Jewish Philosophy: Perspectives and Retrospectives 9781618111821

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Jewish Philosophy Perspectives and Retrospectives

E m u n ot: J e w i s h P h i lo s o p hy

and

Kabbalah

Series Editor: Dov Schwartz—Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan Editorial Board: Ada Rapoport-Albert—University College, London Gad Freudenthal—C.N.R.S, Paris Gideon Freudenthal—Tel Aviv University Moshe Idel—Hebrew University, Jerusalem Raphael Jospe—Bar Ilan University Ephraim Kanarfogel—Yeshiva University Menachem Kellner—Haifa University Daniel Lasker—Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva

Jewish Philosophy Perspectives and Retrospectives

Edited by

Raphael Jospe and Dov Schwartz

BOSTON / 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A bibliographic record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.

Copyright © 2012 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-61811-160-9 (hardcover)

Book design by Ivan Grave On the cover: A bifolio, dismembered from a manuscript (14th-century, Spain), containing the first page of Perush Ha-Millot Ha-Zarot (1213), a glossary by Samuel ibn Tibbon, appended to his Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. The bifolio was reused in 1713 as a cover of a register of the series “Giusdicenze.” Hebrew Fragment 520.1 in the State Archive of Modena, Italy, kindly provided by Prof. Mauro Perani of the University of Bologna.

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2012 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

C ontents

Editors’ Introduction Raphael Jospe and Dov Schwartz

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PART I Introduction to Part I Alan Mittleman

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Coming After: American Jewish Thought in Light of German Judaism Leora Batnitzky

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Doing Jewish Philosophy in America Lenn E. Goodman

33

Thinking Through Scripture and Liturgy after the Shoah Steven Kepnes

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Jewish Thought and Contemporary Philosophy Michael L. Morgan

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Jewish Philosophy in North America David Novak

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On the Renaissance of Jewish Philosophy in America Norbert M. Samuelson

104

Covenant and Social Contract: Classical Judaism and Classical Liberalism Kenneth Seeskin

122

Philosophy, Jewish Thought, and the American Setting in My Work Martin D. Yaffe

129

Jewish Philosophy and American Democracy William A. Galston

146

Response Paul Mendes-Flohr

150

PART II Maimonides on the Eternity of the World Howard Kreisel

157

Maimonides on Creation Kenneth Seeskin

185

Comments on Seeskin and Kreisel’s Essays on Maimonides on Creation Roslyn Weiss

200

Comments on Professor Kreisel’s Paper Charles H. Manekin

215

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

233

Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Concept of Vital Heat: A Reassessment of Peripatetic Epistemology in Terms of Natural Science Ottfried Fraisse

255

The Phenomenology of Faith R. Soloveitchik’s Analysis in And From There You Shall Seek Dov Schwartz

279

Interactions between Karaite and Rabbanite Thought in Spain and Byzantium James T. Robinson

315

‘Anti Maimonidean Maimonideanism’? Some Remarks on a New Publication Yossef Schwartz

319

E di tors ’ I ntroduc t ion

Much of the credit for the original conception of the symposia and studies in this volume properly goes to our colleague and friend, Steven Harvey, whose talent, dedication, and hard work provided a solid base for our own work. There is an irony to the fact that our first symposium, on “The Renaissance of Jewish Philosophy in America,” organized by Alan Mittleman, was conceived in response to Paul Mendes-Flohr’s observation that “Jewish philosophers seem to be a dying breed,” in a lecture titled “Jewish Philosophy: An Obituary.” However tongue-in-cheek the statement may have been at the close of the twentieth century, particularly when made by a scholar of modern Jewish thought, a similarly pessimistic observation was made quite seriously at the beginning of the twentieth century by Isaac Husik in his History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (1916), which he concludes with the sad words, “There are Jews now and there are philosophers, but there are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy.” This volume is akin to Mark Twain’s famous observation that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Its birth, as one more modest contribution to the exponentially increasing list of publications in Hebrew and other languages of original thought and scholarly analysis, proves that obituaries for Jewish philosophy and thought are exaggerated, premature, and ultimately far off the mark. Husik’s own work helped start the revival of a field for which he—like nineteenth century scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums—mistakenly thought he was writing an epitaph. Our second symposium, on “Maimonides on the Eternity of the World,” provides a similar opportunity to continue the ongoing debate initiated by the medieval commentators and still challenging us today, regarding Maimonides’ “true” opinion on this central philosophical and theological question. Our selection of scholarly studies also reflects our conviction that Jewish thought must be examined in all its periods and

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literary genres, and our commitment to presenting as rich a variety of perspectives as possible. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), whose career included scholarly studies of medieval philosophers including Sa`adiah Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses Maimonides, and Don Isaac Abrabanel, and who taught generations of rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, became one of the most influential Jewish philosophers of his generation, known among non-Jews as well as within the Jewish community. In the last chapter of his seminal God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1956), he wrote: The task of Jewish philosophy today is not only to describe the essence, but also to set forth the universal relevance of Judaism, the bearings of its demands upon the chance of man to remain human . . . To be a Jew is to be committed to the experience of great ideas. The task of Jewish philosophy is to formulate not only these ideas, but also the depth of that commitment, in vivid, consistent thinking. The task of Jewish philosophy is to make our thinking compatible with our destiny.

It is our hope that Jewish Philosophy: Perspectives and Retrospectives will, in its own small way, encourage the growing interest in the study, the teaching, and ultimately the doing of Jewish philosophy and thought. Raphael Jospe

‫רפאל ישפה‬

Dov Schwartz

‫דב שוורץ‬

I ntroduc t ion A l an Mi t t l eman

In a lecture delivered at Oxford in 1999, the distinguished Jewish intellectual historian Paul Mendes-Flohr offered—with tongue somewhat in cheek—an obituary for Jewish philosophy. He suggested that “Jewish philosophers seem to be a dying breed,” “lamentably few and far between.”1 Mendes-Flohr thought this a most regrettable situation. Philosophy, in his view, had throughout the ages obliged Judaism “to bear, so to speak, its best countenance and to flesh out the universal implications of biblical teachings… To put it boldly and even rather bluntly, I would submit that philosophy serves to secure Israel from idolatry and a tribalization of God and Torah.”2 Woe unto the generation, then, for which philosophy has been marginalized. Given the exalted and religiously crucial role which Mendes-Flohr assigned to the philosophical impulse within Jewish experience, why has there been a decline in philosophy? Part of the reason is the tragic and untimely end of German Jewry. German Jews, particularly in the twentieth century, renewed Jewish philosophy in a manner unparalleled since the medieval encounter of Judaism and Greek philosophy, as mediated by Islam. German philosophical culture was rich, audaciously so, in metaphysical speculation and ethical analysis, and offered frameworks of discourse in which Jewish intellectuals could grapple with the universal implications of their tradition. The great modern architects of constructive Jewish thought, such as Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig, embarked on a project that could not be continued in an organic way after 1  Paul Mendes-Flohr, Jewish Philosophy: An Obituary (Oxford: Oxford Centre for Hebrew and

Jewish Studies, 1999), 7. 2 

Ibid., 10.

Introduction Alan Mittleman

the culture that nurtured it was destroyed. The thinkers who followed in their wake, such as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Emil Fackenheim, brought the European modalities of thought to the United States, but with the passing of their generation the traditions of existentialism, phenomenology and philosophical anthropology were played out. The American temper and climate required its own mode of philosophical creativity. Add to this the predominant concern for Jewish survival or continuity, first in the wake of the Holocaust and then in the face of weakening communal bonds and demographic prospects, and one has an orientation toward the practical and the particular, not toward the universal and the theoretical, as philosophy arguably requires. For the same reasons, Israel does not yet provide a nurturing environment for Jewish philosophy. Mendes-Flohr did acknowledge that there are some Jewish philosophers working in academic philosophy and religion departments, “but they speak virtually only among themselves.”3 The sociology of intellectual life in the United States militates against a public role for philosophers. Of course, this was not always the case. In the mid-twentieth century, John Dewey and his disciples (among whom must be counted the Jewish thinker Mordecai Kaplan) insisted on a public role for philosophy. In their view, if philosophy was not speaking to a broad audience about important matters of public and cultural life, it was suspect.4 But Dewey gave way to Quine, so to speak. Philosophy in America took a different, highly specialized path, and left “public philosophers” looking like amateur philosophers. The Jewish philosophers of today to whom Mendes-Flohr refers are ensconced in their university departments, victims of the general irrelevance of philosophy to the life of the nation at large. The last factor adduced by Mendes-Flohr in the modern decline of Jewish philosophy is the advent of postmodernism. On the one hand, 3 

Ibid., 18.

4  Alexander Nehamas, “Trends in Recent American Philosophy,” in American Academic Culture

in Transition: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines, ed. Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 228. See also Bruce Kuklick, A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), passim on the general decline of religiously oriented philosophy beginning in the nineteenth century and its replacement by technical, scientifically oriented philosophy.

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postmodernism has opened space for a pluralist affirmation of cultures and, arguably, religious perspectives. Postmodernism has claimed to liberate us from the hegemonic rationalism of a philosophic tradition stretching, as Rosenzweig put it, from Ionia to Jena. That, presumably, would provide some cover for a distinctly Jewish program of philosophical construction. On the other hand, postmodernism embodies a “retreat from a universal, indivisible truth” which has “a deleterious effect on metaphysically and ontologically oriented theology and philosophy.”5 Academically fashionable postmodernism, in Mendes-Flohr’s view, is uncongenial to Jewish philosophizing: “. . . were Jewish thought to ally itself with postmodernism’s epistemological agnosticism it will court disaster, for it and its relativistic presuppositions will ultimately undermine the hope of revitalizing Judaism as an intellectually, spiritually and morally compelling way of life.”6 Given this bleak assessment of the prospects for Jewish philosophy in the United States, why do we dare to speak here of a “renaissance of Jewish philosophy”? Jewish philosophers may indeed be few and far between (when was this not so?), and their influence may be limited (Rosenzweig himself remarked that his book was more displayed than read), but there is movement afoot. Thirty years ago, when this author began graduate school, Jewish philosophy was strictly a historical category. Anything worth reading was written in Greek (Philo), medieval philosophical Hebrew and Arabic, or German. English-language Jewish thought was largely apologetic, the work of intellectual congregational rabbis. An important scholarly literature about Jewish philosophy existed in English, of course, but contemporary Jewish philosophy as such did not. That has changed. There are today dozens of well trained, academically accomplished philosophers of Jewish background who have chosen to turn their attention to Jewish thought and to enter the perennial conversation about the ultimate significance of Jewish life. The fact that they have yet to find a broad audience seems to this author less important than that they have turned to a set of concerns that are fundamentally public, existentially urgent, politically (in the best sense of the word) engaged, and intellectually important. “Renaissance” 5 

Mendes-Flohr, Jewish Philosophy, 19.

6 

Ibid., 20.

Introduction Alan Mittleman

may be too grandiose a term for the movement on which we reflect here, but it well evokes the promising cross-pollination of the present moment. Just as German-Jewish philosophizing developed in protracted conversation with German thought, so does American Jewish philosophy engage both American intellectual traditions and the world of moral, political, and cultural concerns of contemporary Americans. American Jewish philosophy must thus take seriously such traditions as pragmatism, analytic philosophy, philosophy of science, and—in broad terms— liberalism. American Jewish philosophy takes off from a position of strength quite alien to the German-Jewish experience. American Jewish philosophers are no longer eager but frustrated outsiders, kept at bay by the mandarins of the old universities; they are themselves leading professors at leading universities. Nor are American Jews, their worries about their own demographic prospects notwithstanding, in doubt about their Americanness—and nor, equally importantly, are other Americans. No one questions whether Jews are “real Americans” in the sense that Germans, and the Jews themselves, questioned the validity of their Deutschtum. As such, Jewish philosophers today are writing as insiders vis-à-vis the American cultural establishment, believing themselves to be responsible for the moral and spiritual well-being of American society. A leading distinction between the current wave of Jewish philosophical work in the United States and the earlier wave in Germany, as Leora Batnitzky details below, is that German Jewish philosophy contained Judaism within the category of religion, whereas American Jewish philosophy is uninhibited in seeking the political implications of Judaic commitment. This is the stance of the native and the citizen. The liberal ideals and institutions of the American republic are not incidental to the deepest concerns and commitments of American Jewish philosophers. Before turning to factors within the American Jewish community that might account for the upsurge of Jewish philosophy, let us consider some trends in American philosophy as a whole. Had logical positivism and other science-oriented analytic approaches carried the day in American philosophical circles, a culturally specific and embedded mode of philosophizing such as Jewish philosophy would have had no ground to secure even a toehold. Quine’s remark, that two kinds of people go into philosophy— those interested in the history of philosophy and

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those interested in philosophy—speaks volumes about a certain scientific conception of philosophy.7 Such a view, even if not anchored in logical positivism, is as disdainful of the history of philosophy as positivism was. It removes philosophy from culture and is embarrassed by the location of departments of philosophy in humanities (rather than natural science and mathematics) faculties. Philosophy of science is philosophy enough, Quine famously said. The language of morals, politics, law, and art was no longer thought to have cognitive content. Evaluative terms expressed nothing more than the preferences and desires of those who used them. Had such an arid view of the domain of philosophy prevailed, as it seemed to for a time in mid-century America, Jewish philosophy would be an oxymoron. But this situation was not to last, due both to developments within analytic philosophy as such and to shakeups at the margins. Rawls’ 1971 Theory of Justice shook moral philosophy from its meta-ethical slumbers and encouraged a new attention to the philosophical defense of liberal ideals and institutions, as well as to normative ethics. The renewal of normative ethics in turn found a new field of endeavor in modern medicine. “Applied ethics” in the biomedical domain became increasingly prevalent, overcoming the isolation of philosophy from public affairs for the first time since Dewey. Kuhn’s 1962 Structure of Scientific Revolutions showed that philosophy, in this case philosophy of science, could not neglect the history of science. The book had an immense impact and helped to restore the importance of the history of philosophy for American philosophers. Kuhn’s epistemological thesis underscored the role of the history of ideas in setting the Fragestellung or paradigm, as he put it, that constrained the interpretation of data. There were no basic, given, consensual data outside of the interpretations that we have of them. Science is in some measure a hermeneutic enterprise. Thus, philosophical reflection on the cultural space in which the work of interpretation goes on reacquired legitimacy. This whole development was strengthened, as well, by ordinary language philosophy and, perhaps more significantly, by feminist philosophy. All of these trends pluralized American philosophy, made it more sensitive to

7  Nehamas, “Trends in Recent American Philosophy,” 230.

Introduction Alan Mittleman

historic cultures and languages, and expanded its conception of what was worth hearing, reading and reflecting upon. At the same time that philosophy became more open to an everexpanding “philosophy of . . .” approach, the Jewish community went through a “paradigm shift” of its own. Observers of American Jewish life have noted that for much of the post-war period, the organized Jewish community directed most of its energies to helping Jews abroad. The SixDay War of 1967 brought a new urgency to work on behalf of the State of Israel. The awakening of the Jews of the USSR in the aftermath of that conflict drew American Jewry into intensive work on behalf of Soviet Jews. Domestically, a liberal emphasis on social justice, coordinated with the civil rights movement, made a kind of progressive utopianism the practical faith of American Jews. Jewish learning, religious commitment and practice, Hebrew literacy, and other traditional indicia of the Jewish way of life were scanted by the Jewish mainstream. A change of tack began to occur in the early 1990s. The end of the USSR, an apparent peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinians, and frightening demographic projections based on an intermarriage rate of almost 50%, occasioned a reorientation. The organized Jewish community faced the salutary task of having to decide what Jewish life should really be about in the United States. Many of its activities, despite their value, began to look like surrogates for a serious encounter with the perennial imperatives of Judaism. Rising to the occasion, the Jewish community during the last decade and a half laid more emphasis on Jewish education, endogamy, and religious discovery and renewal than ever before. The renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America may be seen as a parallel development. It is an ongoing endeavor to evoke and reflect on first principles, on what is really fundamental to Judaism, and to gauge the significance of those fundaments in light of contemporary moral, epistemological, metaphysical, and political theories. It is to do so, furthermore, in a self-consciously American context, with reference to theoretical discussion in the American academy. But beyond the purely theoretical, American Jewish philosophy joins the larger civic conversation about the interrelation of religion—religious thought, practice, faith-founded moral communities and their values—with public life in our pluralistic, liberal democracy. And it joins specifically Jewish conversations—both the proximate one about the meaning of Jewish life

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in America and the perennial one among philosophers and other Jewish thinkers across the ages. In the essays collected in Part I of this volume, eight American Jewish philosophers reflect on the meaning of their own work, as well as on how their work relates to contemporary American philosophical and moral concerns. All of the essays provide a window on what counts as Jewish philosophy for these thinkers, what they think the most important issues and the most fruitful ways of pursuing them are, and how their projects relate to broad civic or public concerns. Some of the pieces are more autobiographical in tone than others. All of the authors were asked to give the reader an orientation in their own thought and then to reflect on such questions as, What role has the American context—broadly construed— played in your thought? How have American ideals and realities, American philosophy and politics, influenced your work? To what extent has your intellectual agenda been shaped by the social and cultural context (including the contemporary American university) in which you live and work? These questions provided a common agenda for the essays. Leora Batnitzky establishes an intellectual context for American Jewish philosophy. Batnitzky’s task was to compare American Jewish work with its immediate twentieth-century forbear, German Jewish philosophy. Batnitzky argues, as mentioned above, that American Jewish philosophy allows for a richer, more political or theo-political conception of Judaism than was possible for German Jews, who lived in a society where Judaism was forced into the narrow framework of a Protestant manqué confession. The political dimension of American Jewish thought, which Batnitzky postulates as its distinguishing feature, is apparent, to greater or lesser degrees, in the chapters that follow. Lenn E. Goodman discusses some of the distinctive themes of his work: opposition to dogmatizing, a religious naturalism deeply nurtured by natural science, and a critical reappropriation of tradition. He sketches a faithful, intellectual, but non-dogmatic or superstitious Judaism, fully engaged in the contemporary metaphysical and moral conversation. Goodman argues for a theory of value that is ontological, that is, which responds to value in being as such. He brings Jewish thought into a critical exchange with modern conventionalism, emotivism, pragmatism, and other anti-realist philosophical traditions. Conscious of the profound impact that American ideals have had on his views, Goodman

Introduction Alan Mittleman

is eloquent in articulating his debt to American intellectual and public culture. Steven Kepnes exemplifies the use of a tradition that Goodman rejects, American pragmatism. Kepnes represents a con-temporary trend in American Jewish philosophy known as “textual reasoning.” Thinkers of this orientation draw on hermeneutics and the philosophy of language to allow for a new openness to the “logic of scripture.” Kepnes argues for the engagement with texts as a redemptive practice. It redeems the practitioner by opening up new moral possibilities as well as new epistemic ones. Furthermore, the engagement in liturgical practices can be shown to be deeply meaningful and transformative for individuals and communities insofar as meaning, on the familiar pragmatist account, inheres in use. Kepnes shifts the emphasis of thought from analysis and explanation to experience and practice, claiming that such a reconstruction affords new possibilities for engaging old problems such as theodicy, a problem made more urgent by the Holocaust. The Holocaust also orients the philosophy of Michael Morgan. In his essay Morgan wrestles with the problem of historicity, that is, with the claim that truth is in some way dependent on its historical-cultural setting, rather than transcending history and being available, platonically as it were, in the same manner in different epochs. Morgan comes to this problem from engagement with the meaning of the Holocaust, specifically whether the historical reality of the Holocaust renders the Judaism of the past incoherent. Do Judaism and its claims to truth transcend history, or must Judaism be immersed in the historical process such that whatever Judaism is at any given point is a function of what historically-embedded Jews say it is? Is there objectivity and, if so, what are the grounds of its authority? This leads Morgan to look at how human agents, persons responsible for interpreting such abstractions as Judaism or for acting in a moral manner, are construed. His work overcomes atomistic accounts of the self and embeds agency in a public realm of shared, authoritative meanings. Although the problem of historicity became acute in nineteenth-century Continental thought, it resonates in America, which as the first “new nation” has a problematic relationship with its own past. In his contribution David Novak sets out to distinguish Jewish philosophy, or philosophical theology, from the Jewish non-philosophical theology, found in the classical rabbinic corpus, and Jewish anti-philoso-

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phical theology, found in the mystical and kabbalistic traditions. Novak is concerned with characterizing Jewish philosophy as a discourse which is open to all who share in rational thought but which speaks with normative authority only to Jews. He gives special attention to the American context of Jewish rationalism and its normative authority: Jewish philosophy must be involved in a dialogue over moral and political principles with American thought, but must resist, at the same time, reduction to American contents and categories. The ontological and axiological priority of Judaism for the Jew—a strong theme in Novak’s work—must be preserved. Novak explores Judaism’s resemblance to and difference from the social contract tradition of liberalism. Norbert Samuelson reengages the mode of medieval Jewish philosophical engagement with science. For him, contemporary Jewish philosophy must also be done in dialogue with science. Samuelson articulates a scripturally informed Jewish philosophical understanding of creation that he defends as a reasonable belief. He also cuts a path between traditional views and skepticism on the question of revelation. Each of these approaches is based on a sophisticated methodological reflection on what truth can plausibly mean in different linguistic contexts. Having written books on creation and revelation, he discusses as well his study of redemption. This leads him into questions of utopia and politics; into what is achievable by human effort in a Jewish view, and how such aims relate to modern western political aspiration. Finally, Samuelson relates his philosophical work to the American context in which he is active. Kenneth Seeskin also engages medieval thought, in his case Maimonides, to argue in favor of negative theology and to define the ethical and anthropological consequences of that philosophical theology. Seeskin develops a biblical and rabbinic account of consent, which is, in liberal social theory, a crucial condition for authority. The Bible is set on a trajectory wherein the agency and dignity of every person is a final good. There is a conjunction of values, on the deepest level, between the Bible’s transcendent underwriting of human dignity and the American ideal of responsible liberty. Although Seeskin is explicitly indebted to Maimonides and Kant, the framework that he develops is close to that of the early Puritans and other Reformed, covenant-oriented Protestants. The contribution of the Bible to the founding of America echoes once again in Seeskin’s work.

