Question

A person acts according to his own view and not according to the views of others, even if they are wiser than he is; that is how everyone acts, and you suggested a justification for this in a column in the past. What about an opinion whose reasons have been forgotten? Suppose I arrived at some philosophical, moral, halakhic / of Jewish law conclusion (let’s say I’m qualified to do so), or some factual conclusion. The years passed, half a century went by, and I still remember my own conclusion, but almost none of the reasons anymore. What is the justification now for relying on my past conclusion? Or is it really the case that “my past self” is, all in all, just another position in the gallery of positions, and in the present, out of lack of knowledge, it would be reasonable to choose the opinion of the greatest expert, and so on.
It is obvious that if I estimate that my opinion-forming mechanism is overall stable (or: fixed), and that if I reexamine the matter I will very likely reach the same conclusion again, then it is as if I examined it and arrived there. But what if I am not sure what conclusion I would reach? And what if my intellectual strength has already faded and I have no principled possibility of reexamining the complex issue? At least from a halakhic standpoint, and according to your approach regarding autonomy in Jewish law, the question is well defined: is “my opinion” only an opinion that I currently hold in a reasoned way, or that I estimate I would still hold if I reviewed the reasons again, or even if I do not have the reasons in hand and also have no principled ability to master them again, is it still “my opinion” as it was clarified in the past, and I should act according to it (halakhically / in terms of Jewish law).