation, and says that the living, psychic, and intellectual world resembles it and is copied from it. It argues that Plato’s world of ideas is supreme and final, static and motionless, and that there is nothing beyond it, and therefore it lacks inner vitality and does not develop. It compares this to a kabbalistic idea of worlds being clothed within one another, where each level lives by virtue of what is clothed within it, and emphasizes that when something is “final” in the sense that there is nothing behind it, it is described as static.

Music in Plato as education and as a means to contemplate an idea

The text connects music with the education of the social classes in Plato, where each type in the kingship of the ideal state imitates the “image of the beautiful and the good” in the world of ideas. It quotes that education is done through music “like learning the forms of the letters in order to know how to read a book,” and that “musical education is a means to know the forms of the good virtues, for melody elevates one to contemplate the light of the supreme idea.” It adds that he does not understand why music is connected here, and suggests the possibility that music emphasizes that knowledge of the idea is not a simple analytical intellectual act but is achieved indirectly through means that elevate the person to an immediate experience of the idea. He compares this to Torah study and Talmud study as an activity that forms tools for grasping deeper ideas that are not grasped directly in straightforward learning.

The proposed difference between Plato and the religious-Semitic conception

The text states that even though Plato appears close to a Semitic conception, his ideas rest on concepts derived from observation of the world, and so he still remains attached to the Greek picture of the world. It argues that Plato has no concepts that are not born out of the world of image and sight, whereas in the religious conception there are categories that come “from outside,” such as “demons, angels, and a mission of evil angels” and “burning anger, wrath, and fury.” It presents a fundamental distinction of direction: with Plato, the human being rises from the world to a second level of ideas, whereas in the religious conception the upper level creates the lower level, and the human being maps the world in terms that precede it. It emphasizes that understanding itself requires an inner basis, and illustrates this through the claim that you cannot teach a person a concept if he has no coordinate system at all for receiving it, and cites the Maharal’s idea that the entire Torah is already within a person from the outset, and learning is bringing it up to consciousness and providing tools for using it.

The Hebrew, hint, and the breaking of the “final”

The text quotes a principle according to which “the Hebrew never sees a thing as the absolute final essence,” but rather what is revealed hints at what lies beyond it, and everything is a parable for what stands behind it. It sets this against Plato, in whom the world of ideas is the final world, and concludes that in the world of ideas itself there is no “hearing” in the sense of listening to what lies beyond, but only “seeing” of what is. It raises a question about the “first cause” in Plato and suggests that perhaps it is perceived as a historical cause and not as an ongoing being, and admits that he is not sufficiently expert in Platonic philosophy on this point.

The Logos, the Stoics, and the Alexandrians

The text explains that the Stoic sages spoke of Logos as a life-giving law acting within all things, and connects this to the sayings that “the world was created through ten utterances,” as brought by Malbim, and to the idea of a continual voice, “a great voice that did not cease,” meaning “did not stop.” It argues that the Alexandrians mediated between the Platonic Academy and the Stoics by bringing Logos into the world of ideas as well, so that the world of ideas itself ceased to be motionless and final and became a parable for what is above it. It presents the view of scholars who see this as syncretism and an artificial combination of two sources, and rejects it with the claim that the combination is made because that is how the world is actually built, and that the conception that there is an “utterance” behind everything is fundamental in the Jewish conception. It quotes that this “is not syncretism, as the scholars of the history of philosophy say,” and adds that the symbolic-allegorical method in Torah midrash among the Alexandrians stems from the “Hebrew ideas.”

The Platonic Jew, the superiority of sight, and the question of identification

The text brings a quotation about “what is revealed in supreme sight to the Platonic Jew, who elevates the eye and sight above all the senses, and who finds in the name Israel the seeing species—Israel, who saw God.” It notes a feeling of implicit criticism but says there is no explicit formulation of criticism, and raises confusion about the identification between “the Alexandrians” and that “Platonic Jew,” suggesting the possibility that this refers to Philo, but finding it hard to reconcile. It points out that in note nine, sources are brought on the superiority of sight, and notes that later in the composition there is a broad discussion of “the superiority of sight,” followed by a discussion of “hearing at the head of the senses” and the question of whether hearing or sight is superior.

Attributing action to God as metaphor

The text concludes with a quotation stating that “the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets,” and adds that it has already been explained in the chapters of the composition that everything said of God, that He did or acted, is said by way of metaphor. It states that God “does not act through deed,” as has been explained, and therefore attributing action to Him is not to be understood literally.