Introduction Alan Mittleman

Martin Yaffe exemplifies the practice of doing philosophy through literary commentary. Yaffe, whose intellectual horizon is animated by Leo Strauss through his teacher (and Strauss’s student) Harry Jaffa, discusses his work on Job, The Merchant of Venice, and Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. As a philosophical commentator, Yaffe is concerned to explore how the constitutive tension between Jerusalem and Athens—between the Bible and Jewish thought and philosophy—plays out in the civic framework of Western and American modernity. How are claims to revealed truth, including the rival claims of Judaism and Christianity, related to the basis of civil authority, of the philosophical foundations that make shared citizenship possible? Yaffe’s deepest question, which other contributors in their own ways share, is whether the civic culture of the United States can be sustained without biblical faith. Part I concludes with two responses to the entire project. The first is from the political theorist William Galston. Galston locates the work of these American Jewish philosophers in the context of American political thought and contemporary civic concerns. The second response, from the intellectual historian Paul Mendes-Flohr, brings this section back to where it began: are we, indeed, in the midst of a renaissance of Jewish philosophy, or does Mendes-Flohr’s earlier dire assessment of the Jewish intellectual situation remain intact?

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C oming A f ter : A mer ican Jew ish T hought in L ight of G erman J uda ism L e or a Bat ni t z k y

The task that I have set for myself in this essay is creating a prelude to the chapters that will come. I would like to outline briefly what American Jewish philosophy looks like when viewed from the perspective of German-Jewish thought. This is important for at least two reasons, the first institutional, the second philosophical. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, German Jewry was only a fraction of the size of Eastern European Jewry. That is, there were at most 800,000 German Jews, compared to five million Eastern European Jews. At the same time, German Jews lived for the most part only in Germany and in small outposts in America. In contrast, Eastern European Jews not only lived in Eastern Europe but also constituted most of the Jewish communities throughout the British Empire, Palestine, the United States, France, and even Germany. Yet despite the relatively small size of the German-Jewish community as well as its relatively minor geographic prevalence, the study of German Judaism has dominated the academic study of Judaism in general. The reasons for this are many, but perhaps the central reason is that what we call today Jewish studies programs are the direct heirs of GermanJewish efforts at creating the enterprise of modern Jewish scholarship, what they called Wissenschaft des Judentums (or science of Judaism), which has rightfully taken its place alongside other humanistic disciplines in the secular academy. From an institutional point of view, any attempt at constructing an academic field of Jewish philosophy by necessity takes place against the backdrop of the history of Jewish studies, which even today has a decidedly German orientation. The philosophical point follows from this institutional point: if German-Jewish thought is the backdrop against which American Jewish philosophy constructs itself, where does

C o m i n g Af t e r : A m e r i c a n J e w i s h T h o u g h t i n L i g h t o f G e r m a n J u d a i s m Le o ra B a t n i t z k y

American Jewish philosophy differ from German-Jewish thought, and why does it differ as it does? In what follows, I will attempt to offer a simple yet important answer to this question. My suggestion is that German-Jewish philosophers are united by one important factor, which is the attempt to define Judaism as a religion. This is the case, I will argue, not only for the liberal philosophy of the father of German-Jewish thought, Moses Mendelssohn, but also for the last great German-Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, who attempted to turn away from German-Jewish apologetics toward what he argued was a more authentic Jewish point of view. From Mendelssohn onward, GermanJewish philosophers strained to define Judaism in terms of a religion. This meant that German-Jewish philosophers could not talk constructively about politics, or perhaps better put, when German-Jewish philosophers did talk about politics they did so only in the context of maintaining that Judaism as Judaism and Jews as Jews had nothing to do with or to say about politics. In contrast, as I will argue in the conclusion of my paper, a defining feature of the renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America is the ability and need to reflect precisely on politics from the perspective of Judaism. Before turning specifically to Mendelssohn and Rosenzweig, I would like to first make two important qualifications to the argument that follows. First, my criticism of the intellectual results of German-Jewish philosophy is in no way meant to anachronistically and unfairly delegitimize the German-Jewish philosophical enterprise in light of the fate of German (and indeed European) Jewry. Instead, I would like to consider the structure of German-Jewish philosophy on its own terms in order to focus on the profound conundrum in which German-Jewish thought, from Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig, continued to find itself. This leads to my second, perhaps more important, qualification. The story that I am about to tell about German-Jewish thought is in many ways oversimplified. While, as I will argue, German-Jewish thinkers continued to define Judaism as a religion, they often did so in ways that were at odds with their own descriptions of Judaism as well as in tension with the objectives of their own arguments. I will be able to point to some of this internal tension briefly only with regard to Mendelssohn’s philosophy, but it is a tension that is also present in the other thinkers I will mention, and especially Hermann Cohen, who will not be discussed in this essay. It is

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the creatively contradictory nature of much of the German-Jewish attempt to fit Judaism into the category of religion while denying that Judaism has any particular political authority that has made a philosophical retrieval of German-Jewish philosophy possible in contemporary American-Jewish philosophy. And this retrieval has played a not inconsiderable part in the renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America. My point, then, is not to present an absolute dichotomy between German-Jewish philosophy and American-Jewish philosophy, but rather to show how the renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America works itself out in large part through a rejection of a problem set in motion by, but also recognized by, GermanJewish philosophers. To begin to make this argument, it is helpful to take a clue from an important German Jewish émigré to the United States, Leo Strauss. As he put it, The weakness of liberal democracy in Germany explains why the situation of the indigenous Jews was more precarious in Germany than in any other Western country. Liberal democracy had originally defined itself in theologico-political treatises as the opposite, not of the more or less enlightened despotism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but of ‘the kingdom of darkness,’ i.e. of medieval society. According to liberal democracy, the bond of society is universal human morality, whereas religion (positive religion) is a private affair.

Strauss’s comment comes from the preface to the 1965 English translation of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. And Spinoza is of course quite relevant not only to the history of the development of theories of liberal democracy but also to the particular quagmire that German-Jewish thought, beginning with Mendelssohn, found itself in. Arguing that the Hebrew prophets were “private men” with conflicting perceptions of reality resulting from their overactive imaginations, Spinoza maintained that while everyone is entitled to their religious opinions, religious opinions without reference to philosophical truth or morality cannot by definition lay claim to truth, philosophically or politically. More particularly with regard to Judaism, Spinoza famously contended that the laws of the Hebrews are pertinent only in the context of their original, political meaning: “ceremonial observances…formed no part of the Divine law, and had nothing to do with blessedness and virtue,

C o m i n g Af t e r : A m e r i c a n J e w i s h T h o u g h t i n L i g h t o f G e r m a n J u d a i s m Le o ra B a t n i t z k y

but had reference only to the elections of the Hebrews, that is…to their temporal bodily happiness and the tranquility of their kingdom, and… therefore they were only valid while that kingdom lasted.” Because the ceremonial law no longer corresponds to a political kingdom, Spinoza’s argument concludes that Jewish law is not divine law, and that post-biblical Jewish law is meaningless. Beginning with Moses Mendelssohn, German-Jewish philosophers accepted Spinoza’s framework for thinking about politics and philosophy even when they attempted to reject his conclusions. Mendelssohn followed Spinoza in maintaining that the ceremonial law makes no claims on philosophy or politics, but unlike Spinoza he denied that the meaning of the Jewish ceremonial law was political. As Mendelssohn put it in his public defense of Judaism in his Jerusalem: “Judaism boasts no exclusive revelation of eternal truths. . . . The voice which let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim, ‘I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according to their deeds.’ This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism.” In contrast to the universal religion of mankind, which Mendelssohn equates with morality, Judaism, he contends, is a historical temporal truth that makes demands only on the Jewish people and not on society and morality at large. In making a distinction between the universal religion of mankind and Judaism, Mendelssohn anticipates another major tenet of German-Jewish liberalism. Here again Strauss offers us a helpful description when he suggests that German-Jewish thinkers embraced a “distinction between state and society, or . . . the recognition of the private sphere protected by the law but impervious to the law, with the understanding that, above all, religion as particular religion belongs to the private sphere.” Mendelssohn distinguishes between the laws of the state, which by definition demand adherence, and those of the realm of Jewish society, which by definition make no such demands. But this distinction, both in the context of Jerusalem and in the context of Judaism more broadly, is particularly ironic and telling. After all, in defending Judaism to his Christian critics, Mendelssohn claims in Jerusalem that “Judaism knows of no revealed religion in the sense in which Christians understand this term. The Israelites possess a divine legislation— laws, commandments, ordinances, rules of life, instruction in the will of

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God as to how they should conduct themselves in order to attain temporal and eternal felicity.” On the one hand, Mendelssohn claims that Judaism is not a religion because it demands action, not belief (this is where it differs from Christianity). But on the other hand, Mendelssohn defines Jewish law in completely apolitical terms, placing it precisely in contrast to the laws of the state. As he puts it: “[Judaism] as religion knows of no punishment, no other penalty, than the one the remorseful sinner voluntarily imposes on himself. It knows of no coercion, uses only the staff [called] gentleness, and affects only mind and heart.” Very fundamentally, Mendelssohn’s definition and description of Judaism is at odds with itself. Judaism is not a religion in the way that his Lutheran interlocutors understand religion, that is, in terms of faith, because Judaism is a religion of law and action. Furthermore, Mendelssohn maintains, Jewish law is not a deadening legalism as some Protestant caricatures would have it, but a “living script.” For these reasons, Mendelssohn would seem to reject the liberal definition of religion offered by his younger contemporary, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who argued that “Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling.” For Mendelssohn, the revealed legislation of Judaism, as opposed to Schleiermacher’s liberal faith, is oriented toward both thinking and acting. In Mendelssohn’s words, “Among all the prescriptions and ordinances of the Mosaic law, there is not a single one which says: You shall believe or not believe. They all say: You shall do or not do. . . . The ceremonial law itself is a kind of living script, rousing the mind and heart, full of meaning, never ceasing to inspire contemplation and to provide the occasion and opportunity for oral instruction.” Yet along with this rejection of the boundaries placed on the concept of religion by Protestants during the Enlightenment, Mendelssohn also removes any conflict between Judaism and universal truth (what he calls the universal religion of mankind), and also any conflict between Judaism and the state, by claiming in both cases that any conflict that would seem to arise is the result of a category error. Judaism is distinct from, and not a threat to, universal truth, just as Judaism—and indeed Jewish law—is distinct from, and not a threat to, state law. From a formal perspective, then, if not from the perspective of content, Mendelssohn’s definition of Judaism does very much fit with Scheiermacher’s liberal Protestant definition. As Schleiermacher puts it, “Religion maintains its own sphere and its own character only by completely

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removing itself from the sphere and character of speculation as well as from that of praxis.” Mendelssohn wants to have it both ways: Judaism is a religion of law requiring action and stimulating contemplation. Yet when it comes to questions of universal action, that is, state law, and when it comes to universal contemplation, that is, the eternal truths of philosophy, Judaism remains separate and irrelevant. To apply Schleiermacher’s words to Mendelssohn, we could say that for Mendelssohn, “Jewish law maintains its own sphere and its own character only by completely removing itself from the sphere and character of universal speculation as well as from that of universal praxis.” It is, of course, important to underscore that the motivation for Mendelssohn’s argument is both obvious and honorable. He is compelled to defend Judaism or risk being forced to convert to Christianity, and yet avoid offending his enlightened Christian audience. And given that when he wrote Jerusalem, Mendelssohn, and the Jewish community for whom he speaks, had no civil rights whatsoever, the caution that he was forced to use in writing it cannot be overstated. Nevertheless, the tension between Mendelssohn’s claim that Jewish law demands contemplation and action and his claim that Jewish law is in essence dispensable to the pursuit of universal truth and morality bears itself out also in the subsequent fate of Mendelssohn’s philosophy. On the one hand, Mendelssohn provides a very traditional conception of the Jewish obligation to obey Jewish law. As he puts it, “He who is not born into the law need not bind himself to the law; but he who is born into the law must live according to the law; and die according to the law.” Yet on the other hand, Mendelssohn provides no philosophical or theological justification for why Jews should obey the law and in fact, by virtue of his own definitions, he cannot provide any philosophical or theological justification for Jews to obey the law, because he has argued that Jewish law is a temporal, historical truth whose legitimacy is dispensable to philosophical truth and theological belief. When the liberal society that Mendelssohn had hoped for was, at least to some extent, finally actualized, the question of why Jews should remain Jews was one they continually asked themselves. From Mendelssohn’s time forward, this question would be answered within his framework, which denied, as we have seen, that Judaism qua Judaism has anything to say about politics.

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The birth of Reform Judaism was of course predicated on precisely the claim that Judaism does not constitute a separate political authority. Abraham Geiger, Reform Judaism’s founding father, maintained that the study of Judaism can only be a history of “spiritual achievements” because “it is precisely to its independence from political status that Judaism owes its survival.” Geiger in fact linked his non-political view of Judaism with a commitment to the German national cause: “The Germans were able to give birth to the greatest discoveries . . . to the free spirit of the Reformation and to the glory of a literature of world-wide import. It is our wish that the new united Reich, led by its imperial dynasty, may be able to record similar achievements.” Geiger’s notion of the spiritual achievement of Judaism went hand in hand with his attempt to rid the Judaism of his day of any notion of collective politics or messianic hope. Geiger rightly recognized that from the perspectives of Judaism and Jewish history only the existence of a synagogue state could undermine the German state. His claims about Judaism’s “spiritual achievement” bear directly on his affirmation of the possibility of German political liberalism–defined as the privatization of religious faith within a neutral political order—for Jews and Germans alike. It is worth noting that even Modern Orthodoxy, founded by Samson Raphael Hirsch, followed the framework set by Mendelssohn, which separated Jewish life from political life at large. Significantly, this was the case even when Hirsch criticized the Reform movement for its claim that Judaism is a religion. Hirsch argued that Judaism is not a religion, the synagogue is not a church, and the Rabbi is not a priest. Judaism is not a mere adjunct to life: it comprises all of life. To be a Jew is not a mere part, it is the sum total of our task in life. To be a Jew in the synagogue and the kitchen, in the field and the warehouse, in the office and the pulpit, as father and mother, as servant and master, as man and as citizen, with one’s thought, in word and in deed, in enjoyment and privation, with the needle and the graving-tool, with the pen and the chisel—that is what it means to be a Jew. An entire life supported by the Divine idea and lived and brought to fulfillment according to divine will.

Yet despite these assertions, Hirsch nonetheless maintained that “It is certainly possible for us to attach ourselves to the state, wherever we may find ourselves, without harm to the spirit of Judaism. After

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all, our former independent statehood did not represent the essence or the purpose of Israel’s national existence but merely a means to the fulfillment of its spiritual task. . . . It is precisely the purely spiritual nature of Israel’s nationhood that makes it possible for Jews everywhere to tie themselves fully to the various states in which they live. . . .”

Franz Rosenzweig is the German-Jewish philosopher who perhaps did most to try to move beyond Mendelsshon’s framework. As Rosenzweig remarked, “From Mendelssohn on, our entire people has subjected itself to the torture of this embarrassing questioning; the Jewishness of every individual has squirmed on the needle point of a ‘why.’” Rosenzweig’s efforts at Jewish education were aimed at ridding the German Jew of the need to answer the question “why.” Like Hirsch, Rosenzweig contended that Jewish life is not a piece among many pieces of a Jew’s identity, but rather that being Jewish encompasses what he called “the whole” of a Jew’s existence. As Rosenzweig put it, “It is necessary for him [the German Jew] to free himself from those stupid claims that would impose Juda ‘ism’ on him as a canon of a definite, circumscribed “Jewish duties” (vulgar orthodoxy), or “Jewish tasks” (vulgar Zionism), or—God forbid—“Jewish ideas” (vulgar liberalism). If he [the German Jew] has prepared himself quite simply to have everything that happens to him, inwardly and outwardly, happen to him in a Jewish way—his vocation, his nationality, his marriage, and even, if that has to be, his Juda‘ism’—then he may be certain that with the simple assumption of that infinite “pledge” he will become in reality “wholly Jew”(‘ganz Jude’).” But even Rosenzweig was unable to transcend Mendelssohn’s paradigm. While Rosenzweig rejected his German-Jewish predecessors’ confining of Judaism to the private realm, and while he, like Hirsch, explicitly rejected the category “religion,” Rosenzweig nevertheless remained unable to consider the ways in which Judaism as Judaism or Jews as Jews might have an impact on political life. Indeed, rather than insisting that Jewish wholeness requires a particularly Jewish involvement in politics (whatever that might mean), Rosenzweig in fact insisted far more than his predecessors had that Judaism qua Judaism was completely separate from politics. As Rosenzweig put it to his friend Eugen Rosenstock: “Is not part of the price that the Synagogue must pay for the blessing...of being already in the Father’s presence, that she must wear the bandages of unconsciousness

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over her eyes?” As Rosenzweig argues at length in part three of The Star of Redemption, the bandages of unconsciousness blind the Jew particularly to politics. Schleiermacher’s modern definition of religion is again pertinent: “Religion maintains its own sphere and its own character only by completely removing itself from the sphere and character of speculation as well as from that of praxis.” Rosenzweig’s understanding of Judaism fits this description, because his claim is precisely that “Judaism maintains its own sphere and its own character only by completely removing itself from” the political life of the world around it. Like Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig finds himself in the position of describing and defending Judaism and particularly Jewish law as, to use Mendelssohn’s terms, a living script encompassing and guiding the whole of life for individual Jews and the Jewish community. Yet also like Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig simultaneously feels compelled to limit this living script when it comes to modern political life. While the American context has certainly seen repetitions of this German-Jewish paradigm, particularly in the ideologies of the institutional inheritors of German-Jewish thought, the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements, much of the renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America is, I would argue, founded on a rethinking of this very position, often through a retrieval and working out of some of the productive tensions within German-Jewish thought. (In fact, the work of the editor of this section, Alan Mittleman, and of two other contributors, David Novak and Kenneth Seeskin, exemplify this retrieval of German-Jewish philosophy and movement beyond it in an American context.) There are no doubt many reasons for this shift among American Jewish philosophers who feel comfortable discussing and even obliged to talk about a particularly Jewish contribution to American political life. At least two obvious reasons come to mind: the first is the complicated interplay between religion and political life that has marked the United States since its founding, and the second is the dominance of the descendants of Eastern European Jews in the United States, who had very different conceptions of Judaism than their German Jewish counterparts had. But I leave discussion of these issues to others in order to focus instead in the remainder of this chapter on an unlikely pair of American Jewish thinkers, both émigrés, who rejected precisely the German-Jewish paradigm that I have described here. It is my suggestion that it has been

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the subsequent drawing out of the implications of their very different philosophies that has provided the seeds for the renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America. These two thinkers are Leo Strauss and Mordecai Kaplan, and they are important both for their deep if surprising similarities and for their profound and ultimate differences. Together they represent the possibility of a real and important engagement between Jewish philosophy and American politics. At the same time, together they also represent the ways in which the implications of this engagement are by no means obvious or determined in advance. I have already mentioned Strauss and his criticism of German-Jewish thought and its faith in the divide between universal human morality and the private affairs of Jewish religion. As is well known, Strauss called this divide “the theologico-political predicament,” by which he meant, among other things, the tension between the modern Jewish claim that religion is a private matter and the theological-political context that defined premodern Judaism, in which the relationship between God and the people of Israel is mediated by law. Mendelssohn’s strained attempt to defend the necessity and centrality of Jewish law for the Jewish people while denying that the law has any political or philosophical implications embodies precisely this tension. As I tried to show before, the strained dynamic set in motion by Mendelssohn plays itself out not only in liberal Jewish philosophy in the German-Jewish context but also in the invention of German-Jewish Orthodoxy, as well as in Franz Rosenzweig’s arguably neoOrthodox philosophy. Remarkably, in his 1934 magnum opus, Judaism as a Civilization, Kaplan anticipates Strauss’s 1965 analysis of the Jewish theologico-political predicament and applies it to the modern ideological movements of Judaism, which of course originated in Germany. As he put it in regard to Reform Judaism: “Only in Wonderland can there be a cat which leaves its grin behind it. In the world of reality it is not feasible to try to have the grin without the cat. That experiment has been undertaken by Reformism in trying to have the Jewish religion without the living entity to which that religion belongs—without a living, functioning Jewish people.” And as he put it in regard to Modern Orthodoxy, “What, in short, is this law of God which no longer regulates our workaday life, and which, outside of marriage and divorce laws, functions only in matters which least affect social relationships and the adjustment of conflicting interests.”

