Q&A: The First Existent — and on Postmodernism
The First Existent — and on Postmodernism
Question
I started the first book. It really is written much better than the notebooks, and it’s also edited much more nicely than the previous books.
You present there the argument that faith is a factual claim, and not a religious feeling or something like that. That’s straightforward enough. But in the book, the presentation is aimed against the postmodernist arguments of Rav Shagar and those like him.
It seems to me that these things do not necessarily entail one another.
A factual claim that can be tested empirically certainly has to remain a one-to-one function.
But what about normative claims, which you also classify as factual claims that look toward the idea of the good?
Must the argument there too be unequivocal? Is it not influenced at all by the human soul?
Almost every synthetic argument is shaped by a person’s human standpoint. Is it really by chance that today everyone is against the exclusion of women, whereas in the not-so-distant past even very moral people saw no problem with it? Almost all disputed ethical arguments are arguments where, broadly speaking, you can tell from the culture a person lives in what he will argue on the issue—not because he is merely influenced in his opinions by society, but because the cultural substrate on which he was raised really does shape those perceptions. And is it for nothing that there is a growing awareness of animal suffering, which the Rabbi also shares?
Does that mean that until now people were mistaken? Or that the psychological and cultural substrate in which they grew up did not allow them to look at animals in the way people do today.
Regarding belief in God, it would seem impossible to say such a thing, because either He exists or He does not (as opposed to value judgments, where a person’s psychological state may enter into the equation). But the question whether a person will necessarily arrive at the same conclusion depends on personal and cultural data, and every synthetic position that is “only” reasonable will be received differently by different people, according to their psychological/cultural state
Answer
I sign my name to every word.
The essence of my comment is in your following sentence:
Does that mean that until now people were mistaken? Or that the psychological and cultural substrate in which they grew up did not allow them to look at animals in the way people do today.
Why do you think those are two mutually exclusive possibilities? The cultural substrate that did not let them see brought them to error. They really were mistaken.
The claim that there is truth does not necessarily mean that all people can arrive at it and agree about it. Those are two completely different claims.
Discussion on Answer
In my view, no. I compare it not to cellophane over the eyes but to a telescope (or glasses). Whoever is equipped with it sees the true picture, and whoever is not—mistaken.
Hello Rabbi.
But how do we know that the picture of reality before us is the one seen through the telescope’s lenses and not that of the dissenter?
Everyone thinks he sees reality better. What do we rely on in order to say such a thing?
See columns 247–248.
Somewhat strangely, the Rabbi’s words here remind me very much of Rabbi Tau’s remarks about what he calls “a holy perspective.”
The idea is that there exists within us an additional cognitive framework, different from the ordinary one, and that certain actions develop it; this gives a person the ability to see reality more clearly. (See the work of Rabbi Oz Bluman, Return to Metaphysics.)
Here too, the principle is that there is a tool that sharpens the picture of reality we encounter, and a person who lacks that tool simply cannot see correctly and will err.
It already pretty much invites taking one more step forward.
If the psychological-cultural substrate is needed in order to reach the truth, and it is an inseparable part of a person’s contemplation of the idea of the good, then we have no real reason to think that דווקא we are right. Everyone comes with his own psychological baggage, and it’s like putting on glasses of a certain color: whoever sees animals in green thinks it is forbidden to cause them suffering, and whoever sees them in orange thinks it is permitted. There is no reason to assume that the green glasses are דווקא the correct ones.