Why does the last idea hint a bit at the goal the Nazir wants to achieve from this point on? That stands in contrast to what appears in the heading, and in general to section 5. If there is a doctrine of intermediaries, then the intermediaries are those things that supposedly mediate between the one and the many. And we saw there in the notes and in the wording—in the wording itself, really—that people took this as some kind of intellectual device for connecting two planes that seem to have no connection between them. And therefore the scholars argued that this is why they basically invented these intermediaries, these mediating entities. But the Nazir’s view was that in fact this is not an intellectual invention, not metaphysical speculation, but recognition. One recognizes that there are intermediaries; one recognizes the intermediaries themselves. Now, unlike the doctrine of intermediaries, here we’re talking about the level of the last idea. Not an intermediary—it’s the last one. I think this is in tension with section 5, and the Nazir’s aim from here on, a few sections later, is to do something we already wondered about in earlier stages. Here he does it explicitly, and that is to distinguish what he is proposing from Platonism. Platonism is an approach that basically claims—Aristotle already spoke about categories, meaning attributions or predicates, talking about whatness, quantity, quality. All kinds of forms of “how,” giving qualities, attributes—that’s too simple a level. We’ll need something more than attributes. Aristotle spoke about them, but he spoke of them as abstractions, not as existing things. Plato claimed that these things—not exactly the same things as Aristotle, but broadly speaking we can say these abstractions—exist. There is a world in which ideas exist. The idea is basically some abstraction of attributes, yes. If we want to identify attributes, or kinds, or forms—they’re not exactly attributes, these ideas. Abstract concepts, like horseness, for example. Yes, the attribute of the horse, the attribution of this creature as a horse. Not the force of this creature as horse; it’s not an image, right. It’s a little hard to call it an attribute. But horseness itself is an idea. Fine. The question is whether horseness is our abstraction, as Aristotle thought, or whether horseness itself is also something that exists, as Plato claimed. And that is basically the Platonic position. The Platonic position saw the world of ideas as some kind of existing world, located somewhere, existing—in what sense, that’s not entirely clear. In any case, I don’t think the concept of “exists” can be defined. “Exists” is a basic concept, and even when we’re not talking about the same mode of existence as ordinary existence—it doesn’t take up volume or weight—the idea exists. It’s a basic concept. We won’t define it; we’ll assume it is self-evident. Here, as I said, the Nazir wants to distinguish what he is saying from the Platonic approach, and this is also what he distinguishes throughout his view of Jewish philosophy, Jewish thought, as opposed to Platonism. We’ve already talked about this a bit on a few occasions, and we had something on it, and here he does it in a more—he says as follows. In Greek speculative wisdom. “Speculative” from the language of eye. Not ear, right. “Speculative,” like what today is called iyun, analytical study. Someone pointed out to me some time ago that the Nazir uses this in both senses, but here I think it’s mainly in the sense of contemplation. What we today call a mode of thought—analysis. And in fact, if you think about it, if you listen to it, you see that the terminology itself already points to a certain conception underlying the term. I mean, what is called analysis? It’s a contemplative, visual conception. And therefore Greek wisdom, for the Nazir, is called contemplation, speculative wisdom. Greek speculative wisdom, contemplative, visual, is the world of ideas, the visible forms—forms meaning forms that are gazed upon, that can be apprehended—which serve as a model in Creation, so that this world, alive in soul and intellect, resembles it and is copied from it. It is the supreme one, the highest and final world, to which one ascends entirely by music. He brings in all sorts of issues of music here that I don’t completely understand—why it belongs here, and how it connects to what is being discussed, to Plato himself and those who followed him—but why it belongs here, I don’t know exactly. In any event, his claim is that Greek speculative wisdom, contemplative wisdom—what is it, really? How did we define something speculative? Something contemplative? We defined this view as a view of what is manifest. Not what lies behind things, not what lies within, in the depth, but whatever I see. Like Nachmanides, whom I keep coming back to and quoting every time, Nachmanides in the Torah portion of Acharei Mot says there—well, yes—that what defines who the Greek is, meaning Aristotle, is this: the Greek is the one who believes in nothing he did not attain with his intellect or see with his eyes. I don’t remember the exact quotation, but it’s at the end of Nachmanides there on the forbidden relations. That is, the Greek conception is a speculative conception: what I see exists, what I don’t see does not exist. Now with Aristotle this is very strong. Because Aristotle really did not grasp all those categories he spoke about as things that exist. These ideas do not exist as unseen entities; this is an abstraction of the intellect, not something that is an entity existing in reality. With Plato, to say that the conception is contemplative or speculative is a bit subtler, because ostensibly Plato in this sense is similar to the Shemitic conception. Plato does look into the horse and see horseness, and claims that horseness also exists. So here it is already much, much closer to the Shemitic conception. He still calls this contemplative and speculative. And the question is why. This is a subtle point. In what sense is Plato Greek? That is really the question. Greek in the sense of Al-Ghazali. It may be that in the sense of “his head is in heaven and his feet are on the ground,” that isn’t true, but how is he properly Greek? But in this sense, on the axis of Greek versus Israelite