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Kaplan concluded his analysis of the state of contemporary Jewish life by arguing that “Paradoxical as it may sound, the spiritual regeneration of the Jewish people demands that religion cease to be its sole preoccupation.” His proposed solution was to view Judaism not merely as a religion but as a civilization that embraces all avenues of life, including land, language, literature, mores, laws, and folk ways. But viewing Judaism as a civilization was not just a matter of adding spheres of life to the sphere of religion. Instead, argued Kaplan, the Jewish religion must also rid itself of certain elements. Most famously, of course, Kaplan contended that a rethinking if not disavowal of a supernatural conception of God and any notion of Jewish chosenness was required. As he put it, “The modern man who is used to thinking in terms of humanity as a whole can no longer reconcile himself to the notion of any people, or body of believers, constituting a type of society which may be described as belonging to a supernatural order. This is essentially what the doctrine of ‘election’ has hitherto implied.” It is here of course that the differences between Strauss and Kaplan arise. While the starting points for both of their thoughts was the rejection of the German-Jewish paradigm and the demand for honest and sober recognition of the break with the Jewish past that modernity brings, their evaluations of modernity for Judaism as well as modernity itself could not be more distinct. Ironically, it is Strauss the non-believer who emerges as the defender of the ultimate value of Jewish revelation as it has been classically understood. As he puts it in what could seem a direct criticism of Kaplan’s position: “I believe, by simply replacing God by the creative genius of the Jewish people, one gives away, one deprives oneself—even if one does not believe—of a source of human understanding. . . . Now I do not wish to minimize folk dances, Hebrew speaking, and many other things—I do not want to minimize them. But I believe that they cannot possibly take the place of what is most profound in our tradition.” What is most profound, for Strauss, in the Jewish tradition, is a belief in a transcendent God who has revealed, and continues to reveal, Himself to the Jewish people by way of the Torah. Strauss, of course, unlike Kaplan, provided no proposed solution to the theologico-political predicament. But for Strauss this is exactly the point: there is no solution. However, it is in recognizing the irresolvable problem of Judaism’s relation to the modern world that Strauss sees the relevance of Judaism and indeed of Jewish chosenness for modern political

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life. As he put it, “Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create a society which is free from contradictions. From every point of view it looks as if the Jewish people were the chosen people, at least in the sense that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of the human problem insofar as it is a social or political problem.” For Kaplan, the Jewish problem is not an absolute problem, and neither are there absolute human problems. American society, in fact, provided for Kaplan the very possibility for the simultaneous resolution of Jewish and human problems. In his words, “[the American Jew] must be willing to live up to a program that spells nothing less than a maximum of Jewishness. True to his historic tradition he should throw in his lot with all movements to further social justice and universal peace, and bring to bear upon them the inspiration of his history and religion.” For Strauss, in contrast, America offered the possibility, and only the possibility, of a society and political order that would not demand or even strive for the resolution of the Jewish problem in particular and of human problems in general. In conclusion, as the pairing of Strauss and Kaplan shows, the practical, political implications of a Jewish philosophical involvement with American politics remain uncertain, and rightfully so. But taken together, Strauss and Kaplan do suggest a perhaps counterintuitive point about the engagement between modern Jewish philosophy and democratic politics. As they transform if not reject their German-Jewish predecessors, Strauss and Kaplan, despite their profound differences, agree that Judaism may thrive in a democratic society in which politics is the site of legitimate disagreement. So too, as the case of Germany shows, Judaism may fail to thrive in a society that demands consensus so much as to deny any political disagreement. The promise of America for both Kaplan and Strauss holds the possibility of an affirmation of Jewish difference, but the meaning of Jewish difference remains unresolved for both, for perhaps opposite reasons. Kaplan famously argues for the necessity of Jewish difference, for what he called the hyphenated cultural allegiance of the citizen of modern state. As he put it, “for a long time to come citizenship in the western world will take the form of hyphenism. . . . Far from viewing the hyphenated cultural allegiance of the citizen of a modern state with alarm, we should rejoice that

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there is present in the body politic an influence counteracting the danger of chauvinism.” Yet doesn’t Kaplan’s claim that Judaism is countercultural rest on the very disagreement that he wants to resolve? And if Kaplan does do away with the deep sources of Jewish disagreement with the prevailing culture, as exemplified by the doctrine of election, isn’t Kaplan back to where Mendelssohn started? But while Kaplan may over-emphasize political agreement, Strauss may over-emphasize disagreement. Where are the common sources of political agreement, for Strauss? If “the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of the human problem insofar as it is a social or political problem,” on what basis should or can Jews become good, democratic citizens? Surely Jews can align themselves with democratic politics because, unlike other political orders, democracy leaves them alone, but for what reason can or should Jews actually acquire democratic virtues? Attempting to answer these twin challenges left by Kaplan and Strauss has provided the seeds for the blossoming of Jewish philosophy in America.

D oing Jew ish P hilosophy

in

A mer ica

L e nn E. Go odman

Our brief, as I understand it, is to explicate the impact of America on our own philosophical work. Three areas come immediately to mind: (1) America is a free and liberal society. I treasure that freedom and love the country that makes it possible. In practical terms that love translates into support of America’s security and well being, a sense of fellowship with other Americans, and admiration for the institutions and ideals that make America a nation—for this nation is defined not by race or even language, but in part by history, situation, and destiny, and more fully by ideas and by our own ability and commitment to put those ideas into practice. My love for America does not bring with it a very un-Jewish failure to criticize. But it does render me chary of knee-jerk criticism, cliches of protest, and the rhetoric of alienation. America is mine, and I am not a stranger here. The liberal foundations of American culture and political thought resonate in my work in Jewish philosophy, in my deep repugnance for dogma. I celebrate the biblical and rabbinic traditions of Judaism for their rejection of dogmatism. Beyond that, my American roots call on me, as a Jewish philosopher, to pursue adequate ways of conciliating the claims of community and tradition with those of law and justice, seeking a wholesome middle ground between the extremes of identity politics and atomistic anomie, impersonality, secularism, formalism, and legalism. My mother, Florence Goodman, saw to it that I learned to know and love my people, the people of Israel, and to cherish the values and ideas of Judaism. But she was a feminist, an idealist, and a poet long before the memory of her grandmother’s love and her own hopes for my sister and me brought our family back to Jewish commitment and observance. My mother taught English literature at one of the Los Angeles city colleges, and along with her classic opportunity feminism, I share her love of poetry and song, the plastic arts, and the riches of the English language.

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(2) America is a product of the Enlightenment—not just the political Enlightenment of Locke but the intellectual Enlightenment that made the modern age. But America was spared the excesses of the Jacobins, and thus spared the reactions of De Maistre and Bonald, and thanks to this spared the Romantic anti-scientism that saw only the ugliness of the Industrial Revolution and deeply feared technology and science. Scientism has bred its own reaction in America, giving a cachet to cults and mysteries and creating a market for willful superstition, but I was raised in the humanistic tradition of science and invention. My father, Cal Goodman, entered Harvard on the G.I. Bill just after World War II, and wrote his B.A. honors thesis on scientific world views. My earliest bedtime stories were his retellings of the discoveries of Galileo and Lavoisier and (later) Albert Einstein. My life was saved many times over in early childhood by the new antibiotics that turned pneumonia and scarlet fever from mortal plagues to rites of passage. My childhood saw the coming of the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines, and my youth witnessed the discoveries of Watson, Crick, and Franklin, and the world’s entry into extra-planetary space. Science to me has never seemed a panacea, nor have I ever taken scientism and its mythos as the keystone of a way of life, but neither have I doubted the findings of the natural sciences or set up dream battles in my mind between poetry and logic, or science and religion. The core message of my book In Defense of Truth is that the arts and sciences, religion and politics, must answer to the same canons of veracity, even though they may use different idioms and methods, address different (yet overlapping) groups of hearers, and focus on different facets of reality.1 There is, I am convinced, just one reality, and truth itself requires all of us, insofar as in us lies, to address it with the same responsiveness and sensitivity. (3) The third area where my American roots surface in my work in Jewish philosophy is in my ideas about critical appropriation (or reappropriation) of tradition. Jewish history is long and reflective. Indeed, it is often reflexive, taking its own experience as the matter to work with. But disruptions have been frequent, and continuity is hard won. 1  Lenn E. Goodman, In Defense of Truth (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2001).

D o i n g J e w i s h P h i l o s o p hy i n A m e r i c a Le n n E. G o o d m a n

Repeatedly, Jewish thinkers have had to rediscover or reinvent what was lost or forgotten, reframing the old stories to live again and light up a new context, rediscovering old meanings, and plumbing the old texts for deeper meanings not yet brought to light. New settings throughout our history have given new applications to ancient and universal truths. They have also demanded new language in which to voice old truths. Every new environment, along with new foods and modes of dress, and new given names for the children, brings new questions to be answered and old answers to be questioned. We can see the reworking of tradition in the palimpsest of the Tanakh and hear the welter of voices in dialogue across the centuries in the Talmud and Tosefta, Midrash and Responsa; and, beyond the canon, in ethical wills, commentaries, songs, stories, and works of philosophy, poetry, and protest. Perhaps the most striking distinction of Judaism from its sister religions, Christianity and Islam, is the pallid face of doctrine in our culture. Judaism, as is well known, is not a faith or a belief system but a way of life. There is a system of ideas, to be sure, but not a catechism. As Moses Mendelssohn wrote: Although the divine book that we received through Moses is, strictly speaking, meant to be a book of laws containing ordinances, rules of life and prescriptions, it also includes, as is well known, an inexhaustible treasure of rational truths and religious doctrines which are so intimately connected with the laws that they form but one entity. All laws refer to, or are based upon, eternal truths of reason, or remind us of them, and rouse us to ponder them. Hence, our rabbis rightly say: the laws and doctrines are related to each other, like body and soul. . . . The experience of many centuries also teaches that this divine law book has become, for a large part of the human race, a source of insight from which it draws new ideas, or according to which it corrects old ones. The more you search in it, the more you will be astounded at the depths of insight which lie concealed in it. At first glance, to be sure, the truth presents itself therein in its simplest attire and, as it were, free of any pretensions. Yet the more closely you approach it, and the purer, the more innocent, the more loving and longing is the glance with which you look upon it, the more it will unfold before you its divine beauty, veiled lightly, in order not to be profaned by vulgar and unholy eyes. But all these propositions are presented to the understanding, submitted to us for

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consideration, without being forced upon our belief. Among all the prescriptions and ordinances of the Mosaic law, there is not a single one which says: You shall believe or not believe. They all say: You shall do or not do. Faith is not commanded, for it accepts no other commands than those that come to it by way of conviction. In fact, the word in the original language that is usually translated as faith actually means in most cases trust, confidence, and firm reliance on pledge and promise.2

The Torah motivates its ideas in the same way that it institutes its ethos and the virtues it seeks to cultivate—through practice, not dogma. The ideas of God and creation, and God’s active presence in history, paradigmatically, are enshrined in the Sabbath. The hope of restoration and the love of freedom are inculcated not as a scheme of tenets but through the celebration of Passover at the seder table. The ideals of purity and holiness that the Torah sets at the core of its ethos are taught not by credal confessions but by a system of praxis that projects ethical practices as constitutive in the good life, with token boundaries in the symbolically freighted rituals that render visible the unseen intentions of the heart. 2 

Moses Mendelssohn (1729—1786), Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism, translated by Alan Arkush, with Introduction and Commentary by Alexander Altmann (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1983); cf. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem: And Other Jewish Writings, translated and added by Alfred Jospe (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1969), 70-71. Judaism does, of course, rest on and foster beliefs, and it does reject alternatives to the beliefs it embraces, but it does not enforce dogmas. As Mendelssohn rightly observes, there are no obligatory doctrines in the Torah—not because beliefs are irrelevant to the way of life the Law lays out but because the Torah recognizes what we all know intuitively, that sincere and well-founded beliefs are not instilled by sanctions. Commenting on Mendelssohn’s watchwords quoted here, Alexander Altmann (p. 217) wrote, “Mendelssohn by no means denied the fact that both the ‘old’ and the latter-day Judaism subscribes to a set of definite beliefs. What he holds to be alien to Judaism is the liturgically expressed status which Christianity accords to the creeds (Apostolic; Nicene) as authoritative symbola (formulations) of the faith; and what he considers wholly inadmissible is the institution of religious oaths. Cf. Leo Baeck’s essays, ‘Does Traditional Judaism Possess Dogmas?’ where Mendelssohn’s view is explained and defended against the attacks by Jewish Reformers like David Einhorn, Samuel Holdheim, and Leopold Löw, and where it is shown that Judaism has no dogmas in the Christian sense of the term.” See Alfred Jospe, ed., Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of GermanJewish Scholarship (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 41-53. The German socialist Moses Hess (1812-75) wrote in a similar vein “The Jew was not commanded to believe but to search after the knowledge of God.” Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem (Leipzig: 1862).

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I Faith, in Judaism, means trust, and faithfulness means trustworthiness. So God Himself is called faithful in the Hebrew (El emunah)—since it is God in whom we trust. As A. J. Heschel said, “To rely on our faith would be idolworship.” Rightly so, for the faith that is a sheer act of will and willfulness can become a kind of hubris: “We have only the right to rely on God.”3 Abraham is found meritorious by God not because he held to a doctrine but because he trusted God (Genesis 15:6). Moses and Aaron are rebuked and punished not for failing to adhere to some dogma but for insufficient trust (Numbers 20:12), and all Israel is chastised for the same reason (Psalms 78:12-39). The rabbis deem the precepts of the Law enforceable in matters of practice, but not opinion. For belief, as S. D. Luzzatto writes, cannot be commanded.4 Even Maimonides’ thirteen articles of belief serve not as a credal trial but as a key element in the understanding of immortality. For the Mishnah promises all Israel (and the righteous of all nations) a portion in the world to come. But Maimonides follows Plato’s reasoning, that immortality is won through intellectual attachment to what is eternal and divine. So how is it opened to common minds that lack the conceptual grasp needed for such attachment? The Rambam’s platonic answer is that sound beliefs are good practical surrogates when intellectual understanding lies out of reach. And sound practices, as the Torah teaches, lay the groundwork for such beliefs. The issue, then, is not to test whom to count as a Jew but to explain how the rabbis can expect all Israelites to share in immortality, or expect righteousness to do the work of understanding. Each of the thirteen articles points beyond itself, to a corresponding act of understanding, accessible in some measure through the hints and themes that a belief opens up. No credo here, then—and least of all quia absurdum. This is not to say, of course, that there are no beliefs in Judaism, that because Judaism is not a faith it therefore contains no doxastic principles, that practice (as our halakhic positivists may imagine) has somehow 3  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 174. 4 

Samuel David Luzzatto (Italy, 1800-65), Iggrot Shadal, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 1882), 252

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trumped faith and banished ideas from our religion. On the contrary, Judaism is replete with ideas. But the meanings of our biblical narratives are not grasped by way of credence or credulity, and the virtues of hope and justice, trust and cheer, truthfulness, purity of heart, and depth of caring are not the work of belief but of character. As the Hasidic rabbi Jacob Joseph Katz of Polonyé in Volhynia (1710-1783) said, “Faith is devotion to God.”5 We proclaim the unity of God in the Shema and hear God’s self proclamation in the first sentence of the Decalogue. Hasdai Crescas argues that this sentence cannot be counted as a commandment, not just because it contains no imperative verb but because to make it a commandment (on which all the rest depend) would make the entire Torah circular, suppositious: We are ordered to obey God’s laws, but the duty to accept those laws is itself among them! Maimonides does take I am the Lord thy God to issue an imperative on which all the rest of the Law depends. But for that very reason he is justly sensitive to the Torah’s stipulation that this commandment, the imperative entailed by recognition of God’s absoluteness, and comprehending the relation of God’s perfection to our destiny as individuals and as a people, was heard by all Israelites. It was not relayed by Moses, like all but one of the rest.6 We grasped it for ourselves—for each of us, as the rabbis teach, must regard himself as though he personally had been led out of Egypt and had stood at Sinai when the Law was revealed. As Maimonides explains, when God called himself I am and told Moses to tell the people I am has sent you, the elders at least would see the power of his words and recognize for themselves the authenticity of his mission, for the Tetragrammaton that encapsulates God's I am was a miniature ontological argument (not a name at all; for a name if familiar would prove nothing, and if unfamiliar would seem mere gibberish). What the words were meant to argue was that what is absolute in perfection must be real. The least handmaid at Sinai, the Midrash reasons, was given 5 

Jacob Joseph Katz, Toledot Ya`akov Yosef, quoted in Samuel Abba Horodetzky, Leaders of Hasidism (London: 1928), 31.

6 

Maimonides, Sefer ha-Mitzvot, Positive Commandments, §1, citing the Rabbinic doctrine, Makkot 23b, that two commandments: I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 20:2) and Thou shalt have no other gods before Me (Exodus 20:3) were heard directly from God Himself. See Exodus 20:15-18, cf. Deuteronomy 5:4-5.

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immediate access to the experience that would instill in her that realization, shared by all according to their capacity.7 The corollary, the other side of the coin, was that not only must the highest and most perfect be most real but that the highest Reality must be most perfect—and therefore just, truthful, faithful, creative, and benevolent. Those who could not see all these implications clearly for themselves would learn them from the institutions they would live by, the rituals that would sanctify their lives, and the history that their own trust and choice would enact across the generations. I resonate to the fact that Judaism does not enforce a dogma but invites commitment through its ritual and ethical practices, and the symbols that point up and help define its ideas and ideals. Pascal writes that masses and holy water do not create faith. But they do, he adds, lay the foundations for its emergence. The same can be said of tallit and tefilin, or kashrut and milah. We still ask, if commitment is a matter for conscience, is the enforcement of rituals intended as the vehicles of values and ideas any less illiberal than the enforcement of belief? This was the issue that dogged Mendelssohn’s heels. It remains a live issue today, when communal vitality and ethnic survival hang in the balance, and matters of practice define not just the boundaries of Judaism as a religion but the integument of Israel as a people.As an aside, I feel it important to point out that this is not solely a Jewish question, for in any liberal or even multicultural society there is always a tension between the maximal demands of a religion and the requirements of the law. The requirements, by definition, are slimmer, but all too readily seen as comprehensive and sufficient when distinguished from the seemingly sectarian or particularistic desiderata of a way of living whose sources or sanctions are deemed moral or religious. Life in America challenges us with the question, how can religious bodies remain voluntary associations, and how can religious obligations be freely chosen, when our theology construes moral and spiritual commitment and indeed the full fabric of religious observance as commandments of the living God, matters not of faith or personal preference but of law?

7 

See Maimonides, Eight Chapters, Mekhilta, Shirta 3, to Exodus 15:2, ed. Lauterbach (Philadelphia: JPS, 1933) 2.24, ll. 29-31.

