The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 18

Table of Contents

• Plotinus, the Enneads, and Porphyry’s arrangement
• Contemplation, static nature, a silent logos, and the world of ideas
• Beauty, virtues, and the soul becoming an idea
• Seeing versus hearing as a metaphor for the Greek outlook versus the Jewish outlook
• Stillness, sound, and light: what sight perceives and what hearing perceives
• Zeno’s arrow paradox and the visual mistake
• Velocity versus change of place, and auditory perception as the perception of process
• Science, quanta, uncertainty, and the Doppler effect in the context of sight and hearing
• The eternity of the world, an active logos, and creation
• Time, the Sabbath, and two axes of time
• Beauty as fit and harmony, and an open ending

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the supreme Hellenic logic as something whose beginning and purpose are in beauty, and which is entirely contemplation and theory. It places this within a reading of Plotinus and the Enneads, while emphasizing the problem of the arrangement made by Porphyry. It describes a Platonic world in which “nature” and the logos are static and silent, and being, in receiving form, is an act of contemplation and imitation of the world of ideas, to the point of conceiving God as “the One, the Good, the Beautiful” as the source of beauty, but not as an agent in any dynamic sense. From there it develops a fundamental metaphor of seeing versus hearing: sight grasps stasis and images, while hearing grasps action and vitality. It uses Zeno’s arrow paradox and examples from physics—velocity, momentum, the Doppler effect, uncertainty, and quanta—to show how visual perception gets entangled in paradoxes and how auditory perception is directed toward process and active force. Later it connects Greek visuality to the eternity of the world and the denial of creation in any essential sense, and it concludes by linking beauty as fit and harmony to the character of visual perception, while postponing completion until next time.

Plotinus, the Enneads, and Porphyry’s Arrangement

The Enneads were written by Plotinus as separate essays, and it was Porphyry the Jew who arranged them into six groups of nine essays, fifty-four essays in all. The text states that there is a dispute in the scholarship as to whether the arrangement has significance, and in general people tend to think that the order has no significance. It describes how Porphyry places the essay on contemplation in the middle, in the Third Ennead, treatise 8, whereas in the view of “the monk” it should have been placed at the beginning, as the passage that sets the pattern for all the Enneads.

Contemplation, Static Nature, a Silent Logos, and the World of Ideas

The text states that everything strives toward contemplation, and that all study and all action are directed toward it. Even unmoving nature is the moving force. It explains that “nature” here is not the collection of inanimate objects, but the nature of a thing as the law hidden within it, identified with lower Platonic ideas, and that the moving force is itself still and at rest. It presents being, in the reception of form, as an act of silent contemplation, and this world as a beautiful imitation of the world of ideas, like a seal and its impression. Therefore the act of imitation is static and not a striving. It adds that the logos that operates in being is itself at rest, nothing but contemplation and a silent logos, and that the soul too is wholly contemplation, and there is no limit to contemplation.

Beauty, Virtues, and the Soul Becoming an Idea

The text defines beauty as something in seeing, and sets up a continuum from sensory beauty to, above that, the beauty of the good virtues, all of which partake in the productive idea and are all of one kind. It states that the soul that contemplates the good virtues is purified by them and becomes an idea and a pure logos—immaterial, intellectual. It describes God, in the Greek conception, as the source of beauty, as “the One, the Good, the Beautiful,” as a supreme static idea that does not act in the world but stands as an idea.

Seeing Versus Hearing as a Metaphor for the Greek Outlook Versus the Jewish Outlook

The text argues that the metaphor of contemplation or sight accurately describes the Greek mode of thought, including a visual God and a static logos, and a world based on an ideal pattern that is grasped as sight rather than hearing. It states that in the background there stands a Jewish auditory conception, not mentioned explicitly here but present as the framework of contrast. It formulates the novelty as the claim that even Platonic Greekness is nourished by the concept of visuality, and that Plato represents a subtler visuality than Aristotle, but still visuality—using the expression “an ideality of looking, a subtle idolatry” as a distinction.

Stillness, Sound, and Light: What Sight Perceives and What Hearing Perceives

The text states that something still makes no sound, and that sound arises from motion and process, whereas an image is perceived in relation to the existence of the thing and the reflection of light from it. It argues that at first glance it seems that sight also grasps both the still and the moving, but in fact sight grasps only a still thing, and motion is an intellectual interpolation between static states. It explains that the thing itself makes itself heard by the ears, but does not show itself to the eyes without an external light source, because in sight there is dependence on illumination that is not an action of the thing being seen.

Zeno’s Arrow Paradox and the Visual Mistake

The text presents Zeno’s arrow paradox: in every photographed instant, the arrow stands in a different place, and so the question is asked when exactly it is moving and when it passes between the places. It clarifies that the structure of a paradox is a logical proof that leads to a conclusion contrary to what is obvious from reality, and therefore one must identify the error in the premises or in the proof itself, rather than rejecting the conclusion merely because it is unacceptable. It states that Zeno is mistaken because he infers from the fact that a photograph captures only position that there is no motion, whereas the correct conclusion is that a camera is not a tool for perceiving movement.

Velocity Versus Change of Place, and Auditory Perception as the Perception of Process

The text distinguishes between a body changing place and a body having velocity, and argues that a body can have velocity even at a point in time, although it does not change place at a point in time. It says that the eyes operate like a camera and therefore do not see velocity but only position, and velocity is generated as an intellectual processing of a sequence of positions. It suggests that the ears are like a movie camera, in the sense that they grasp action and process as such and not merely as an indirect conclusion. Therefore hearing is the perception of vitality and pulsing life, whereas sight is the perception of the static and the dead.

Science, Quanta, Uncertainty, and the Doppler Effect in the Context of Sight and Hearing

The text argues that science is being forced, against its will, to become auditory, but it kicks against this and refuses to recognize it, and that creates difficulties in understanding the world. It links the uncertainty principle to the fact that a camera cannot grasp both position and velocity at the same time, and presents the conceptual possibility of a complementary observation using different tools in order to know both. It brings the Doppler effect as an example of a measurement that does not rely on differences of place between two moments in the same way, and notes that in quantum theory there exist the “position picture” and the “momentum picture,” in which the axes themselves are different, with the momentum picture presented as an auditory form of observation.

