The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 20

Table of Contents

• The foundations of beauty: Plato, Plotinus, and Don Yehuda Abravanel
• The two dimensions of beauty as fittingness, and the instrumentality of beauty and goodness
• Charity, kindness, mercy, and the debate over the reason for an action
• “The good essence and the one beauty”: Plotinus, ecstasy, and the critique of visual-theoretical contemplation
• Seeing ideas versus conceptual abstraction: how do we know the “ideal horse”
• Ecstasy versus progress: the Lithuanian approach, knowledge that remains, and the modern search for spirituality
• “Show me, please, Your glory,” seeing God, and the Rashba on visual thought
• Moving from “seeing” to “hearing”: beauty itself, not a “beautiful horse”

Summary

General overview

The text describes the development of conceptions of beauty from Plato through Plotinus to Don Yehuda Abravanel, and sets against them a critique according to which, even when these approaches move closer to inwardness, they ultimately remain visual-theoretical conceptions. It sharpens the point that for Plato beauty is measured by the degree of a thing’s closeness to its idea, and that the two central criteria of beauty—harmony among parts and expression—are in practice different forms of fittingness. From there a broader clarification emerges about instrumentality: are beauty and goodness values in themselves, or are they measures and tools for attaining some goal? The discussion continues into the question of commandments and kindness, between pragmatism and acting simply “because that’s what one ought to do.” In the end, the text proposes a shift from “seeing” to “hearing” as a metaphor for a deeper Jewish conception: not getting stuck in images and visual ideas, but listening to the abstract concept of beauty itself and exercising thoughtful, non-pictorial judgment.

The foundations of beauty: Plato, Plotinus, and Don Yehuda Abravanel

For Plato, beauty rests on two parameters: fittingness among parts and the expression of something that lies behind the work. Plotinus places greater emphasis on the side of expression. In the Platonic-Neoplatonic system, this world is an inferior imitation of the source, and the criterion of beauty is the distance of the thing from its idea. This conception is described as a visual one even when it is directed toward “inwardness,” and it is still called a refined Greek-pagan conception rather than a “hearing” one.

Don Yehuda Abravanel basically accepts the structure of the idea and the copied world, but adds the “beautifier” who creates the world out of the idea, so that a structure emerges of beauty, beautifier, and beautified. This addition parallels what was described in section 8 regarding the integration of the Logos into the world of ideas among the Alexandrians, the Stoics, and the Platonic Academy, out of the claim that Jewish thought returns in different contexts but always adds its own shade of meaning. The Logos is described as a living law and not a static one, one that establishes even the ideas themselves, unlike Plato, for whom the ideas are “the final thing.”

The two dimensions of beauty as fittingness, and the instrumentality of beauty and goodness

The two kinds of beauty—expression and harmony—are presented as two forms of fittingness: harmony is fittingness among parts, and expression is fittingness to the idea that the thing expresses. From here comes the assumption that beauty is instrumental, something that serves a purpose, and not something that stands on its own. The same structure is applied to goodness: a good act is an act that fits the idea of the good and comes to achieve something, and so goodness too is understood as a means of drawing close to an idea or a goal.

The text raises the question whether there is an “idea of beauty” as an essential value, or whether beauty is only a measure for testing closeness to an idea and not an idea in its own right. It distinguishes between “types of beauty” with different criteria and “the concept of beauty itself” that is shared by all of them, and argues that when beauty is defined only as a measure, it becomes sharply instrumental. Later it is claimed that goodness can be understood functionally, in the modern sense, as contributing to order, wholeness, happiness, and the reduction of suffering, and then goodness itself becomes a derivative rather than a basic concept. This is contrasted with a religious-metaphysical position according to which the world is “more corrected” because it is conducted according to values of goodness.

Charity, kindness, mercy, and the debate over the reason for an action

The text illustrates the tension between pragmatism and intrinsic value through charity and kindness, and cites the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Turnus Rufus: if the Holy One, blessed be He, loves the poor, why does He not provide for them? Rabbi Akiva answers that it is “in order that through them we may be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom,” or in another formulation, not because of Torah and commandments alone but in order to grant merit through them to people. From here it is learned that the commandment to give charity is not only in order to make the poor person rich, but that the act is good in itself. Pragmatism is described as an approach according to which, if there are no poor people, there is no reason for charity—up to the extreme image of searching for poor people in order to fulfill gifts to the needy.

Also described is the possibility of an act that is not done in order to improve the recipient’s condition, but simply “because it needs to be done,” and the poor person becomes the “excuse” through whom one can perform the commandment. A practical difficulty emerges: how can one live the combination of genuine compassion for the poor person together with fulfilling a commandment as obedience to a command, and how can there be “two sufficient reasons” for one and the same act? The text defines kindness as giving without mercy and without an inner feeling of lack, and mercy as an action in which there is self-repair and the closing of an emotional lack, adding that mercy is a mixture of kindness and judgment.

“The good essence and the one beauty”: Plotinus, ecstasy, and the critique of visual-theoretical contemplation

A passage is quoted describing “the good essence and the one beauty” toward which the soul yearns with the thirst of love, stripping off its “garments of lowliness,” and opening within itself a “divine inner eye,” as a supreme ideal cognition. A statement from Plotinus in Arabic is brought—“the believer rises above sight”—together with a description of divesting oneself of the sensory and “hearing a voice from above,” yet it is argued that this still remains a “subtle ideality of contemplative, observational thought.” Ecstasy is described as an experience of union with the One, and it is even mentioned that biographers of Plotinus report that he had this kind of ecstasy four times, but even here it is stressed that this is often an experience that remains within the domain of imaginative seeing.

The text also illustrates visual-ecstatic experiences outside the Jewish world through a story about a psychologist who lived among a tribe in Bolivia, a hallucinogenic plant that causes everyone to see “the same thing,” and a description that they saw “visions of the chariot.” It is determined that even when the seeing is not with the eyes but with the imaginative faculty, it is still viewing, whereas study of the chariot in the writings of the Ari is “attainment” and not a spectacle. The relation between prophecy and imagination is also discussed, with a quotation from Maimonides, “No two prophets prophesy in one style,” and a distinction between a shared structure of perception and the form of image and description that changes from prophet to prophet, together with a note on the uniqueness of Moses our teacher’s prophecy as more abstract and less ecstatic.