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The answer, I think, itself depends on another kind of faith, faith specifically in the vitality and relevance of our ideals and practices. This, I think, is the meaning for us of the biblical commandment to teach God’s mizvot diligently to our children, to speak of them in our homes and in public, to reflect on them morning and evening, to bind them symbolically on the hands and arms that effectuate our choices, to hold them out before our eyes as a guide to action, and to display them for all to see on the doorways and gateposts of our homes (Deuteronomy 6:7-9). Job, the rabbis tell us, was tested twice—first with prosperity and then with penury and sufferings. Our people has had more than its share of sufferings, but America tests us with liberty. Confidence in the truth of our idea about God and trust in our calling, the divine imperative to become a holy people and a light to the nations, mark our path forward, if that path is to remain free. The kernel of truth in Sartre’s biting claim that all faith is bad faith lies in the recognition that the faith that needs enforcement is a faith uncertain of its roots. It is here that I see a proper role for Jewish philosophy in America. Philosophy can help us shed the dogmatic accretions and pressures to conformity that arrogate to themselves the mantle of religion. Trust and openness can create alternatives to the insularity and parochialism of positivist orthodoxy. They help us cleanse ourselves of the would-be progressivism that seeks validation not in the Torah’s timeless message but in political correctness. Trust and openness sustain and are sustained by philosophy when philosophy gives us confidence that our thoughts are well reasoned, our intentions sound, and our actions faithful to principle, in no need of being hidden away hermetically or shrouded in dogma and obscurantism. Abraham trusted the promise of God’s Covenant: his descendants would be countless as the stars (Genesis 15:5) and a blessing to the nations. How could he be so sure of that? Only because he grasped the power of an idea: by purging the horror of violence from the holiness of the divine, the monotheistic idea allows the integration of all affirmative values in a dominion of justice and truth.8 The trust that this idea inspires

8 

See Goodman, On Justice (Oxford: Littman Library, 2008), God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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gleams steadily in Isaiah’s counsel, “Be firm and calm and unafraid, do not lose heart . . . only in trust is there safety (im lo ta’aminu ki lo te’amenu) (Isaiah 7:4, 7:9). In our darkest hour, Leo Baeck voiced the same message, describing our faith not as a doctrinal system but as “the capacity of the soul to perceive the abiding... in the transitory.”9 Abraham’s idea will spread and grow, allowing the nation who bears it to flourish, as a light to all nations, the little child that leads them, not by force, and not by power, but by the shining exemplar of a life well lived. This role is only in part enacted on the plane of private virtues. For even such virtues, after all, are fostered by public institutions—educational, cultural, eleemosynary, and indeed industrial and commercial. The ethos limned by the Torah, and specifically by its admonition to pursue our likeness to God through emulation of God’s hesed—generosity and graciousness—is the strength behind the promise that Abraham’s progeny will flourish. The example of Israel’s ways when we heed God’s call is what projects our blessing to others who need not share our heritage or law, culture or faith, but learn to share our ethics and ideals.10 The peoples of the world live in communities as well as societies. Societies are formal structures, regulated by rules and laws. Communities are informal groups, where roles, not rules, sketch the norms. We build our societies but enter our communities—families, tribes, ethnicities, cultural and language traditions—often before we have any choice in the matter. Yet those communities are far more fluid today than the skeletal, societal trellises that support them and seek to regulate them at the boundaries of permissibility. A commercial society with diverse historical traditions will be pluralistic perforce and will push and tug at those who live in it in all sorts of ways, to affiliate or disaffiliate with every sort of group or tendency. Communities can educate. They can set standards—although the pressures

9  Leo Baeck, Essence of Judaism (London: Macmillan, 1936, 118). 10   For some of the details of the life of generosity and justice called for in the Judaic

reading of the command to emulate God’s grace by loving others as we love ourselves, see my Gifford Lectures, Love They Neighbor as Thyself (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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are immense and intense to conform those standards to prevailing trends or to the lowest common denominator among those trends. Hence the tendency of individuals and groups, including churches, scouting organizations, schools, and even families, to conform their moral standards to the legal minimum and their epistemic standards to the skeptical maximum, in deference to market demand and the cynicism that calls itself realism. Reason, as sharply differentiated from faith, becomes critical here, for communities in a pluralistic society cannot readily coerce. They must convince—optimally by showcasing the intrinsic worth of their wares. They must learn from their environment and discern what is most true or beautiful, just or good, in what is their own, but adopt or adapt what is wholesome and worthwhile in what may look new and exotic, without denaturing their heritage in the process. America is a community of communities. The fabric of American identity is a mosaic of subcultures and loyalties without which its ideals would rapidly grow vapid, its rhetoric hollow, its laws devoid of energy, content, warrant, or motivation. Yet the subcultures of America do not create a society, and it is only as a society that America attains unity and greatness, through its unceasing efforts, our unceasing efforts, to integrate with one another in the name of over-arching values that are not only shared but worth sharing. Parochialism has no proper place in the dialogue that makes for America’s integration as a nation. Separatism and particularism, racism and even the invidiousness that sometimes disguises its motives under the specious banners of pluralism and communalism, are at odds with American ideals and with the Jewish experience: Dialogue builds the sinews and joins the hands that unite a nation and give it not just strength but good sense and responsiveness to diverse interests and concerns. Dogma feeds on fear and shelters in a refusal to engage or even discuss differences and commonalities. Dogma, then, evades the biblical command to test all claims that we hear. It fails also the rabbinic test, which identifies the wise as those who learn from every fellow human and which cautions us that we are accountable for all that we have seen and refrained from tasting and enjoying.11 11

  See Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin, ad fin.

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II Naturalism is the second area I want to focus on in assaying America’s impact on my work in Jewish philosophy. That penchant in my work is evident to everyone who reads my published writings. Never having been scientistic, I have nothing to disavow or live down in my outlook on science. I have never been tempted by reductionism, so I have never sought refuge from it in obscurantism, even when it tricks itself out in the guise of mysticism. (From the time of my first examination of religious experience, in my BA honors thesis on Ibn Tufayl, the mysticism that has interested me was rational mysticism, in the tradition extending from Parmenides and Plato to Spinoza and beyond.) I was raised with what I take to be a healthy distaste for superstition and a wholesome disrespect for the occult. My personal story does not justify my intellectual commitments— that must be done by whatever cogency they achieve—but it does help explain the constellation of values that orient my thinking and have continued to orient it since I first began to see myself as an inquiring mind. So I will be somewhat personal here, and the personal story I have to tell is very American. After majoring in philosophy at Harvard, my late father taught physics for a year in Putney and then worked as an engineer and management consultant, segueing gradually into his self-created profession as an advisor to artists and gallery owners. My wife, Roberta Goodman, had a long career as an equity analyst specializing in health care policy and finance. Her successes in that work and in her later teaching and consulting rest on the union of sharp analysis with penetrating insight into human character, warm personal skills, a keen memory for detail, and a sharp distaste for disingenuousness, pettifogging, and cant. She is also a past president of our local shul. My late first wife, Madeleine Goodman, was a PhD geneticist and medical anthropologist. Raised as an Orthodox Jew and maintaining her religious commitments and affiliations throughout her 50 years of life, she was educated at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, Barnard College, Oxford University, UCLA, and the University of Hawaii. It was in Hawaii that she became a professor and in time an academic vice president of the university. She was a laughing and light-hearted lover of the arts, a pianist, painter, and dancer as a girl, and a women’s studies professor as a young woman before she was a college administrator. Early on, she helped

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me co-found a synagogue in Honolulu. My daughters Allegra and Paula are a novelist and a hematologist/oncologist. Both are critical thinkers who see no dichotomy between reason and imagination. Both are committed Jews, as are their husbands, a mathematical biologist and a computer scientist. I have a deep and abiding love of the sciences, especially biology. I have no Heideggerian phobias about technology, no yearning to hide out in the Black Forest with the trolls, gremlins, and far uglier specimens of humanity. So I harbor a great respect for the sciences, and for the patient creativity of inventors, engineers, and designers. I do believe that engineers, at their best, are creative—and so, for that matter, are administrators. Their work fails when they fail to think creatively. It flourishes when they unite creativity with critical thinking. The sheer intellectual curiosity of discoverers is precious to me. I find no prurience in scientific curiosity and have no fears that it will open some ungovernable Pandora’s box. I am not, in C. P. Snow’s telling phrase, an intellectual Luddite. If there is something dark and dangerous in the work of science, I believe that it’s only there because we’ve put it there by confusing power with violence—and then making power rather than understanding the theme of our inquiries. Knowledge does give us power as well as understanding, and either can be used for weal or woe to nature and ourselves and one another. But the appetite for knowing is not the enemy, and the naturalism that grows from the desire to understand nature and master it, the mandate Genesis lays out, is not the foe of God or beauty or morality but their powerful friend and ally, suborned at times but never worse or better than the human hearts that read its message. I remember the concern another philosopher expressed on hearing me acknowledge my naturalism. But naturalism, to me, as I wanted to assure that colleague, does not mean atheism or any sort of positivist neutrality about values. I do not believe that our ancient predecessors thought more slowly than we do, or that the medievals talked more slowly than we do— and I certainly do not believe that either group (in finding meaning in the world) thought the cosmos was a text! They were more likely to see it as an organism. But I don’t think human beings ever uniformly thought the thoughts they were expected to think. And I do not believe that human experience was ever radically different from what we know.

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So if poets speak of miracles or prophets lay down laws, the response in antiquity would have been as varied and subtle, as mottled and open to doubts and descants, as any such words would be today. Idioms, symbols, customs, and conventions change. But if we want to understand what a miracle looked like, we need to consult our own experience, visual and emotional. And if we want to understand how laws were promulgated and received we need to translate our own jurisprudence of expedience and uniformity into a jurisprudence where fairness is God’s concern and an unchanging law for everyone is a fresh and revolutionary idea, vouched for by the word of God, as spoken and relayed and reported by His prophet, but deriving its authority not from an arbitrary fiat underscored by thunder and lightshow in the heavens but from its claim to justice and its worthiness of ascription to the author of creation, the caring and generous provider of light and life, sustenance and cosmic order. The Torah endures as a guide to life not for its occasional reflections of pagan antiquity but for its power to rise above that spiritual plane and give us richer and more realizable ideas of transcendence. So I don’t privilege readings of scripture that presume only the crudest and most primitive notions to be accessible to the biblical authors or their intended audience. I think the Torah uses simple language and concrete imagery because it seeks a certain timelessness, which it has won, miraculously enough. The rabbis, when working at their best, thematize the Torah’s interests, keeping them fresh and accessible, quite often as intended, and also often with value added, or with time-bound crochets bracketed or ironed out. The medievals—thinkers like Saadiah and Maimonides—rethematize both Torah and Talmud. I don’t find them inaccessible, and I recoil from commentaries and translations that set them at a remove and make them alien. For these men speak our language; and, beyond that, build bridges for us to the much more exotic idiom of the Psalms, or Job, Kohelet, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Deuteronomy. My naturalism here serves to unify my experience. It enables and empowers the humanism that can hope to find nothing human utterly alien. It enables me to use the rule of charity and thus to learn from others whose lives are unlike my own. I know the categories of their experience— they are the same as mine—but my naturalism goes further than epistemic empathy. It does not just trust the uniformity of the laws of nature and thus expect a constancy in experience, it also affirms the value of what I see

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in nature, and what I see is emergence—richness and creativity springing from seeming simplicity. I find real value in life and freedom, in wisdom and other virtues, and in being itself. It is because I find reality beautiful and good that I can affirm (as I do in all my writings about justice) the unity of each being’s prima facie deserts with the claims of its conatus (its unique and dynamic essence); justice, in the equilibration of such deserts, in keeping with the ontic magnitude of those claims; and rights, on the plateau of claims made by (and articulated in) the dignity of persons. This idea, that being itself is precious, that existence is a blessing and reality a good, makes me perhaps somewhat impatient with those who scratch their heads over whether goodness is a natural or a non-natural property. I don’t think it’s a property at all but the very reality of beings, never to be scorned, but not to be confused with facticity, the core mistake of those committed to a naturalistic fallacy, and of those who skirt too widely from the recognition of the unity of being with value, in an effort to avoid that fallacy. Siting value in being leads me to the ontic theory of justice that has been a centerpiece of my normative philosophy, and again makes me just a bit impatient with the well established (and even trite) contractarian tradition of American political (and moral!) thinking, which I fear descends too readily into relativism and conventionalism. I see contracts as an index of fairness, but not its criterion. This is one place where I think American political thinking has something to learn from the ontic tradition of Jewish and biblical thought, which does hold being precious and finds a kind of pinnacle, or rather a plateau, of that preciousness in the dignity of persons. My naturalism, then, is as alive in ethics and politics as it is in ontology and epistemology. The false dichotomies that make science an enemy of value, and that bundle beauty, truth, and goodness apart from nature, are the sort of splits that my own synthetic bent strives to overcome. One big project, recently published, has been a book, Creation and Evolution, aiming to demonstrate the deep compatibility of naturalism with theism.12 But my naturalism runs deeper, into metaphysics, because I see being as a value, 12  Lenn E. Goodman, Creation and Evolution (London: Routledge, 2010).

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and into epistemology, where I’ve defended a non-reductionistic but hardly deflationary correspondence account of truth and its active presence in the sciences and in the arts. My new project is a co-authored book called Coming to Mind: The Soul and its Body, about the intimate connection of body and soul, arguing from the evidence of neuroscience for the substantial reality of the emergent soul, not as a wispy and ethereal “stuff ” but as an active, integrative, and creative agency. Many philosophers of our era have turned away from the big questions, shielding themselves from engagement by transforming philosophy into a meta-discourse: the philosopher, we are told, does not speak about nature or life, peace and war, good and evil, truth and falsity, but about discourse. So we have philosophy of law or religion; not ethical or political philosophy but talk about ethical language or political judgments; not logic but reflections about logic; not philosophical theology but treatments of God-talk; not explorations of experience and its meanings but philosophy of mind, disquisitions on the right or wrong way to talk about cognition or emotion, animal behavior, or human intentions and motivations. I find this kind of sublimating retreat radically unwholesome. It grows merely sad when it turns fractal, wheeling in ever-diminishing arcs about some rotational axis invisible to all but a parochial coterie of fractal dervishes. Philosophers, of course, never wholly abandon the core issues of their discipline. The big questions pursue them, just as God pursued Jonah when he tried to escape his prophetic charge. But when the material questions of philosophy are bracketed, cloaked in referential opacity by their confinement within metadiscourse, the attention they receive is inevitably oblique at best. Inquirers once moved by natural curiosity and a real hunger for understanding turn away from the big questions and only back up into the issues that matter. They beg the questions they were once moved to address and stumble ahead with learned disquisitions on one another’s work, but little to say that brings clarity to the quandaries that continue to vex their fellow human beings, whose perplexities a philosopher might try to resolve. Academic insularity aggravates the problem. So does defensive overspecialization. The mutual hand-holding and back-scratching that may seem professionally useful among tiny self-constituted and selfcongratulatory groups is only harmful to the philosopher’s public charge and damaging to the profession’s image.

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Parochial or scholastic philosophers will lay out theories of truth that tell us that theories of truth are otiose. They are willing to hazard that ‘p’ is true if and only if p is the case. But they sidestep responsibility for the notion of correspondence—or boldly announce that truth is whatever a (well grounded) theory says it is—even as they finesse the challenge to tell us what it is that makes a theory well grounded. Some of our most acclaimed philosophers of politics write that justice is whatever reasonable people would agree to—but fail to explain what makes a person reasonable, except for mentioning a few symptoms that look suspiciously as though they were painted not from life but from the mirror. Philosophers of science stand at the sidelines, volunteering as cheerleaders, groupies, roadies, Monday morning quarterbacks, or amateur coaches, with about as much relevance to the real work of scientists as couch potato coaches have to the real games they like to chew over. The cleverest have long ago given up trying to explain how science differs from superstition. Like intuitionists in ethics, they seem to say that they may not know how to define science, but they know it when they see it—which sounds a lot like that, as it sounds too much like the philistine comment: “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.” The authority of the artist and the curator, the critic and Kunstverständiger, need to be preserved, but clever philosophers of art have long ago stopped trying to differentiate art from the rest of the environment, preferring to sonorously announce that art is whatever an artist (or museum director) says it is. Yet when the red soil of America rubs off on me, part of what it leaves is a sense of joy in getting down and dirty, and talking about the issues that matter and not just about other people’s talk. Besides, I can’t muster much patience for art critics and aesthetic theorists who are confident that Duchamp’s Fountain is an art work but aren’t quite sure about Andrew Wyeth or Thomas Hart Benton. Analytic philosophy takes David Hume as its culture hero, and clearly Hume was a great analyst. He sundered being from value by urging that facticity does not make what is so right. He sundered cause from effect by slipping into his description of events a radical atomism of time and description, presaging the logical atomism that beached Bertrand Russell in phenomenalism and confined many another philosopher in the unacknowledged solipsism or radical skepticism of various forms of idealism—including the social solipsism of language games, “practices,”

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and blicks, weltanschaungs, paradigms, and other purportedly inescapable mental cocoons. Hume cut the delicate threads of personal identity too, by atomizing our thoughts and impressions, as if in reality and not just in description they were isolated from one another. Even Kant’s ingenuity could not put the pieces of the soul back together again. Only dogmatism or idealism seemed able to take up the thread of philosophical discourse. G. E. Moore is a case in point, with his blustering insistence on common sense as regards the objects of appearance and sheer intuition as regards the good. In American philosophy, dogmatism and idealism often joined hands. For it was William James, not C. S. Peirce, who became its best heard spokesman, laying claim in his bully tones to the terrain of realism while snuffling and shuffling toward an equivocal subjectivism in defining what realism must mean. James could make religious faith itself a kind of subjective necessity and generalize that point to truth at large, even as he carefully pinned religious experience to the waxed lining of his dissecting tray in his Gifford Lectures, addressing not the holy itself, of course, but religious experience and expression. Phenomenologists took a similar course. Seeking a key in subjectivity to the wardrobe, where, behind the learned overcoats and heavy furs, curtains would part on a clearly viewed reality, they backed further and further away from their objective. Descartes began the process by reframing the classic arguments of metaphysics psychologistically: Matter is what I cannot abstract from it; mind is what I cannot deny; the cosmological argument no longer speaks of the world’s beauty and order but of the Source of my idea of perfection; and the ontological argument is not about the inherence of reality in perfection but about the logic of the idea of perfection in my mind. Descartes will have little to say about normative ethics or politics, but much to discuss about the dynamic of the passions. Kant heroically seeks to rebuild the ethical vessel, starting only with its rudder, the idea of a moral law, but he runs aground when he vacillates between autonomy and the objectivity of the moral law. Wreck gatherers salvage solid shards and precious cargo from the ribs and carcass of the wreck; and scavengers like Nietzsche and Sartre, fancied up in the garb of corsairs, will pluck for their own uses a bauble or two, making personal appropriation not just a necessary but somehow a sufficient condition of moral authenticity—thus

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falling into step with the utilitarians they despise, who have also somehow identified desirability with desire. The inward turn in philosophy, whether in Ralph Barton Perry’s equation of value with the object of any interest or Rawls’ notion that a theory of justice can be tested only by shared intuitions, culminates in Richard Rorty’s principled and public yawning at philosophical differences, rather than attempting to address any querulous critique. Many an analytic philosopher began life as a mathematician or logician—some of the founding figures were pioneering cyberneticists. So formalism has a prominent place in twentieth-century philosophy. Among the artifacts of the analysts’ method: the Gettier problem in epistemology, the Frankfurt cases in debates about free will, the brain-in-a-vat and Chinese room and brain transplant issues in philosophy of mind, the Schrödinger’s cat examples in philosophy of physics, Nelson Goodman’s epistemic quandaries about the color grue, which changes unaccountably on a given date from green to blue, Quine’s gavagai, Kripke’s metre stick, and Putnam’s alternate universe, which holds a substance with all the properties of water that is not H2O. The examples are colorful, but so is any red herring. All of them reflect the assumption that philosophy is about discourse, here conceived in formal terms, so that a countercase from any possible world will explode any a priori thesis. But philosophy, as I see it, rightly opens not with discourse but with life. Its claims do not normally deserve a priori status. They should stand or fall, like the rest of what we think we know, not by our ingenuity but through our insight, breadth of experience, and depth of understanding. There’s more than enough mystery and ambiguity to clear up in this world, the one we live in, so I agree with Aristotle in preferring fiction that tells us what a certain kind of person might have done in certain circumstances (and thus in devaluing fantastic fictions that set up melodramas in hypothetical worlds while slighting the real dramas of our actual life). In the same way, I find philosophers more usefully employed in addressing the questions real people ask, or might have asked had their natural curiosity not been stifled by dogma or hemmed in by convention. My own method of work is not analytic but synthetic. Not that I eschew analysis: I think distinctions are critical to any intellectual work. But Aristotle’s definition of intelligence as the ability to see a middle

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term, discriminating one class of things from another and discovering connections among seemingly unrelated things, shows us that analysis and synthesis are two sides of the same coin. Neither works without the other. Philosophical disputes and the quandaries that underlie them often arise, as I see it, out of the commitments we hold, often on good grounds, where we fail to reconcile competing values or apercus—perhaps the warring factions in our own minds. The outcome, if not a battle royal, is typically a standoff. Thinkers compartmentalize free will and determinism, reason and experience, chance and necessity, science and religion, explanation and the sense of the absurd. The great philosophers, I believe, are those who overcome these dichotomies not by denying them dogmatically, as some deny the subject-object distinction, and not by ignoring them, as many sophists and sophisticates have tried to ignore the universal human interest in questions of right and justice, or truth, by declaring justice a contract or truth a convention or an imposition, but by reconciling seemingly opposed views, discovering what is sound and solid in what motivates each one, and exposing the apparent opposition as incomplete, too sharply drawn. Plato did that, paradigmatically, with the seeming opposition between Parmenides and Heraclitus. Avicenna did it with the opposition of the eternal and the contingent, saving the world’s constancy and continuity for science without sacrificing its dependence on God—by arguing that all finite and determinate things are contingent in themselves but necessary by reference to their causes.13 Spinoza similarly resolved quite a few seeming antinomies, starting with the many and the one and moving on to such familiar if false dichotomies as liberty and determinism, cognition and volition, reason and emotion, skepticism and knowledge, power and justice. Kant, however, declared an impasse with many of these classic conundrums. My own efforts, richly aided by the work of earlier philosophers, are more in the spirit of Plato’s and Spinoza’s conciliations than Kant’s compartmentalizations. Thus, with free will, I have argued that the seeming opposition of determinism rests on a false dichotomy, arising in the 13  

See Goodman, Avicenna (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 49-83.

