Q&A: Questions, Doubts, and Feelings About What You Say
Questions, Doubts, and Feelings About What You Say
Question
Good evening, Rabbi Michael.
I’m in a somewhat complicated place in my heart. On the one hand, I see and hear a great many criticisms of your words and views. On the other hand, I read what you write and agree with a large part of it (although there are quite a few feelings of “you just can’t say that.” And I emphasize: that is only on the level of feeling).
I did not come, Heaven forbid, to challenge anything; I came to ask: where do these feelings of rejection come from? Is it proper to ignore them?
In addition, after reading quite a few criticisms of what you say (and it is wonderful that the Rabbi makes sure to address them properly), I understand that I am not the only one at all, and that this is a general and common reaction, even among some rabbis and among students. In your opinion, should I follow my heart and look for the logic and truth in the more common approach, or should I continue trying to think as far as I can and override my heart and feelings?
(This is a question that depends on questions like: “Should one lead the heart after the intellect, or the intellect together with the heart?” And if we go with the heart, can rational and logical thinking provide sufficient tools for analysis? And if we go with the intellect, must we abandon feelings and the heart? Do they have intellectual and logical significance? And more…)
Answer
The heart has no standing and no weight whatsoever in intellectual questions. Except that sometimes what you call “heart” means not emotions that have been embedded in you by genetics, upbringing, and environment, but rather intuitions. If you have different intuitions, then certainly you should not ignore them. But leave emotions out of this. And even if you do have different intuitions, that should only direct you to search and study more deeply. In the end, if intellectually you were convinced, then in my opinion you should accept it; otherwise there is no intellectual integrity here.
By the way, I did not understand why challenging something is “Heaven forbid.” One may and should challenge everything.
Discussion on Answer
In my books Two Carts and Truth and Unstable, I sharpened this point. Feeling means emotion. What you called “natural” thinking (that is, arriving directly at a conclusion not by way of logical arguments) is intuition, and it is part of the intellect. Every logical argument is based on premises, and therefore the premises themselves certainly do not come from logical arguments. And even if they do, then I am referring to the premises of that argument. The foundational premises come from intuition. Intuition is an intellectual faculty, and therefore one should certainly make use of it. Emotion does not deal with right and wrong, and therefore it has no importance whatsoever in this matter.
Thinking should of course be clean, not because it “ought” to be, but because otherwise it will err. But the needed cleanliness is from emotions, not from intuitions, as explained above.
What is meant by “intuition”?
By the way, from what I understood, I should direct my intellectual search according to my basic intuitions.
And is it really true that feelings have no significance at all in my search for faith?
Also, I still do not feel that there is completely “intellectual integrity” here (which, by the way, raises the question whether all thinking really has to be pure, or whether there is also room for natural inclination).