Seeing ideas versus conceptual abstraction: how do we know the “ideal horse”

The question is raised: how can one measure beauty by comparison to an idea if we have never actually “seen” an ideal horse? It is suggested that the idea may be grasped as the result of a process of abstraction from particulars, and not as an image that is literally observed, and therefore the seemingly simple criterion hides the difficulty within the concept of the idea itself. One possibility is suggested, that an ecstatic state allows one to “see” ideas if they really exist in Plato’s sense; this is contrasted with an intellectual path that analyzes from concrete cases what the idea must be, without any imaginative seeing.

The text argues that even the conception of “the absolute beautiful, the absolute good, and the absolute true” as one in Plato remains couched in visual categories and is therefore a refined form of idolatry. It suggests that there is a way to relate to ideas in an auditory rather than visual mode, and says that this will be discussed further on.

Ecstasy versus progress: the Lithuanian approach, knowledge that remains, and the modern search for spirituality

Ecstasy is described as a momentary departure from the world and then a return, whereas non-ecstatic progress is described as a gradual, steady, and sometimes frustrating process, in which a person advances without feeling a dramatic “jump.” It is argued that in a study hall in the style of the Lithuanian world, “here only the intellect works,” and someone looking for ecstasies will not find his place there. The point is emphasized that real progress is the acquisition of knowledge and understanding that remain even after the experience passes, and the Lithuanian emotion is described as a different kind of emotion, connected to immersion in study and not to outbursts.

The text links today’s search for spiritual experiences to a lack of reasoned values as things of worth in themselves, and to the absence of objective truths, arguing that when everything is subjective, “there is nowhere to advance to” except by way of more mystical experiences. By contrast, if what is learned is truth and not merely a means to attain happiness, the inner world expands and the person progresses in an essential sense. An example is brought that commandments such as redeeming the firstborn donkey are not measured by social usefulness, but as intrinsic value that adds “one more value” to a person’s world.

“Show me, please, Your glory,” seeing God, and the Rashba on visual thought

The verse is cited about Moses’ request, “Show me, please, Your glory,” and the answer, “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen,” and it is said that the language of back and face is speaking in the terms of someone who wants to see, even though the true apprehension of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not through ideas and philosophical speculation. A dispute between the Rashba and Tosafot is brought regarding mental reflection: the Rashba explains that the Talmud’s attempt to derive both that mental reflection alone is sufficient and that this can be done in any language from the same word is really one derivation, because reflection is not linguistic but visual, and therefore it is not dependent on the holy tongue. Tosafot, by contrast, assumes the possibility of verbal thought, and the passage about thinking words of Torah in unclean places is also mentioned, together with the distinction between the holy tongue and other languages.

The text uses this to sharpen the point that even an “inner eye” of higher attainment may still remain within the category of seeing, and therefore even abstract ideas may be grasped as theoretical pictures. From here comes the need to move to a further stage that is not visual.

Moving from “seeing” to “hearing”: beauty itself, not a “beautiful horse”

The text proposes that in order to move beyond visual contemplation one has to change the object of reference: not the idea of a perfect horse or a perfect table, but “the concept of beauty itself,” which is shared by all forms of beauty. The concept of beauty itself is not something one can see even in imagination, and therefore it requires a kind of thinking that is not pictorial. This is called “hearing the concept of beauty” rather than seeing beauty. In this context, a Jewish aspiration is described—to penetrate “beyond the ideas” and listen to what is within them, so that judgment about beauty is not made by comparing images but by an intelligent comparison of the concrete thing to the abstract concept.

Within this discussion there is another mention of the tendency of Jewish Neoplatonists in the Renaissance, including Don Yitzhak Abravanel, to see Plato as one who received divine wisdom, even as a disciple of Moses. A remark is also brought about Rabbi Azariah min HaAdumim, who wanted to argue that for Plato too even prime matter was created, and that creation is the impressing of form upon primeval matter “like a seal upon wax.” The text explains that a static world of ideas has difficulty containing the concept of creation, whereas a conception of ideas as living forces and as more inward concepts allows for process, becoming, and the application of the abstract within the concrete. The practical conclusion is that the judgment “did this table come out beautifully?” is made by listening to the concept of beauty and not by seeing an idea of a table, and this is presented as a Jewish form of the perception of beauty.