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assumption that if all events are causally determined all must be externally determined—negating or ignoring the extent to which we ourselves choose our own acts and form our own character.14 In regard to truth, I have defended realism (a place where Jewish and American commitments meet as allies). Ascribing the familiar opposition between correspondence and coherence to a false demand for certainty, I’ve called coherence back to what I see as its proper role, not rivaling but powerfully and effectively confirming our descriptions and explanations of what we behold. As for the analytic and synthetic, I’ve argued that when context is allowed for, familiar worries over the distinction dissolve: The same sentence will be read analytically or synthetically depending on the assumptions invoked to support it. And with human creativity, I’ve sought a middle course between the romantic and the logicist mystiques, arguing that creativity (found not just in novelty but in outcomes that genuinely add value beyond the given) is neither a passive implant nor a product of the play of chance but (like all our judgments) a product of thoughtful, indeed synthetic, work. Confronting the opposition between classic liberal and communitarian political thinking, I have similarly sought syntheses. So I have argued that community is indeed stronger than the formalism of societal relations, but that for that very reason must be regulated at the extremes by formal rules and institutions. And I’ve argued that the split between deontology and consequentialism in ethics is too sharp. Paraphrasing Kant’s famous words, I’ve urged that morality without interests is empty, and pragmatism without principles is blind. The eudaimonism of the Torah, I have argued, points to a stable middle ground in the Mosaic ideal of a life that fairly integrates the aims that call upon our energies and the principles that rightly guide them. I see here a viable alternative to the romantic myth of inevitable tragedy.15 14   See Goodman, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age (New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 146-200; “What does Spinoza’s Ethics Contribute to Jewish Philosophy?” in Goodman and Heidi Ravven, eds., Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 17-89. 15   See Goodman, On Justice: An Essay in Jewish Philosophy (Oxford and Portland, OR: Littman

Library, 2008), 75-118.

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The synthetic ideal inspired by the Torah and powerfully underwritten by the conceptual work of Aristotle and Plato is heartened and given body by the American experience, which confirms my trust that a good life is possible, for the individual and society, and in time for humanity at large. III The traditions I love are historic and particular, not generic; and there’s a similar particularity in my response to change. I’ve never been comforted or convinced by the arguments of Burke or Oakeshott, or even by Hayek’s thoughtful organicism, that long practice is a valid stand-in for justice or that long tenure and familiarity can take the place of truth. I’ve never seen faith as a way of knowing or an able substitute for reason. By the same token, I do not believe, with Mill, that just any dispute will likely lead to truth, or that just any experiment in living is worth trying, or worthy of praise or support just because it has been tried—or never tried. Nor do I concur with Dewey’s lingering delusion that change somehow is inevitably progressive. I’m suspicious of invisible hands, even in the marketplace of ideas and ways of life. Such agencies seem a bit too mysterious to be real; or, when they do come to life, a bit too hidden to be trusted. I think planners and projectors should lay their cards on the table. The experiments in living that I’m most ready to trust are the un-rhetorical kind without a parti pris or slogan, or a poster child that essentializes the exotic or typifies the extreme. Experiments, I think, should be judiciously laid out and well grounded in experience, cautious about their impact on human subjects, and undertaken with due regard and diligence, careful scrutiny of human history and human nature, openly and thoughtfully on the lookout for unexpected consequences, even as they chance the unlooked-for risks inherent all efforts to retain or adjust an unexamined status quo. Genesis recycles the mythic language of Mesopotamia to motivate higher and more sublime concepts than that ancient mythos bore. The story of creation and the catalogue of begats give way to the patriarchal narratives of rivalry and succession, covenants and promises, lonely vigils and visions, sacrifices on new-made altars, bargaining for innocent souls with the Eternal Judge of all the Earth. An ethical vision emerges in such encounters, anchoring and anchored in a larger, metaphysical intuition.

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Together these give meaning to the events of a shared history and create a sense of peoplehood and mission for those who win the name of Israel. Israel’s idea of mission makes familiar notions of fate or destiny look dark, flat, even opaque by comparison. But part of the Israelite mission, from the outset, was a demand for critical thinking. It is only by their veracity that true prophets are to be distinguished from false ones. Even Moses, the Rambam tells us, would rightly be doubted and questioned by the people he had arrived to liberate, for one should never simply accept at face value a purportedly inspired message, even if its content is just what all have most longed to hear. What we take up from our surroundings must be scrutinized. What is preserved or revived from the past will endure only if it is not swallowed unquestioningly but chewed over and digested—made sense of, even as it is tested and put to use. The biblical patriarchs and heroes are not all holy or heroic; the biblical kings, unlike the royal icons of ancient Near Eastern sacred and official history, are often seen as overreachers. Prophetic history records royal remorse as well as regal triumph. And the prophets too, unlike the gilt simulacra of hagiography, were fallible and flawed, often troubled and imperfect human beings, although their messages reached beyond the limits of their failings. Jacob feared Esau, and Samuel feared Saul. “It is not necessary,” Maimonides observes, “for a prophet to have all the virtues and no faults whatever.”16 Even Moses lost his temper, even Aaron buckled to the vox populi. And Miriam, along with Aaron, slipped into invidious talk against Moses, for marrying a black woman, and vaulted from there to the notion that her converse with God, and Aaron’s, somehow rivaled that of Moses, which was no mere epiphany but the framing of a law and way of life (Numbers 12:1-2). Past lapses are not all redeemed, and not every act of David’s or of Solomon’s, or of Moses himself, becomes a norm. Scripture declares that Solomon sinned (Nehemiah 13:26), and Nathan leads David to condemn his own crime in sending Uriah to the front. Solomon, Maimonides writes, was waylaid by venery; David gave way to ruthlessness. Elijah’s mission was undercut by his wrath. True, the Rambam writes, that ire challenged only 16  

Maimonides, Eight Chapters, 7.

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those who flouted God’s authority. Still, “the Sages declare that God took him from the world, saying: ‘no one is fit to govern men who has so much zeal as you, for you will be the death of them’.”17 Even a paragon, then, is not an idol; and no saint is an all-sufficient guide. God sets the norms, but even these demand interpretation. And to spell out the demands of the living God in every age they must continually be re-visioned. Only so can they be lived as law and not laid by in a reliquary, sacred, silent, and untouched—or ossified into practices that swiftly lose their meaning and purchase on our lives, minds, and spirits. The meta-tradition that keeps a practice or idea fresh is a culture of critical appropriation. That kind of culture is especially apposite in America, where the world itself seems still new and young. And it suits the culture of Israel, since we are, as our historic Lover rightly paints us, a stiff necked people, not readily bent to the yoke of credence or obedience. We learn from our experience of history, from the cultures that surround us with valuable or terrible examples. We triangulate from what we see, and that allows us (pace the postmoderns) a measure of selfcriticism and objectivity. We can stand outside ourselves to some extent, even as we learn to live comfortably (but never too comfortably) in our own skin. Tertullian stands up as a champion of faith when he proclaims Credo quia absurdum, But Maimonides argues that no faith is possible without understanding. And understanding demands a critical edge, a nose for the problematic, a sense that actions and choices must heed what we know and will be vapid or inane, or dangerous, if based on ignorance. The twentieth century novelist Hayyim Hazaz describes the intellectual honesty we need for the kind of long -distance run that our history sets out for us as an odd, hybrid of commitment with doubt. It is, he says, “a Jewish trait, very, very Jewish: to believe with absolute faith, with glowing faith, with all their hearts and souls, and all the same just very slightly not to believe, the tiniest little bit, and that tiny little bit is the decisive thing.”18 17   Maimonides, Eight Chapters, 7, quoting Sanhedrin 113a. 18  Hayyim Hazaz, “The Sermon” (Avanim Rothot, 1946), translated by I.M. Lask, The Jewish

Spectator (May 1952): 16.

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Critical appropriation demands both creativity and responsibility, respect for ground won and vigorous winnowing and sifting of what must and should be let go. That kind of critical creativity has always been the key to our survival. It has been and remains the key to the living work of Jewish philosophy.

T hink ing T hrough S cr ip ture and L i turgy af ter the S hoah St e v e n Kepne s

Preface: Jewish Philosophy as Hermeneutical and Crisis-Thinking

My view of Jewish philosophy is that it is a rational, ethical, hermeneutical enterprise. The rational dimension of Jewish thought speaks to its logical and systematic aspect and draws it into relationship to Greek, medieval, modern, and postmodern notions of rationality and logic. The ethical dimension tunes Jewish philosophy to matters of individual virtue, social relations, and justice for both Jews and non-Jews. The hermeneutical dimension supplies Jewish philosophy with its central method, which is exegesis of texts. The exegetical dimension of Jewish philosophy is what grounds its continuity with biblical and rabbinic thought and most recently has allied Jewish philosophy with literary criticism and semiotics. Since the publication of my first book, The Text as Thou: Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology, I have attempted to focus on hermeneutics as a path to forge continuity with the biblical and rabbinic traditions of Jewish thought as Jewish philosophy attends to the significant logical, ethical, and practical challenges that the modern and contemporary world presents to the Jewish community. Among these challenges are the Shoah, the establishment of the State of Israel, the transformation of gender roles in Judaism, issues surrounding Jewish identity and continuity, and most recently the challenge of interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I found the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Buber, and Paul Ricoeur most fruitful for Jewish thought because it addresses the inadequacies of the Cartesian cogito and the Kantian autonomous rational self as the origin and criterion of modern philosophy.

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Hermeneutics offers alternative models for philosophy based on the powers of language, so the hermeneutical turn is part of the larger “turn to language” in philosophy that involves recognizing that not only is all thinking done in language, but that language is not merely a vehicle for thought, it contributes unique qualities to thinking. My view about the supposed “crisis” in Jewish philosophy today is that it is appropriate to the very nature of Jewish philosophy to be in crisis. I see Jewish philosophy as only valuable when it is responsive to the contemporary world situation. Since the world is not redeemed, Jewish philosophy cannot be the activity of men and women sitting in the robes and regalia of elite universities thinking thoughts. The Jewish philosopher should rather be like the handmaidens at the Sea of Reeds and like Nachshon ben Amminadav, who, despite the hesitation and fears of the Israelites behind him, stepped into that Sea and thereby pushed the world forward toward redemption. Although I briefly flirted with philosophical postmodernism as an avenue to revive modern Jewish philosophy, I came to see postmodernism as a form of anti-philosophy that was prohibited from delivering on its epistemological and ethical claims by its own dalliances with deconstruction, excess, absence, and the newest trends in avant-garde art. Instead of postmodernism I have turned to the uniquely American form of philosophy called pragmatism, and to the rich semiotic system of C.S. Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics not only offers the most comprehensive system to understand how texts become pragmatic sources of meaning, but also offers alternative logical models to those given by Descartes and Kant. These models help us see Jewish scripture and exegetical traditions as complex forms of logic that can help Jewish philosophers attend to practical, ethical, and social problems. Most recently I have turned from Jewish texts to Jewish liturgies, and have sought to trace out a type of thinking in modern Jewish philosophy that I call “Liturgical Reasoning.” In my recent book, Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (Oxford, 2007), I look at the thought of Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig on the philosophical resources in Jewish liturgy, and then apply these thoughts to issues of the Shoah and the State of Israel. Liturgical reasoning follows the modern Jewish philosophers in their claim that the elements of liturgy—word, symbol, music, costume, action—

Thinking Through Scripture and Liturgy af ter the Shoah Ste ve n Ke p n e s

have a rational, ethical, and theological importance. This view is clearly opposed to views of liturgical actions as secondary to beliefs or liturgy as hardened “institutional” expressions of religious charisma.1 It is also different from various psychological views of liturgy as a vehicle of unconscious feelings and thoughts that have only individual and not collective meaning. The approach I take is indebted to sociological theories of religion that present ritual as the heart of religion, as the primary vehicle of socializing the young and reminding the old of the leading values and overarching worldview of a religion. Yet it goes beyond sociological views of ritual by suggesting that liturgy does not merely function to indoctrinate and recall set values and beliefs but also creates a space in which constructive thinking occurs. Liturgy is, thus, not merely a vehicle of indoctrination; it is a sphere in which thinking about primary existential, metaphysical, and theological issues takes place. In addition, as a form of communal action, liturgy helps to mediate between certain philosophical and existential dichotomies such as belief and behavior, thought and action, mind and body. Liturgy is not only a tool of socialization, it is a normative philosophical enterprise that enters individuals into the quest for the true, the good, and the ethical. If the last statement holds, then I venture to make an additional claim for liturgy, and that is that liturgy provides a model for all Jewish and even non-Jewish thinking. Thus, I take the communal and process and “event” quality of liturgy and, moving beyond the sphere of the synagogue, suggest that we look at philosophy as a ritualized communal process and a social event. This ultimately means that truth, itself, is liturgical. A Scriptural Response to the Shoah

To flesh out these claims I want to consider the ways in which Jewish scriptures and Jewish liturgy help develop responses to one of the central events of the contemporary Jewish era: the Shoah. The Shoah, by which we

1 

I share Catherine Bell’s passion for overcoming the needless dichotomy between “ritual and belief ” and the attempts to build up a thick interconnected social field within which to theorize ritual. However, my study attempts to preserve a philosophical and theological dimension for ritual (and liturgy) and thereby departs significantly from Bell’s approach, which culminates in a complex method to understand relations of power and legitimation in ritual but eschews any theological analysis. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford, 1992).

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refer to the murder of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis, remains an “orienting” or “epoch-making event”2 that has had a determinative effect on all Jewish life and thought. I would argue that where traditional Jewish philosophy has, in the words of Emil Fackenheim, “foundered” on the reef of the Shoah,3 scripture and liturgy allow thought to respond in a constructive manner. The issue of the Shoah has mainly been phrased in terms of theodicy. That is, the Shoah challenges God’s goodness in the face of the suffering of the innocent. Since 1966, when Richard Rubenstein proposed that after Auschwitz God and the concept of the chosen people were “dead,” postHolocaust theology or theology after the Shoah has been a central part of contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish theology. Rubenstein states the problem in terms of a simple logical syllogism, “If X then Y.” “If I truly believed in God as the omnipotent author of the historical drama and in Israel as His Chosen People, I had no choice but to accept . . . [the] conclusion that Hitler unwittingly acted as God’s agent in committing six million Jews to slaughter. I could not believe in such a God, nor could I believe in Israel as the Chosen People of God after Auschwitz.”4 Rubenstein’s logic is simple, and since few would accept the position that Hitler was the agent of God, Rubenstein assumes that he has an open and shut case. He therefore proposes a new form of Judaism in which there is no God and no chosen people, but merely a “Jewish paganism.” In his pagan Judaism, diaspora Jews join Israelis in a drive to procreate and survive in their ancestral homeland with no transcendent God, no higher calling, and no purpose greater than survival. That Rubenstein struck a resonant chord with many Jews was borne out by sociologists of contemporary Jewry like Jonathan Woocher, who labeled the post-Shoah American and Israeli secular symbiosis as “sacred survivalism.”5 Woocher describes this as an overarching worldview that unites Jews in Jewish Federation fund raising, 2  Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History (New York: New York University Press, 1970). 3  Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken, 1982). 4  Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, First Edition

(Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1966), 3. 5 

Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival: The Civil Religion of American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).

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political lobbying for Israel, building Holocaust Memorials, and defending Israel from its enemies. Yet some rabbis and Jewish philosophers, and many lay Jews, simply could not abide the dissolution of the over-two-thousandyear-old tradition of Jewish transcendent ideals, practical ethics, and divine love into the terms of fund raising, political lobbying, and building museums alone. Without any real theological or scriptural warrants, Emil Fackenheim struck a defiant note of response to Rubenstein in the 1970s when he proposed the 614th commandment, “Thou shalt not hand Hitler any posthumous victories.” After Hitler’s death, one could neither give up on God, nor on the chosen people, nor on Jewish ideals and thus let Hitler win more victories from his grave. Thus, we could say that the issue of sacred survivalism of the Jewish “race” was tied by Fackenheim and many others to the “survival of the sacred in Judaism.”6 Yet perhaps the wisest statements were made by those who looked at the actions of the survivors themselves and saw many of them committed to a life of Jewish observance, charity, and utterances of prophetic warning against the evils of genocide for all powerless minorities. When asked, countless survivors said that they did not lose their faith in God, Judaism, or the Jewish people in the Shoah.7 The famous survivor Elie Wiesel expressed the sentiments of many when, in a conference with Rubenstein, he quipped, “How strange that the philosophy of denying God came not from the survivors. Those who came out with the so-called God is dead theology, not one of them had been in Auschwitz.”8 Wiesel expressed his own faith in the now-classic survivor witness account, Night. “In spite of myself, a prayer rose in my heart to that God in whom I no longer believed.”9 6 

Fackenheim, God’s Presence, 84. In other books Fackenheim does supply biblical, rabbinic, and philosophic justifications for his 614th commandment. See To Mend the World (New York: Schocken, 1982) and The Jewish Bible After the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). For an explicit discussion of the issue of the survival and meaning of the Jewish sacred after the Shoah, see Michael Goldberg, Why Should the Jews Survive? Looking Past the Holocaust to a Jewish Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

7 

“Richard Rubenstein and Elie Wiesel: An Exchange” in Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications. Edited by John Roth and Michael Berenbaum (NY: Paragon House, 1989) 365.

8 

Ibid., 364.

9  Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 87.

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This is followed by Wiesel’s well-known novels, each of which investigates the Shoah through layering characters and plots against biblical themes of exile and sin, covenant and spiritual defiance. What interests me about Rubenstein’s death of God theology and Wiesel’s contradictory faith in God and Judaism after Auschwitz is the different logics that these two figures use. Rubenstein uses the propositional and syllogistic logic of early modern philosophy and science, and Wiesel points to an empirical and pragmatic logic of how people actually live with faith. His statement, “In spite of myself, I said a prayer to the God I no longer believe in” is a logical contradiction that is non-sensical in modern philosophical terms, yet believable in the terms of the human faith experience. The Logic of Scripture

When all knowledge, theological and scientific, is translated into the terms of propositional truths and syllogistic logic, the sphere of theological, ethical, and even scientific knowledge is radically reduced to a tiny circle of certainty. Peter Ochs has argued this point forcefully in his Peirce and the Logic of Scripture.10 In a recent essay, “From Two to Three: To Know is also To Know the Context of Knowing,”11 Ochs presents his position with exceptional clarity. Here, he argues that propositional truth claims such as, “the table is black,” “the dog is quick-tempered,” “God is living,” or “God is dead,” are not so much useless as they are narrow. They work well to assess color in tables and temperament in dogs but are simply too crude to assess the character and existence of God and the life of faith. Like the structure of the universe, or the nature of light, God and the life of faith simply require a more complex logic. To say that light and God cannot be expressed in syllogistic logic and propositional terms is thus not to say that light and God are non-existent, or false, or even non-logical. “The error is not, therefore, to trust in formal reasoning and thus logic, but simply 10  Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998). 11  Peter Ochs, “From Two to Three: To Know is also To Know the Context of Knowing” in Scripture,

Reason and the Contemporary Islam-West Encounter, ed. Basit Koshul and Steven Kepnes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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to have nurtured too limited a view of how to practice formal reasoning and of what logical models we can build. As physicists, philosophers, and logicians have learned since early twentieth century discoveries in quantum theory, standard propositional logics are useful for mapping only a limited range of behaviors and beliefs. In briefest terms, one could say that they are useful for mapping only those things about which we have potentially little or no doubt.”12 Adapting Ochs’s analysis to a discussion of God and faith, we could say that there is a logic of God and faith, a way of “describing patterns or rules that can be seen or imitated”13 that is different from propositional logic. First of all, this logic is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive activity. Like Wiesel’s reflections on the faith lives of survivors, this logic takes place after events and therefore often takes the form of a narrative of a sequence of events in a particular context and a reflection upon that narrative. This logic does not exclude normative discussion. Indeed, it must include norms and values if it is to adequately describe the elements of the faith event. But the norms and values are known pragmatically, after the fact; they are “determined a posteriori, by their effects and usefulness, rather than by a priori criteria.”14 If we are to speak of God and the life of faith in the Jewish context, the obvious place to look is to scripture. Indeed, scripture may be seen as displaying most clearly the “logic of God” and the “logic of faith.” In scriptural narrative we have a description of the creative, revelatory, and redemptive events of God and an assessment of the values and norms that those events give rise to in the forms of sayings and laws. So scripture itself offers a logic of descriptions and rules that readers of scripture, like chemists with a formula in a lab, can “see and imitate.” Thus, the faith events become “repeatable” and, in this sense, scripture functions to not only describe but provide a template for more faith events. Ochs likes to points out that the paradigmatic logic of scripture is displayed in the lines of Exodus, chapter 3: “I have surely seen the suffering of my people . . . and heard their cry,” And “ehyeh imakh,” “I will be 12  Ochs, ibid.,13. 13  Ochs, ibid.,15. 14  Ochs, ibid.