or Jewish, the question is why he is placed there. That is what he wants to explain to us. He says that those visible forms, those Platonic forms—and later he speaks of this perhaps in terms of visibility—he says that the world of ideas, as essence, is frozen, static, motionless. In the world of ideas there is some conception that the whole world there is frozen. There is a collection of categories and abstract concepts standing there; nothing moves there, nothing lives, develops, no. It’s some kind of framework whose role is basically to serve as a blueprint for this world, and this world is the living world. This world is the world that lives and acts and changes and moves and flows. And the world above is some frozen world, whose role is essentially to provide the templates that somehow generate the attributes or the things that are copied from that world into this one. That’s why he says, “resembles it and is copied from it.” And this, he says, is the highest and final world. And according to Plato too this is the final world. And in this sense, “the final world” is basically another expression for the fact that this world is motionless, static. Something alive may have a living soul within it. A living body has a soul inside that gives it life. Something with nothing inside it cannot live. That is a static thing. It cannot animate other things; it itself cannot live. And therefore the Kabbalistic conception in general—the conception he is proposing, I think—is that ultimately there is thing within thing within thing, and every world in Kabbalah is clothed within the world beneath it, so that ultimately there is an infinity clothed in all of them, and infinity itself really is some kind of static, motionless place, because nothing can happen there; infinity cannot change. It is not some movement of the soul, which is what he—so in any event, that thing is indeed static because there is nothing inside it. That is the first revelation; it itself begins to be clothed below in Adam Kadmon. Adam Kadmon is clothed in Atzilut, and Atzilut is clothed in Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and so on. So everything alive is something with something clothed inside it that gives it life—a soul, in our language, something a bit more palpable. The world of ideas is a final world. It is the final world; there is nothing behind it. It is, so to speak, Plato’s infinity—not infinity; it is entirely finite. And that is precisely the problem: how can something finite also be final? But the fact that it is the final world is basically another expression, a bit differently put, for the fact that it is not alive, that it is static, motionless, as we saw in duality. Now if we return to all the music: Plato speaks about music as a means of educating all the social classes, each one for its role. Each of them basically represents some idea in this world. What we are talking about here are different types in the kingdom, in the Platonic ideal state. We’re talking about guardians, righteous men, artists, who imitate the image of the beautiful good. The image of the beautiful good is a pure image found in the world of ideas, yes, far removed, and it basically comes to expression in this world. And all the different types—guardians are only one type, soldiers in our language—righteous men, artists. What are “righteous men”? Maybe thinkers, artists. So all these imitate some image from the world of ideas. They are some expression of it in the living world, in the world of action in our terminology. Here that idea is alive. That idea above is eternal, remote—not eternal. And then here all these people are educated through music. There is some musical education they have to undergo in order—I don’t know if it differed from one to another, I have no idea—but in order to grasp better the idea they represent. This is what we would call, in the language of art, the craft of their profession. The craft of their profession in a more elevated form, in the form of more general study and imitation of them, and by distinction, to grasp that profession. Yes, there is here—there is here duality, because it is not for nothing that he is making the effort to explain Plato through duality, because Plato has a lot of duality. Many sages of Israel are classified as Neo-Platonists. Maimonides—there was certainly influence. There is a book by Dr. Gutmann, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who wrote that Maimonides is not a Jewish book; it is a book by a Muslim Neo-Platonist from the twelfth century. I’m not saying it’s not a Jewish book; Jewish it certainly is. If it weren’t Jewish no one would call it Jewish, and so too what Maimonides scholars wrote. In any event, as he says, they are educated by music just as one studies the shapes of letters in order to know how to read a book. Yes, musical education is a means for knowing the forms of the virtuous qualities, since melody uplifts one toward beholding the light of the supreme idea. I don’t know exactly the precise sources here about music, and I don’t know exactly why it matters here. It exists in Plato, but I don’t know why it matters here for our purposes. Why study music? It may be that the point in Plato is not the study of music itself. It may be that what he wants to emphasize here is that even for Plato, the ability to know the idea is not something that works through our ordinary, simple analytical intellect, like vocational training. I can’t teach the guardians by explaining what the idea of a guardian is, or of an army, or of a soldier. Rather, this is done somehow indirectly, because after all we are situated within a deeper world. So this exists also in Plato. How do you do such a thing? I don’t know how one teaches something so abstract. Apparently there are some means that somehow indirectly bring me, lift me, to some level where I can experience the idea directly, without mediation. So once again it goes on and continues and advances. If you remember the previous section, section 6—he spoke about it earlier too, in Eight Notebooks, section 4. There he speaks exactly about this parable that on the one hand lowers the lofty idea down to me, to my language, and on the other hand in section 6 we saw that it raises me up to it. And in the following section he