Last time, on the foundations of aesthetics from the Rabbi’s letter, we really saw the development from the Platonic method through Plotinus and Don Yehuda Abravanel. And basically, in aesthetics you could say that with Plato two parameters of beauty were at work and got mixed together. One of them is the parameter of fit between parts, and the second is expression—that is, something that lies behind the work of art or the artistic poem. Plotinus emphasized more the second side, and really focused more on the issue of expression. And we talked a bit about how, in both the Platonic approach and Plotinus the Neoplatonist, the world is basically a world of an inferior image, as we saw—in this world, which is some kind of imitation that is generally less successful than the original insofar as it is an imitation. And in fact his criterion for beauty is the distance of the thing from its idea. That is his criterion for beauty. And again, as we saw several times, this conception itself is still a visual conception. Even someone who compares the thing to its idea, which seemingly is already listening to something inner, still, all along here, the Nazir keeps saying why Plato is indeed closer than Aristotle to a listening-oriented conception, but it still isn’t that. It is still subtle idolatry, as he writes there in several places. So this really is still a visual conception, still a Greek, idolatrous conception and not a listening-oriented conception. And his emphasis on how this happens—we basically finished that last time—is through the addition of Don Yehuda Abravanel. Don Yehuda Abravanel’s conception in fact accepts in principle this idea that there is an idea and there is a copied world, and beauty is derived from the question of how much the world resembles the idea, but he adds another piece into this worldview—and that is the beautifier, the one who creates the world out of the idea. That is, there is beauty, there is one who beautifies, and there is what is beautified. And that parallels very much what we saw in section 8, where the world of ideas and the logos appeared. He writes there about the Alexandrians and the Stoics and the Platonic Academy and the Stoa, who compose the world of ideas in the logos. There too we saw exactly the same phenomenon, just in another context. And that is his goal: to show that Jewish thought basically repeats itself in different contexts each time, but always adds its own shade to whatever environment it operates in. In that context they add the logos to the world of ideas. Because the world of ideas too is not the final thing; behind the ideas there is also some law that constitutes the ideas, and that law is a living law, not static like the ideas themselves. With Plato, the final thing is the ideas. Don Yehuda Abravanel too in fact added to Plato’s picture of beauty something beyond the idea, and that is the beautifier. And with that we can summarize—we basically finished section 9 here, and now let’s start reading section 11. But before that, a comment that I don’t remember whether I managed to say: the two forms of beauty, both the beauty of expression and the beauty of fit between parts—harmony—these two criteria for beauty are both, in some sense, criteria of correspondence. Even the criterion of expression is a correspondence to some idea that the thing expresses. So it isn’t a correspondence between the right half and the left half. Therefore beauty is basically a measure of dimensions of correspondence. Both of them, both dimensions of beauty. And somehow that assumes that beauty is basically an instrumental thing. That is, it’s not something that stands on its own; it’s something intended for something else. We talked about this before, in the context of good, of value, of values of good. What is good? And what is a good act? A good act is an act that fits some idea of good, of how one ought to act in some theoretical world of ideas. There too there is some sort of correspondence. But basically what is assumed here is that the goodness of the act comes to achieve something. And therefore it is good—it comes to be like the idea of the good. So in practice this is an instrumental conception, a conception according to which it is a means and not an end—beauty and goodness. If beauty to some degree reflects some sort of correspondence, then maybe—there is a very big point here. The question is whether there is an idea of beauty there, or whether the idea of beauty serves only as a mediator. Meaning, if we say that there is such a thing as beauty in itself, meaning that beauty is actually the beauty of the idea, then there is an idea called beauty located somewhere up there, and apparently there is one, and all matters of beauty strive to resemble that idea, just like all the ideas that exist. But if there is—there are two kinds of ideas and one has to distinguish between them. If we speak now not about that idea. There is a certain criterion, there are several criteria for beauty. Several things are beautiful. Even the theoretical criteria are several; they are not one. There are different kinds of beauty, all of which come under the heading of beauty. Each one has some abstract measure of its own in the world of ideas, and I check this thing according to how well it corresponds to what came before. The concept of beauty itself—not beauty of this type or beauty of that type, which also exists, but beauty itself, what they all share—that is something else. We are not talking about that. I understand that this gives up the first side, that there is such a thing as essential beauty. When the Rabbi says that beauty is only some kind of means, he means that beauty is only some kind of tool, a gauge for checking how close the thing is to the idea. Meaning, it is not a thing in itself. It is not an idea in itself either. Again, that’s what I’m saying: everything here is instrumental. Meaning, it’s some sort of gauge, not something that stands on its own, just a measure of how close you are to the idea. So that is very different from good. It’s very different from good. In good too there is such a conception. Maybe that’s less pragmatism. Everything here is instrumentality of the good as well. Fine, maybe. No, you don’t have to agree. But the point is that exactly as with beauty, so too with good there are instrumental conceptions. With good too there is the question of how far the good is, how close it is to the goal you want to achieve by means of the good act. But with good there is some content; with beauty there doesn’t have to be content. Beauty, according to this conception, can exist without any content at all. No content there. Like good. There too there is no content. Right. That is the modern conception that says that acts are good if they contribute to the world functioning more—not that I want to use the word good—but more as it ought to be, maybe on the moral level. If that moral level still isn’t enough, then let’s say that good acts are acts that help the world function in a more proper way. More orderly. More whole. Don’t use the term good to define what good is. Happier? Happier, you can call it that. But everything here is functional. Fine, so what comes out is that there is no real content to good. Good means the degree to which it serves my purpose, that is, how close it is to the state in which I want it in the most perfect way. Fine, okay, but that has nothing to do with the Greek outlook. The Greeks certainly did not think like that. Why? The thought that these views of beauty are parallel conceptions—the Greeks and the Lithuanians, for argument’s sake. Never mind. The thought is to reach some state that is relative—not really relative, no, something relative where basically there is no such thing as good. Good is just a name for saying how much I want something to happen, because the world simply operates in a more perfect way. Less suffering. As much happiness and as little suffering as possible. That is the definition of what good is. If indeed the concept of good in itself does not exist, then that means that good acts are good because they lead to some pragmatic goal, not because one simply ought to be good. The metaphysician says, why is it good? Or the religious person—why is it good? So that the world will be more repaired. It is true that the world will be more repaired, but it’s the other way around. The world becomes more repaired because it is conducted according to values of good, and therefore the world is more repaired. And you are saying the opposite. Good is not a basic concept; good is a derivative concept. Here too, beauty doesn’t really exist; there are ideas, and the degree to which you are close to the idea, the degree to which you are close to the beautiful plastic structure. That goal is not only on the side of structure—I think maybe this can clarify the structure. One can understand kindness, the need to do kindness, in order that there not be poor people in the world, that there not be sufferers in the world. One can understand the need to do kindness because this is a desirable mode of activity in itself in the world. A person ought to engage in acts of kindness in order to do good. And that is like the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Turnus Rufus the Wicked, who asks: if the Holy One, blessed be He, loves the poor, why doesn’t He sustain them? Why didn’t He make them rich? After all, He commanded us—if He loves fish He gives to Himself. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create them poor if He loves them so much? And Rabbi Akiva says to him that this is in order to save us from the judgment of Gehinnom, or rather to bring merit to people through them. Meaning, the fact that we were commanded to give charity is not in order that the poor person become rich, because the Holy One, blessed be He, could make him rich by Himself. We were commanded because this act is good in itself, not because it makes the poor person rich. Rather, the act itself is good in itself. All right? Because otherwise the act is pragmatic. The pragmatist talks about giving charity so that there should not be poor people. If there are no poor people, there is no reason to give charity. I’ll go looking for poor people; maybe I’ll even produce them so that I can give them charity. And charity is like the Lithuanians who look for all kinds of poor people and orphans and widows so there will be someone to whom they can give gifts to the poor on Purim, which is a little strange. And that is exactly a conception that is, of course, extreme, but that is exactly it. It is the greatest anti-pragmatic conception there can be. I don’t care about the poor. The poor are the wheat on which I can perform the commandment of gifts to the poor. It’s very extreme, but it’s a good story. I’m saying that clearly both things are true, but this thing is also true. And there’s the myth that only this thing is true, among the classic Lithuanians. The extreme case. If we ask a Lithuanian what this belongs to—there is a well-known story about Rabbi Yisrael Isserlein, may the memory of the righteous and holy be blessed, author of Terumat HaDeshen, whether the story is true or not. He had some companion there. How did he merit the World to Come? He was walking in the desert with another man, and they had one flask of water. You know the dispute between Ben Petora and Rabbi Akiva: one says they should both drink, and the other says that only one should drink—your life takes precedence over your fellow’s life. What did Rabbi Yisrael Isserlein do? He did the opposite of both of them: he gave the flask to the other so only he would drink. What? He did the opposite of Ben Petora and the opposite of Rabbi Akiva. He did the opposite of both—gave the flask—and so he was led to Gehinnom? Because he did not rule according to Jewish law. These are the methods we saw here. And the third method, which is that of that Lithuanian who was mentioned here earlier. What did he say? What was in that approach? And the pious man, of course, says to himself that this is beneficence from the side of Gehinnom. That is, the Gehinnom that every creature can endure, by way of His kindness. And that is Gehinnom. And the question is whether beneficence is not in order to save him, and not for any purpose at all, but rather because there is a Jewish law that is absolute. And that is beneficence. And one who said in Heaven they will bless you in cash, or in Heaven they will bless you—which may sound a bit strange, but it exists there in Heaven in some sense. A person acts in Heaven within some context. Even if this is Israel we are talking about, that same Lithuanian—did the Lithuanian ask whether he has that standing? Here, clearly this Lithuanianism contains things that are strange within Judaism. That is, we are taking it to absurdity within an extreme approach. But certainly there is an important element like this within Jewish thought. There is a conception here that acts are not done in order to benefit. Acts are done because they have to be done. That’s all. Not in order to benefit, meaning not in order to improve the situation of the beneficiary, let’s put it that way. Rather, in order to benefit because that is what has to be done, that’s all. That is, the fact that there is a beneficiary is not an indication that one ought to benefit; it is a reason. The beneficence is to benefit the beneficiary. Right, and that is the definition of an act of beneficence: there is a beneficiary upon whom the act of beneficence falls as my obligation. And therefore I am bound—defined—and therefore I am bound. But the question of why I do this act—that is not in order to improve the poor person’s condition, but because I am commanded to benefit. And this poor person is the excuse. How else am I going to do that here? One can explain—again, I’m not going into fields now—that there are two things here. On the one hand, the social standing—one cannot understand how not to give charity. How can these two things really be seen together? It’s truly a difficult question. How can these two things be seen together? On the one hand there is an act of beneficence in itself, and on the other hand you care terribly about the poor person. If you care terribly about the poor person, then you are doing it for the sake of the charitable act, not because you are commanded and standing under command. The act of beneficence is to feel compassion for the poor person. So then it’s not because of the commandment—so what is going on here? The truth is, a bit of both. Right, a bit of both. The poor person is a reason for beneficence. And that is what Rabbi Akiva comes to teach here. That’s not right. He gives charity in order to benefit, in order to improve the moral standing of the person. But a person improves his moral standing not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded him, not because it says so in the Shulchan Arukh and therefore I do it. It is not something that improves my morality. To improve morality—here, here is the whole point—the Lithuanian approach here is not the extreme one of the pious person altogether. You are saying that the person acts, and this action makes the person. If he does it—but why? Not so that the poor person enjoy it, but in order to improve your character traits. And how do you improve your character traits? By caring that the poor person lacks something. By caring—it doesn’t matter if because I care. And that is what he is trying here. And that is basically it. No, I am now reading the Lithuanian approach. How can one live like that? That is the hard question. To live the opposite—meaning, it’s not entirely the opposite, but a combination of the two things. The Torah demands of you both of these things. Compassion for the poor person is, in some fashion, the commandment. That is, clearly if you are a person without mercy, then you are not fully keeping the commandment. The question is who is right? And how exactly do we establish these things? And how can a person say there have to be two reasons every time one does an act? Both because I pity the person and because—there are two reasons. One reason is something which in itself is enough to generate the act as a reason. The question is whether it is necessary. But it is certainly sufficient. Why can’t there be two sufficient reasons? There can’t be two reasons each of which is sufficient on its own? No, no, no. Each one by itself is sufficient. What then is the result of there being another one—how can it be that both… But the question is, how can it be? If feeling compassion is enough to do the act, then now why am I doing it? Because I feel compassion. So if the feeling is sufficient, then where does the command come into this thing? The question is how one can actually live this, not theoretically how it can be. You understand—the problem is not in the philosophical category but on the practical plane. How can one really act like that? How can there be compassion or not? If I have developed the capacity for compassion, then I am actually preventing myself from doing it because of the command. Because all in all compassion is a sufficient condition for me to give the charity, if it indeed exists in the person. The question is how to live this. In any case, in principle it seems to me this is kindness and mercy in practice, if we take the pure