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with you.” I will have more to say about the transformative and healing capacities of scripture, and of its relationship to liturgy and the Shoah, but would now like to point to a final quality of the logic of scripture that Ochs identifies. And this is the “vagueness” of scripture, the fact that the meaning of a scriptural passage is often unclear and even written so as to defy simple understanding. In this regard we need only look back at Exodus 3:14, to God’s self-naming as ehyeh asher ehyeh, “I will be what I will be.” Now again, this unclarity and vagueness could be taken as a sign of the illogical or even irrational character of scripture. But Ochs asks us for the patience to see the logic in it. “I will be what I will be” means God cannot be defined in any straightforward way. It means God’s infinite freedom and the human inability to grasp or control him. The vagueness of God’s name also signifies that the logic of God and the corresponding logic of scripture requires interpretation, tradition, and commentary. Scripture is, in a sense, humble, unfinished, and hypothetical; it requires readers to interpret it to yield its meaning.15 The call for patience and interpretation to “finish” or establish the meaning of scripture for the contemporary reader brings us to one more element of the logic of scripture, and that element involves practice and experience. If one spends most of his waking hours enmeshed in the logics of propositions and in meeting utilitarian objectives, it will be very hard to understand the logic of scripture and the discourses of God and Judaism. It is thus not at all strange that so many contemporary Jews find it hard to believe in God and to participate in Jewish liturgies. God and Judaism come to one neither through birth nor through a momentary flash of revelation, but through a long education and disciplined use of special discourses and practices. The Logic of Scripture and the Shoah

If we return to the Shoah with the logic of scripture instead of the logic of syllogism and proposition, it should already be clear that scripture offers immense resources for a response. From Genesis through Chronicles 15   For the way this is worked out through modes of rabbinic interpretation, see David Weiss

Halivni, Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) chs. 4, 5.

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the Jewish scriptures are fundamentally concerned with issues of human fallibility, exile, murder, famine, genocide, slavery, persecution, generational continuity, and survival. As one reads the text of the Torah, there is little sense that Israel ever feels safe and secure from harm and threat. There is also little sense that everything bad that happens to Israel is caused by God, and that all enemies of Israel are controlled by God. There is the Deuteronomic view that failure of Israel to follow the commandments will result in negative consequences (e.g., Deuteronomy, chapter 11). Many of the prophets do present world history as controlled by God and ultimately revolving around the destiny of Israel. Still, these views are contrasted with the principle of human free will that is underscored in Genesis. Free will means that humans and not God determine human destiny, and the notion of a covenant suggests that human history is neither in God’s hands nor those of humans, but in both. The Bible therefore suggests opposed and conflicting views of the responsibility for human and Jewish history. Given this, the assumptions in Rubenstein’s formulation that “God is the omnipotent author of the human drama” so that therefore 1) no evil and no destruction should come to his chosen people, and 2) if there is destruction, God is responsible for sending that destruction, are too simple and clearcut and not adequately warranted by Biblical narratives. However, if God cannot always secure the protection of Israel, what seems to be true in the Biblical narratives is that He can provide hope and trust in the midst of the insecurity of human existence. That hope and trust comes from God, but from a God who presents Himself not before the human crisis as its “omnipotent author,” but in the midst of and after the crisis to save Israel. Thus, as God Himself refers to Himself in His most public revelation, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:1). The philosopher of religion Janet Soskice, from the University of Cambridge, has argued that many of the theological characteristics of God—like omnipotence and omniscience—come not from the Bible but from Greek philosophy.16 This philosophy begins the long tradition of Western propositional thought; but

16   Janet Soskice, “Athens and Jerusalem, Alexandria and Edessa: Is there a Metaphysics of

Scripture?” International Journal of Systematic Theology, Vol. 8: 2 (April, 2006).

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this thought, for all its power and influence, is unscriptural in its form and logic. The genius of the Biblical text is that the narrative manages to represent the real terror and insecurity of human existence at the same time that it also gives hope, healing, and redemption. But redemption, as we see it in scripture, never delivers finality, tranquility and security. As the people learn very quickly after they have been released from slavery and even after Sinai, the journey to redemption has barely begun. Thus, the logic of the theodicy of scripture cannot be articulated by the simple proposition “God is the author of history.” The logic is something like, “God is with you in your suffering” or even better (and closer to Exodus 3:14), “I am with you in your suffering now and I will be with you in your future suffering.” Here, in my paraphrase of Exodus 3:14, we see that scriptural theodicy comes not as a statement or proposition but as an address that is related in the first person. Job, the archetypal innocent sufferer in scripture, receives God’s response to him precisely in this way, by way of a direct first-person address (Job 38:1). Note that scriptural theodicy does not eradicate suffering and does not provide particularly good explanations for suffering. It does provide some explanations, but they are multiple, contradictory, and sporadic and therefore vague. Thus, at times it is human sin that causes suffering, and at times it is God’s test or trial, or the result of sins of the fathers. But we do not know, for example, why the child is orphaned, the poor thrown into poverty, the widow widowed. Nor does Job really know why he suffered his many indignities. Scripture stands in front of human suffering like the humble scientist stands in front of the origins of the universe, and the doctor in front of the incurable disease; scripture stands with humility and yet with ever-new hypotheses and constant hope. Like the physicist who doesn’t have the luxury of saying, “Since I need two contradictory explanations to explain it, light doesn’t exist,” scripture cannot say, “Since I can’t explain human suffering, it doesn’t exist.” Scripture says “this is the best I can do in explaining it, but it exists, and, moreover, I must respond to it not fundamentally to explain it, but to heal it and, if not to heal it, to help people cope with it.” And scripture takes the same approach to its ultimate mystery—God. Scripture cannot say that because it cannot adequately explain or describe God, God does not exist. Like human suffering, God is an assumed reality for scripture. Scripture tries with humility and perseverance to describe God and the

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consequences of God’s actions as best it can. And the “as best it can” is complex, hypothetical, contradictory, and vague; but in its complexity and vagueness, it is what Ochs would call more “rational” and more “logical,” more “scientific” and more exact than the exacting and clear logic of Greek and modern philosophy. Liturgical Theodicy

I would now like to turn from scripture to liturgy as another resource to address the issues of theodicy brought forth by the Shoah. The liturgical experience is essentially an experience of transformation that works through a logic of transformation. As Arnold Van Gennep showed in his studies of ritual, the logic of liturgy includes a path or movement from one state to another. The most obvious liturgies of transformation are those that accompany puberty, marriage, and death. Judaism, like all cultures, has these liturgies and they remain central vehicles of knowledge and socialization, but liturgy also contains a way of transforming its participants from despairing to hopeful, from the state of spiritual emptiness to fullness, from suffering and exile to redemption. In other words, liturgy, and particularly Jewish liturgy, contains within it a theodic dimension through which spiritual suffering is healed. The crucial thing to understand about a liturgical response to suffering is that it is not mainly thought but performed and enacted by the human body. What this means is that the problem of theodicy cannot be solved purely conceptually but it can be expressed, addressed and resolved liturgically. And the performance is not only an individual but a collective act. Beyond this, liturgy makes use of the full variety of artistic expressions of the body, like music, costume, and dance. In this way liturgy can be considered a form of religious theatre. Richard Schechner and Victor Turner17 have highlighted the performative and theatrical dimensions of ritual. Schechner makes the interesting point that the transformations that happen to performers who play parts in theatre are temporary. After playing their part in the

17  Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-

vania, 1985). Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (NY: PAJ Publications, 1988).

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performance, the actors “get their old selves back.”18 Although status rituals like puberty and marriage rites attempt to transform people permanently, I suggest that the theodicy liturgies in Judaism are more like theatrical performances in that they create temporary forms of transformation. So that, for example, the Jew can momentarily experience “eternity” in the Shabbat liturgy. These experiences must be temporary precisely because full redemption and eternal life have not yet come. In my book Jewish Liturgical Reasoning, I analyze the theatrical, performative, and philosophical dimensions of a large number of Jewish liturgies, such as daily, high holy days, Shabbat, and festival services. I can-not review all of these liturgical events now, but instead will focus on the liturgy of the Passover seder. The Passover seder today is certainly one of the most popular and widely performed Jewish liturgies, and its popularity has even spread from Jewish to non-Jewish homes. The Passover seder takes the central event of the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery to freedom, and through story, song, symbolic eating, and behaviors enacts or performs it. The purpose of the seder meal is to help the participants fulfill the commandment given in Exodus and reiterated in the Passover Haggadah: “In every generation one is obliged to see himself as though he, himself, and she, herself, had actually gone forth from Egypt.” The Passover seder clearly displays a theodic structure, for it begins “Now we are slaves,” and ends, “We have been brought from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy.” Yet the seder meal will only work as a redemptive and theodic experience if the participants, like actors in a play or method actors in a film, allow themselves to see themselves as slaves at the beginning of the seder. The crucial point is the beginning point: see yourself as a slave in Egypt, eat this piece of cardboard-like cracker like the slaves did, taste this bitter herb and horseradish, and then the liturgy itself will carry you to redemption, in which you will drink wine and eat a feast like a free person. What the Seder meal thus does is reenact suffering and spiritual despair and then take the sufferer through a process in which freedom is won, redemption granted, and hope restored. This process is not only represented but experienced through corporeal acts of eating, through a collective process of storytelling, 18   Schechner, 20.

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and through singing and performing symbolic actions.19 But a crucial feature of this redemption is that it is granted in religious theatre and not in reality. At the end of the seder, the American Jew remains in America and says next year in Jerusalem. The poor widow remains poor, the world remains unredeemed, but hope is restored because hope was performed in the theatrical context of the seder. Hope is restored because the Seder illustrates that there was another time of great suffering and despair when Israel was redeemed, moving from slavery to freedom. Now if we look at the Passover seder in relation to the Shoah, there are a number of points to be made. First of all, the most chilling thing is to realize that despite the Enlightenment and the granting of civil rights in the modern world, Jews were enslaved again, and they were reduced to a condition that was worse than enslavement to Pharaoh. This makes the words of the Haggadah strikingly relevant. “Not only one has risen up against us to destroy us, but in all ages they rise up against us to destroy us.” Thus for survivors of the Holocaust it is certainly not hard at all to identity with the Israelite slaves at the beginning of the Haggadah. And even for the Jews who did not experience the Holocaust, the plethora of witness accounts, films, and books like Elie Wiesel’s Night give the words of the Haggadah a frightening power. And many contemporary Haggadot make the connection between the Exodus and the Shoah explicit by including symbolic references to the latter. Now, there is a crass and overly simplistic interpretation of the Shoah that utilizes the Passover story to suggest that not only did modern Jews experience another slavery but they also experienced another redemption, in the return of the Jews to the land of Israel. Thus God redeemed modernday Jews by giving them the State of Israel in 1948, and this state represents the fulfillment of the ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses. The easy counter-argument to this point, however, is that the vast majorityof the Jews in the camps were murdered, and were not redeemed. Six million Jews were murdered, and most of the Jewish communities of Europe were destroyed, and thus the Holocaust looks more like an anti-redemption moment, an Exodus with no exit, rather than an experience of salvation.

19   In some Sephardic rites, participants place matzah on their shoulders to simulate the heavy

stones that the Israelites carried while enslaved.

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But here again I think that liturgy can be helpful. For what the Passover liturgy and, indeed, all Jewish liturgy says is that the real and actual world in which humans live remains in exile. That is a fundamental assertion of Judaism. We have not yet been redeemed; the messiah has not yet come. Thus we should not be surprised that horrible events like the Holocaust and genocide will occur, and that slavery, poverty, illness, injustice will persist in our world. But in the meantime and before redemption comes, there are liturgies of hope like those of the Passover seder, Sabbath, and the high holidays, which not only preserve our sense of humanity but inspire us with ideals and dreams of justice and motivate us to go out and do our part to repair the world until the messiah comes. In conclusion, what I am suggesting is that both the scriptures and the liturgies of Judaism are structured less to provide neat answers to questions like why do the innocent suffer, and more to provide strategies for the preservation of hope and the motivation to continue to fight for justice in a world that suffers from the condition of exile. For Judaism, hope and justice cannot be separated from God, but God is that which cannot be said in clear language and cannot be seen with the naked eye. The representation of God requires complex linguistic and logical expressions and a series of actions and communal performances. The entire structure of Jewish scriptures and liturgies then becomes an elaborate signifying system that gives witness to the unsaid and reveals the unseen as it fortifies the human spirit.

Jew ish T hought

and

C ontempor ary P hilosophy

Mic hae l L . Mor gan

For three decades, my thinking about Judaism and Jewish philosophy turned on what might be called the problem of historicity. This problem concerns the relationship between thought and history: is thought transcendent? Or to what degree and in what ways is thought essentially historical? “Thought” includes scientific theory, moral principles and convictions, metaphysical and other philosophical claims, and religious beliefs or doctrines; “history” includes historical events, human actions, and experiences. The problem of historicity asks of such modes of thought whether they are thoroughly and unqualifiedly immersed in the conditions of human action and experience, or whether there might be some thoughts or claims that are “timeless” and general. I was not driven to this interest by worries about the nature of scientific reasoning or Quine’s attack on the a priori and the distinction between empirical and non-empirical knowledge or truths. Nor was I drawn to it by the relativist implications of historiography and anthropology. The importance of the issue arose for me in a religious setting. Of particular interest to me was the character of Jewish beliefs and Jewish self-understanding, and how a responsible exposure of such beliefs to the events of the Holocaust might have led some theologians to reconsider the historical nature of Jewish belief, in other words not only to reconsider the content of particular beliefs but also to reconsider the very status of those beliefs. In short, I wondered if one outcome of the Holocaust and taking it seriously intellectually—philosophically and theologically in particular—was not a revised estimate of what might be called the “transcendence” of thought. The study of a number of figures led me to these worries. The most notable was Emil Fackenheim, for whom the issue of the historicity of religious thought and philosophy was, I would argue, a central preoccupa-

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tion in his early years. As early as 1968, he acknowledged that the central moment in his philosophical career came when he realized that he could no longer claim, as he had in 1964, that religious faith is verifiable by history and human experience but could never be refuted by them. What he clearly had in mind in 1968 was the impact of the reality of Auschwitz on philosophical and religious beliefs. Other figures were Jewish and Christian theologians who tried to confront the horrors of the death camps and to respond with some theological articulation. But I was also led to think about these types of issues by Thomas Kuhn and the swirl of responses to his claims about the historicity and political character of scientific theories; by E.D. Hirsch, Stanley Fish, and other literary critics influenced by Gadamer and questions about the hermeneutics of textual interpretation; by Ronald Dworkin and debates about legal interpretation; by the exchange between Alasdair MacIntyre and Peter Winch about anthropology, ethnography, and the incommensurability of languages and the problems of translation; by the emergence of a tendency to treat philosophy as historical in the work of MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor; and by similar work on political theory, associated with the Cambridge school of John Dunn, J.G.A. Pocock, and especially Quentin Skinner. This issue of historicity dictated for me how I thought any serious Jewish philosophy would have to be conducted. It would have to be sensitive to those contextual or situational features that most influenced a contemporary sense of what was important, acceptable, and urgent, and also sensitive to reading the past in terms of those contextual factors that make past texts and actions meaningful and intelligible. Only then could Jewish philosophy ask what significance the past could have for the present, what of the past could be recovered and what should be recovered, and what access the present could have to the past. By 2000 or so, I had come to think that insofar as thinking is unavoidably hermeneutical and historically situated, it would find itself constantly wrestling with the implication some might draw that it is also relative and qualified, that there is no objectivity. And this would hold for science, ethics, religious thought, philosophy, and more. As time had gone by, and postmodernism had become an expression for a host of tendencies, among which was a radical pluralism and relativism, I became convinced that from the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, this problem of objectivity had been at the center of philosophical debates

J e w i s h T h o u g h t a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y P h i l o s o p hy M i c h a e l L . M o rg a n

and much of Western intellectual culture in general. In Interim Judaism I wrote about various engagements with that problem early in the twentieth century in Europe and then in America after the Holocaust. The problem of objectivity raises the question of whether there are any principles or truths or ideals that are permanent, fixed, and secure, or whether all are historically, culturally, socially, or personally conditioned and conditional. If one thinks that there are or ought to be such principles or truths or ideals, what gives them their authority? What is the ground of their objective status? Is that ground to be found in nature or rationality or rather in some connectedness with transcendence? This, it strikes me, is the great question of the twentieth century, and it remains so to our day. In the early part of the century, in Europe, this problem of objectivity arose as a consequence of the development of historiography and the study of cultures. It was associated with figures like Nietzsche, Dilthey, Windelband, Troeltsch and a host of others. Terms like relativism and nihilism were associated with the lack of secure and firm principles or ideals. The problem was called the crisis of historicism by some, and the problem of alienation by others. My own thinking about these issues continues to draw on European philosophical and theological figures—Rosenzweig and Levinas preeminent among them, but also Lukacs, Benjamin, Foucault, and Wittgenstein. But recently I have come to appreciate the important ways in which these issues have emerged in Anglo-American philosophy over the past several decades, and have thus been rearticulated and clarified. Let me say something about how this is so for several figures whose work, I think, has untapped significance for Jewish philosophy: Charles Taylor, Hilary Putnam, and especially Stanley Cavell. It will also be appropriate to mention others, such as John McDowell and Donald Davidson, as well as developments in metaethics that constitute criticism of one kind of naturalism or another. Jewish philosophy and thought should seek to articulate what Jewish existence is and what it means. It will want to clarify the Jew’s relationships with nature and other persons, with Jews and non-Jews, with various types of institutions and practices, and indeed with God. In order to do so, it will have to say something about Jews as selves and agents, about the Jewish people as a community of Jews, and about the way that Jewish life is related to God. It will also have to say something about texts and language, about human conduct—ritual, ethical, and more—and about ultimate issues, life

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and death, etc. For its foundations, that is, Jewish philosophy must turn to general philosophy for its understanding of what it is for us to be persons, agents, and social beings. Much philosophy of mind today and for several decades has been decidedly naturalist and anchored to the subject-object relationship and to the confrontation between idealism and realism. Taylor is a very good case of someone who has challenged this model about what it is to be a self or person throughout his career. To him, our ethical experience and our linguistic abilities, when understood correctly, have an effect against the accounts that begin with an atomic self and understand its epistemic achievements and personal agency in terms of it. Emotions and states such as shame cannot be adequately appreciated by such accounts. Nor can knowledge and language be understood without taking the person as agent to be engaged or situated in a context or background. The outcome of Taylor’s argument is a conception of selfhood and agency as situated in a nexus of connectedness with the world and others; it is Taylor’s version of an appreciation of human agency that he finds in Wittgenstein and Heidegger, among others. I think that this same outcome, that the self is not an originally isolated, atomic entity, whose relationships with objects in the world and other persons must be conceived as a supplement to what it is in itself, can also be found, variously conceived, in the thought of other Anglo-American philosophers as well: John McDowell and certainly Stanley Cavell, and perhaps also Hilary Putnam in his later work and Robert Brandom. Indeed, there is reason to think as well that it is a feature of the neo-Aristotelian style of ethical theory that can be found in figures like Rosalind Hursthouse and Sabina Lovibond, with their emphasis on the role and education of moral sensibility. But, to me, the most intriguing example of this kind of thinking, other than Taylor himself, can be found in the work of Stanley Cavell. Before I turn to Cavell, however, I should point out why this kind of account of human agency strikes me as appropriate for Jewish philosophy and even requisite for it. First, if it is a more compelling account of selfhood and agency in general, then it is more compelling than alternative accounts for a Jewish self-understanding rooted in an appreciation of Jewish selfhood and agency in particular. What is true for all human existence is surely true for Jewish existence as well. Second, it is precisely this kind of