speaks perhaps more—I can guess, I don’t really know, I assume—that he always set the Platonic alternative against those parables he talks about in section 6. And the Platonic alternative is simply to hear music, or study music, or compose music. But for our purposes, even in music there is probably a difference between creating music and hearing music. I think there is probably some philosophical depth here that I unfortunately did not attain—not the depth of this matter—but still, well, we know that music acts upon a person, right? Let’s describe all this as some sort of more or less subjective influence, one kind of music or another. But let’s view music in itself, as an idealistic thing, as something that in itself acts within the human soul, within the soul of the public, and not only in the obvious way with names, with words and such things. Music in itself also has an influence. There is some influence to music. To what extent this is truly substantial—again, can one really formulate through it an understanding of ideas or abstract things? That is not entirely clear. I simply do not know deeply enough the depth of this mode of experience; I don’t know. The Vilna Gaon, after all, writes that all the fundamental melodies descended from Sinai. I recently saw an entire book on music according to the Maharal, music in the writings of the Maharal. I also saw another book dealing with the theology of music in the Maharal and in general. There are very interesting things there, very interesting studies. Maybe something like that is going on here. There is something deep in music—it isn’t just, I don’t know, I say this as someone working from a conjecture, from an experience, but I think there is something like that. And in the end it rests on some indirect means that tries to build within you the templates that absorb ideas, to improve the vessels of cognition that grasp ideas. Which is basically what we also do in Torah study, in our context. Torah study too is not directly the study of divine matters, what are usually conceived as divine matters—namely philosophical thoughts about the essence of the Holy One, blessed be He, about manifestations in the world, things like that. That is not what one simply perceives in Talmud study. So apparently Talmud study nevertheless is supposed to form those tools or abilities for grasping philosophical ideas too in a more concrete way. Concrete. Here again there is this dynamic of reversal—you can, certainly. Certainly that is—it. I didn’t know how to describe it, probably because I don’t have enough of it in myself. What can I do? In any event, up to this point it seems that Plato is very similar to the approach being discussed here. So what, after all, is the difference? Up to this point, the world of ideas. He begins by saying that Greek wisdom is speculative, contemplative. But the continuation indicates that it is basically the same thing. There too there is some inner world, and one reaches that world through various means, whether through Torah, through music, through some spiritual activity—one can reach some kind of interaction with that abstract world, that spiritual world. This really resembles everything he says in the context of duality. So what really is the difference here? In the notes we gave at earlier stages, we already discussed several times that in the end Plato still has some kind of visual conception. We will get to it later when he speaks about the difference, but for now, as we said, Plato’s ideas were not—when Plato constructs the ideas, the ideas themselves are grasped מתוך the concepts we have of things. That is, the idea of nature, the idea of horseness, the idea of things like that—again, they come through attributes of things that I know in the world. That is, true, Plato abstracts the things he sees and creates some world of abstract things and claims that it too exists. That is one step beyond Aristotle. But those abstract things that exist are not abstract—the concepts themselves are not abstract. They are abstract only in the sense that they are not substances but attributes. That’s all. Meaning, there are no concepts there that we do not know from observing the world. And simple observation of the world, Aristotelian observation—Aristotle too recognized horseness and nature and such qualities or others. He didn’t claim they exist, but Aristotle too recognized them. That is something one can recognize through Greek observation, visual observation. Plato only claims that after you abstract them, they themselves are already substances—they exist, they are somewhere. But what substances is he talking about in the world of ideas? Those very substances that Aristotle also discerns and calls non-existent abstractions. He has no substances that did not emerge from the world of the image, from the world of observation. That is the point. And therefore, in one respect, in some way, Plato is still attached to the Greek world-picture. Plato still produces his qualities or his ideas from things essentially taken from our experiential, tangible world. It’s just that he claims these abstractions also exist. Those same abstractions Aristotle also makes—the categories of Aristotle—Plato makes the same kind of abstractions. So in this sense Plato still draws his spiritual world from the world he is looking at. Plato does not really have a concept like the Holy One, blessed be He, perhaps the concept furthest removed from our everyday experience, say, from the tangible—I mean an experience that is not sensory. We come with certain categories that are not drawn from the world we observe. There are other categories too, and they are part of that same ideal, spiritual, abstract world that exists, which is in some sense part of this whole world and all its multiplicity. But this world does not have its root below and then we ascend with it upward and also generate a second level. With us it works the other way around. With us, the second level generated the first level; the first level did not generate the second. And we try to map the world around us in those terms. We do not produce those terms based on what we see in the world around us. I think this is one of the most salient differences, perhaps, between Plato—who is seemingly close to a religious