concepts. Kindness is really a state in which you feel no mercy at all. You give because one has to give. That is called kindness. Real kindness. When you give because one has to give. Not because it is pity, not because it interests you. If you give out of pity, then you give in order to close some lack within yourself. You have some deficiency that expresses itself in your feeling of mercy toward someone. When you give, you are really closing some lack within yourself. That is work on yourself. That is called mercy. Kindness is not like that. Kindness is to give because one has to give, without my feeling that something is lacking in me if I do not give, feeling bad because I did not give. And maybe that is the greatest thing in it. Mercy is a mixture of kindness and judgment. We won’t spell that out; you are adding another layer. Okay, let’s continue. Fine, I’m continuing from section 13. The one good essence and beauty, toward which the soul longs in expectation and thirst, in love and with the strength of memory, with the love of ancient times, like one entering the Holy of Holies and hidden chambers, purifies himself and removes his garments, she removes the garments of lowliness foreign to God that enclose the flesh, and an inner divine eye is opened. And this will be the final ideal true supreme cognition. The one supreme essence in beauty and purity to the eye of the beautiful supreme soul. And he doesn’t stop there; he adds another little paragraph from the marvelous visions of the previous lines. And all this is very impressive and seems very unique, but he tells you that this is contemplative. Still, one should note here too—a sentence from Plotinus in Arabic: belief rises above sight. This continues Plotinus’s method. At times it rises above sight in its elevation, because one must divest oneself of sensory things and hear a voice from above. He uses the language of hearing when speaking about theory. The vision in the Holy of Holies perhaps means contemplation. And behold, from sight to another kind of sight—ecstasy, to unite with Him, which in sacred matters is called sight. But he immediately adds that the sages among the prophets hint at how one contemplates the infinite. In the end this is still a subtle contemplative visual ideality. So there is here a conception that comes closer and closer to the contemplative conception, but the Nazir still leaves us—brings us back to the point. This is still contemplative. It’s subtle contemplation, but it is contemplation. And the question is exactly how to understand these things, and we have already discussed that more than once. He speaks about ecstasy. Belief and another kind of sight—ecstasy. Ecstasy is what we would perhaps call a religious experience on the emotional plane, let’s say, and not only on the intellectual plane. That is ecstasy. Meaning, to feel some sort of experience, not just a cold intellectual apprehension. Now this ecstasy—I don’t know if this is always so, but it seems to me that here he is speaking about this kind of ecstasy. Down here he brings that the writers of Plotinus’s biography tell that he had four times in which he experienced ecstasy, to unite with the One. In any event, when you are in an ecstatic state it means that you leave your world of concepts; the question is what you enter. Usually ecstasy is defined by the fact that you have left your world of concepts. Now the only question is what you entered. Many times—I don’t know if always, but at least often—you see all kinds of visions. In biblical prophecy too, prophecy is often perceived as some sort of ecstatic state, especially among non-Jews, where you see all kinds of visions and prophetic scenes. That is called an ecstatic state. But notice, there too one sees visions. Meaning, you see some picture, you see imaginings that rise up in some world you are not used to seeing. But you are still seeing. And what operates here is your faculty of imagination. And therefore this is still subtle contemplation. True, it is not this simple external world that we know from everyday life, but it is still a world. About that psychologist who came to me—I met him once; we have a mutual friend. He was in Bolivia, did I tell you? He was in Bolivia with some tribe, an Indian tribe in Bolivia, and was there for half a year. A friend of mine had been there before and sent him there. I met him not long ago—it was about a year, a year and a half ago—and he was the last one who had been there before my friend. My friend had been there and sent this psychologist from Jerusalem to them to do various anthropological and sociological studies. And an amazing thing turns out: they have some hallucinogenic plant there that causes visions, and everyone sees the same thing. It’s not subjective. Anyone who chews this plant sees the same thing. And to the surprise of this Jewish psychologist, who studies a little Kabbalah in Jerusalem, learns Kabbalah from Hasidim in Kikar HaShabbat and in all kinds of places—to his surprise they see there visions of the Chariot, and everyone sees this there. I spoke with him; he himself also saw it. And it’s not mysterious—it’s a world that has existence. In any case, everyone sees visions of the Chariot literally, through a kind of ecstatic experience like this, which comes to expression in the fact that you see a chariot. But notice—they see the Chariot. Not with the eyes; it is the imaginative faculty, but it is still contemplation, still seeing. When we learn about the Chariot in the writings of the Ari or wherever it may be, we do not see visions; we learn about the Chariot. It is apprehension, not contemplation. Therefore the ecstatic experience too can be visual. If you are in ecstasy, that does not mean you have completely exited all the senses. You internalize some quasi-sensory image here, or you internalize some spiritual image. Meaning, whether your imaginative faculty is operating or whether your abstract intellectual faculty is operating—that is the difference between an ecstasy of intellect and an ecstasy of just… There are probably also intellectual ecstasies. That is, there is probably also some possibility of intellectual structures that apparently arise only within a certain mental state, and that an ordinary orderly functioning intellect cannot reach. I don’t know exactly. There is probably such a thing too. And it seems to me that this is also how it works in other ecstatic societies. Maybe what they see there are prophetic things, but no two prophets prophesy in the same style. Maimonides says that no two prophets prophesy in the same style—precisely, each one has his own aspect. Then the question is, what is that personal aspect? When the prophet prophesies, he says the idea, the thought, the form of the picture that appears to the prophet—that differs from one to another. The structure behind the picture is something that is really common to all the prophets. Because there is also an aspect of conception there, not only a visual aspect. And once one describes a picture, then certainly each one describes it in his own way, like anything seen with the eyes. When one tries to interpret what this picture means, and not only its external aesthetics—if you want to examine the picture or you want to examine what it expresses, what stands behind it—and once you hear this picture and understand what it says, then this already changes from prophet to prophet, because each one brings his own baggage. Again, one can divide it up by saying this comes from religious experience: there are more intellectual religious experiences and more emotional ones. The emotional ones are something more connected to visuality, that you live within a world you do not know, but there are experiences that are much quieter, where you can sit quietly in a place and simply reach some deep insights, which do not have to be visual. You grasp an idea; it enters the intellect, not your imaginative faculty. The truth is that in prophecy this is the abstract part, and there one sees what is correct, and that is also true. The part for whose sake we are supposed to study Eight Chapters. And there is this question of imagination—what is this imagination of the picture of the Chariot? I think this is something they won’t grasp in prophecy. One can debate what is inferred from here—whether the Temple will be destroyed or not destroyed, and what the prophet’s relation is to this—and what he brings out in columns already depends on his language, and there you can already see that it can be grasped in different ways. All the prophets prophesy about the same thing, but they do not say the same thing. What is the difference? The difference is how it is grasped