Q&A: Legal Reasoning
Legal Reasoning
Question
A question about the ninth part of Moves Between the Standing Ones.
1. I’ll summarize what I understood from your words, and I’d be glad if you could say whether I’m mistaken:
In law there are substantive reasons (what is the factual truth?) and legal reasons (considerations of efficiency, pragmatism, justice, social order, etc.).
And sometimes in Jewish law in general, and in its legal dimension in particular, there appear halakhot/laws that run against logic and cannot be explained either by substantive reasoning or by legal reasoning. For example, the extensions that the Sages made, based on reasoning alone, to the law that relatives are disqualified from testimony.
The Torah then concludes from this that the Sages simply saw it (an observation through the eyes of the intellect) in meta-legal reality, and from that they legislated a law. That is how one ought to act, because that is how meta-legal reality is, and it is binding on us.
And this is my question: this feels a bit tendentious; that is, it’s a little too easy to say, “We don’t understand, but the Sages saw that this is how one should act.” In other words, does meta-legal reasoning of this sort (the kind that can be derived from observing legal truth through the eyes of the intellect) have logic? Can it be explained in our own words, or do we simply say, “That’s what they saw was right to do, so of course it’s right”?
Also, at the bottom of page 424 you write: “From a modern perspective, this outlook sounds somewhat foreign to me, and I doubt that there are metaphysical realities, etc.”
So I didn’t understand: is there a legal idea (a meta-legal reality) or not? In the end, is there a difference between “ownership” and “the taking effect of ownership,” or not? I didn’t understand what exactly you are retracting in that paragraph.
Answer
Not only the Sages saw. We do too. Not always, but this is not a privilege exclusive to the Sages. If we do not see it, then the assumption is that the Sages did see it, and they have authority, and therefore it is binding.
I wrote there that in my opinion there is meta-legal truth. Whether this consists of metaphysical entities or of another kind of truth (for example, relations between events or things), I’m not sure. The claim that 2+3=5 is a Platonic truth. Is there an entity that represents it? Probably not. But the number 8 perhaps does represent an idea that is an entity. And so too regarding halakhic concepts, unlike halakhic principles.
Discussion on Answer
What does it mean to find logic? There is an intuition that says that this is how one ought to act. To find logic means to find another principle that explains it. But for a foundational principle, by definition, you can’t find logic in your sense.
Clearly this opens the door to explaining anything that way, and therefore it’s troubling. So one should not see the principle of legal reasoning as an explanation; rather, it is only a way of drawing people’s attention to the fact that we all sense that there is another type of reasoning, and therefore we can look in that direction as well—to feel our intuition with respect to the principle under discussion. If intuition sees this as something reasonable, then that is enough, and there is no need to look for a substantive or purposive principle as an explanation.
But if we do not sense it intuitively, then indeed we have no explanation, and this is a principle that is not reasonable. Still, there are rules of authority, and if the Talmud determined it, then it is binding (though not necessarily correct).
But can one find logic in meta-legal reasoning of this sort? That is, is there some higher value that explains a certain law that emerges from meta-legal reality, or do we simply say, when we don’t understand, “This is the legal truth as they saw it, even if I don’t understand it”?
Because this kind of answer bothers me, you understand—just like when people ask questions about faith and they answer, “You can’t understand; believe and keep your mouth shut.” What’s the difference between that and what you wrote above?