Q&A: Question about the book What Is Present and Absent
Question about the book What Is Present and Absent
Question
A question about Gate 3, Chapter 4, in the book What Is Present and Absent.
Rabbi, good evening. As I understood the Rabbi from his book, the Rabbi holds that according to the synthetic approach, it is more reasonable to assume that a myth must have some basis in historical reality, because we all have an intuition that the plane of reality matters in the context of myth. This is true for both sides in the debate—the “new” historians versus the “old” ones. That is why each side tries to prove that the plane of reality did or did not really exist, even though in principle neither side is required to maintain that the plane of reality actually happened. Seemingly, the factual plane is disconnected from the value plane. Did I understand correctly?
If so, then my question is: why not understand it differently—namely, that there is indeed no connection between the plane of facts and the plane of values for either side in the debate, and the fact that it did not really happen is not required on the logical plane, but nevertheless it still has a central place in our experience, and that is why all sides also fight on the historical front? After all, it definitely does matter to people on the plane of their experience, and therefore if I undermine that, I am certainly weakening the other position. But that is not connected to the plane of reality; it does not mean that deep down I think there is some core of truth here. Rather, I understand that this is an important plane from the standpoint of experience, and harming it will harm the opposing position… In other words, we certainly intuitively feel that there is significance to the historical truth of the myth, or to some factual core within it, but that significance is on the experiential plane, which is perfectly understandable, and does not necessarily point to any actual historical reliability.
In addition, the Rabbi also writes (on p. 262) that without a true core, a myth could not have a causal influence on people. I did not fully understand the meaning of the term “causal influence,” but the Rabbi gives the example that it is impossible to educate a nation or a social group to sacrifice their lives for something over time—the whole of history—if there is no true core at the base of the myths. My question is whether the Rabbi thinks there were no myths based on falsehood (even though their believers thought they were true) that significantly influenced history and their believers over time, and because of which they fought, murdered, and gave up their lives. Does the Rabbi think such a thing is impossible even in theory? Can psychological influence really not, in essence, reach such levels? If the Rabbi answers yes to that last question, then why does the Rabbi think so? Because it seems entirely plausible to me that such a thing could happen…
Answer
What you are really suggesting is that we are deceiving ourselves and others. In fact the myth did not happen, but one should still fight those who deny it because of the expected consequences. That is a possible psychological explanation, but fundamentally I oppose sacred lies (there was a column about this at the beginning of the site).
True, my opinion has changed somewhat on this issue since I wrote those things, and today I am less inclined to think that there must be something concrete in every myth. Maybe there is something psychologically real in it, but not necessarily historically real. So why do people fight about it? That really is not straightforward.
Discussion on Answer
I am not talking about the course of action (what you choose to invest effort in), but about the perception itself. The question whether Trumpeldor existed or not is unrelated to the question whether you agree with his views and values. If you oppose his values, you can still think he existed, and vice versa. If you formulate a historical position based on the ideological result, that is deception (dishonesty). Of course, if in your opinion he really did not exist, and it also happens that you oppose his values, then it is reasonable that you would try to promote the historical view that he did not exist in order to achieve the result.
My opinion has changed in the sense that an influential myth did not necessarily happen (not even a core of it). Influence can be psychological (like Greek mythology). Still, it is plausible that if there is a “myth” that many claim really happened, then probably something of it did happen (a core). Even that is not necessary, of course, but here there is an argument. The argument from influence is a mystical argument, and today it seems less convincing to me.
Rabbi, I did not really understand why this is because of the expected consequences. Suppose I oppose Zionism on value grounds and try to undermine it by challenging the historical dimension—which, even if it does not logically undermine it, is still certainly significant for the people who hold the opposing position on the experiential level. So why is there deception here? (Or perhaps the Rabbi meant deception on the logical plane?) But as an explanation of people’s behavior, it seems entirely understandable to me that people fight over the historical plane because it matters to the people holding the opposing view that they reject on the value plane, and they want to weaken it in any way they can…
P.S. Could the Rabbi expand a bit on how his view has changed? What does “something psychologically real” mean? Could it be that the influential myth of Mount Sinai, for example (without dwelling on this specific example), has no reality dimension in it but is influential because it contains something psychologically real?
Thank you very much.