Rationalism and Empiricism in Maimonides’ Thought, Rabbi Michael Abraham – Gabriel Hazut

Table of Contents

• General Overview
• Opening and presenting the basic claim about Maimonides
• Rationalism and empiricism as a philosophical and scientific revolution
• The reflection of this tension in Jewish law and faith / belief
• Legislation versus interpretation in Jewish law: “do not turn aside,” Torah-level / of biblical origin and rabbinic / of rabbinic origin
• Interpretation itself as a fractal: facts, subjectivity, and the empiricist illusion
• A legal parallel: judicial legislation and its limits
• Derash, “branches emerging from the roots,” and a continuum of validity in Jewish law
• An empiricist critique of Maimonides and the response from the rationalist framework

Summary

General Overview

The discussion presents Maimonides as a figure who consistently prefers reasoning and a priori logic over isolated “facts,” and places that tendency within a broader tension between rationalism and empiricism that appears not only in science and philosophy but also in Jewish law and in law generally. Within Jewish law, that tension is reflected in the relationship between interpretation and legislation, and within interpretation itself through the recognition that there is no “pure” interpretation without a subjective component that one brings “from home.” Against that background, it is explained how Maimonides does not “disagree with the Sages” and fully accepts their authority, but he does not derive all his principles from them. Therefore, when sources from the Sages seem to contradict the principle that appears compelling to him logically, he uses creative interpretation or classifies those sources as exceptions, and Nachmanides attacks him sharply on this point in the second shoresh.

Opening and presenting the basic claim about Maimonides

The speaker connects his remarks to what Shlomo Abramfor said and seeks to present an aspect that runs through many disputes between Maimonides and Nachmanides, and between Maimonides and others. Maimonides is described as someone who prefers “dosages” and a priori logic, and gives reasoning priority over facts, so that from his perspective facts are not decisive. Rabbi Sabato’s claim that Maimonides does not deviate from the Talmudic facts is presented as accurate, and the speaker argues that there is no contradiction here and promises to return to that at the end.

Rationalism and empiricism as a philosophical and scientific revolution

Rationalism is defined as an approach that allows one to make claims about the world by force of reasoning, and Aristotle is presented as a clear rationalist. Until the end of the Middle Ages, a rationalist outlook predominated, and then a parallel revolution took place in science and philosophy in which the claim emerged that the world does not “have to” conform to the way a person thinks. Empiricism is described as an approach that replaces reasoning with observation and with the demand for facts, and the Chatam Sofer is brought as an example of an approach that gives reality priority over reasoning. Aristotle is presented as someone who did not test a simple experiment about falling bodies because he thought logic was sufficient, whereas modern science warns that logic may contain unconscious errors and that one must be cautious about it.

The reflection of this tension in Jewish law and faith / belief

The tension between rationalism and empiricism is presented as a tension over “how much I trust my own thinking” before checking, and sometimes when checking is impossible altogether. In an example from debates about faith / belief, an empiricist critique is presented against a philosophical argument for the existence of God, claiming that we have no experience with the formation of worlds and therefore cannot “know” in that way. The speaker presents this parallel as another application of the same fundamental dispute.

Legislation versus interpretation in Jewish law: “do not turn aside,” Torah-level / of biblical origin and rabbinic / of rabbinic origin

The dispute receives halakhic expression on the level of the relationship between legislation and interpretation, through Maimonides’ view versus Nachmanides’ view regarding “do not turn aside”: according to Maimonides, “do not turn aside” gives the Sages authority both to interpret and to legislate. The distinction between Torah-level law and rabbinic law is not chronological but functional, and depends on whether the sage is acting as an interpreter or as a legislator. Interpretation of a verse yields Torah-level law even if it was done today and even if it overturns what had previously been accepted, and a religious court can overturn the words of another religious court in Torah-level matters without additional requirements, whereas in rabbinic matters it must be greater in wisdom and in number. Legislation yields rabbinic law, and its authority derives from “do not turn aside” both on the side of the positive commandment and on the side of the prohibition.

Interpretation itself as a fractal: facts, subjectivity, and the empiricist illusion

Interpretation is described as an activity that relates to facts outside the interpreter, but science itself is also presented as interpretation and generalization from facts, not as a mere collection of facts. The speaker states that there is no interpretation without a subjective component, because the move from observation to a general law or explanation is not derived from the observation itself but from the person’s thinking. The illusion that empiricism completely “replaces” rationalism collapses once it becomes clear that observation does not provide everything science does, and David Hume is cited as an empiricist who identifies that gap. The phrase “let the facts speak” is presented as a sign that someone is smuggling in his interpretation through the facts, because in almost every case there is no avoiding the introduction of a subjective component.