J e w i s h T h o u g h t a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y P h i l o s o p hy M i c h a e l L . M o rg a n

understanding of human selfhood and agency that is found in the work of Jewish thinkers whose work I find significant and instructive—from Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig to Emil Fackenheim and Emmanuel Levinas. It is assumed in all of Fackenheim’s post-Holocaust Jewish thought, perhaps most explicitly in his appropriation of a Gadamer-style hermeneutical account of human agency in To Mend the World, and it is very explicitly presented and defended in his early work Metaphysics and Historicity. The way in which that work draws on Heidegger, Sartre, Collingwood, Buber, and Rosenzweig is transparent. In Levinas, whose patrimony includes Husserl and Heidegger, the connection is equally obvious. Third, however, such an account of selfhood or human-situated existence is immediately encouraged by the richly textured relational ties that make up Jewish life— between individual Jews and the Jewish community, traditional practices and texts, and ultimately God. To show this, of course, would take a great deal of time, but it is one of the virtues of the work of Buber and Rosenzweig in the early part of the century and then of Fackenheim in the 1950s and 1960s that they seek to show this precisely in their defense of the centrality of revelation and the experience of faith for Jewish existence. Contemporary philosophers with these commitments have focused on epistemological issues, and most importantly on ethical and political ones. Cavell’s work has a breadth and a creativity, however, that is unique. Schematically, Cavell begins by exploring what he calls the “moral or truth of skepticism” and comes to see it expressed in Shakespearean tragedy and later in those genres of American film he calls the “comedies of remarriage” and the “melodramas of the unknown woman.” He also finds it in the writings of Thoreau and Emerson, in Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and a host of other authors whose work exemplifies what he calls “Emersonian” or “moral perfectionism” and what he takes to be distinctive of American philosophy. There is complexity and far-ranging nuance in Cavell’s project, his “modernist philosophy,” but we can summarize a central thread in this way. The problem of skepticism exposes the limitations of traditional philosophy and the framework of subject-object, the atomized self, the problems of the external world and our knowledge of it, and the problem of other minds. All fail to appreciate the variegated ways in which we as selves are enmeshed in a weave of life, tied to the world around us and to others in networks of relatedness that constitute our everyday, ordinary

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existence. The dialectic of Cartesian skepticism and the epistemological dogmaticism that it challenges, together with the problem of other minds as we find it articulated in modern analytic philosophy, reveal the primacy of the ordinary; Austin and Wittgenstein are, for Cavell, the most prominent philosophers to appreciate this truth about skepticism and urge it upon our attention. What Cavell then comes to see is that the human, existential consequences of a devotion to knowledge is the theme of Shakespeare’s tragedies, most notably “King Lear” and “Othello.” Here we find the human cost of holding out for certitude and what Cavell calls the results of “an avoidance of love and acknowledgment.” Cavell is pointing us to an exploration of how we as individuals negotiate our relations with others, what are our dependencies, our commitments and needs, and the ways in which we come to understand ourselves and become ourselves within the contexts of those relationships. There is here what Taylor calls an “ethic of authenticity,” but one that is tied to human relationships of acknowledgment and avoidance, of acceptance and denial. Hence, in the 1930s and 1940s, the cinematic setting for such a process of self-making is marriage, and Cavell finds special significance in comedies that plot the breakup of marriages and their recuperation, when a marriage fractures for various reasons and the partners, through conversation and mutual education, come to accept each other on new terms, precisely as they have come to know who they are themselves through a process of self-discovery. The documenting of the constituent features of this process, its techniques and its goals, Cavell calls “moral perfectionism,” a mode of ethical inquiry and exploration that he finds in diverse authors and venues from antiquity to our own day, in philosophical literature, novels and poems, plays and films, and beyond. Such “moral perfectionism” or “moral perfectionist” moments one can find in many places, then, and a Jew might do so throughout the Biblical and rabbinic corpus, in kabbalistic texts and hasidic tales, in texts of Jewish philosophy, and on and on. Moreover, a Jewish philosophy that is cognizant of this tradition of exploration and disclosure, self-conscious about the tradition of Jewish thought and philosophy, its strengths and deficiencies, and about its present role, would be by Cavell’s lights a “modernist” one, self-aware and at the same time attentive to its own role in modern Jewish life and in modern life itself. What are the precise ethical implications of Cavell’s “moral perfectionism”? In one sense, of course, there are no “precise” ethical implica-

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tions. The tradition he identifies expresses no ideal, no commitment to moral principles or virtues of a definite kind. But it is nonetheless a tradition of authenticity, of learning to become true to oneself and at the same time to become true to others. It is also a tradition of reflection on the rich texture of everyday life, of the ordinary world in which we live our lives each day. To the degree that Jewish life manifests a version of ordinary life carried out within the orbit of a divine-human relationship and a multidimensional responsiveness to that relationship, Cavell’s portrayal of life itself and its social and human texture applies to it. Cavell advocates deepening our relationships both with the world and with others as we come to express our capacities and interests, our accomplishments and our hopes. In this sense, then, Cavell recommends how philosophy in general, as a “modernist” enterprise, can carry on today and what it might look like, broadly speaking. I would contend that his defense and implementation of philosophy today is one example of a strand of current Anglo-American philosophy that claims the situated character of human existence and agency, that appreciates the primacy of the ethical in our relationships with others, that is sensitive to the interplay of what is universal and what is particular about our lives as human beings, that privileges the ordinary or everyday and yet acknowledges the role of special forms of cognitive inquiry within it, that takes language and its role in interpersonal relations seriously, and that is open to a variety of ways in which philosophical reflection might be carried out. Such a strand of philosophical thinking should be attractive to Jewish philosophy, I believe, and an encounter with it ought to be richly productive for any attempt to understand contemporary Jewish life and its future. What this strand does, of course, is present us with a new formulation of the setting in which the problem of objectivity becomes central. It seems to run the risk of relativism or historicism. Something like this recognition can be found in Putnam’s Reason, Truth, and History, and his response to it then was what he called “internal realism.” But Putnam is not alone. What goes by the name “postmodernism” also privileges the problem in the work of figures from Foucault and Derrida to Rorty and Levinas. What are the grounds, if there are such grounds, for the normativity of values, in particular moral values? Are there moral values, obligations, or ideals that are universal, binding, and permanent? In the Anglo-American tradition,

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there are a host of responses to this problem—various forms of naturalism, rationalisms, and those based on the roles of communities and traditions. Many of these, however, do not begin with the notion of selfhood as situated agency; some do. John McDowell’s “naturalism of second nature,” I would contend, is one; others are Taylor and Putnam. For Judaism, there is a great challenge. The traditional vocabulary of God, covenant, and commandment is difficult to appropriate without reflection and revision. Such reflection and revision can only benefit from contemporary engagement with the issues I have raised and with the figures I have discussed. For Jewish philosophy, it is a matter of newly articulating what Judaism is in terms of the historical and intellectual changes that we have experienced for a century or more, and to do so in a world unlike that of the earlier centuries.

Jew ish P hilosophy

in

N orth A mer ica

D a v id No vak

Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Studies

What goes by the name “Jewish philosophy” these days is almost exclusively conducted within the relatively new academic discipline called “Jewish studies,” even though the subject matter of that discipline, Judaism, is certainly older than almost everything else studied in the modern university. The newness of Jewish studies as a field in the modern university is quite understandable. It wasn’t too long ago that Jews themselves were not very welcome there, and even when they were at long last admitted as students and even later as faculty, there was a tacit understanding: the Judaism that had made them Jews was to be left outside the portals of the university. Indeed, it seems many Jewish academics accepted this abandonment of what had made them Jews as their price of admission to the university (and most of them thought it a bargain at that).1 Therefore, considering this state of affairs, one must be aware of how, more recently, Jewish studies got into the university without paying this earlier price of admission, and then ask whether Jewish philosophy can simply enter the university on the same free pass with Jewish studies, or whether it must make a different claim for academic admission if it is to be authentically philosophical. In other words, can Jewish philosophy simply be subsumed under Jewish Studies, or can it only function in association with what is more usually taken to be Jewish studies, and will that association not manifest certain inevitable tensions? Answers to these questions require a definition (however tentative) of “Jewish philosophy,” and then a discussion

1 

See D. Novak, “The Jewish Ethical Tradition in the Modern University,” Journal of Education 180 (1998): 21-39.

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of how this discipline is related to the discipline of “Jewish studies” today. And, finally, we need to ask whether Jewish philosophy need be conducted differently in North American universities than in Israeli universities or in European universities, the two other places where one finds the field of Jewish Studies today. Of course, like any discipline, Jewish philosophy can be conducted by non-academic, “independent,” scholars. Nevertheless, I know of no other arena of contemporary discourse than the university where even these officially non-academic scholars can discuss Jewish philosophy. In fact, the only official forum for the discussion of Jewish philosophy today in North America is the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), whose membership, with a few exceptions, is made up of those who hold academic positions in Jewish studies (or who are looking for them.) The only other place this kind of discussion might be possible today is the so-called “yeshivah world,” but as far as I know, there seems to be little interest in what could be termed “philosophical” discussion there. Jewish Studies got into the modern university as an extension of what came to be known in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria-Hungary as “the science of Judaism” (Wissenschaft des Judentums), “science” here being understood in more or less the way we speak of the “social sciences” (les sciénces humaines in French; Geisteswissenschaften in German) as distinct from what we now call the “natural sciences.” The essential difference between the old Wissenschaft des Judentums and our contemporary Jewish studies is political. Because of the pervasive antisemitism of the old European universities, the academic study of Judaism had to be conducted there within the modern discipline of history. Thus it had to be shown that the study of the history of Judaism was valuable for the study of the history of Europe, and that it could be subsumed therein. (In fact, the first chair in Jewish studies per se was not founded until 1930, at the newly founded University of Frankfurt am Main and, interestingly enough, it was held by the Jewish philosopher Martin Bube, but—as we know too well—for less than three years.) So, it would seem, the fact that we now have Jewish studies in North America recognized as a distinct discipline very much reflects the quite different political and economic power of Jewishly committed Jews of North America. Indeed, in many cases, Jewish Studies came into North American universities because powerful Jews insisted it receive academic

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recognition, and a significant number of them were willing to literally pay for this recognition by endowing chairs and even whole programs of Jewish studies there. Despite this essential political difference, however, the intellectual presuppositions of Wissenschaft des Judentums and most of contemporary Jewish studies are virtually the same. That is, the history of Judaism—even the fairly recent history of Judaism—is taken to be an object that makes no moral claims upon the one researching it or upon those to whom his or her research is addressed. Max Weber most famously called such “scientific” research “value free” (Wertfrei), that is, it doesn’t have and isn’t supposed to have any moral meaning.2 Thus, why anyone should be doing such research and why anyone should be paying attention to that research are questions most positivist historians preclude from their consideration. Indeed, this question itself is left to philosophers of history such as Hegel and those of lesser philosophical ability like Toynbee. Yet, this leaving of the “why” question to philosophers of history becomes a matter of permanent exclusion when, in the minds of most historians, philosophers of history (even Hegel) are taken to be hopelessly inadequate historians themselves, who almost always grossly distort the historical data they take as grist for their philosophical mill. Nevertheless, I still assume that historians as rational human beings do have to deal with this moral question itself, at least privately. How many of them do ponder this question privately, though, is something I have no way of knowing. Here we have to face the question of truth, which is the philosophical question par excellence. “Truth” is a much better term than “values” for dealing with the why question introduced above. Values seems to designate our own products, which we have made valuable for ourselves.3 Yet, it is hard to understand just how the products of our own projection can make any justifiable claims upon us other than that we be responsible for them. Truth, conversely, seems to designate what we have not made ourselves, something we are answerable to precisely because we did not make it but,

2 

For a famous and trenchant critique of Weber et al., see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 36-78.

3 

See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, nos. 583, 675, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 313-14 and 356-57.

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rather, because it makes us in the sense that it enables us to say and do what we could not say and do without it. Indeed, what is valuable need not be true, but what is true is surely valuable, thereby making the search for it worthwhile for its discoverers and those with whom they share their discoveries. But, what kind of truth, if any, do the Jewish historians who predominate in Jewish Studies today engage? And if they do engage truth, is it the same kind of truth Jewish philosophers engage? If truth is nothing more than facticity, namely, the assertion and description of past events that really occurred outside of our own present invention (factum est), then most historians—in our case at hand, most historians of Judaism—do not avoid the question of truth. After all, they make numerous statements they want their listeners to accept as true. They do not claim to have themselves made up the facts they are describing and conceptualizing. Nevertheless, these historians avoid, often assiduously, the moral question of truth. That is, they avoid the question of why the discovery of truth requires its discoverers to, minimally, proclaim it or bespeak it accurately; and, maximally, to practice this truth and call upon their listeners to do it along with them. Contrast this with Kant (still the most important modern, nonJewish philosophical influence on contemporary Jewish philosophy), for whom the truth of essentially rational human nature, which human beings show each other by their very presence in the world of speech, itself requires that it be spoken insofar as we are to speak to other humans beings rationally; and it requires that we respect it by treating every human being as an end-in-itself and not simply as a thing for our use or for our disposal.4 Obviously, this kind of truth is more than mere facticity, more than merely “how it really happened” (wie es eigentlich gewesen). Along these lines, the concern of pre-modern Jewish thinkers with the great events of Jewish history was less a concern with the question of ascertaining that they happened or how they might have been experienced by a neutral observer, but more a concern with why these events happened at all, and why these events make claims both upon those who were there and upon those who accept the accounts of those who were there as truth (emet) and

4 

See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 92-98.

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not falsehood (sheker).5 And is not the moral claim of these events because in them we can discover perennial truth about the human condition in the world: what is to be spoken and to be done by humans in the world that is worthy of their unique situation in the world? (Even the renegade Jewish philosopher or philosophical Jew, Baruch Spinoza admitted that revelation, especially Jewish revelation, could give us moral-political truth, still to be emulated today.6) Thus the why question here is not “why did X happen?”—the answer to which is “because Y did it”—but, rather, “why, for what purpose, did Y do X?”—and “why should we do similarly?” The question of what is Jewish philosophy and what its function can be in an academic setting today is most acutely put into the forefront when we look at two different notions of truth: the truth dealt with by historians and the truth dealt with by philosophers. This can be expressed as a fundamental paradox inherent in the praxis of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its heir, Jewish studies, namely: Even though the historicalcritical study of Judaism can say many ephemeral things that are true about Judaism at one time or another, it seems it cannot enable Judaism to say anything that is perennially true; that is, it cannot bespeak the truth of Judaism. Underlying this paradox are the questions of whether Judaism manifests any truth anyone can bespeak, or even whether there is any truth elsewhere that one can bespeak, and subordinate whatever is true about Judaism under it. Those having political power in the field of Jewish studies today seem to have the following four choices when dealing with this paradox: (1) They can acknowledge the possibility of Judaism having perennial truth and thus allow Jewish philosophers to “do Jewish philosophy” in their midst, which then involves the concomitant responsibility of the philosophers’ careful and respectful use of the research of Jewish historians and textual scholars in the philosophers’ theoretical constructions. (2) These historians can deny that Judaism has any perennial truth at all, while simultaneously asserting that such truth lies elsewhere. (Social scientists who try to 5 

For a good discussion of the philosophical problem of modern Jewish historiography by a philosophically astute Jewish historian, see Y. H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).

6 

See Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chap. 18, trans. M. D. Yaffe (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2004), 211-17.

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imitate the methods of natural science, assuming that these methods are more authentically “scientific,” often fall into this same trap.) (3) As more conventional positivists, these historians can preclude the question of trans-factual truth altogether, insisting that such questions are the illusions of “religious” people (whether these same people know it or not), thus relegating questions of the truth of Judaism to what they usually consider the inferior, non-academic, discourse of the synagogue or the yeshivah. Historians of this third variety are, for all intents and purposes, adherents of historicism. (4) Finally, certain post-modernists try to avoid this paradox most radically by simply denying the reality of any truth at all, even factual truth. If the option chosen is anything other than the first option just mentioned above, then the only Jewish philosophy to be tolerated in the modern university (often begrudgingly) is Jewish philosophy as the history of ideas that have been entertained within the history of Judaism. That usually means nothing more than examining ideas held by self-consciously “Jewish” Jews in the past, hence ideas that can only be treated as being dead along with the people who held them in the past, a kind of intellectual archaeology. (That might be nothing more than unearthing these ideas and then returning them to their historical graves.) And, in fact, most if not all of us who do teach “Jewish philosophy” in North American universities do it just that way. We teach the history of ideas held by self-consciously Jewish Jews in the past who, as self-conscious Jews, had a personal connection to the Jewish community by practicing Judaism in one way or another. Yet the way we avoid giving these ideas an obituary is to remind our students (often by allusion) that there are Jewish thinkers very much alive among us today, and they are still working and reworking these ideas from the past, treating them as alive, not dead. This is done best when a Jewish philosopher can show his or her students that he or she is one of these living Jewish thinkers. (I would characterize a “Jewish thinker” as someone who can express and apply identifiably Jewish ideas in the first person.) Only when the first choice is made are we Jewish philosophers able to explicitly do something more than explore the history of Jewish ideas. Most happily, there are times when Jewish historians (among whom I would also include Jewish textual scholars in the academy, almost all of whom utilize historical methods of investigation), who still constitute the vast majority of Jewish Studies professors, do admit the possibility of Jewish

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philosophy and do allow the possibility that it can be done within their own realm. Even then, however, I have yet to find a Jewish historian who can philosophically justify such tolerance on his or her part. As such, it is best for Jewish philosophers to simply accept such largess wherever and from whomever it comes for the most pragmatic reasons and make the most of it here and now. In fact, more often than not whatever Jewish philosophy is being done in the North American academy today is being done because a Jewish philosopher has simply taken it upon himself or herself to do it there—unauthorized, as it were. Most rarely, it happens that a Jewish philosopher is put in charge of a Jewish studies program in a North American university and can thus personally authorize—or at least not question the legitimacy of—Jewish philosophy being done ad locum. Nevertheless, even under the best of circumstances, the tensions between Jewish studies of the historical or historicist variety and Jewish philosophy seem to be inevitable, and any hope that they can be truly overcome at present or in the foreseeable future seems to be naive. Because of or in spite of that, one could say that Jewish philosophy is better done when faced with a challenge to its very legitimacy—be that a challenge to its Jewish legitimacy by nonphilosophical Jewish theologians or a challenge to its academic legitimacy by Jewish historians—than when it is simply taken for granted (something which, to my mind, has never actually occurred before anyway anywhere).7 Jewish Philosophy as Philosophical Theology

Jewish philosophy can be done as Jewish theology, specifically as Jewish philosophical theology, or as Jewish apologetics. At the outset, I would define the former as a philosophy of Judaism, and the latter as a philosophy out of Judaism. We shall return to the latter kind of Jewish philosophy in the next section of this essay. To speak of Jewish theology calls for a definition of “theology.” Based on the Greek etymology of this term, “theology” (logos tou theou) is usually taken to be “God-talk,” that is, talking about God (logos peri tō theō). But

7 

See Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, trans. E. Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 41-79.

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where is the God whom this kind of theology considers to be found? For this kind of God-talk, which used to be the main interest of metaphysics, the God it talks about is to be found in the world we experience, a world best described by science (“physics” in the classical sense). To be sure, in this kind of ontology, which we call “classical metaphysics,” God is not a direct object of our experience but, rather, an entity whose supreme being we infer from our experience of worldly objects, especially from objects that seem to manifest intelligence, including but not limited to ourselves, homo sapiens. We are to do this because the essentially intelligent activity of these objects in the world requires an explanation by reference to an object of thought that lies beyond our bodily experience but not beyond the world in which the objects of that experience essentially function. God is ultimately, but not immediately, to be found there. And doesn’t this God, whom the ancient philosophers assumed to be the end of all ends, seem to inspire in us the desire to imitate His intelligent activity?8 The God who can be found in this kind of world makes a moral claim on those capable of asking the right questions about the world in order to seek God out. Thus, in this metaphysical scheme, the most important question any intelligent person can ask is “might there be God?” (quod sit deus), and “what is this God?” (quid est deus). The latter question must inevitably become: “What does this God do uniquely?” This is how theology was done by all the mediaeval rationalist theologians (whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim). For them, theology was the highest form of philosophy because its object is “that which nothing greater can be thought.”9 Metaphysics/theology was the “queen of the sciences” (regina scientiarum), and all the other sciences (that is, all other forms of worldly knowledge) are its “handmaiden” (ancilla theologiae), ultimately functioning for its sake. It is quite doubtful that one can still do theology in this metaphysical way inasmuch as it surely presupposes a cosmology of a discernibly limited universe, structured according to universal teleology, with God sitting on top, so to speak, as the end of all ends (Summum Bonum), the apex 8 

See Aristotle, Metaphysics 6.1/1026a20, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.7/1177b25-30.

9 

See D. Novak, “Is the God of the Philosophers That Which Nothing Greater Can be Conceived?,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006): 196-204.