conception—and the Nazir’s religious conception, and I think this is the prevalent Jewish conception. The concept of form, for example, is a concept that has no form. It can be found even above—not a specific form. Yes, yes, the very concept of form. So again here I have no idea—everyone creates abstractions. Those abstractions—even the concept of nature is not a form; it is a lower level. The concept of a table—even that, the concept of a table. The concept of a table is nowhere to be found; there is a collection of objects around which we call them a table. But it doesn’t work that first we called those objects “table” and then made an abstraction and brought the concept of table. It goes the other way around. We brought the concept of table from home, and now we produced various tables, and now we understand that all of them are really expressions of one abstract concept. So true, in some place basically all concepts—there is no one abstract concept that comes out of direct, pure observation and that’s it. Obviously there are matters here of degree. That is, I am presenting it very simplistically only so that the possibilities will be sharply drawn, but there is no such thing as thought that is based only on what we know—and we have discussed this several times. There is no abstract concept that comes out of observation; there is no such thing. Abstraction itself is something we add to the world as we see it. So again, what is the difference? What will the difference be? There are still things that are more transparent through nature, so then we move to differences that are perhaps quantitative and qualitative, differences of degree, and not two separate lines as I presented it at the beginning merely for the sake of extreme clarification, because neither of them exists in pure form. But the concepts of matter and form—that is an obvious abstraction. It is an abstraction of anyone, every person who looks at the world wants to distinguish between two things, between matter and form. Sometimes things are made more abstract; one speaks about nature. He turns everything into geometric forms. He turns everything into geometry. He has a level of abstraction. Yes, but in turning things into one principle he turns that into some kind of form, yes. That is already some kind of level of seemingly. The world of concepts will still remain within what he sees. All true. What is the connection between triangle and fire, for example? Read Plato. Fine, but both triangle and fire are things we see in this world. Meaning, the conceptual world cannot be a self-contained conceptual world, one with no external source from which it draws; it cannot include concepts that are not drawn from its own world. Now again, “drawn from its world” is too harsh a phrase. There is no abstract concept drawn only from the world, I agree. But it may be that even within Plato there is the Holy One, blessed be He. The fact that Plato perhaps does not believe in Him does not change the fact that He exists. That is, even human beings who don’t believe in Him use Him. They may not be willing to admit it or may not recognize it, but it won’t help. All intellectual activity uses those connections we received, the connections in the intellect that we received from Him. Wait, that is the antithesis—that I use concepts. The antithesis is a naive, simple conception: the action of the Holy One, blessed be He, demons, angels, and a dispatch of evil angels. Wrath, fury, rage, and a dispatch of evil angels. Look at concepts that are not drawn from this world. All those are concepts that come from outside. After they come from outside, I may perhaps also understand that they have some form that comes to expression in this world. But I do not emerge from this world and create another level, and then the second level. Plato did do that. He created another level in forms that again are very reminiscent of chemistry, which is why we are going with this example. Because with Aristotle it is not so hard to distinguish between this and that; with Plato it creates difficulty. But I think there is still a fairly clear difference here. These concepts—didn’t we hear them in this world? The concept of demons, we heard in this world. True, there is such a thing as a concept we heard in the world. If you had not heard it from the world, you could not understand it. You would hear it, but not from the world. Meaning, that mode of listening is to listen into the divine utterance within things—let’s see how he defines it. Is the divine utterance in the world or not in the world? It is certainly within things. And that is what I call “in the world.” You don’t just look at what is outside you, but try to listen to what is within it. If from within things you managed to think about a dispatch of evil angels, all kinds of spiritual definitions that at least you can think about, that means it is in the world. Not at all. And again, you cannot really call it one way or the other. Obviously not. You need to receive the system of concepts. There are many children too, say, whom if you try to teach certain concepts, they never knew them before, right? But on the other hand, it is quite clear that they do grasp them even though it would never rise to the threshold of consciousness. If you teach that child something, he will grasp it. If it were not already within him, he could not grasp it. Meaning, he experiences it on the one hand, but as long as someone does not come and define for him, “Listen, this is a specific concept, and that too is a specific concept,” and create for him a language from which he can then describe more complex concepts—but those are the basic concepts. So as long as you have not created the language, it is not that they are not within you and that you do not discern them in the world through your senses—you do experience them. Obviously yes. But until someone has defined that set of concepts for you, it is not clear to you yourself. There is no concept or definition that can be conveyed if it is not already within your being. Nothing like that is possible. A person who is constituted in such a way—an example that I think anyone can understand, I think, though I know there are explanations—is a person who has no acquaintance at all with what purpose is. He knows only