A legal parallel: judicial legislation and its limits

In the legal world, the naive criticism of judicial legislation says that the judge’s role is interpretation alone and that legislation belongs to the Knesset, so a judge must not bring himself into the law. Against this, the claim is presented that there is no possibility of a single objective interpretation that every judge will arrive at, and therefore in practice a judge legislates within limitations and constraints. The speaker argues that there are no sharp dividing lines that determine where overstepping authority begins, but anyone who thinks one can escape this “is making a bitter mistake.” The debate surrounding Aharon Barak is presented as a question of dosage and of how far it is reasonable to take the expansion.

Derash, “branches emerging from the roots,” and a continuum of validity in Jewish law

In Jewish law, it is argued that derash does not simply “reveal” an existing dimension in the verse, and Maimonides uses the metaphor “branches emerging from the roots” to describe the way derash works. Derash is presented as a kind of judicial legislation: it is connected to the verse and is not detached rabbinic legislation, but it is also not a simple decoding of the text, because in practice it contains addition and creativity. From here the tension arises: is the result interpretation or legislation, and is its validity Torah-level or rabbinic when the matter is “not written in the verse” but is rather an extension with a legislative dimension? The claim is that there is a continuum of levels between interpretation and legislation, and each level projects onto the question of validity, so that the validity is not simply “ordinary Torah-level” as a purely philosophical question; rather, each type of source has a different halakhic significance.

An empiricist critique of Maimonides and the response from the rationalist framework

Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla is presented as a major critic who represents an empiricist outlook and attacks Maimonides on the grounds that he “goes against the facts” and ignores explicit Talmudic passages. Maimonides is described as being untroubled by this criticism, because within Jewish law empiricism and rationalism refer to the degree of trust one places in reasoning while interpreting the sources, not to one’s attitude toward physical facts. Maimonides gives strong weight to what seems logical to him, and if something else is found in the words of the Sages, he employs creative interpretation or explains that these are exceptions, all while accepting the authority of the Sages. Maimonides does not derive all his principles from the Sages, but brings in principles “from home” which, on their face, seem to contradict what is written, and Nachmanides attacks this sharply in his glosses to the second shoresh, describing an astonishing sweep through the pages of the Talmud and an assault “from every direction,” to the point of a “slaughter,” with the remark that Maimonides had already passed away and therefore could not respond.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, good evening, welcome. I want to say a few things that actually connect somewhat to what Rabbi Sabato said earlier, even though that wasn’t planned in advance. I want to talk about a certain aspect that, you could say, runs through many of the disputes between Maimonides and Nachmanides—but not only specifically the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides; rather, Maimonides’ own outlook as against many others. I don’t know—we don’t know the whole saga well enough yet, maybe we will after it comes out—but we also dealt a bit with conjectures in the book. But I think you can see, quite consistently, that Maimonides actually did not go with the Hatam Sofer whom you mentioned earlier. Maimonides prefers—again, there are different degrees there—but he prefers a priori logic, reasoning, over facts. From his perspective, facts do not decide the issue. And precisely what Rabbi Sabato said in his lecture, that Maimonides does not deviate from the Talmudic facts—which I very much agree with, and on the face of it that sounds contradictory—that is not a contradiction. And I’ll try to explain; because of Rabbi Sabato’s remark, I’ll come back to that at the end and explain why that also fits. But first I want to make a kind of conceptual introduction. I will deal less with the halakhic particulars and the details of Maimonides’ words. I want to speak a bit more broadly, because I think there are several perspectives here that we should take with us to various other places when we try to understand one dispute or another between Maimonides and Nachmanides, or some particular statement of Maimonides. In the background there is a longstanding dilemma. Philosophers are divided about it, scientists mostly stand on one side of it: the dispute between what is called empiricism and rationalism. Rationalism is the view that we can make claims about the world by force of reasoning. That’s how I understand it. Aristotle was a clear rationalist, but it’s not only Aristotle—perhaps because of him, and not by accident, but his influence was enormous. Still, it seems to me that this was basically the view that dominated—I’m making very rough generalizations, but broadly it’s still true—very strongly until the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. Then a revolution happened on two planes simultaneously: on the scientific plane, modern science was essentially born, and on the philosophical plane as well. On the philosophical plane, suddenly people began to think: just because I think something, like the Hatam Sofer—so what? The world doesn’t owe me anything. Meaning, if I think something, why should that mean that this is really how things are in the world? Maybe that’s just a result of the way I happen to be built. That’s how I’m built. What guarantee do I have that what I think really matches what is happening in the world itself? So philosophers and scientists, in parallel, carried out a kind of revolution, and the approach called empiricism emerged very strongly. Of course it didn’t begin there—these are longer and less sharp processes—but the view called empiricism was formed, or began to dominate, and it basically says: I don’t care what I think or don’t think—that’s my problem. I want to see what the world says, what the facts are. Let’s see. Observation, supposedly, replaced thought, reasoning. And then the Hatam Sofer comes along and says: wait, we have the facts. Reasoning is a nice thing, but first let’s see what reality is. There are many jokes at Aristotle’s expense, where he says that two bodies fall to the earth in proportion to their weight—that their speed is proportional to their weight. You don’t need a particle accelerator to test that this isn’t true. Aristotle’s technology was entirely sufficient for that. He just had to take two stones, one heavy and one light, go up somewhere high, throw them, and see that they fall at the same speed. He didn’t do that. He didn’t do it because he didn’t think it was necessary, because if simple logic says so, then apparently that’s how it is—why assume otherwise? And modern science says: wait… logic is logic, it’s a nice thing, but there may be all kinds of things built into us that are simply not correct. Part of our logic, by the way, is itself the result of experience—unconscious experience. But because it is unconscious, and because it is uncontrolled, it is entirely possible that all kinds of things get smuggled into our reasoning that do not really fit what is going on in the world, and one has to be careful with logic. “Keep your children away from logic,” as the saying goes—perhaps in a completely different sense. Now, this argument between rationalism and empiricism is usually associated with the world of science, with how I learn facts about the world. But the truth is that you can also see a reflection of it, a reflection of a reflection, in halakhic contexts, in legal contexts, and in all kinds of other settings. Sometimes it is a person’s tendency or worldview, or that of a group: how much trust do I place in my own thinking? How far am I willing to take seriously what I think before I’ve checked—and maybe I haven’t checked. If I do check, fine, then maybe I’ll have to throw up my hands. But maybe I haven’t checked, or it can’t be checked. Some things can’t be checked. In debates about faith, for example, people often attack someone who says: I have some reasoning, some philosophical argument that there is a God, that a world like this didn’t come into being by itself. People attack them and say: what are you talking about? We have no experience with worlds coming into being. How can you know such a thing? That too is a kind of dispute between rationalism and empiricism. Again, this is all very rough, of course; one