The Eternity of the World, an Active Logos, and Creation

The text states that when the logos is still and silent there is no room for creation, and therefore the Greek conception of the eternity of the world is essential and not accidental. It explains that a static world of ideas, above which there is a seal and its impression, does not allow for essential change in time, whereas creation becomes possible only when one understands that behind reality there is something living that acts and gives it life. It adds that modern physics can slide into a “Greek” conception when motion is described as annihilation here and creation there, like a cursor on a computer that switches off and on at different locations.

Time, the Sabbath, and Two Axes of Time

The text suggests that if time is perceived as flowing, then a fixed axis is required in relation to which it flows, and from this arises the possibility of two axes of time. It brings halakhic examples: “since it was set aside” turns the entire Sabbath into one unit of time, hinting that the Sabbath is “that same Sabbath” from the creation of the world until the coming of the Messiah, as brought in a midrash about keeping one Sabbath. It distinguishes between the axis of weekdays, in which the Sabbath is a segment of twenty-four hours, and a higher axis in which the Sabbath is a point, and notes that there are practical ramifications, such as a minor who comes of age in the middle of the Sabbath.

Beauty as Fit and Harmony, and an Open Ending

The text states that the good virtues among the Greeks are also a kind of beauty, and that the Hellenic concept of beauty is connected to visual art, to cultivating the body, and to the importance of “how things look.” It argues that aesthetic beauty usually expresses fit and harmony between one thing and another, or between the internal parts of a thing, and suggests that there is no “thing that is beautiful in itself,” only a beauty that comes through relations of fit. It concludes by saying that time ran out and the discussion will continue next time, including the question of “Jewish beauty,” which is not decided here.

All right? We’re at section 13. The contemplation of beauty. The supreme Hellenic logic, whose beginning and end is beauty and which is wholly contemplation, theory, stood at the head of the Enneads of Plotinus. Plotinus, one of the well-known Greek philosophers, wrote the Enneads. Really, he wrote them each separately. The one who compiled them was a Jew named Porphyry. No, no—and he basically arranged them. There’s a lot of debate among scholars whether his arrangement has any significance at all, or whether he just made six groups of nine treatises. There are fifty-four treatises there, and he arranged them into six parts, each of which has nine treatises, and people generally tend to think the order has no significance. He notes that here below too regarding a certain treatise, but it’s true in general. Meaning, there’s a problem with the arrangement of the Enneads. In any case, Porphyry placed Plotinus’s treatise on theory in the middle, where does he write it here, where? I know—in the Third Ennead, book 8. All right? In the eighth part of the Third Ennead. But in the monk’s view it should really have been placed at the beginning. Meaning, this is the passage that really determines the pattern of all the Enneads. Fine. Everything aspires to contemplation. Every study and every action. Even unmoving nature, which is the motivating force. “Unmoving nature, which is the motivating force” does not mean the collection of inanimate objects, right? A collection of inanimate objects is not the motivating force. He’s talking about those lower ideas he discussed above in section 10. The motivating force in the Platonic-Greek picture is something at rest. It is in repose. He says “nature,” meaning the nature of the thing, not nature in the sense of “nature.” The nature of the thing—that’s what he means by nature. The nature of a thing is the law embedded in it, the law that operates it, the law that governs its action. That’s what “nature” means here. And for him, since this is the Platonic idea, it is something stationary. “The unmoving one that is the active mover.” Being, in receiving form, is an act of silent contemplation. It’s like imitation; this recalls what he said in section 9. He says: the light of the world of ideas as the model of the beautiful order of the world, which this world imitates as a beautiful imitation. This world is some kind of imitation of the ideas, right? That too is a static action. You imitate the ideas; you don’t strive toward them, you don’t do some action—you are built in their pattern, like a seal and its imprint. Nature rests in silent contemplation, and the logos that acts in being, which itself is at rest—that’s what we discussed earlier, the Platonic logos. It too is at rest; these are resting ideas. We’ll come back to that, I’m just inserting a few remarks here. It is nothing but contemplation, a silent logos. The soul too is wholly contemplation, and contemplation has no limit. Beauty is in seeing—sensory beauty, and above that the beauty of good virtues, all of which share in the creative idea. And they are all ideas of the same kind. The good virtues, beauty, the good—all of these are basically things of the same type. They all belong to that same world of stationary ideas, in whose pattern our world is built, imitated. The soul that contemplates the good virtues is purified by them and becomes an idea and a pure logos, immaterial, intellectual—I don’t know what this word is, I think it should be “intellectual.” Intellectual, maybe—entirely toward God, the source of beauty. Again, even God is grasped as the source of beauty; that is the Greek definition of God. The highest idea, still something stationary, not something active in the world but the idea of the world. But something standing, something still, not something that acts. Right? That is the Greek conception of God. We’ll come back to that too. For He is the One, the Good, the Beautiful. Beauty. From beauty directly comes the intellect, nous—some expression I still haven’t even had time to check what exactly it is. The beautiful spirit. In the intellect the soul is beautiful. The soul that creates every form, all wisdoms, all actions—they are beautiful.

All right, let’s try to give some kind of picture. Here there’s something that I’m usually not very good at doing, but I’ll try anyway—to explain a metaphor. This is literary work, not philosophical work. What he’s explaining here is basically why the metaphor of contemplation or seeing is the one that correctly describes the whole Greek mode of thought. The Greek conception of everything in the world. Even God there is a visual God, or really visual divinity there. And the logos is something stationary, and the imitation of the logos—this world, which is built in its pattern, in the pattern of the idea—is basically an act of seeing, not an act of hearing. Meaning, everything revolves around some action that he calls seeing. That is the metaphor that describes Greekness. And of course, in the background the whole time—he doesn’t mention it in this passage, but obviously standing in the background the whole time in contrast—is the Jewish conception, which he defines as something auditory, as hearing. That’s really the bottom line of all this. It’s a whole collection of different details, all of which he basically attributes to this general mode called seeing or contemplation.