what cause is. A postmodern person, a material object—he acts only from causal considerations and not teleological ones, acts according to causal laws and not teleological ones. Now you try to explain to such a thing what purpose is. How will you explain it? That this is done for the sake of this, or on behalf of that? “For the sake of” and “on behalf of” are not part of his terminology; he has no such things. Because in an entire world where purpose does not exist, only cause, then the concepts of “for the sake of” are no more understandable than purpose itself; they too do not exist for him. You have no way to penetrate at all. If the person does not understand this in some raw, hylomorphic way before you start talking to him, he will not understand it even after you start talking. It is impossible to convey to a person a concept wholly new to him, for which he has no coordinate system to grasp it. Therefore obviously everything exists somehow in a raw potential form, but until the Torah came and said: the holiness of His name, there is purity, there is Sabbath, there is impurity, there are demons—and this whole world was built. So after all these things were defined, a person finds within himself those raw insights, and now they become clearer, more defined; now he can use them. Until this was defined and established as a term, you do not know how to use it, even though perhaps you have it within your senses. Those speculative insights—but you do not know how to use them. So clearly there is some play here between two things: first, this exists in me, recognition that this is there potentially; but someone from outside always has to come and formulate it, as it were, the basic ideas. And it does not work otherwise. It’s like teaching a child. I think this is a simple thing. I once heard—I don’t know—but it is a simple thing. There is no child who—try to imagine some imaginary child not endowed at all with those basic personal intuitions: you could not teach him at all. Not the alphabet, not history, not politics, not anything. You simply could not teach him anything at all. The things you come to teach him have to be within him in a raw way from the start, and in some sense learning is only bringing to the threshold of consciousness things that already exist within him in some raw form. In some way they are there, and what learning does is give them a defined image and bring them to the threshold of consciousness, giving the ability to use them. That is basically what it means to teach a child. No one will succeed in teaching a child who has from the outset no basis of reception. Nothing like that. It’s impossible. He understands nothing. You cannot teach him anything. Why? Because he has no inner basis. And that is what the Maharal says: all of Torah—just as the angel strikes him on the mouth and makes him forget all the Torah. The Maharal explains that the entire Torah is already within a person from the outset. And in order for him to understand learning, he has to know it already, and it is within him. And learning is only giving the tools that help you grasp things afterward. And in the Kabbalistic perception of worlds, the upper light always spreads downward and creates the next world in line. That next world, the lower one, when it spreads and there is a process in which the light departs, some form is created. What is the form? The soul prepared the infrastructure below so that the lower could grasp the second light that would come from above. Because if there were no vessels, it could not grasp the second light. So there always has to be some kind of initial shaping of the infrastructure from above, something I do not do, but with which one is created. And once I am structured this way, I have the tools to grasp information higher than me, or to perceive, to absorb things higher than me. Fine. In any event, let us return here to this difference, to the proof we raised here. I just want to emphasize it here because we are dealing with the difference between Plato and the Shemitic conception. And we said that basically the question is whether one goes from below upward or from above downward. That is my remark; it is not what is written here. But beyond that, what is written here, despite all the things that are indeed similar, is that at one point I think he is trying to emphasize that here there is something that is the highest final world—as distinct from the Shemitic conception. The Shemitic conception, as we already saw on page 4: the Hebrew never sees a thing as the absolute final essence. The final one is the Holy One, blessed be He Himself, but of the Holy One, blessed be He, we do not speak; we always speak of manifestations. And manifestations are never the final one. Within every final thing there is something sitting behind it. And that is what he says: the Hebrew never sees a thing as the absolute final essence; rather, what is revealed appears to him, and in his eyes beyond it, what is above it, is hinted in it and imagined upon it. That is the Shemitic conception. Everything is a parable for what lies behind it. In Plato there is no infinite chain. There is this world, which is an imitation of the world of ideas, and the world of ideas is the final world. So here already there is another point of difference, that Plato looks at the ideas visually, not Shemitically. Within the ideas themselves there is nothing. That is, the ideas are within things, but within the ideas themselves there is nothing. Meaning, this is the final world. Behind them there is nothing hiding of which they are the parable. And where does the first cause sit? And where does the first cause sit? The first cause, I think—I’m not sufficiently expert in Platonic philosophy—but I think in that sense it is historical. Meaning, it is not a cause that continues all the time. It created it, and that’s it. It is not a cause in the way we understand it, that it continuously sustains and constitutes as first cause. And therefore the picture of the world supposedly exists; it is not erased. There are the ideas, and thus the world was created. There are the ideas—I think. On this point, really, I’m not sure, because I’m not expert in Plato and Greek philosophy. Fine. Here he continues. The world of ideas—the world of ideas is