Q&A: General Questions
General Questions
Question
Hello,
With your permission, I wanted to ask a few questions.
1. I’m interested in how the Rabbi interprets paragraph 1 in Orot, Orot Yisrael, chapter 8, “The Unique Quality of Israel,” by Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook of blessed memory. What is meant by “the power of faith” that is embedded in Israel by nature “by virtue of the manifest inheritance of the revelation of the Divine Presence,” and that “heresy is unnatural among them,” etc.? How can one arrive at such a conclusion?
2. Let me begin by saying that I have not yet studied your books. Recently I read your introductions to the essays called “Notebooks.”
There the Rabbi writes: “Therefore it is so important to smash this sacred cow that identifies faith with certainty. That is not correct, and it cannot be correct. Someone who testifies about himself that he is convinced with certainty of his faith, in my opinion is either lying to me or lying to himself (that is, he does not really understand what certainty is).”
And later in the paragraph: “Certainty at the level that I can attain is certainty that is sufficient for me in every field, including the religious one. I think this is usually what those who speak about certainty mean (unless they are deceiving themselves or others). This is certainty at the practical level, but it is not immune to logical criticism or to conclusions and changes that may follow from it.”
If so, I want to understand exactly what you meant. When I claim that I am certain, I mean that I am certain.
I’ll use an example from the study hall where I learn: I’ll begin with the claim that even a cow is a believer. Why? Because if I take a spearhead, for example, and point it at her, she will do everything to preserve her life. She’ll attack me, run away, etc. She does not have a developed intellect, and yet she is certain. Why? Because she believes.
In the same way with a person—can a person prove that he is alive? No. It follows that he believes. Every person behaves this way. And if I point a gun at him (at least at a mentally healthy person), he will do everything to preserve his life. Without intellect, without proofs. Why? Because he is certain of his existence! A person who is not certain of his existence is pitiable, and is usually hospitalized in a psychiatric ward—because he lives in terrible skepticism: “Maybe I’m not alive? Maybe everything is an illusion?” and so on.
If so, on the psychological plane of human beings, that faith is enough for him to be certain. Human beings do not need more certainty than that. So then you might come and argue—but what? He has no proofs. Correct. And nevertheless he is certain of his existence. So it follows that one does not need more than this certainty. And this is certainty. It doesn’t matter what semantic terminology people use to define it.
– Is this what you meant by “practical certainty”?
– Why does one need more than this certainty?
– Why is it “not immune to logical criticism or to conclusions and changes that may follow from it”?
– In the study hall where I learn, people are accustomed to say that faith is one of the ways a person apprehends reality; it is something very primitive—that is, I receive life and live it. Even a baby lives, although its intellect is undeveloped. Faith is neither intellect nor emotion (clearly emotion is momentary, and the intellect is always in doubt—it seems to me that this is what you meant when you said that in truth there is no certainty). What does the Rabbi think about this?
Answer
1. I do not see any point in interpreting statements of this kind, for several reasons: first, they have no clear meaning. Second, I do not think anyone has the tools to formulate them or answer them.
2. I drew a distinction between an ontic claim and an epistemic claim. When I say that some claim is necessary, that is a statement about reality itself (like 2+2=4). When I say that it is certain, that is a statement about me (that I am sure of it).
Beyond that, I argue that we cannot have certainty about any non-trivial claim (except tautologies like 2+2=4).
And I also argue that lack of certainty does not mean absence of information (that is the postmodern mistake). I know things (for example, that a spearhead is dangerous to me), but that does not mean they are certain for me. I act under conditions of a certain degree of uncertainty.
By the way, regarding animals, I doubt whether one can even say that they know anything at all. See column 35 on my website.
Yes, that is what I meant by “practical certainty.” One does not need more than that, but it has implications. One of them is that I am indeed prepared to consider arguments that attack it, and people who think differently. For example, regarding belief in God, someone who is convinced of it with certainty will not listen to other arguments and will think that those others are fools. I do not think that way, and I am willing to listen to the arguments of others on this issue. The same applies to the wisdom of the Sages, the morality of the Hebrew Bible, and more.
Faith is the way we acquire foundational assumptions, and it appears not דווקא in the religious context. The idea that religious faith is some other instrument of apprehension is, in my view, conceptual confusion and misunderstanding.
I elaborated on all these matters in my book Truth and Unstable; you can read about it there. By the way, there too I distinguished between emotion and intuition, which you are conflating in your remarks.
Discussion on Answer
With all due respect, this is the usual collection of nonsense, all of it based on misunderstandings and conceptual vagueness. It’s hard to elaborate and explain all of that here, and the basis of the matter is in my aforementioned book. If this is important to you and you’d like to meet—I’d be happy to.
Thank you very much. I’ll turn to your book.
I do not understand why there are such implications to “practical certainty.” If it is clear that a spearhead is dangerous to me, then I will flee “as long as life is in me” and won’t start hair-splitting with someone who wants to harm me. Since I am certain about my life, I do not understand why the rule would be different in the world of faith and ideas.
I am looking for a consistent approach, but one that is based on the words of the Sages—for if it is not based on their words, there will be a gap in the credibility of the chain of tradition. (This is essentially the special synthesis that Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook of blessed memory makes between the accepted faith passed down from generation to generation and faith in intellect and emotion, in epistemology and in logic.)
What I mean is that Judaism is not built for rare individuals who are experts in philosophy; it is built and founded on a people, a community (which according to the Vilna Gaon is an acronym for righteous, intermediate, and wicked). So on the practical level, how can one build a people this way?
What people in my study hall claim, drawing from Rabbi Kook’s teachings (I can think of the sources and bring them if the Rabbi would like—among them the Kuzari), is that there is no point in rational proofs for the existence of God, because the intellect will always remain in doubt (since there is always an opposite opinion—which also has “proofs”), and such proofs will persuade only one who is already convinced of God’s existence. Therefore there is another human instrument for apprehending reality, namely faith (or “practical certainty,” which we already said is sufficient for a person). Bottom line: every atheist also believes (no matter how skeptical he may be; the paradox of skepticism is well known)—he believes that he is alive, and he did not prove that with his intellect. And not knowing deep philosophical definitions does not harm his faith. (Rabbi Kook of blessed memory, in his commentary to the prayer book, Olat Re’iyah, says that faith sits so firmly that there is no possibility whatsoever that anything contradictory will burst forth and shake it—part 2, p. 575.) That faculty gives intuitive awareness (it seems to me that this is what you argue; correct me if I am wrong), which is a spontaneous and immediate cognition, like sight in relation to external objects, unlike discursive intellectual cognition that arises from a chain of ideas such as deduction or induction. In this way one arrives at certainty in faith far more than through rational proof.
This idea does not claim that one should remain with such a small faith; rather, one should develop it, but the basis is the “sense of faith.”
In light of these things, is there any point in proofs? I am very interested in what the Rabbi thinks about this approach. It is hard for me because it is not ‘rational’—and yet I have not found any ‘hole’ in it. But, as I noted at the beginning, this is the approach closest both to tradition and to reason.