Why is he saying this now? I didn’t understand whether this is something new in the story—I’ve already defined this many times. He’s now talking about the Greek conception; he’s trying now to define the Greek conception. His novelty is not in what we call visuality; the novelty is that Greekness is nourished by the concept of visuality, which we already knew from earlier. Even Platonic Greekness. That’s a somewhat bigger novelty. Aristotelian Greekness is more obviously visual, right? That’s what we discussed about that Nachmanides in the portion of Acharei Mot, about that Greek who says that anything he has not grasped intellectually and apprehended does not exist. That’s Aristotle. Plato, apparently, is something a bit closer to an auditory logic. He sees the ideas as something existing within things; it’s not merely some theoretical abstraction of ours and nothing else. Still, Plato too basically represents some sort of visual conception, perhaps a subtler visual conception. There’s an expression like this at the end of the next section, 14, where it says: “After all, this is ultimately an ideality of contemplative, subtle idolatry.” Meaning, the difference between Plato and Aristotle is how refined their visuality is—but it is still visuality and not auditory-ness. So here he’s trying to return a bit to that point: why this visual characteristic really is the fitting characteristic.

First let’s go back for a moment to seeing and hearing, but this time perhaps not in the aspect of depth and ambiguity versus superficiality and clarity, which we already discussed, right? That seeing is superficial but clear, unambiguous, and hearing is ambiguous but also grasps things that are behind. That’s what we explained until now with those metaphors of seeing and hearing. Here there’s another novelty—perhaps beyond what I said before, when I said that the novelty here concerns only the characterization of the Greeks and not what visuality is. There is still some novelty here, which was hinted at in what I said earlier: the world of the lower ideas, in section 10, where the ordered, law-giving world is arranged, cosmos and so on, how force acts in it. Here he defines better why this is stationary and so on, that whole business. And why rest is a quality that describes visuality—or conversely, why in a stationary world the contemplation of it is viewing and not listening. Right? That is really the goal of this passage.

First of all, even just physically: when you look, a picture is the thing you look at, and it is something stationary. When I listen to something, a stationary thing makes no sound. You can’t listen to a stationary thing. Sound—and not only sound itself, which is waves; that’s also true of light—but I mean what creates sound. Sound is not created by something standing still. Something, some process, has to happen for sound to emerge. Something has to strike something, something has to move, something has to rub against something, right? There is no stationary thing that emits a sound. Meaning, every sound that comes out is the result of something happening, something moving.

By contrast, a picture is apparently not only like that—but in a moment we’ll see that it’s exactly the opposite, meaning not only is it not like hearing, I think it’s entirely not like hearing. At first, in simple perception, what is a picture? A picture can show things that move and things that stand still, right? Meaning, the source of what I see can be standing still or moving; there’s no requirement that it specifically move. So you already see a difference, right? Hearing is to grasp something alive, moving, active, something that acts; and seeing is to grasp the thing as static, to photograph it. In a certain sense, even what we see—except that it’s harder to see things that move, because motion blurs vision. Which is also what the Rabbi keeps talking about regarding the arrow of the arrow. Right, exactly. That’s what I meant when I said that in a moment we’ll see that it’s exactly the opposite—not only is it not entirely hearing, I think it’s entirely not hearing. In the first intuition, seeing is something more than hearing, not something opposite to hearing. Hearing only grasps active things, only things that move, whereas seeing grasps both moving things and standing things. But really, the truth is that this isn’t correct. Seeing grasps only a stationary thing—only a stationary thing. And hearing grasps only a moving thing, only the process. So in that sense these are really two dual pictures, each one grasping a different aspect of reality.

First of all, before we even get to the arrow and what we already mentioned: when I look—even when I look at a moving thing—what do I see in it? I do not see the motion, right? What creates the image that I see? In sound, what creates the sound is the movement of something. What creates the light—or the image that the light brings to me—is not the movement of something. It is the very existence of something there, that light struck it and reflected back to me. Right? So even if it happens to be moving, the motion is accidental. It’s not that the source of light can be moving or stationary. The source is stationary. Maybe it can also be stationary at different points, right? Then I’ll see motion that way. But in fact, the source of seeing is always standing still, it isn’t moving. Do you understand what I’m saying? Neutral? It isn’t moving? No, no, yes—I think it’s not neutral, it’s standing still. And I’ll sharpen that later. Seeing as such—what creates the image is the very existence of a thing in the world. If it happens to move, then first it exists here and afterward it exists there, so I’ll see it first here and then there. Or if it happens to be stationary. Is existence something external? Yes, but the action is clearly something added to mere existence. Mere existence is something—right, you’re right that in principle it seems neutral, and we’ll soon see that even that isn’t so. But you’re right that it is in principle neutral. Still, clearly when you talk about the very existence of the thing, before you even ask… What are those trumpets? Wait. When you ask about the very existence of the thing, you’re talking about it before the question whether it is moving or standing. Right? In that sense I mean that the very existence of the object is something stationary. It’s not yet the question whether it is pulsing or not pulsing; it comes before that question. All right? You’re right that at first glance it looks neutral, but I think that’s a question on another level. Meaning, it isn’t that both a stationary body and a moving body create an image. That’s true, but it’s true because what creates the image is unrelated to that question—it lies on a prior level. All right? By the very existence of the body, regardless for now of whether it is stationary or standing. A body as such, when it exists, is something static. Right? It may happen to move, but the very existence of the body is something static. All right?

Now beyond that—this is what Avi mentioned earlier, and we already touched on it—we wanted to say that sound is something produced, as it were, from the thing itself, while vision depends on the sun, the light… all this is produced by the thing itself, and light—precisely because of that. Meaning, because the thing itself does nothing—so how can I see it? Only if someone casts rays on it that return to me, and that’s how I can see it. Precisely because it does nothing. These are two connected characteristics. Sound—I myself create the sound; I don’t need someone else to throw sound at me. Why? Because the very act of creating the sound is what creates it. Meaning, I do an action here, and therefore it comes into being. But how is the light created, through which I can see the thing? Only because someone else—because the thing itself is not active when I see it. Therefore it’s clear that the way seeing works is really by relying on something else. The thing itself does not show itself to my eyes. The thing itself sounds itself to me, to my ears. The thing does not show itself to my eyes. Meaning, it’s not correct to say this about seeing. Except maybe the sun itself, which really does do some action. Right, right. With the sun it may indeed be different. But in practice, you can’t look at the sun. It often leads to blindness in the worst case. Fine, just because of the intensity. Of course, at a candle, say, you can look. Fine. Right, but in ordinary seeing, I mean, some other light source is required, and I think that is connected to the characteristic we were discussing.