the final one; there is nothing behind it. So therefore, even if Plato would agree that in this world there is both seeing and hearing, and also grasping abstract things, in the world of ideas that will not happen. In the world of ideas there is only sight. Hearing always means listening for what lies beyond. In the world of ideas one cannot listen; one can only see. If I look at this world, when I listen to it, I will see the world of ideas, discern it, sense the world of ideas. But the world of ideas is the final one; there is nothing behind it. So here one can only grasp; one cannot listen. And here the Alexandrians enter, mediating between the Platonic Academy and the Stoa. We spoke about this introduction of Philo—at least those who were here last week heard it. We talked a bit about the concept of the Logos, and that was a kind of introduction. The concept of Logos is basically this: the Stoic sages claimed that within all things there is some operative law that gives them life. And the Malbim connects this to “utterance”: the world was created with ten utterances. The divine utterances that basically still exist today, and to which we listen—that hearing of ours. To this day those utterances move about on mountaintops, as Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi says; they are inside things, and one need only listen to them. This is not some utterance that existed once and ended—“a great voice and it did not cease”; we translated it as “and it did not stop.” “And it did not cease” means “and it did not stop.” That is, the voice continues all the time; there is a meaningful voice—not one heard with the ears—and it continues all the time. And apparently there was some time when there were people who became open to perceiving this, and at other times. What? Yes, in a world of time and space, hearing takes place. The Alexandrians mediate between the Platonic Academy and the Stoa. What do they do? They insert the world of ideas into the Logos. They put Logos into the world of ideas as well. The Platonic Academy is that conception according to which inside the ideas there is nothing; it is the final world, as we said. The Alexandrians take the next step. They show us that behind the ideas too there is something; something gives life even to the ideas. It is not a motionless world as the Platonists saw it, not a final world as the Platonists conceived it, but a world that is itself only a parable for what is above it. Within it too there sits some Logos, some utterance that animates it. It is not the final world; there is another stage. Therefore they mediate between the Platonic Academy and the Stoa. The Stoa had no problem with this, because when the Stoa spoke about the Logos, it spoke about the Logos within this world. Plato invented that this Logos is also a world that exists above. And the Alexandrians say: it is Logos within Logos. That is, within the Logos of this world, which is itself a Logos, there is another Logos within it. All right? That is going one step further. And therefore what he says is this is not, in the words of historians of philosophy, syncretism, an artificial combination. The Alexandrians—in the eyes of scholars they always love influences or derivations. That is, that one thought the other was influenced both by Platonism and by the Stoa, and that is how they describe this development. He says: the Alexandrians drew from two sources; they drew from Platonic sources and from Stoic sources. Therefore, as it were, they had to produce some world-picture that includes both Logos and ideas—in other words, there is Logos within the ideas. And this is indeed an artificial syncretic combination, because if so, why draw from two sources? Follow one rabbi and not two, so your world-picture will be coherent. Why are you building a worldview just because you heard two rabbis? Usually that does not trouble scholars. Scholars usually deal with development and not with the inner logic of the system, and that is the stumbling block of a scientific approach. A scientific approach always deals with development and not with meaning. But he argues that this is not influence, not a syncretic phenomenon, not some combination of two things because I happened to be in two places. I make this combination because I truly believe it is correct, because this conception—that within everything there is a Logos behind it—is an essential conception for Jews. It is not that they happened to draw from two places. So they say: if we believe Plato, and we took from Plato that there is an ideal world, then automatically there also has to be Logos within it. Not because I happened to draw from the Stoics—quite the opposite. I chose to draw from the Stoics because I think what they say is true also regarding the world of ideas. In other words, there is a big difference in how one can see it. Very often people see it this way, and this historiographical discussion is not only here. First of all, I do not know these specific sources explicitly, but every time he really comes to dislodge that same scholarly conception. The scholarly conception is always generally occupied with developments. How things developed. And not really with what their essence is, what their meaning is. It is a little reminiscent of what exists in anthropology. In the anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss—he was at one pole all the way, but there was a long-standing argument in which the two poles were divided very sharply. On the one hand, looking at things from outside and trying to see objectively what the characteristics are, how this connects to various other societies, say, and so on. And on the other hand, there is the approach of “let’s live with them, let’s get inside the head of this tribe and understand what it means.” The first approach is usually the scientific one. The second is already much more existentialist. And the second approach is basically: let us understand what this means from within, let us live it. Only this way can one build a science? Obviously not. But this is not a criticism of the scientific world. The scientific world has to work as it works. But know that this does not capture everything, does not encompass everything. And once you decide that there is some syncretic combination