in them within the imagination. So the prophet who has that question in Moses our teacher—perhaps Moses is the prophet who has the least of that from the side of imagination. On the one hand perhaps he is the only one who truly sees, and on the other hand he is the only one who sees in the most, most abstract way. With Moses our teacher, prophecy was perhaps not an ecstatic state; that was how he lived. He existed in some sort of state. His clothing? His appearance. If you speak of appearance, then he sees prophecy—that is its visual part. Then within the appearance there is the comparison, the meaning of the appearance. That is, what is the distance from this ideal horse there is. If we speak of it only rationally, the aspect of just the visual side is a little strange. Someone who has not reached that idea—something that there is no such thing as being able to see—uses the eyes. What is the difference? There is another layer, a layer behind the world of ideas. One person translates it into the concept of beauty. Someone in an ecstatic experience can see an idea. The idea as it is in itself. How do I know that this is an idea? I compare this horse to the ideal horse and thus determine how beautiful it is. How do I know what the ideal horse is if I have never seen an ideal horse? Right—every horse is a non-ideal horse, so how do I know how to measure the distance between each horse I see and the ideal horse? I have never in my life seen an ideal horse, right. And therefore I think it is abstract. Beauty is abstract and lies less than some of them. The idea is above them all. If we speak in terms of the concept of science, what all of them ultimately have in common is abstract; it is a distilled essence, what they all share and which strips away the defects from each one. So this is really some process of abstraction—you never saw such a horse. And therefore even someone who assumes that the criterion of beauty is supposedly simple, that it is merely comparing the thing to its idea—what’s the problem? It’s a completely simple criterion. The only question is what the idea looks like, obviously. And then how do you know what the idea is? Here your concept of beauty basically enters. What you determine as the perfect idea is really your concept of beauty. And you simply hide the problematic nature of the concept of beauty and do not provide a simple criterion that solves the problems. He hides all the problematic aspects in the concept of the idea. Plato claims that there is a concept of idea, and that this concept exists, and this is an essential thing in Plato—that it exists—because he provides a point according to which there must be some way for all of us to understand what this ideal horse is. Then all of us understand that this horse is beautiful at level eight and that horse is beautiful at level seven. This one is farther from the idea and that one is less far from the idea. He speaks about distancing from the source. Wait just a second—let’s continue. An ecstatic state is perhaps a state in which I can see the idea. After all, according to Plato it exists; it is not a fiction, it is something that exists. If it exists, then perhaps one can reach it. In an ecstatic state one can rise to some higher world and see ideas. Maybe that is what we talked about in previous classes regarding parable, for example—that the parable takes us to a higher world and elevates us. What is called a parable? So in ecstatic experience one can simply see the ideas, that’s all. And that is one way of seeing. But one can think about the concept of beauty, as we said earlier, and try to think what the idea could be—and that is already an intellectual act. To try to understand what the idea is from all the horses I see, to try to understand what the idea is and compare to it the concrete horse I am seeing now. That is a different action. I didn’t see the idea. I think, I analyze, and I reach a conclusion about what it ought to be. It may even be that my eyes are not in the picture at all. I perform the analysis not even by comparison, even in imagination, between two images. I am not comparing images. I see a horse—this horse that I now see—and from this image itself determine whether this horse is beautiful or not beautiful. The comparison to ideas is really some state that occurs visually. I see an idea of an ideal horse, I see this concrete horse, and I compare them. That is called beauty, aside from all the problems of what the idea is and how one sees, and so on. He is the most beautiful action, yes. Then you say, wait a second, is this horse that or not that? So this measure of comparison between the images is an intellectual act. It is not putting two transparencies on top of one another and seeing where the differences are. It is a more intellectual act. The absolute beautiful, the absolute good, and the absolute true—that is all one. That is God in Plato. The absolute idea. We did not speak about it last time, but things like that are really beautiful. The conception of the One in our terms is called description. To describe it as beautiful—but it is the most beautiful, fine—but it is still in our concepts, like the most perfect horse, but it is still a horse. That is, all in all, seeing. The conception of the one thing, the idea, the pure truth—the very conception of an idea in this manner, what the visually oriented professor calls the ideal conception—this conception is actually an idolatrous conception. A subtle one, admittedly, but idolatrous. There is a way to relate to ideas in an auditory way, not in a visual one, and we will speak about that shortly. Ecstasy is a state where you basically leave our world, and then after some time—and sometimes a very short time—you return to our world. A sort of deviation. By contrast, the work of the mind that is based on ecstasy is not a matter of leaving and coming back, but of progress. So you are not just ascending now; you understand more, you understand more. Ecstasy on average is not a process of progress; it is a process of stepping out of the world for a moment and returning. Looking there and returning. Something that is not ecstatic—try to understand—is a more gradual process, and in some sense at times a frustrating one. It comes to expression in the fact that in our daily life, many guys, when I speak with them here in the yeshiva, describe a certain frustration in feeling that they are not progressing. They do not feel that they are becoming more religious, feeling the Holy One, blessed be He, more—each feeling has its own parameters. When you try to think what could make a person indeed feel satisfied from that standpoint—if he had some kind of religious experience during study or prayer or something like that. So yes, in a certain sense an experience of the ecstatic type is perhaps the thing that satisfies more, because you really feel that you are in another world. But once again it is also easier to feel that you are in another world, because you see with your eyes the other world. You are still using the eyes, another kind of visual perception, yes? And that also resolves it. It is something that uses our tools to grasp higher things, and therefore it exits our world, goes there, and returns to our world. And that is the ecstatic experience from the broad perspective. I left this world—one cannot live in an ecstatic world. Ecstasy by definition is something fleeting. But more moderate inner spiritual progress, gradual, with a steadier pace—that is non-ecstatic progress. Someone who is in ecstasy has a kind of blurring; someone who studies and delves deeply is inside. And from this standpoint, someone who seeks ecstasies—as I once heard from the Rabbi, something brought regarding Epicurus or something like that—someone who seeks ecstasies does not find his place in the study hall in the style of the Lithuanian world. Here only the intellect works. And intellect really is a state of monotonous progress. You don’t go out and come back, go out and come back. No experiences—we are not about experiences, we want to progress in ourselves. Many times a person really does progress and does not feel that he progresses, because he always feels the place in which he lives. And that is true—the place in which he lives changes a bit. I think that anyone who examines himself very, very well will see this process in himself, it seems to me. It seems to me that everyone… Many times people feel: what progress did I make? I entered yeshiva, I left after five years, same thing, everything here is the same. Nothing essential changed, I received nothing essential from Torah. It seems to me that this is not true. And it seems to me that one of the