So we already mentioned this paradox of the arrow. I think that parable came up this year too, in these classes on prophecy, right? Fine. I’m sure I mentioned it. Wait, where did you hear this from me? So? Three years ago we went through it. In the first year we talked about it. Fine, so let’s mention it briefly. I think I mentioned it here too, though maybe—fine, maybe I’m mistaken. Zeno’s paradox of the arrow goes like this. Let’s look at a flying arrow. Zeno says: how can it be flying? Or alternatively, let’s ask it differently: when is it flying? After all, at every single moment I look at it, it is simply standing still—just standing in a different place, right? Take a camera and photograph the arrow; at every moment you photograph it, you’ll see it standing still, only standing in another place. Right? We’re talking about a camera with point exposure time, yes, without technical blur effects. So in practice, says Zeno, at every moment the arrow is actually standing still, just standing in another place. So at what moment is it moving? When does it pass between the places? After all, at every moment it stands in a different place—so at what moment does it move?

Why should it stand? Huh? Why should it stand? At a point-instant, it stands. You see that it stands—at every moment it stands in another place. And what is an optical illusion? In an instant it cannot move. At a single instant it cannot move; at a time point a thing cannot move. So at every time point it stands in another place, right. So at which time point does it move? But after all, it doesn’t move at any time point here, so when does it move? It cannot change place at a time point, because otherwise that would mean infinite speed. At one time point, distance divided by time comes out infinite. At a time point the time interval is zero. If it moved any epsilon you want in space—doesn’t matter how much, ten to the minus twenty meters—if it moved, divide that by the time it took to move it, and you get infinite speed. At a time point it cannot move, right? So at every time point it is standing in another place. So the question is: at what time point does it move? When does it move? When does it pass from place to place?

But isn’t it wrong to point to this “one” of time that we grasp? A time point isn’t like—we’ll never actually arrive at a time point of absolute time that is like no-time. We always grasp only the process. Maybe that’s connected to the other thing—that we grasp the process and not the division. What you wanted to say is that there is no such thing as a time point? As though there are only tiny time intervals, as small as we wish? I don’t know if there’s no such thing, let’s say there is such a thing—but we grasp the process. Or the opposite—we don’t grasp the process; we try to break it apart and put our finger on something, but we don’t grasp the process, though obviously there is a process here. The fact that it’s obvious there is one is irrelevant—the question is what we see. And the fact that it’s obvious there is one—that is exactly the paradox. If it weren’t obvious there is one, then there would be no paradox, right? Then there is no process and everything is fine. What’s the problem? Every paradox is built this way: I prove to you logically one thing, but it’s completely obvious that it isn’t true. If the other side doesn’t exist then it isn’t a paradox. Then I proved one thing clearly and indeed that is the correct thing. Every paradox is always built so that there is a beautifully structured proof of something, and on the other hand it is clear that this thing is not right. That is the structure of every paradox. You can’t argue against a paradox by saying… fine, but obviously that proof isn’t correct, because obviously there is a process. That itself is what the paradox asks—how can that be?

What do I mean? Every paradox is built this way. You know the paradox where I can show you that one equals two, for example? Do you know the paradox that one equals two? x squared minus x squared equals x squared minus x squared. Up to here that’s correct, agreed? x times x minus x equals x plus x times x minus x. That’s also correct, agreed? Expand the parentheses and you get it. a plus b times a minus b is a squared minus b squared, right? Now let’s reduce by x minus x, and we get x equals 2x. Reduce by x and we get one equals two. The problem here, of course, is that I reduced by zero. x minus x is zero; you’re not allowed to reduce by zero. Zero times anything is the same thing; you can’t reduce by zero. But every once in a while, when we discussed this paradox, someone would come and say, “But obviously that’s not true”—they say, “Obviously one is not equal to two.” What do you mean obviously one is not equal to two? Exactly that. Every paradox is built so that I have a seemingly clean and orderly proof leading me to a conclusion, but on the other hand either common sense or the facts or the eyes—it doesn’t matter—I have completely clear indications that this conclusion is wrong. That is how every paradox is built, all right? So to argue against a paradox it’s not enough to say, wait, but in this proof the result is obviously wrong. You need to explain to me at which stage of the proof I erred, or which assumption I made during the proof is incorrect. Because if the proof is correct and it leads me to that conclusion, then you can’t simply claim that the conclusion is wrong, because that has no meaning. All right?

But our tools for grasping reality don’t necessarily project onto reality itself. There really can be a paradox. There is a flying arrow here, but I don’t… I have no tool to grasp the process as a process, only as a collection of pictures. Fine, but I’m asking: at some moment in time does it happen that it passes from place to place, right? So if at every moment it is in a different place, when does it pass between the places? That is a logical question, not a question about our perception. When does it pass? When is it between the places? Right? When does it move? Every moment it is in another place.

He presents the paradox here in several nuances, not just one. You can define it in a few ways, ask it in a few forms. In any case, for our purposes I won’t go too deeply into it. Let’s return to what concerns us. Where exactly did Zeno go wrong? Zeno went wrong precisely in that visual conception. Zeno was Greek, as is well known, and he grasped the world visually—and that is exactly the problem. When you take a camera and photograph the arrow and you see it standing in some place, all you can conclude is not that it is not moving, but that a camera cannot grasp motion. Right? When you photograph the arrow you see it standing in some place. So what can’t you conclude from that? That it isn’t moving. You can conclude from that that a camera is not the instrument for observing motion. Right? A camera grasps only position; it does not grasp motion. Right?

Now earlier you asked me—well, actually you didn’t ask me, you suggested it, and I asked how there can be motion at a time point. After all, at a time point you cannot change place, otherwise… By the way, changing place at a time point is a logical paradox, not a physical one. The fact that the speed would be infinite is not the relativity problem that you can’t move faster than light. It’s a logical problem, because if the arrow is here then it is not there at the same time point. So this isn’t a problem in physics but in logic—the question of whether the object is here or there is a logical contradiction. All right? Here, even if relativity were not true, this still couldn’t be done. Fine. For our purposes, what is happening? One thing is clear: this mixes together two things. A thing’s being in motion, and a thing’s changing place. Or, a thing’s having speed and a thing’s changing place. These are two different things. They often come together, but they are two different things. And a thing can move even at a time point—move in the sense that I say it has velocity. Meaning, at that time point there is indeed a difference between saying the thing is at a certain point and saying the thing is at rest at a certain point, right? Those are two different statements. A thing at rest at a certain point does not mean only that it is there. It means it is there and its velocity is zero, right? A thing that moves is also, at every single moment, at a certain point. But its velocity at every moment is not zero. Therefore, saying it is at a certain point does not mean saying that it is not moving. It has velocity. Right—it cannot change place at a time point, as we said earlier, because that is a problem. But it can have velocity at a time point. Every calculation of velocity, after all, gives velocity at each time point. At every time point a body has a defined velocity. So velocity is a quantity that exists even on a point, not only on a segment of time. All right?