here, then you have lost an entire paragraph that is very essential. Because if you focused only on the scientific plane, know that there is another layer. There is another layer in which somehow these concepts really do speak together. It is not a combination of parts of a metaphor. That is what he says: it is not syncretism, in the words of historians of philosophy, because the deep survey of the Hebrew ideas that bring its ideal pattern also establishes the symbolic allegorical method in Torah interpretation for the Alexandrians. So you see that the Alexandrians also received this fact; you can see it in their Torah interpretation. There is always something else behind what is written, always parables, behind everything there is something else. This conception is something essential. The Hebrew, as he said in section 4 above, never sees a thing as it is as the last thing; it is always a parable for what lies behind it. And here you see that the Alexandrians are also like this. So if the Alexandrians are like this in other respects, in their interpretation of Torah, then there is no reason to assume that their philosophy was not built on the same basis. This is not something that arose by chance because they drew from two places; rather, this truly is their worldview. The world of ideas as an example of the order of a beautiful world. And the meaning of Logos is the order of all the concepts. So that order, that very order, is the order in the world of ideas, which this world imitates like a reflection in a mirror. It is visible indeed, like the light of the first day in Creation. Visible like the image of the great light of day in the heart of the Creator-artisan. Here the Nazir quotes the famous midrash and interprets it in an Alexandrian way. And the eidos-form and the demiurge appearing here are like a parable for how the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world—there is a blueprint, like a demiurge, an artisan planning a building or something like that. So the eidos is that quality, that plan according to which the demiurge, as it were, built the world. Let’s continue reading inside for a moment, and then I’ll say what I still don’t entirely understand here. What is revealed in higher sight to the Platonic Jew, who elevates the eye and sight above all the senses, and who finds in the name Israel the species that sees—Israel, that saw God. I smell criticism here, even though it is not presented explicitly as criticism, but it still seems to me he has criticism here of the Platonic Jew. This Platonic Jew—these Alexandrians, after all, according to his argument, also introduced hearing into the ideas; it did not remain only in the visible world. I don’t know who this Platonic Jew is that he is talking about. I don’t know who it is; he doesn’t use words of criticism here, so I’m not sure. But precisely this emphasis on visibility, on the conception of sight, is itself criticism of what he opposes throughout the book. But he doesn’t write anywhere where this changes or who these people are. Because these Alexandrians, he says, did place something behind sight; they did insert the Logos into the world of ideas. And who is this Platonic Jew who elevates the eye and sight above all the senses? I think this is Philo, but then what did he say above? Alexandrians means Philo too. And besides Philo, nothing remains of the Alexandrians. What, everyone who wrote in the Library of Alexandria? But they did not get along with the ideas. In the second book there are two well-known Alexandrian sages who wrote interpretations very similar to the famous interpretation of Philo. Again, there are—there’s some Opticus Dioptri or something like that. What does that say about the Logos? If the Alexandrians are this, then it’s for you. Apparently the meaning is not “Alexandrians” literally, but someone writing in an Alexandrian genre, or someone later than Philo who wrote it, or something among the Romans who also used this. Basically it turns out that apart from Philo there are no Alexandrians. So if now he is assigning Philo to the Platonic Jew, then who are the Alexandrians he talked about above? I do not entirely understand who he is speaking about here, who elevates the eye and sight above all the senses. Philo says this below, but then it also applies to the Alexandrians he spoke about above. And one who finds in the name Israel the species that sees—Israel is one who saw, yes, this is the definition of Israel, unlike the prophet who hears—hears. Look in the notes here. In note 9 he brings several places where one sees that the eye is the highest thing, and more fully he discusses it later in this essay. Starting basically from page 187 there is “the superiority of sight.” And after that—ah yes, from page 187 there is “the superiority of sight”; after that he moves to “hearing as chief among the senses,” which appears on page 222. There he discusses whether hearing is greater than sight or not greater than sight; this is the subject of the sections I dealt with here. Basically he discusses those who made sight the supreme thing, as opposed to those who made hearing the supreme thing. So let’s freeze the discussion here until we get there; perhaps it will become clearer to us later in the discussion who is against whom here. It may be that somewhere here they inserted the Logos into the utterance—perhaps that’s how it comes out here—that the Alexandrians inserted the Logos into the ideas, but they do not believe it; they see it. In what sense is that the same Logos? He is not speaking about it now. What we read earlier is apparently what he means to say here. I still don’t know. In what sense is it the same Logos? After all, he speaks about it already from the opening there, and that is apparently what he means to say here. I don’t know. I don’t know. But what is clear, in any event, is that he wants to remove this matter from simple anthropomorphism. Now this chapter, chapter 66, is a very short chapter. “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets.” We have already explained in one of the chapters of this treatise that everything said of Him, may He be exalted, that He did or performed, is said only by way of analogy, for He, may He be exalted, does not act through action, as we have explained.