could get into details. In the legal context, and also the halakhic one, the expression of this debate seems to me to come on the level of the relation between legislation and interpretation. We know—it was already mentioned—”do not deviate,” Maimonides’ view as opposed to Nachmanides’, that “do not deviate” gives the sages two powers: the authority to interpret and the authority to legislate. What people do not always notice is that the difference between Torah law and rabbinic law is not a chronological difference. There can be a Torah law that is born today, and there can be a rabbinic law that has existed since Moses our teacher at Mount Sinai, and we know many laws of both kinds. The difference lies in the question of how the sage, or the institution—the religious court—that establishes that law functions. If it does so through interpretation, then it is Torah law. If it does so through legislation, it is rabbinic law. Essentially, when I interpret a certain verse, expound it—that’s a gentler word with a different root—but let’s say ordinary interpretation: when I interpret a verse, the product, from my point of view, is what is written in the verse, and so that is Torah law. Even if that interpretation was made today, and even if that interpretation disagrees with all the interpretations that existed until now—and one court can overturn the words of another court. In Torah law there are not even any extra requirements; in rabbinic law it has to be greater in wisdom and number. But in any case, there are processes by which one court can overturn the words of an earlier court. What was accepted until now—the thirty-nine primary categories of labor—if a court came today and said there are only four, then there would be four. Because a court today can determine, of course with reasons in hand, that in its opinion there are only four. So the interpretive move yields Torah law. When a court interprets a verse, the result—even though it is the result of a sage, and we are speaking about validity and source—the source is the sages, but the validity is Torah-level validity. Because until that sage no one interpreted the Torah that way, but after that sage it is presented as an interpretation of the Torah. He did not make a new law, he did not legislate a law; rather, he interpreted. Once he interprets, even if that happens today, it is Torah law. If the sage legislates—and Maimonides says that this too, the authority to do so, comes from “do not deviate”; for Nachmanides that is more problematic—says Maimonides, then the law is rabbinic law. And the authority to do this too is an authority derived from “do not deviate.” In one place it is a positive commandment, and in another it is “do not deviate”—there is a prohibition here and a positive commandment there. What is the difference between these two actions, these two modes of conduct—legislation and interpretation? Interpretation supposedly relates to facts, to reality outside me. I look at verses, I look at source material, and I interpret it. There are subjective dimensions to interpretation—I will get to that in a moment—but first in broad strokes. So when I interpret, I am basically relating to facts. Science too is interpretation. Even though people talk about science as something empirical, clearly science is not just the collection of facts that we saw. Science is some kind of interpretation, generalization, drawing conclusions from the facts we saw. So in that sense interpretation is parallel to scientific work. I examine the facts—the verses, or the sources being interpreted—interpret them, infer conclusions from them, make generalizations, and so on. Legislation, by contrast, does not relate to any facts, not directly. Of course it is connected to facts. The distress or needs that generate legislation are rooted in reality, but legislation is not an interpretation of reality; it is not the result of observation. Observation gives part of the picture: I see that a certain problem has arisen, we need to establish a new rabbinic law, so I legislate. The problem, of course, I see through observational means. But the determination of what ought to be done, and the validity of that determination, does not arise from observation. It comes from the fact that the sage determined it and has authority to determine it, or the court determined it and has authority to determine it. Therefore, in a certain sense, legislation versus interpretation parallels thought versus observation. Yes—legislation parallels thought, and interpretation parallels cognition or observation. But I want to move to a somewhat higher resolution. When we go into interpretation itself, the situation there too is not simple. And everything I am saying now in Jewish law is also true in the legal world; in that sense it is completely parallel. When I now enter the world of interpretation, this tension appears there too. It is a kind of fractal. That is, the difference between legislation and interpretation is also found within interpretation itself. There too there are two centers, or two components, that are in conflict, or in tension, and there are different approaches regarding the right relation between them. As I mentioned before, even in scientific interpretation, even in the scientific generalization that we make, there is some dimension that is not the result of observation. Observation gives me a certain set of facts. From that I now have to derive some general law, infer a conclusion, provide interpretations, think what the cause was—it doesn’t matter; all kinds of things of that sort. Those are interpretations. These interpretations are not derived from observation; they are derived from human thought. And because of that, the illusion that prevailed at the beginning of the modern era, at the beginning of modern science—when people thought empiricism would replace rationalism, that now observation would take care of everything and we would no longer need our belly-logic, our intellect, observation would give us the whole business in a fully verified way—already David Hume spoke about this, among other philosophers. He was a clear empiricist, and suddenly he noticed that observation cannot really give us everything we do with science. Observation does not give it. There are interpretive dimensions here, and those we bring from home. Again, “from home” is a very broad phrase, but inside that home are also results of some accumulated unconscious experience. I am not claiming that we pull everything out of genetics, but it is something that does not come out of the observation we are currently dealing with; rather, it is something we bring with us and with which we interpret that observation. And there is no such thing as interpretation without a subjective dimension. Interpretation is not just knowing the facts and that’s it, letting the facts speak. Very often you hear this phrase, “let the facts speak.” Whenever I hear “let the facts speak,” I understand that there are