Only what? Our eyes operate like a camera. And therefore when we look at that arrow, we actually cannot see the very fact that it has velocity. All we can see is that it is here and then a moment later it is here. So I infer—and here the intellect is doing it, not the eyes—the intellect infers that apparently even earlier it had velocity, and that in fact it has velocity all the time. But the eyes in themselves, without the processing that the intellect does on the data, the eyes themselves see only position; they do not see velocity. The eyes cannot see velocity. All right? And therefore Zeno basically thought there is no such thing as velocity, because Zeno thought that whatever the eyes see is what exists, and whatever the eyes do not see does not exist. There is no such thing. Exactly what it says here—the Greeks think visually: what the eye sees. What they see exists, and what they do not see does not exist. But that is not true. What we see—vision is one means of observing the world.

Suppose I had an instrument called a movie camera, an ideal movie camera. Yes, a camera not built like our movie cameras today, where we film one situation, then another situation at high speed, and project them one after another, and that appears to us as motion. Those cameras are of course just cameras, exactly. They are Greek cameras. Just a sequence of cameras. I’m talking about a camera that sees motion itself. Meaning, a camera that grasps motion—not one that grasps position and then another position and the brain does the work and reaches the conclusion that there is motion. That’s what happens in film; that’s what happens in every camera. What happens in the eyes. What? What happens in the eyes. There is really no difference in our world today between a movie camera and a still camera. A movie camera is just many still cameras, that’s all. The question is whether there is such a thing in theory—I don’t know how to build such a thing. Huh? It’s not a technical problem, it’s a problem on the side of the human eyes—not a technical problem. That the eyes would not be able to grasp the result of such a camera. Of course, I see—with my eyes I see velocity. But I could theoretically arrange some sensory device that would go directly to the brain, not through the eyes, and would show motion. The ears, I think. You understand? That’s exactly where I’m heading.

All right, I had also thought about the Doppler effect, for example; maybe that resembles it somewhat. The Doppler effect is an effect that directly measures the velocity of a body—not by measuring where it is at one time and where it is at another time and dividing the distance by the speed. That’s how ordinary speedometers work. They of course work in a Greek way. Or infinitesimal calculus basically works in a Greek way. It defines the derivative through differences of position, right? How do we define a derivative in mathematics? How do we get the velocity? What is the velocity of a body? It is its position at a certain time minus its position at an earlier time, divided by the time difference. And when you take that to be very small, that’s what is called a derivative. I don’t know whether you studied this; I think some of you did. So that is basically a definition trying to grasp the process through static perceptions. Meaning, I know how to grasp place—that is a static grasp, I have no problem with that. A time point too I know how to grasp. Velocity is a quantity I do not know how to grasp, so I have to define it by means of place and time. So I define it through differences. That is the definition of velocity. No—that is exactly the Greek mistake. More or less what I heard in fourth grade was like that. No—that’s how you measure velocity; that is a different question from how you define velocity. That is exactly the point. We measure velocity that way because we have perceptual limitations, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean that is what velocity really is. The Greeks think that the way we measure velocity is what velocity really is. But that is only human perception—who says there is really any velocity inside something real?

I can bring all kinds of proofs for this. For example, when you transfer momentum to a body. Right? Suppose a ball strikes a wall. All right? When it reaches the wall, it has velocity, and nevertheless it doesn’t advance—the wall stops it. What does that mean? It means it has velocity that does not manifest itself as change of place, right? Because the wall doesn’t let it. How does it manifest itself? It transfers momentum to the wall or to the body it collides with; it transfers momentum to it. What did it transfer? Did it transfer changes of place? It transferred velocity. Meaning, there is such a thing as velocity that gets transferred even if the object does not change place. That’s not velocity; it’s the ability to change place. Fine—that’s velocity. Velocity is a potential quantity in any case. It’s potential when you look through position. Velocity is your potential to change place. If you look through the categories of place, then velocity is something potential. But there is another way to look at velocity in which it is the thing itself.

By the way, in quantum theory—anyone who once studied it and looks at it this way—in quantum theory there really are two completely parallel pictures. One is called the position picture and one the momentum picture. And you can look in the momentum picture, and there indeed your axes, your coordinate system, are momenta, not positions. Meaning, velocities. And conversely, there position is the quantity that is not graspable. Meaning, there one really looks in the way of the ideal movie camera we mentioned earlier. And that is the auditory form. The momentum picture is the auditory form of looking at the world. That is one thing this testifies to, for anyone a bit familiar with these matters. This suddenly became a physics class. Science is being driven against its will to become auditory, and it keeps kicking and refusing to acknowledge that, and therefore it does not understand the world. A large part of the problems in science today, in my humble opinion, come from the fact that as science advances it is forced to understand that there are auditory parts of reality. That there is such a thing as momentum—it is not only an abstraction. And since there is such a thing and I don’t know how to grasp it, then I don’t know—I get into all kinds of paradoxes.

The uncertainty principle, which says I cannot measure—cannot know—the position of a body and simultaneously also know its velocity. Why not? Very simple. It’s obvious—because a camera cannot grasp both position and velocity. We said this before, right? A movie camera cannot grasp both position and velocity, because it grasps only velocity, not position. But one needs to know that a camera does not give a full picture, and a movie camera also does not give a full picture. If you could look through both a camera and a movie camera, as it were simultaneously—I’m talking now about the intellect, not the eyes—then you could know both position and velocity together. Whenever you look with your eyes, that is the essence of Zeno’s paradox. When you look with your eyes, you will never know velocity, because the eyes grasp position. But you know the potential velocity—how do you hear it? What? You know its real velocity—you have to do it through differences. No, that’s not—that’s not true. Not true. No, that is certainly not true. The Doppler effect, for example, doesn’t work like that. That is obvious. As measurement, I can show you measurements that do not rely on differences. What is the Doppler effect? The Doppler effect sends a beam of light at something moving, like police radar, or a laser beam or a light beam, some electromagnetic wave, doesn’t matter right now. It returns to me at a slightly different frequency, and that frequency difference depends linearly on the velocity of the body it hits. Meaning, the change in frequency is some constant times the velocity of the body it hits, whatever. All right? Do you understand that such a measurement is not a differential measurement? The moment the body has a velocity, I know what it is. I’m cheating you a bit here, but in theory that’s correct.

