Q&A: Negative Attributes
Negative Attributes
Question
I would be glad to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on Maimonides’ claim that God cannot be described positively, for the following two reasons:
A. Any positive description, from the standpoint of the basic syntactic structure of a sentence, is built from a subject and a predicate—the sentence “Reuven knows” assumes an entity called Reuven that bears a property, namely knowledge. In religious language, such a sentence structure undermines the unity of God and the relation between Him and His attributes. In his view, knowledge is not an accident that happened to God, as though it were an additional property beyond His essence, but rather an expression of His essence; therefore attributes such as knowing, one, or eternal ascribe to God an internal multiplicity, as to an entity containing a plurality of properties, and thereby they undermine God’s simple and absolute unity.
B. We understand an attribute like “wise” or “good” because it is applied to a number of human beings. The attribute enables us to subsume under a shared category a group of particulars—we understand the attribute “existent” as an expression referring, for example, to tables, human beings, insects, and the sun. Therefore, according to his approach, attributing qualities to divinity harms not only the pure concept of unity but also God’s transcendence and absolute otherness from the world, since the attribute serves in practice as a linguistic bridge between God and the world and subsumes God and the world under a shared category, and its generalizing nature turns religious language into a medium that ignores God’s strangeness in relation to the world.
Answer
I don’t deal with these ancient and bizarre discussions. The arguments are weak and the concepts are vague, and usually this says almost nothing.
Discussion on Answer
It’s understandable, I just think it’s imprecise and incorrect. But these really are unimportant and uninteresting discussions.
In any case, I’d be happy if you could explain why the argument is not correct in your view.
I’ll do so briefly.
A.
1. The structure of the sentence says nothing of the sort. It has nothing to do with sentence structure but with its meaning.
2. I see no reason to assume that attributes cannot be ascribed to the Holy One, blessed be He. There is no connection whatsoever to the unity of the bearer of the attributes.
3. I see no reason to assume that He is not supposed to be composite but rather uniform and simple. Multiplicity is not problematic in my view.
B.
There is nothing preventing us from ascribing human qualities to the Holy One, blessed be He, such as goodness and the like. That doesn’t mean He has a heart or feelings like ours. But I don’t see why one cannot say that He is good, certainly in His actions and also in His essence.
There is a difference between saying that I exist and that an electron exists, or that some idea exists (a Platonic idea or even in the Aristotelian sense). But one can still use the term “exists” in all these contexts. The same is true with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He, and the same is true with respect to the attributes ascribed to Him.
The argument can be formulated as follows: if every object depends on another object, and those other objects are also not self-caused but depend on still other objects, then a collapse of reality is created and the very possibility of its existence is nullified. A world that is entirely possible existence is a world with no grounding. Therefore, from the existence of possible reality we must infer also the existence of “necessary reality,” which anchors the existence of possible reality. A chain of links dependent one upon another ultimately requires a metaphysical nail holding the entire contingent chain. A linguistic characterization of necessary reality would subordinate it to a broader category. If we say of it that it is good, it would then depend on the category of the good. It follows that using language to describe necessary reality denies its being necessary; the very linguistic description indicates that it is possible.
There are two independent parts here. The first part “proves” the existence of a necessary entity. The proof is of course invalid. There is no reason to rule out the possibility that everything is contingent.
The second part is independent of the first. It claims that if there is a necessary entity, it cannot be described by a positive attribute. This is a hypothetical claim (if there is such an entity), so there is no need first to prove its existence. But this argument too doesn’t hold water, for several reasons. The first was discussed in column 547 (where I explained that the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to morality and logic). And even if He cannot be subordinated to something greater than Him, there is no reason to assume that He cannot be described by a broader category. Description is not subordination. And finally, the category is not necessarily broader. There are categories that contain only one object (for example, being necessary existence, according to your approach. By the way, in that very statement you have of course described Him positively).
(It seems to me that the issue of simplicity comes as a continuation of the standard version of the physico-theological argument: if the probability that complex figures will be formed is lower than the probability that simple figures will be formed, then apparently God is simple in the most maximal way.)
Leaving Maimonides aside, isn’t the argument that emerges from the wording above understandable?