no facts here, because when facts speak, no one needs to tell me to let them speak. When someone tells me to let the facts speak, that means someone is using facts but smuggling in his own interpretation through them. And therefore—and this is almost always the case, by the way—there is no escaping it. In every interpretation we must insert some subjective dimension. This raises a serious difficulty in the legal world as well. In the legal world people speak about judicial legislation and all sorts of things of that kind. Again, the crude criticism of judicial legislation says: what do you mean? The judge’s role is solely to be an interpreter. The legislature legislates, and the judge is the interpreter. He has the facts established by the legislature. Who authorized you to determine things by your own reasoning? You are not a legislator; you are an interpreter. And in the naive picture as I described it until now, if you are an interpreter you are attached to the facts; you cannot innovate anything of your own. So what about disputes between judges? Well, that’s an unfortunate necessity. Not everyone succeeds in plumbing the sublime intention of our legislator, and therefore there is no choice; one has to establish rules for what to do when there are disputes. But in principle, the judge is not supposed to bring himself into the law. That is the criticism of judicial legislation. Opposed to this are various defenses, some of which in my opinion throw out the baby with the bathwater, because they essentially say: yes, but there’s no choice. What can you do? We have no possibility of an objective, uniform interpretation in which every judge gives the same interpretation, or every interpreter reaches the same results from the same data or the same text. Therefore there is no choice. But in my view there is a formulation—and again I can’t go into too much detail—that is more correct. Maybe there is an element of “no choice” here, but one has to understand that there simply is no such thing as interpretation that is only the facts. There is no such creature. If you try to produce a judge who does that, you can shut down the legal system. As for those limits—I don’t know, and I don’t know whether anyone knows how to draw them sharply: where he exceeds his authority and where he does not. But there is no choice; every judge has some authority to legislate. And anyone who thinks one can escape this is gravely mistaken. You can argue about the proportions, about how far one can go, where the line is, and all the debates that arose around Aharon Barak. In the crude formulation it was nonsense; in the more refined formulation there is room for discussion. Meaning, the question is how far this can really be taken, and reasonably taken, and from what point it cannot. The same applies to Jewish law. And in relation to Jewish law, I think this is one of the main meanings of the “second root” that has come up here several times. It seems to me that what lies behind Maimonides’ claim is that when we expound, we are not exposing a dimension that is already inside the verse. The metaphor Maimonides uses is “branches emerging from roots.” That is how he pictures the way one derives interpretations. And branches emerging from roots are a kind of extension of what is happening in the roots. So what we have here is a certain kind of—midrash is a certain kind of, ordinary interpretation is too, but midrash is a certain kind of—judicial legislation. That means: we are indeed relating to the verse. This is not like legislation—rabbinic law—that has no connection to a verse at all, where I simply say what I think according to the circumstances. That’s legislation. And then, if I am an authorized body, I add another law to the arsenal of laws; I add a rabbinic law. In interpretation—or in exposition, if we’re speaking about exposition—I am indeed relating to the laws, or in this case to the verses, but clearly one cannot see this as though I am simply decoding what is written in them. That’s nonsense. It isn’t true. You can never do such a thing, and certainly no one can do it. Clearly I am adding something; there is judicial legislation here. And therefore all the tension and the debates—which I won’t enter into here; we discussed this at length in the book—how should we relate to this? Is it legislation or interpretation? Because it is something in the middle: judicial legislation. Where is the line? Then the question is whether, in terms of validity, it is really Torah law, or whether it is rabbinic because it is not really written in the verse—it is some kind of extension. So there is a legislative dimension here. And what Gabi mentioned—that what we argue in the second root, in the article on the second root, is that there is a kind of continuum of levels—and this time I am already defining the poles—between legislation and interpretation. We can even put our finger on a few notches on that axis, but of course there is also a continuum between them. There is a range of situations, and we argue that each of these situations also has implications for the question of legal validity. Meaning, it is not true that the validity is just ordinary Torah-level validity and the whole issue is only some philosophical question of where the source is. And it is also not as minor as what you said just now, Gabi—that the source has halakhic significance. It has halakhic significance, much more than that. It is not just that the source has indirect halakhic significance; the source produces halakhic significance. Every source creates a different halakhic significance; every kind of source is a different halakhic significance. Let me return to the general move of empiricism and rationalism. The claim that we encountered in several of the roots—and again, not always vis-à-vis Maimonides; sometimes against other views. For us it was Rabbi Yerucham Perla. I jokingly say that those three volumes mentioned here are Rabbi Yerucham Perla’s Sefer HaMitzvot with notes by Rav Saadia Gaon. That is, there are notes by Rav Saadia in the middle and Rabbi Yerucham Perla’s Sefer HaMitzvot all around. So for us, Rav Saadia is Rabbi Yerucham Perla. We will merit the light of the next book, and then I assume we will already find a number of mistakes of our own. In any case, Rabbi Yerucham Perla attacks Maimonides in many places and represents a certain outlook—and Nachmanides too—a view that is empiricist. You are going against facts. Here you are ignoring explicit Talmudic passages. What do you mean? Your rule doesn’t fit. In a moment I’ll get to how this fits with what Rabbi Sabato said earlier. And Maimonides—at least this was our impression—simply isn’t fazed by that at all. Because again, empiricism versus rationalism, when we are speaking about Jewish law or law, is the question of how I relate to the law or to commandments, not to physical facts. And here too there are not just two views but a continuum of views. There are those who allow themselves