But doesn’t that mean that if I define someone standing on a mountain, I’ll say he has velocity even if he is at rest, just because he is somewhere? What do you mean? The velocity is zero. What do you mean standing on a mountain? What do you mean? He has potential energy there; he can hear… No, that’s potential energy; that’s something else. I’m not talking about energy, I’m talking about momentum. Earlier too I wasn’t talking about kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is something else. I was talking about momentum. And according to this, we think, say, that right now we are moving at… I mean, I do have velocity relative to something, because on the one hand the earth is rotating and moving at I don’t know what speed, and I look at myself as a person at rest. Meaning, velocity is something relative to something. Exactly. Relative to the earth you are at rest. Relative to the sun you are… So that is exactly what I’m saying. Meaning, velocity is something relative to something—it must come relative to something, meaning that it is a differential thing. But not differences in my motion. No, not related at all. It’s not that there must be differences in my motion—it is relative to someone else. We are not talking about those differences. I’m saying: given a coordinate system whose origin you know, even then, in order to know velocity you need to take a difference—not a difference from the coordinate system, but the difference between two successive times in the body’s position. That is what I mean.

Fine, but for our purposes—what was the logical paradox we wrote, that there’s this logical paradox that if you divide things up then the body never actually moves from time to time? The body never changes place at a time point, that’s obvious. But the fact that it doesn’t change place doesn’t mean… From time to time? What’s the problem? That is exactly the point. Zeno’s mistake was to identify change of place with velocity. Zeno thought that if there is no change of place, then there is also no velocity. But that’s not true. At a time point, true, there is no change of place. At a time point that is obvious, and you cannot change place at one point of time. But that doesn’t mean there is no velocity at that time point. The result of the derivative function is a function defined on every point. When you calculate the velocity of a body, at every defined point there is a defined velocity. Velocity is not a quantity that exists only on a segment. It is a quantity that exists on a point as well. But how can that be if time equals zero? A lot of little segments like this where time equals… No, I’m not talking about dividing segments; I’m talking about descending to a point. If you keep dividing, you’ll go on infinitely and you’ll never reach a point. You’ll always get half of what you had before. A point is not half of what you had before. A point is something whose dimension is zero, not only whose length is zero. Understand? A line has dimension one; if you divide it all the way, you’ll get something with dimension one but length zero. That still isn’t a point. A point also has dimension zero. Therefore, you cannot reach a point by infinitely dividing a line. A point is a concept from another conceptual world entirely. And still there’s the paradox that you can’t pass from point to point. Why not? Points don’t create a line. Of course they do. In certain properties they do create a line. There are no gaps between those points, as it were. They stand right next to each other, supposedly. That’s a very naïve claim. Still there’s no, as it were, change of place. What does “change of place” mean? I’m telling you: the arrow was at a certain point in one place, and at a second point it was somewhere else. How did it get there? At every time you give me I’ll tell you at which point it stands. What do you mean? What’s the problem here? It simply moves. It just moves. It’s moving all the time. What do you mean, when does it move? That is exactly the point. At every moment when you call it standing, it is also moving. It does not change place—it moves. It has velocity. That is exactly the point. Of course it doesn’t move, because you can’t move on a point. What does that have to do with anything? On a point you can’t move. That is exactly the point—on a point you can only have velocity. You cannot move. And still—not when does it move, but when does it change place? But when does it change… Why is place itself a paradoxical question too? The question is paradoxical, not the answer. Because what do you mean? What are you expecting—a time point? At a time point you can’t change place. So when you ask me when it changes place, ask me on which interval. Fine, when does it change place? No problem. Fine. The question is not… the question is paradoxical, not the answer. There’s no problem with it at all; it’s not paradoxical at all.

Now look—you wanted earlier to claim something else, and that was the dispute between Bergson and Einstein. Bergson claimed that the Einsteinian conception of time is that time is made of infinitely many static points one next to the other, packed very densely. And Bergson argued that only the continuum exists. What about some combination of the two? Yes. I think maybe there are actually two times—at least two time axes in the world. Fine. If you feel that time flows—but you said by that that there are two time axes, right? What does it mean that time flows? Along which axis does it flow? Relative to which axis does it flow? Today you feel that time, as it were, continues, right? Time somehow passes from future to past. In space you don’t feel that dynamic quality. Right? There is some felt difference between time and space. But if you really believe that time flows, then you need to define what is the stationary axis relative to which it flows. Relative to some consciousness standing outside? Fine—but then consciousness means there is a static time axis. Anything that flows, flows along a time axis, right? What does it mean to flow? What does it mean to change? That at one moment it was thus, and at another moment it will be thus. But when you talk about time itself changing, then you have to define another time axis on the basis of which this time changes. You have to assume there are two time axes if you say time flows.

You can get to this from all sorts of directions, even halakhic ones—that there are two time axes. The axis of Sabbaths is different from the axis of weekdays. What? Now this is disconnected from reality. What? That’s exactly the point: it isn’t disconnected from reality. We need to look for it in reality too, not only in Jewish law. Huh? Spiritual reality. What do you mean spiritual? Explain a second—I’m talking here about time itself. “Since it was set aside at twilight…” The principle of “since it was set aside at twilight” turns the whole Sabbath into one unit of time. So you see that time on the Sabbath is not… not something flowing. It is something fixed. Meaning something static. This is the same Sabbath that was at creation of the world—is the Sabbath of today a different Sabbath? It is exactly the same Sabbath. There is a midrash that says that one who keeps one Sabbath, Scripture considers it as though he kept all the Sabbaths from creation until the coming of the Messiah. Why? Because it is exactly the same Sabbath. There are not two different Sabbaths. On the time axis of Sabbaths you are always at the same point. So how can it be different? Only on the time axis of weekdays is it different. Six weekdays simply passed in the meantime, so every six days you rise upward and meet that same point of time above, with that spiritual time that stands still. Then you go back down, move another six days along the lower time axis, and again rise up to that same point. But the lower axis means that Sabbath is a segment and not a point. No—the twenty-four hours of Sabbath are a segment on the lower axis, on the axis of days, where you also measure the weekdays, the six weekdays. But above it is a point. That’s “since it was set aside at twilight.” And if I make a loan on Sabbath? And that won’t count as interest? No, because interest is not determined by the axis of Sabbath but by the axis of weekdays. Fine, there are other practical ramifications of this, you understand? A minor who comes of age in the middle of the Sabbath—there are many ramifications. “Since it was set aside at twilight.” Fine, what can you do.