phenomena—there are many things in common here, but there is progress. And it seems to me that one of the reasons people do not feel this is because we do not work on ecstasies; rather, we work on the inner nature of things. And the more things you understand, then indeed you have progressed, you live at a higher standard. And now this is your world. So true, you continue living in the same world you are in. And you feel that you are constantly in the same place where you were, that this never changed. Right, it never changed; the question is what this place is in which he is. All right? From an ecstatic experience it is much easier—many more derivatives come from it. It is much easier to feel that you are in motion, that you are returning, that you traveled from the world and came back, that you are not like everyone else. You are not living in the world in which everyone lives. And precisely the Lithuanian form, let’s say the calmer one, is a way of creating a world that may look like everyone else’s but is a little different. A world in which I live, in which I dwell permanently. Not another jump. Here I live. I formulate things a little differently, I have additional considerations that others do not have. Just a bit more. So I am a bit different. There are a few more things in which I am better in the instrumental moral sense. But if you think of good in the instrumental sense, then you will always remain the same thing. All in all, we all want to do what is best, so we engage in character work. But there is nowhere to progress without that. Where can one progress? Aside from being better, succeeding in doing more, working on the evil inclination. But how can one progress spiritually? To believe in more advanced things? Only if you are not instrumental. Only if you understand that things in themselves have significance, not because they achieve something. So if that is so—if things have significance not only because they make me a better person in the social sense, but because knowing Torah and purpose is valuable in itself—then one can progress. But one cannot progress essentially from within instrumentalism itself. You cannot now have a more advanced conception. You can implement the instrumentality better. Instrumentality is by definition something in which one cannot progress. By contrast, a conception that grasps things as having intrinsic value—then every additional thing is another value. Not just another place where you can achieve the same interest you always had, to give people a little more happiness, but redeeming a firstborn donkey brings no benefit or happiness to anyone else, yet it is another value in itself. So when I came to redeem a firstborn donkey and succeeded in fulfilling it, then I progressed. Now I inhabit a world in which I have one more value. In the Kabbalistic world one can describe spiritual worlds to which the commandment is connected, but let’s put this at the principled level. If I do not know those worlds, and the thing that has value in itself is not trying to change the world into a more perfect world or one of maximal happiness for most people—because I knew that already before, that this is what one ought to do if one follows an instrumental approach—then on the principled level one cannot progress there, except by more and more ecstatic experiences, mystical experiences. And that really is the main thing people seek today. People seek spiritual experiences because the world lacks intelligible values in themselves. You cannot progress in the intelligible sense in the world today, because there are no things that are truths. It can be this and it can be that; there are no things that are truths. The only thing people may be willing to recognize here is that it is all subjective, that one needs humanity and various moral norms, all kinds of psychologies today. Everyone calls that spirituality and progresses from there. It is all subjective. There is nowhere to progress. There can be another level, another understanding—you can travel to India and undergo mystical experiences. And that really is the only option for progress here. If you grasp that everything you learn is also truth, not only a means for achieving happiness for most people, but also truth, then you have progressed to something. You learned something else. It is a real thing, not some hallucination that stayed in someone’s head or not. It is a world that expands within you. There are objective truths that we seek. And that is the form of conceiving progress in a Lithuanian way, in a philosophical way. And that is the meaning of Lithuanianism. Lithuanianism is a worldview. The Kotzker was a Lithuanian, no? The Kotzker was a complete Lithuanian. There are experiences produced by the world, by psychology, by psychoactive substances, by psychedelic mushrooms—these are trips—but the experience will pass and the knowledge will remain. That is the secret of knowledge that remains. And that is the point. Progress is not an experience. Progress is that now you know something more—another understanding, another piece of knowledge, you learned something more, you learned another level. And it remains with you even after the experience passes. It remains. And that really is a kind of experience for the Lithuanian. Someone who is not made known and does not come face to face with this Lithuanian Holy One, blessed be He, who does not seek eruptions and heart palpitations—they immerse themselves in the golden pages of the Talmud and they have emotion, but it is emotion of a completely different type. I was there. How much I enjoyed it. Enjoyment is a good thing, a useful thing, but the personal plane should also take part in religious action—but it is not the goal and not the measure of how much I progress. Fine. As for enthusiasm, I addressed it, and it stayed around the area of enthusiasm. I want us to pray together with the Name, that I speak to Him, I connect to the Name—perhaps I speak to Him, which is something intellectual. Fine. Let’s look here at this story of Moses our teacher. Moses our teacher asks the Holy One, blessed be He: “Show me, please, Your glory.” And the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him: “You cannot see My glory,” but He says to him: “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” There are here concepts of parts in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He: back, face—very strange names. If Moses our teacher wants to see something, then automatically he already wants to see God, the idea of God, the essential thing of God. Fine, but does an idea have parts? Is there a back, is there a face? “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” Yes—if you want to see, then I speak with you in your own language. And because you are speaking in the language of someone who wants to see the Holy One, blessed be He, I use his concepts when he wants to relate to the Holy One, blessed be He, when he wants to grasp the Holy One, blessed be He. So He speaks to him in his concepts: “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” But to grasp the Holy One, blessed be He, truly, truly—not through ideas and not through thought—one cannot grasp Him through an intellectual conception. He brings here the dispute between Rashba and Tosafot. Rashba says that our way of learning from it is that thought is not verbal—thought is always visual. Rashba in Berakhot—the Talmud learns there from the same word, reciting the Shema, that the Shema requires speech and that thought alone is not sufficient, according to one opinion; another opinion says thought is enough and speech is not needed, and that it can be in any language. And there it is called any language, not specifically speech. So the Talmud learns there—let’s see there—how Rashba understands it. The Talmud raises there that there is a possibility and an opinion there—on the one hand this, which is seemingly two things, but I want to explain what Rashba says. So the Talmud says there: first, thought is enough and speech is not needed, and second, it can be in any language. And Rashba asks: how can two derivations be learned from the same word? So Rashba says: these are not two derivations, it is one derivation. Once thought is enough, then clearly one does not need the holy tongue, because thought in itself has no language. Thought does not operate in speech. Clearly you can think words, but when you think, in thought, you do not think verbally, you think visually. Audible to the ear—there is a lot there in the Talmud—but the Talmud raises some such initial assumption here and attacks it from all sides. There Rashba says that thought really is not verbal thought but visual thought. And