to bring in more of their own reasoning when they interpret the facts, and there are those who try to stick to what is written, even though one can never do that completely, as I said; it is a question of degree. And that is what I am calling here rationalism versus empiricism. Now Maimonides, in a very consistent and systematic way I think, places strong emphasis on his own reasoning. What seems logical to him—that is the truth. And if in the Sages we find something else, then either he will offer a creative interpretation—and Nachmanides will cry out against him for that, and others too—or he will explain, which is also a creative interpretation, that these are exceptions. These are exceptions which, fine, because he fully accepts the authority of the Sages—and here I think we completely agree also with what Rabbi Sabato said earlier—in the end Maimonides does not disagree with the Sages. That is an important point. But Maimonides does not derive his principles from what is written in the Sages. Or not all of his principles from what is written in the Sages. Many principles he brings from home. He brings from home principles that on their face appear to contradict what is written in the Sages. And Nachmanides cries out against him. It really is an astonishing text, Nachmanides’ glosses on the second root—how he sails over the whole Talmud without the responsa database and without anything. It’s hard even to grasp that kind of power. He attacks Maimonides from every direction. It is simply unbelievable. It is just a slaughter. He massacres Maimonides. A real massacre. Now, he carried out this massacre because Maimonides had already passed away. Maimonides couldn’t respond. I assume Maimonides would have had something to say in response had he been able to write it. So we tried a little to do it in his place, and of course others did so before us. But in the end, with Maimonides, very often the attacks really do come on the basis of facts. And Maimonides is a rationalist. Aristotelian—whether because Aristotle was explained to him, whether he was influenced by Aristotle, more than that it’s hard to determine. Maimonides is a rationalist. Don’t confuse me with facts. What do you mean? Not in the negative sense. Don’t confuse me with facts, because if you think these are facts, you are mistaken. These are not facts. They are interpreted. And now I, says Maimonides, among the possible interpretations, prefer the one that seems reasonable to me. And as they say in the yeshivot: better to force the language than to force the reasoning. I think Maimonides did this in a very, very consistent way in the roots and elsewhere too, but in the roots it is very much on the surface. Now perhaps one more remark, a philosophical remark. Fine—how are we on time? Okay. This matter of judicial legislation, or interpretation beyond the facts, the interpretive dimension beyond the facts that a person brings with him from home—you can view this in two ways, and I hinted at this earlier but I want to sharpen it. You can view it as a necessity. Necessity means: fine, nobody knows what the naked facts really say. Facts are facts, but how do you infer from them any conclusion beyond what is explicitly written? Usually, after all, we deal with things that are beyond what is explicitly written. This is that unfortunate necessity I mentioned earlier. But there is—and here this also brings us to things written by Rabbi HaNazir in his Hebrew Logic, and non-Jewish philosophers wrote this too, and others—that one can also see our ability to interpret with the tools we bring from home as a cognitive capacity. Meaning, although I cannot derive it logically or directly from the facts, I claim that it is true. Not that it is an unfortunate necessity. I claim that the interpretation I give—even though it contains a dimension not found in the facts themselves—I trust my intuition, I trust my reasoning, and like Aristotle, despite all the criticisms I mentioned earlier, I think that the reasoning within me has some power to decipher reality. And even if I add, beyond the naked facts, the interpretive rational dimension that I supposedly bring from home, I claim that the product is a true product. Meaning, I am really an interpreter and not a legislator at all. In contrast to what I said earlier, that this is an intermediate move between legislation and interpretation, the claim I am making now is: pure interpretation. But it is interpretation done with tools that are not strict logical tools. And still, I claim that its product—in the scientific context, for example—is true to the world, not merely my way of looking at the world. I claim that this is how the world behaves. That is my claim. Maybe not with certainty, but that is the claim. The same with halakhic interpretation. Halakhic interpretation too—I think this is quite clear in Maimonides—the confidence with which he arrives, the unequivocal tone. For Maimonides this is not an unfortunate necessity. For Maimonides this is a worldview. A worldview that says: if this is how I think, then it is true. Not because there is no choice, and what can you do—we are all trapped inside the way we think, inside our assumptions. There are various examples of this. Because of time, I’ll make do with one example that I brought from the second root, but a second very prominent example, I think, is in the seventh root, which was already mentioned concerning details of a commandment or particulars of a commandment. Not like the four species—lulav, myrtle, and willow—which are four; particulars that together create one large commandment. Rather, different applications of the same commandment. You can apply this, say, to the sliding-scale offering mentioned here earlier, or halitzah and levirate marriage, or redemption and breaking the neck of a firstborn donkey: there are two options for how to deal with the situation before me. By the way, for some of these Maimonides counts them as two commandments, and for some as one. That is one of the baraitot around which his critics debate with him. But there in that root we see two very interesting things. And here, if you’ll permit me, I’ll just read two points so that things will be sharper. One sentence first. Two examples David Hume brings to show that what we do in scientific interpretation or in our scientific work is not just facts—the two clearest examples are causality and induction. Causality is an assumption that everything has a cause. David Hume argues that this is not learned from experience. Experience cannot show me that there is a causal relation even between two specific events, let alone that there is always a causal relation between events, which is already regulative. David Hume also argues—again, I won’t go into details—that this is the claim. The second claim is the principle of induction, which says that what has been will continue to be. If we saw something happen until now, it is reasonable to assume it will continue. That isn’t