In any case, if we return to our subject, then we now see we’ve advanced one more step. Now we see that vision not only grasps both moving things and stationary things—it grasps only stationary things. When I grasp moving things, it is only interpolation that my mind makes between perceptions of rest. But vision is exactly the opposite of hearing. Vision grasps only stationary things. When vision grasps moving things—when I look at a moving body—I don’t really grasp its motion. My mind or my intellect just performs some calculation on the data: it was here before and then here and then here, and I create in my head some awareness, some imaginary movie. But when I see, I see a collection of snapshots, yes, like in cinema. All right? I think that is one of the problems with silent film, by the way. Silent film gives a certain feeling—have any of you seen a silent film? Anyone? Huh? Charlie Chaplin, the early ones, yes. There is some basic problem in silent film beyond the fact that part of reality is missing. It’s not only that part of reality is missing, in my opinion. It’s beyond that. The point is that when you only see, you actually don’t grasp the… the living thing. You grasp it dead here and then dead here and then dead here. The only thing that can grasp its very aliveness—not create an interpolation of life, but grasp the very fact that the thing acts, not some indirect indications that it acts. It was here before and then moved there, so apparently it moved, apparently we’re talking about a living person. It’s not a corpse that was first lying here and then there. But that is an operation of the intellect. When can you see that it moves, or sense it? Not see, but grasp it with the senses that it moves? Only in the ear.

Maybe because it’s not just an experience—it’s not that the person grasping it, it’s a much more personal experience? Between one person and another, the silence before something you’re not… maybe that’s actually what makes you more inward and less… that’s on the experiential plane; I’m talking now on the level of perception. We are talking now about seeing and hearing as metaphors. That enters much more deeply, and then it becomes a much stronger sensory experience. Experience—but again I’m saying, right now I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the metaphors, not their meanings. The metaphors are seeing versus hearing. What seeing does as opposed to what hearing does. Their meanings are something else. We already said once that an auditory perception can be through the eyes; that’s not the issue. Right now I’m defining only the metaphors. Their meaning—you’re right—that belongs in the realm of experience. It is certainly possible that specifically with the eyes I will create an auditory experience. And why do I call that experience auditory at all? Because hearing is what is responsible for the sensory perception of it.

And hearing means to grasp the thing acting in itself, not to infer that it acts, not to infer that it is alive. When I see a person and hear nothing, and I see him moving from place to place, I can only infer that he is alive. I do not grasp that he is alive. But when I hear him—his movement, his speech—then it isn’t an inference; then it’s clear. I hear him acting. I grasp the action itself. If the ear is a movie camera, then the eyes are a camera and the ear is a movie camera. And someone who grasps only that what is in the eyes is what exists—that person gets tangled in all of Zeno’s paradoxes. He is Greek. He thinks there is no such thing as reality; there are only changes of place, and reality is an abstraction. It’s some fictional concept we invented because it is mathematically convenient for us to describe the world in terms of such concepts, but that is not true. The concept of velocity is a real concept, and we define it in a forced way because our perception really is a perception of cameras, and we define it through all kinds of differences. But the proof is that at the end of the calculation we get velocity at a point. There is such a concept as velocity at a point, not only on an interval.

So basically, a static thing is a dead thing, a resting thing. The life of something is expressed in its moving, and our ability to grasp the life of something is by means of the ear. Because the moving thing makes sounds. To grasp with the eyes that it moves is not to grasp the life; it is to infer the existence of life. That is exactly how Greeks infer the existence of motion. A Greek who cannot grasp life itself but only what appears of life, the visual thing, can only infer—perhaps in some primeval way—that there is such a thing as life, but he doesn’t grasp it; he has no unmediated experience of the thing itself. All right? I think that is what he means when he uses these metaphors.

Obviously, in a static world where there are no forces acting behind the staticity you see, in a visual, formal world behind which there is no active force—in our example, say—in a world where there are changes of place but behind them no velocity. The body has no property really existing in it that causes it to change place; the body just changes place. I know it changes place—fine, so it apparently stands in many places. That’s how, in an extreme formulation, a radical Greek formulation, I would call it. The body doesn’t move; it merely stands in many places. Right? Then you basically grasp the world you see with no force enlivening it behind it. Velocity is like the energy, the force that enlivens it behind the scenes, and in our eyes it appears as changes of place. But behind that there is an active logos, not a resting logos. A living logos. Do you understand? For the Greek, behind it there is nothing—only what is seen. Everything else is fiction. So it’s dead. There is nothing acting.

What about speech? In speech you don’t see anything, you feel something like that. What would Zeno say about spirit—who knows, because try understanding how he can say there is no motion. Zeno took Greekness in the most extreme way. He really claimed that what we see is nonsense and there is no such thing as motion. Don’t they say there is wind speed and all that? Huh? There is no speed at all, there is no motion at all—not only not for wind, none at all. According to Zeno. Yes. So that is the extreme expression of Greekness.

Look, when I describe two extreme models, you need to understand: there are almost no people who are completely here or completely there. We are describing two imaginary figures so that we understand between what and what the play occurs. The Greeks are those closer to this side, and the Jews are those closer to that side. Jews too grasp certain things visually. I’m not talking post factum; a Jewish conception always relates to visuality—it just doesn’t relate only to visuality. That’s the point, do you understand? The question is the proportions, and that determines where you are on this axis between the two poles—whether you’re closer here or closer there. You can’t take it fully to the end and say: fine, I really can’t understand what was in this one’s head, and so on. Don’t take it all the way. He didn’t literally hold that what I don’t see doesn’t exist. Then he says things that I just can’t understand at all—what does it mean there is no motion? What do you mean there is no motion? And what my eyes see—what is that? Just nonsense? Does this lead to idealism, or what exactly does he mean? It’s simply not clear to me what he even means. Fine, these are somewhat extreme formulations.