basically it makes no sense—if you say that thought is enough and speech is not needed, then in that you have also said that thought is in any language. Because surely thought is just thought, and in general in the mind the notion of words does not belong; the mind does not operate in the form of language. That is Rashba’s understanding, a somewhat strange understanding. Tosafot thinks there is verbal thought. It may be that Rashba says that if a person speaks in thought, then certainly it is drawn toward verbality—not that it thinks verbally, but it is drawn toward verbality and can itself be speaking. We won’t deal with that now. But here Rashba—there is a Tosafot in tractate Shabbat 40b. Tosafot there says regarding thinking words of Torah in filthy places, that if it is in the holy tongue it would be forbidden, but in any other language it would be permitted to think words of Torah in the bathroom. Wait—these are two forms of thought: one when I think visually, with images and pictures, and one when I think verbally. And what is the difference in a verbal way? The verbal way is basically thought about the concept and not about the detailed picture, not about the image. Now if I see a picture when I think, or whether it is an intellectual act to do so, an abstract intellectual matter—that is the difference between one kind of thinking and another. Even in Rashba, it seems one should say that this is the distinction. What Rashba says is that a requirement of verbality cannot be mere thought. Not that there is no such thing as verbal thought, but that if thought is enough—and since there is also non-verbal thought—then whenever a demand for verbality would be impossible, so it is not that Rashba claims there is no such thing as verbal thought, but that one cannot require such a thing as verbal thought. Therefore that is what he says in the first passage: after all the descriptions and everything, in the end an inner eye is opened, but this is still sight. We are still seeing an idea and everything—we are no longer seeing with the physical eyes, all true—but it is still sight. We are still looking at the external image of the most perfect beauty. If one wants to advance beyond that—and now I move to section 15—it seems to me one has to change the object of reference. Meaning, if I now want to grasp beauty as a concept beyond the concept of sight, or to think about this concept beyond—yes—to try to think in words and not in sight, not visually, then I need to think—and this is connected to what Rafael said earlier—instead of thinking about an image of an ideal horse as an example of the most beautiful horse, one needs to think about the concept of beauty itself. The concept of beauty itself—that is, not whether this horse is beautiful or not beautiful; I am not comparing it to another picture of a theoretical horse, an ideal horse. This is not a comparison at all. I think about what the concept beauty means. Not beauty of a perfect horse or a perfect tree or a perfect stone, a perfect picture—those are still kinds of beauty. Rather beauty itself. What is the thing that all these things share? I think about that. That is called hearing the concept of beauty, not seeing beauty. Because the first thing—we saw it—had pictures, had forms. An intellectual thing, seeing an ideal horse, one sees that too with the intellect, but one sees. But the concept of beauty itself cannot be seen. The concept of beauty itself is an abstract concept; it is not something one can see, even in the imagination. Therefore one can think about it but not see it. Here verbal thought can work on it, not visual thought. There is no picture when I think about beauty; that has no meaning. Beauty itself finds expression in all sorts of forms, even ideal forms, but that is already an expression of the concept of beauty. We reached this because concepts have existence of their own, not only in their definitions. And this is what Jewish Neoplatonic philosophers in the Renaissance wanted. The Neoplatonist Don Yitzhak Abravanel, who sees the Neoplatonic idea in the Torah, sees Plato as someone who received divine things. So there are those who love Plato and make him a student of Moses our teacher. And down here he comments that Rabbi Azariah of the Rossi wanted to claim that even according to Plato, prime matter itself was created matter. And creation was the giving of form, the imprinting of form upon hylomorphic matter—basically the idea imprinted its seal upon hylomorphic matter, like a seal on wax. He wants to claim that even prime matter was created, in order to connect Plato entirely with Moses our teacher. And this is essential, because we discussed in one of the previous classes that someone who sees the world of ideas as a static world cannot grasp the concept of creation. There is no such thing as creation in a world where everything is static. But in a place where the ideas are not concepts but forces, this is a living world, a world in which things can change. It is not some static upper ideal world and a static lower non-ideal world, and everything is just a copy of one from the other. Nothing is really happening here. There is no soul to the ideas, no eros to the ideas, as we will see in section 8 and section 9. The static ideas do not themselves change. Right—but eros acts on this world. The question is how, if you grasp the ideas as visual things. An ideal horse, an ideal sandal, an ideal table, an ideal house—so all these stand there as they are in themselves, and through the seal and the imprint you can stamp them onto this world and produce a house. The imprint is not perfect, and the distance from what is imprinted to the seal—that is beauty. All right? But this is a very static conception; everything stands still, nothing moves here. But if you look at beauty not as an ideal horse or ideal house, but as beauty itself, the force of beauty, what is common to all ideal things, then it is not a matter of simply producing one from the other with a stamp. That is an action, an understanding. It is taking this thing and seeing whether it is beautiful, or producing it as something beautiful—not through seal and imprint. It is a process. A process of coming-into-being. It is a process of applying an abstract thing in concrete form. All right? Therefore the Jewish way of grasping beauty is basically to relate to the concept of beauty and not to the concept of the beautiful horse. It is to relate one step further inward. What stands within the world of ideas? Within the world of the perfect ideal horse, the ideal sandal, and the ideal table—what do they all share? Why are they all ultimately called beautiful? What is beauty? What is beauty itself? Not what is a beautiful horse and what is a beautiful table. What is beauty itself? Now, to compare this table to the concept of beauty itself—that is a form of listening. That is listening. Listening—did this table come out beautiful? You understand? You are performing a comparison. Therefore it is a listening-act. Therefore it is a Jewish act of beauty. It is an act of comparison. When people say there is some sort of measure—beauty itself is in some sense a measure—then it is not a measure of comparing pictures, because it is not that I am looking; rather it is an act of comparison, an intelligible measure, not a visual one. All right? Is that the ideas? No. I penetrate beyond the ideas; I listen to what is inside them, and that I compare to what I now see—not the idea. My thought about the beauty of the table is actually not directed to the image and idea of the table, but toward the abstract beauty. I can see the abstract beauty through the idea of the perfect table and the perfect horse. That is how I reach it. I need to listen to the image and see what is behind it. But in the end my decision is not made by comparing pictures, but by the thought of whether this table is truly beautiful or not beautiful. That is a comparison, intellectually, and that is the understanding. You can look here again beautifully at the ideas. Change the ideas only in order to grasp what beauty is, and listen to what lies behind them, because they too are really visual. Even the theoretical ideas—true, they are abstract, true, they are non-material—but they are still pictures. Theoretical pictures, but still pictures. And to a picture I listen; I do not look at the picture. I listen to it. And after I have listened to it, then I know how to judge this table too. The problem is that the concept of beauty—that’s it—it is not beautiful. Meaning. Right. Meaning, not beautiful—it defines what is beautiful. Yes, but if I—I mean, you would say that this we can already understand inwardly.