always true, but the assumption is that it is true until proven otherwise. And these are two fundamental principles of scientific thinking. About causality, some say it is not necessary, but about induction I think no one disputes its importance. And of course neither of these two principles can be learned from experience. You cannot learn the principle of induction from experience, because otherwise we are simply applying the principle of induction to the validity of the principle of induction. Therefore it is impossible to say that because my generalizations have worked until now, I make a generalization and trust generalizations. Okay—if I can’t do that, then I also can’t do it with respect to generalizations. So in fact one cannot learn induction and causality from experience. So what are they? You can say: fine, they are just our form of thought, our outlook—an unfortunate necessity. Yes? It is an interpretation we bring from home, that which is beyond the facts. So probably, fine, unfortunate necessity—we cannot think otherwise, so it’s just us; it isn’t really the truth, but there is no choice, we are trapped within this mental framework. As opposed to that, as I said earlier, I—or we—are trying to argue that these are tools for knowing reality, or Jewish law in our context, or law in the legal context. It is not merely an unfortunate necessity, but tools for knowing reality. Therefore I do not claim that using induction and causality is an unfortunate necessity, and okay, this is how I formulate things but don’t take me too seriously, this does not make claims about the world itself. No. I am saying that induction and causality are tools of interpretation. And if I derive from them some halakhic, scientific, or other conclusion, I believe that that is how the world operates. It is not that I ignore the facts. If there is an experiment that shows me the opposite, then of course I will be honest enough to concede. But I trust these tools, even though they are seemingly subjective. In the seventh root it is very interesting that a significant part of the disputes around that root, if you translate them into this language, are based on causality and induction. Those are the two things. Maimonides uses them in a very bold way, and people attack him on that basis. How do you know? There are two examples: the second Passover offering. Is the second Passover a make-up for the first or not? That’s a tannaitic dispute regarding the first Passover. So Rabbi Yerucham Perla asks about this—yes, he is our representative of Rav Saadia: “What difference does it make that the second is a festival in its own right?” He knows Rabbi’s claim that it is a festival in its own right and one is liable to karet for it just like for the first. “Nevertheless, concerning the counting of the commandments, according to the principle that Maimonides laid down here, it is only one of the details of the commandment of the first Passover.” So there is a formal dispute here about how exactly to view the second Passover: is it compensation for the first, so that whoever did not observe the first has the option of observing the second, or is it a festival in its own right? But Rabbi Yerucham Perla says: you cannot ignore the linkage between the first Passover and the second Passover, because only someone who did not observe the first brings the second. So clearly there is a causal relationship here. Or in other words—whether or not I care about causality—once there is a correlation, they go together. And Maimonides says: no. There are several exceptions—the firstborn donkey, I mentioned it before, levirate marriage, the second Passover, various exceptions he discusses in that root. He says: for me, in the interpretive root, there are juxtapositions that are correlation but do not indicate causality. Meaning, the second Passover is brought only by someone who did not bring the first Passover. That does not mean that the reason I bring the second Passover is because I did not bring the first Passover. Those are not the same thing. Statisticians have jokes about the confusion between probability and correlation, between statistics and correlation, and causation versus correlation. Maimonides says: it depends on each case individually. And how do you know? All you know is the adjacency: if this, then that; or if not this, then not that. That is true in all the examples. How did you decide that in these three the relation is not causal, even though still only someone who did not bring the first Passover brings the second Passover—but there it is not causal; whereas somewhere else it is causal? He says: because that’s how it seems to me. Why? So if you cling to facts, then he is right—in other words, either you go with the juxtapositions. Juxtapositions are the same thing everywhere. The person who says: no, but I have a line of reasoning—I want to understand the meaning of the second Passover, perhaps even from the verses themselves you can see it a bit—and therefore I say that although the juxtaposition is ostensibly the same juxtaposition, there is no causal relation between the first Passover and the second Passover. Therefore this is not one commandment but two. The same is true regarding induction, though I won’t bring that here now. But there are all sorts of questions here about how you make a generalization, which connects to what Rabbi Sabato discussed about how Maimonides counts the offerings and the impurities. Maimonides counts them in families. Families lengthwise, not widthwise—families. Some count each and every one separately. Some count one for everything. And there too, by the way, Maimonides very, very consistently goes with the logic of families. In all the examples that I think I saw there—I hope I’m not mistaken—he goes with the logic of the family. And there too this is a question of induction. It is a question of how you make a generalization, which Rabbi Sabato said is a matter of taste. I am not sure I would sign off on that, with all due respect. It seems to me there is a certain outlook here. It is not just a matter of taste. But it is true that in a certain sense one can disagree. The facts allow for several interpretations. But Maimonides went with his interpretation and determined what belongs and what does not belong. Dividing into groups is essentially the result of generalization. So generalization and causality—the two very examples at the center of the philosophical dispute around empiricism and rationalism—stand at the center of the dispute between Maimonides and, in this case, not Nachmanides but his other critics, Rav Saadia or Rabbi Yitzhak Perla and others. And there too, very consistently, you see that Maimonides says this. I just want to conclude with the significance of this. Because of his rationalism, Maimonides arrives at—and it does not always appear explicitly in his words; sometimes one has to integrate everything he says, and this is very conspicuous in the second root that we worked