So you understand that if there is no acting force, if the logos is mute—it isn’t alive—like the Alexandrians added, right? The Alexandrians added a living logos behind the mute, Platonic logos. That is what we saw in the previous sections. When the logos is mute there also cannot be creation. You understand why the Greeks think the world is eternal? Because if there is nothing acting behind the world, everything rests, then what was is what will be. There is just this kind of copying, like seal and imprint. What is above is some static world of ideas, and this world is some kind of imprint, meaning some copy of what is above. No essential change in time can exist in such a conception. Therefore the Greek conception of the world’s eternity is essential to their conception; it isn’t by chance a common view among the Greeks—it is something essential. Greeks who grasp everything as static cannot grasp creation. Creation is possible only if you understand that behind the reality you see there is something alive that activates it. Then of course it can also create it—before it was not, and now it created it. And it is something that acts, not only something that exists. It is also something that acts. That is the active logos he keeps talking about. It’s not ideas. Even if the Platonic world of ideas exists, that changes nothing; the world is still eternal, because that too is something resting, existing but resting. So what does that help me?

But let’s say creation—what does that mean? That there is energy and movement. That still doesn’t mean it must be necessary, right? I mean it’s a necessary condition, but not sufficient for a conception of creation—the conception of an active logos. But again, it isn’t certain—there’s something very… once you speak of an active logos, you are speaking of some sort of renewal every time, as if every time you see something new before your eyes and not the same thing as before. Yes, but that doesn’t mean there was once nothing and now there is everything. Not necessarily. There could have been changes all the time, or there could have been perpetual creation ex nihilo. Fine, you’re saying that in a certain sense every change is creation from nothing—but that too is a Greek conception, you should know. Because what does the Greek say? The Greek says there is no difference—and in modern physics this is very common. In modern field theory they describe the motion of a particle—this is a very interesting point—as being annihilated here and created there. It doesn’t move from here to here. It is annihilated here and created here. A kind of from-nothing conception like that—nothing moves at all. It is annihilated here and created there. Do you understand? Think of a cursor on a computer, right? You know that little point on the computer, when you move it with the arrow key? So it moves. Nothing there moves. It goes dark here and lights up there, dark here and lights up there, right? There are squares on the screen and they light up consecutively from left to right; that cursor doesn’t move. Nothing there moves. So the Greeks—or modern physicists, who are also Greeks in their outlook—grasp the whole world that way. Every movement is like that. You die here and are created there. You don’t move.

So in that sense indeed every motion is creation from nothing, as you said earlier. But one who grasps that the thing also has continuous existence, only changing characterization—that is much less creation from nothing. It is creation from nothing of the form, not of the thing itself, of its form. All right? Therefore the conception that every creation is from nothing is also a Greek conception. But creation in the full sense is not some side issue. What? It depends what you call matter. If the Holy One, blessed be He, is the matter, then you’re right—all creation is really some place of His withdrawal, His self-limitation, or giving form to Him. But I’m speaking in the concepts of our matter today, not in concepts of divinity. What we grasp as matter and form, to whatever extent we grasp that.

So—this was the introduction regarding the metaphors of seeing and hearing. And today we also understood that the difference between seeing and hearing is also the difference between grasping the pulsing, living, active thing, versus grasping mere existence, the static thing, the fact that it exists, not the fact that it acts. It could even be dead. The indication that a person is alive is that he moves, right? A dead person is precisely one who doesn’t move. Yes, that’s exactly the most obvious characterization of a person who… a person who doesn’t move. To grasp moving things is to grasp them as alive. To grasp standing things is to grasp them as dead. Therefore vision is, in some sense, at rest. A mute world is a world of contemplation. And a world of listening, of hearing, is to grasp a living world. And to grasp that behind it there are at least living forces at work. The law of nature is grasped as a noun, as something acting, as something existing, not as some abstraction of ours that merely describes a collection of resting states that we compare. If that were the case, then the law of nature, according to the modern physicist or the ancient Greek, says that after such a state comes such a state. Not that from such a state such a state is produced, but that after such a state comes such a state. There are rules of correlation. There is no mechanism at all. It isn’t the same thing. It isn’t the development of one thing, because there is nothing acting. The laws of nature are our abstractions. By contrast, to conceive the laws of nature as something real is basically to grasp the laws of nature as something acting on that reality all the time, only changing it according to certain rules. But the laws of nature are not an abstraction. We may arrive at them by abstraction, but once we have reached them—once we have reached the law of nature itself—then it represents a real reality, assuming we reached the true law. All right? And if not, then we reached some approximation of it. But if we grasp it fully, there is something real there. All right?

The connection he makes is basically the connection between life and death on the one hand, and auditory and visual, stationary and mobile, on the other. Right? That is basically what we’ve explained until now. He claims here in a few places in the passage that the good virtues, for the Greeks too, are a kind of beauty. They connect the good virtues with beauty. And beauty, of course, describes visual contemplation. Right? It’s not accidental that the Greeks emphasized beauty, visual art, physical development. These were things very, very developed in ancient Greece. Because for them it was very important how things look. Meaning, beauty is a concept visual in its essence. I mean Hellenic beauty. There is another kind of beauty, which people often call Platonic beauty. But according to the monk’s conception, Platonism too is a kind of Greekness, only more refined. It too is a kind of Greekness. What is Jewish beauty? That is another question already. There is Jewish beauty too, which is something else; maybe we’ll still talk about that.

Beauty is basically visual perception. And visual perception, perhaps one could call it in some way, is a perception of comparison. When you say that a certain thing is beautiful, then generally the concept of aesthetic beauty—I think it is, I don’t know, maybe even always; I don’t want to be too extreme in the formulation, I’m not sure—but it seems to me that in all the cases I can think of, when I say a certain thing is beautiful, that means there is some fit between one thing and another. That there is some harmony between something and something. There is no thing that is beautiful in itself. Meaning, beautiful in itself—when you say of a picture that it is beautiful in itself, regardless of the background in which it stands, never mind—that means there is a fit between the inner parts of the picture and one another. But beauty always expresses some fit between one thing and another. Beauty is fit. What? In relation to color. I didn’t address that example. So then nature is not… I’m not relating to it as the thing itself. Yes, yes, actually yes. I don’t know, I don’t know. We’d have to think whether that’s true in all cases, but in many cases it is. We’re out of time. Fine, so let’s leave that for next time—we’ll continue next time.