on—in the end we arrived there at a structure that is a very complex structure in Maimonides’ method. So much so that it is a little hard to understand: if Maimonides really thought this, then why didn’t he say it? After all, there is a rather complicated structure here. On the other hand, I think the levels of constraint and difficulty and contradiction there require building such a structure. Very often the feeling is that when a structure is complex, that itself already means that there is some forcing going on. After all, we are always searching for the simple explanation. Why take a complicated explanation if we have a simple one? And once again the reason is the same. Because Maimonides trusts his own mode of thought, his own reasoning, he had to—and because he does not disagree with the Sages, and I completely agree that this is exactly the point—but it is precisely the combination of those two things that generates the complexity. Because he does not depart from the Sages. Everything the Sages wrote is Torah law; for Maimonides it is Torah law. Rabbinic law is rabbinic law. There are here and there difficulties that need to be resolved, but in principle Maimonides does not depart from the Sages. That is, he forces his reasoning onto the facts in the sense that he is unwilling to let the facts determine what the reasoning is. But he also will not let the reasoning determine what the facts are. That is, the facts he takes from the Sages. What is Torah law is Torah law; what is rabbinic law is rabbinic law. Now he sees—okay, so what do I do with my rules? Since in our opinion Maimonides did pay attention to the exceptions—if it is written in the Sages, that means there is something else here; it is not for nothing. It is a scriptural decree, it is written in the Sages. Otherwise, what do you mean by “just as one receives reward for expounding, so one receives reward for refraining”? Then your rule is not correct. What does that mean? If you go with the Sages, then the Sages say the rule is not correct—give up the rule. But he does not give up the rule, and he continues to go with the Sages. That means Maimonides had to build some kind of structure, a structure of epicycles and deferents, like they did in old cosmology, adding one circle and another circle so that the orbits of the stars would still be built on circles, even though it was clear they were not circles. That is a metaphor always used to explain complex structures. You create complex structures to protect your way of thinking because you are unwilling to give it up, even though there are many facts that contradict it. So here too: this is because there is such-and-such a principle here, and there a different sub-principle. And this appears quite a lot in the book, mainly in the second root but not only there. And this is exactly the result of what I described earlier: confidence in reasoning on the one hand, and commitment to the Sages on the other. And together those two things, inevitably, lead you to very complex structures. One last remark: in essence there is here a kind of charitable reading, but a special kind of charitable reading. They used to tell that they once asked Rabbi Chaim—Rabbi Chaim of Brisk—why a crooked mind was created. So he said: in order to judge favorably. To judge someone favorably you need a crooked mind. But when you look at the commentators on the Mishnah in tractate Avot, on “judge every person favorably,” you see that it is not so simple. Maimonides and Rabbenu Yonah and Meiri all write there: do not use a completely crooked mind to judge favorably—not a totally crooked mind. Meaning, if someone is wicked and it is clear that what he is doing is wickedness, do not judge him favorably. You don’t have to be an idiot. But if there are two possibilities, even if the positive one is slightly less likely, go with the favorable reading, decide in his favor. Build on it. Assume you cannot say otherwise. Meaning, in the end—let me give an example. You see the leading sage of the generation chasing after a betrothed young woman with a knife in the street. Now if you saw anyone else in that situation, you would say: okay, he is going to rape her. Law of the pursuer—you have to shoot him, right? Such a person is a pursuer. But what would people say for the leading sage of the generation? It can’t be. Apparently she forgot the knife at home and he is running after her to return her knife. Right? It sounds kitschy, you don’t believe it. But what do you say—which is more plausible? Clearly the second explanation is more plausible, because what is the probability that the leading sage of the generation is chasing a betrothed young woman to rape her in the street? So sometimes the more complex explanation is the simpler explanation. It depends whether you believe in the constraints that bring you to it. So if you trust your own reasoning, you are willing to strain in order to fit it to the facts of the Sages. And I think that in a certain sense there is here a kind of judging favorably that Maimonides, or a person in general, ought to do for his own reasoning. Even if it seems to contradict the facts, the coward will say: okay, the facts contradict what I think, what can you do. The empiricist coward will say that. But someone who has more confidence in what he thinks—and Maimonides certainly was such a person—says: no, no, wait, let’s judge my reasoning favorably. It can’t be that my reasoning is so stupid. So if there are statements of the Sages saying otherwise, then let us find some epicycles and deferents and define something, do something more complex, and we will see that in the end everything works out. By the way, in the end it seems to me that Maimonides often comes out the most reasonable. Really, after doing the work, he comes out the most reasonable—more reasonable than all those who cling to the facts. That is how it seems to me, though that really is already a matter of taste. Final point: I think that to a large extent our goal in the book was to uncover those very lines of reasoning that Maimonides brings from home. If I had to put it in one sentence, that was basically our goal in the book: to uncover those lines of reasoning that Maimonides brings from home. He does not always say them explicitly; sometimes he says them implicitly, sometimes more explicitly, sometimes not at all. So we filled them in. Whether we were right or wrong—but to uncover those lines of reasoning that he brings from home. Not necessarily because he was always right—there were those who disagreed with him, and one can argue about it—but at least to see that each of us too, each according to his own level, sometimes has to deal with facts that seem to contradict what I think. One should not always give up what one thinks. Meaning, sometimes I have some confidence in what I think, and I will give the facts a creative interpretation in order to save—or to judge favorably—myself, what I myself think. Thank you all for coming.