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of the cosmos.10 But after Galileo and Newton, let alone after Kant, no one can do cosmology that way, hence no one can do metaphysics that way. Furthermore, even before the rise of modern physics, this type of metaphysical or “natural” theology was theologically problematic since it seemed to turn the knowledge of God we get from revelation (logos para tou theou) into mere specification of the more generic, hence higher, knowledge of God we get from science, that is, from scientia or what we would today call “cosmology” in the broadest sense, which is human reasoning about nature as a whole. Moreover, to designate God as a cause within the natural order, even a First Cause, seems to compromise the incomparable role of the Creator God (bore olam) revealed in scripture and talked about in rabbinic tradition. Therefore, it seems better to now say that Jewish theology be reasoning about the revealed word of God (dvar ha-shem), the Torah, from which we derive knowledge of God in relation to humans, and from which we derive knowledge of ourselves in relation to God. In other words, this means taking revelation as the prime datum to be reflected upon, rather than taking it as an epiphenomenon, which only functions subsequent to rational discovery in order to fill in some details about God, that is, a God whose existence and essential attributes have already been apprehended without revelation. And, an added advantage of this phenomenological approach is that it does not require any proof of the existence of God, something that almost all philosophers today regard as philosophically futile. Finally, the question of God-speaking rather than speaking-about-God has always been the main concern of Jewish theology since the Pharisees.11 Along these lines, the more classical Jewish theology has a theoretical function and a practical function. Theoretically, we are to retell the narratives (aggadah) of scripture and tradition (that is, the Written and Oral Torahs) of how God acts in relation to ourselves as related to prophets recounting what they have heard and have been charged by God with recounting to us, and then ponder why God did as he did. Practically, we are to interpret

10   See Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1957), 273-76. 11   See my late revered teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah, trans. G. Tucker and

L. Levin (New York and London: Continuum, 2005), passim.

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what we have been told by God through his prophets (but, primarily, what was directly heard by the people at Sinai) as to how we are to act in relation to God (halakhah), and then ponder why we are to so act (that is, surmise ta`amei ha-miẓvot or “reasons of the commandments”). Nonetheless, the separation of theory and practice by classical, rabbinic theology is more formal than substantial (unlike their more substantial differentiation by Plato and Aristotle). Accordingly, even when doing “theoretical” theology, we are dealing with divine praxis, namely, how God interacts with us. And, even when doing “practical” theology, we are theorizing, namely, surmising why this action is what God wants us to do and that action is what God wants us to refrain from doing. In fact, one can see this dialectic between theory and practice in those discussions in the Babylonian Talmud where it is assumed that a disputed theoretical distinction entails a practical difference, and where it is assumed that a disputed practical difference presupposes a theoretical difference.12 Now that we have distinguished classical rabbinic theology from metaphysical theology, we must ask: can Jewish philosophical theology still be done without classical (that is, Aristotelian) metaphysics? I would maintain the view that the employment of philosophy for theology—what can still be called “philosophical theology,” where “philosophical” functions as an adjective modifying the noun “theology”—is still possible, even desirable, today. In fact, it might be able to do a better job for Judaism, because when the Jewish tradition does present an ontology in its God-talk, that ontology need no longer have to argue against a metaphysics taken to be more exalted than its own God-talk. Jewish theology can find a connection to philosophy, albeit philosophy that makes no ultimate ontological claims for itself. As such, the philosophy I speak of now is analysis of the ways through which we necessarily have to experience the world and bespeak the content of that experience intelligently, namely what today goes by the name “phenomenology” and “analytic-linguistic philosophy.” The connection of these two types of philosophy with classical rabbinic theology is that they are all concerned with our experience of the world: philosophy, more 12  Re the practical difference emerging from more theoretical disputes, see e.g. Babylonian

Talmud: Shabbat 22a; and re the theoretical distinction underlying more practical disputes, see e.g. ibid., Berakhot 21a.

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generally, is concerned with experience per se and how it can bespeak its essential structure and content; theology is more focused, being concerned with the experience of divine revelation, its essential structure, and its normative content. Philosophy is concerned with our experience of the world; theology is concerned with an experience of ours in the world. Moreover, theology claims that the experience of revelation is the ultimate experience possible in the world; indeed, it is the experience that shows us why there is a world at all and why we humans have been placed in it by the Creator of us both. The task of philosophical theology, then, is to cogently explain the proper connection between theology and philosophy, or why theology needs philosophical tools for its more cogent formulation. A key insight of Maimonides (1135-1204), certainly the greatest of the Jewish philosophical theologians, might help us in this task. When speaking of what distinguishes God-made law (al-shari`ah al-ilahiyah) from humanmade law (al-shari`ah al-numisiyah), he writes: “[T]he law, although it is not natural [tabi`ah], enters into what is natural.”13 Disconnecting this insight from Maimonides’ metaphysics and thus contextualizing differently (but without distorting its prima facie meaning beyond recognition), one could interpret it to mean: Revelation comes into a natural world already created here by God. Being “natural” means that this world already has intelligible structure, whose content admits of being so structured and thus becoming the subject matter of our experience.14 In fact, for Maimonides, both the Torah and the world are creations of God (beru’ah or ens creatum).15 Since, at this primary level, the Torah came into the world, it would seem that the world as we can conceive it provides the means for understanding what the Torah teaches, both theoretically and practically. (One could even see this formal worldly conceptuality functioning like a Kantian a priori, and the content of revelation functioning like a Kantian a posteriori.)16

13

  Guide of the Perplexed, 2.40, trans. S. Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 382; Judeo-Arabic text, ed. S. Munk (Jerusalem, n.p., 1931), 270.

14   See D. Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 142-48. 15   Guide of the Perplexed, 1.65. Heb. text (reprint) trans. Judah Ibn Tibbon (New York: Om

Publishing, 1946), 84. 16   See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B125-26, trans. N. Kemp Smith (New York:

Macmillan, 1929), 125-26.

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Here we have two creations: one prior (the creation of the world), and the other subsequent to it (the creation/revelation of the Torah). Since the latter occurs within the former (what a twentieth century philosopher called in-der-Welt-sein), the former is its conditio sine qua non.17 Minimally, one’s experience of the world cannot preclude the possibility of revelation; hence our constitution of the world need not be closed to revelation. That point is easy to make, since the only impossibility is logical impossibility. So, even though God’s communication to humans is not a matter of ordinary experience, it is clearly not illogical or unintelligible to assert. Maximally, one can actually employ the categories used to understand ordinary experience’s structure and content for one’s understanding of the Torah, both theoretical and practical. At the deepest level, this is what prevents the Torah from becoming other-worldly, even though the Torah comes from a transcendent source. As the rabbis put it: “The Torah is no longer in heaven,” but the Torah is now with us humans on earth, to be interpreted with the best earthly means at hand.18 One could say that these tools should be the earthly means having the greatest heuristic, even the greatest constructive, power—without, of course, ever ignoring the divine origin of the Torah.19 This point can also be seen in the rabbinic dictum: “The Torah speaks according to human language [ki-leshon bnei adam].”20 Though there are various ways this dictum has been interpreted and can be interpreted, I think it can be used to complement the assertion of the worldliness of the Torah as follows: humans constitute how they have experienced the world and what they have experienced in the world through language.21 Indeed, as Aristotle profoundly taught, humans are essentially communal (politikon) beings because they are essentially linguistic (logikon) 17   See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1979), sec. 14-18,

52-89. 18   See Babylonian Talmud: B. Baba Metsia 59b re Deut. 30:12. 19   See Mishnah: Sanhedrin 10.1. 20   See e.g. Babylonian Talmud: Avodah Zarah 27b and parallels. 21   See D. Novak, “The Idea of Natural Law in the Thought of Hermann Cohen” (Heb.), Neti`ot

Ledavid: Jubilee Volume for David Weiss Halivni, ed. Y. Elman, E. B. Halivni, and A. Z. Sternfeld (Jersualem: Orhot, 2004), 131-32, n. 2 (Heb. Sec.).

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beings, and vice-versa.22 Humans constitute the meaning of their world through interpersonal discourse, out of which they hope actual truth will emerge (a point well made, mutatis mutandis, by both Plato and Habermas).23 To be sure, philosophers have debated whether philosophy can be taken as an original language itself or whether philosophy abstracts its own terms out of more original (or what have been called “natural”) languages.24 Holding the latter view, though, philosophy as epistemology draws its terms from the language of mathematics; philosophy as ethics draws its terms from the language of law; and philosophy as aesthetics (what was once called “poetics”) draws its terms from the language of poetry. Theologians having philosophical perspicacity can usefully employ all three modes of philosophically refined language theologically: logic (especially newer, more “relational” logics or methodologies) in both the theoretical and practical functions of theology; ethics in its practical function; aesthetics in its theoretical function. When done this way by Jewish thinkers, philosophical theology becomes a philosophy of Judaism. In North America (specifically the United States and Canada), the two most important philosophical theologians have been my late, revered teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72), and Joseph Baer Soloveitchik (1903-93). Both of these men did their major theological work in North America, specifically the United States of America. Yet both of them were born and initially educated in Eastern Europe, and both of them did their doctoral work at the University of Berlin. Had they remained in Western Europe, having survived the Holocaust as did their contemporary, the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (190695), or had they immigrated to Israel as did their contemporary the Jewish philosopher Ernst Simon (1899-1988), would their theologies have been constructed any differently? That is hard to say. (Only Heschel’s social

22   See Politics, 1.1/1253a1-19. 23   See Plato, Crito, 46B and 48A; Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative

Action, trans. C. W. Lenhardt and S. W. Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 134-41. 24   See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed., 1.18, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe

(New York: Macmillan, 1958), 8; 1.124, 49.

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philosophy seems to be one that could not have been constructed outside of the United States.) One could argue that both Heschel’s and Soloveitchik’s basic theological positions had already been thought out in Europe, before they crossed the Atlantic for good. Nevertheless, the type of theology done by the still-living disciples of either Heschel and Soloveitchik certainly bears the stamp of their North American births, upbringing, education, and careers. It is clear that the disciples of Heschel and Soloveitchik have followed their teachers regarding a philosophy of Judaism. But have any of them, or can any Jewish philosopher today, work out a philosophy or a philosophical approach out of Judaism? Jewish Philosophy as Apologetics

The second type of Jewish philosophy, as distinct from Jewish philosophy qua philosophical theology, is Jewish philosophy qua apologetics. Here, instead of or in addition to his or her speaking of Judaism, the Jewish philosopher speaks out of Judaism. I call this “apologetics,” following the Greek etymology of the word “apologize,” apologein, meaning “to speak out of.” There are two different kinds of apologetics, each of which has been done by those who would consider themselves to be Jewish philosophers. In neither kind, however, do I mean “apologizing” in the ordinary way we use this word, namely, “being sorry for or ashamed of,” even though some thinkers who might be termed “former Jews” have done just that. There have been thinkers who have been sorry for or ashamed of Judaism. Some of them have even been philosophers. (One could see Karl Marx’s negative remarks about Judaism as being his apology for or justification of his parents’ apostasy from Judaism, something that he no doubt saw as his ticket out of the confines of the Jewish community and its religious tradition.25) But, since most of them have apologized for Judaism to the members of the community they have already joined anyway, such apologetics could hardly be considered “Jewish” philosophy in any way short of nihilism. Such writers are not speaking out of a Judaism for which they have any affection or even any respect. Instead, they are justifying their 25   See F. L. Bender, ed., Karl Marx: The Essential Writings (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972),

54-66 (trans. T. B. Bottomore); also, Louis Dupré, The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1966), 109-12.

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own departure from Judaism, often arguing why every Jew should do as they are doing, indeed that it would be best if Judaism were to self-destruct. That is, their apologetics has been their way of talking themselves out of Judaism and hoping to persuade others to do likewise. (Some have read Baruch Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as this kind of negative apologetics, which is an arguable thesis.) Here I am concerned with the philosophical apologetics of those Jews who are positive about their connection to the Jewish tradition and to the Jewish people who have preserved, transmitted, and developed that tradition. There are two kinds of such positive Jewish apologetics. The first kind of positive Jewish apologetics is epitomized by the very title of the profound work on Judaism of the person many consider to be the greatest modern Jewish philosopher, Hermann Cohen (1842-1918). That book, published posthumously in 1919, was named by Cohen Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums.26 Its 1972 English translation calls it, quite literally, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism.27 However, based on what Cohen argues for in that work (which, one gets the impression, Cohen had long meant to be his finale and magnum opus) and in his earlier works leading up to it, one could paraphrase that title as “Judaism’s contribution to philosophical religion.”28 In other words, Cohen sees the construction of a philosophical religion to be the great project or ideal of philosophy since only God—the one and only God—could be the Absolute, with whom a relationship (what Cohen called “correlation”) is philosophy’s greatest quest, and philosophy being the highest striving possible for humans as rational beings. Such a relationship with the Absolute God (whom Cohen identifies with Being) is religion per se.29 Cohen sees the two primary contributions to or historical sources (the aus den Quellen of the title) for that ideal religion (the Religion der Vernunft of the title) to be Greek philosophical theology/metaphysics (especially as formulated

26   See 2 nd ed. (Darmstadt: Joseph Melzer Verlag, 1966). 27  Trans. S. Kaplan (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972). 28   See Herrmann Cohen, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1995), 1-34. 29   See ibid., 42-49.

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by Plato) and Jewish prophetic religion (especially biblical morality and eschatology).30 Cohen is able to save Judaism for himself and all other philosophical Jews because Judaism has not yet finished making its contribution to the ideal, fully rational, religion Cohen envisions. Indeed, being an ideal, one could argue that it will never be realized in history. Nevertheless, even though Cohen might have saved Judaism’s life—philosophically by his own criteria, that is—now and for the historical future, by legitimizing that life solely on the basis of what it can really contribute to ideal philosophical religion, Cohen deeply undermined Judaism’s autonomy. As a philosopher, Cohen was correct to follow Kant and attempt to construct a new ontology built on the back of ethics rather than a metaphysical ontology built on the back of the by-now discredited Aristotelian physics. That is the intellectual project, starting from ethics, that looks for the higher ontological implications of ethics, minimally being the philosophical anthropology from which ethics draws its power. Kant himself called this a “metaphysic of morals”; today we might call it a “metaethics.” (With this kind of emphasis on the primacy of praxis, it is not hard to see why many Jews, as adherents of a practical religion of mizvot, found so much in common with Kant.) As an ontology and not just a system of rules, Kant’s metaethics could not very well ignore the question of God. But, on this theological score, I think Cohen did a much better job than did Kant, inasmuch as Cohen was able to conceive of God as the Absolute in a way Kant’s God as the mere instrument or exemplar of ethical perfection could not be conceived.31 That is important to bear in mind because Cohen was not simply fitting Judaism into the ready-made Procrustean Bed of Kant’s philosophy; instead, he was constructing his own philosophy, for which Kant’s philosophy offered great guidance and inspiration, but not total hegemony. Cohen’s philosophical religion was meant to be more than simply Kantian Judaism, despite Cohen’s seemingly boundless reverence for Kant.32 30   See e.g. ibid., 291. 31   See D. Novak, The Election of Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 54-64. 32  Leo Baeck, who might be seen as Cohen’s theological heir (as Ernst Cassirer might be seen as

Cohen’s philosophical heir) at one time seemed to be a rather uncritical Kantian regarding

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Cohen could have seen classical Jewish theology, based on the primacy of revelation, to be where the full trajectory of ethics might lead.33 And he could have done this without making classical Jewish theology the ideal foundation from which ethics can be deduced. In that way, he could have recognized the ontological primacy of Jewish theology, but without requiring any one of his ethical interlocutors to accept the authority of traditional Jewish theology thereby. In other words, Cohen could have out of ethics alluded to the ontology of classical Jewish theology rather than trying to deduce both ethics and Judaism (whose philosophical value for him is exclusively ethical) down from his new ontology. In that way, Jewish revelation (or, more accurately, God’s revelation to the Jews and their transmission and interpretation of it) would be neither the major premise of an ontological syllogism nor would it be the necessary final cause (telos) of an ontological inference as it was for Maimonides. In that way, then, Jewish philosophical theology can (and, perhaps, should) now stake out an ontological position distinct from either Maimonidean metaphysics (which is still Aristotelian, despite Maimonides’ critical modifications of it) or from Cohenian ontology (which is still Kantian, despite Cohen’s critical modifications of it). Indeed, the nineteenthcentury Italian-Jewish theologian and Bible exegete, Samuel David Luzzato who no doubt was aware of the older Jewish Aristotelianism and the newer Enlightenment Jewish rationalism called for his contemporary Jewish thinkers to develop a philosophy more consistent with scriptural teaching.34

Judaism, and a more critical Kantian at another time. See Leo Baeck, Judaism and Christianity, trans. W. Kaufmann (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958), 193 and 254 (from his essay, “Romantische Religion”; cf. ibid., 178 (from his essay “Geheimnis und Gebot”). Interestingly enough, both essays were originally written in 1922. Yet the latter essay, with its critical view of Jewish Kantianism, seems to reflect Baeck’s thought after 1933, and his survival of the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1945 until his death in 1956. 33   I.e., where it might lead, but not where it must lead. That difference from Aristotelian

metaphysical teleology stems from the different ontology I employ in my philosophical theology. See D. Novak, Jewish-Christian Dialogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 129-38. 34   See S. D. Luzzato’s Commentary to the Pentateuch (Heb.), ed. P. Schlesinger (Tel Aviv: Dvir,

1965), 516-517, re Deut. 6:5.

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Jewish Apologetics in North America Today

We have at least the possibility of a second type of Jewish apologetic philosophy today, one that can avoid the theological problems of some of the philosophies of the past. Moreover, this new kind of Jewish apologetics is more attuned to the more pragmatic, less idealistic (in the philosophical denotation of that term), moral discourse in North American society today. I do not mean “pragmatic” in the vulgar sense, that is, as a synonym for unprincipled consequentialism—“whatever works”— but, rather, in the sense of praxis that is not simply deduced from theory or is only for the sake of theory. Such apologetics can truly be a philosophy out of Judaism. How? A Jewish philosopher—in this case, one who philosophizes out of Judaism—can self-consciously enter into contemporary public discourse (which is more than academic, but one in which the voices of academics are constantly sought) when the big questions of public morality are on the line. In today’s multi-cultural setting, the morally intelligent public is genuinely interested in hearing a variety of points of view on such questions, especially from adherents of traditions that have long experience in dealing with these kinds of questions. (That was definitely not the case in either Maimonides’ or Cohen’s time and place.) Indeed, who could be better to consult than Jews? After all, self-consciously “Jewish” Jews seem to have much to contribute much to public moral discourse in democratic society, and that would lead many to assume that the Jewish tradition properly prepared Jews for this role there. Moreover, Christians (still the majority in North America) who are knowledgeable know quite well that their morality is the Jewish morality Christianity retained even after it separated itself from Judaism per se.35 (That was something almost all Christians in Cohen’s time and place, and in fact until rather recently, wanted to forget.) For these reasons, there has been no dearth of Jewish “spokespersons” who have been eager and willing to respond to what they rightfully perceive to be a public request for their Jewish views on the big questions of public morality today. Nevertheless, it seems that most of these Jewish responses

35   See D. Novak, Talking with Christians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 184-

202. This essay is entitled “The Moral Crisis of the West: The Judeo-Christian Response.”

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have been problematic according to Jewish criteria, philosophical criteria, or both. So, before a possible Jewish philosophical approach to such questions be put forth with some plausible arguments, let us look at the extremes that need to be overcome in order that an authentic Jewish philosophy be put forth with good reason, and that it call for rational evaluation on the part of those to whom it is addressed. The two extreme tendencies that Jewish philosophers must overcome are: (1) the tendency to bring into public discourse only those aspects of the Jewish moral tradition that support a pre-conceived ideology, and to either implicitly ignore or explicitly reject those aspects of the tradition that contradict such an ideology; (2) the tendency to speak authoritatively from the Jewish tradition in public contexts where the Jewish tradition has no authority. The first extreme tendency is displayed by many Jewish liberals who speak out as Jews in the public square; the second extreme tendency is displayed by many Jewish traditionalists who speak out as Jews in the public square. This happens when either Jewish liberals or Jewish traditionalists speak out for specifically Jewish issues like general public support for the State of Israel, or when they speak out as Jews for general issues of social morality like abortion or the status of civil marriage, or war or poverty. Jewish liberals have a tendency to dogmatically espouse certain ideologies, for which they rarely make any genuinely reasoned arguments, and then they claim to find precedents for these ideologies from within the Jewish tradition. (Secularist ideologues, who are unlike secular philosophers, are very much like religious dogmatists, who are unlike genuine theologians: they both avoid rational argumentation, preferring rhetorical appeals to the prejudices of those they seek to influence.36 That is usually the case for whatever ideology these Jewish liberals happen to espouse, be it socialism or libertarianism, be it feminism or egalitarianism, be it militarism or pacifism. (Clearly my examples are not confined to those who in the narrow political sense go by the name “liberal.”) Usually, they select from the tradition whatever suits their ideology, considering it to be “progressive” and thus to be emphasized and elaborated upon;

36   For the difference between “secularism” as an ideology and “secularity” as an idea, see

D. Novak, The Jewish Social Contract (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1-29.

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and whatever in the tradition does not suit or actually contradicts their ideology, they either ignore or dismiss as “regressive” or “primitive.” How unlike the philosophy of a titan like Hermann Cohen this type of ideology is! His philosophical religion and Judaism’s subordination to it is eminently arguable even if not finally persuasive. By comparison, how puny are the efforts of our contemporary Jewish ideologues to colonize revelation and the tradition rooted in it. Any attempt like that of Cohen is at least plausible, leaving aside any judgment of whether Cohen truly succeeded in his ideal construction of philosophical religion from which he sought to deduce most of the Jewish tradition, but to reject some of it. (The ancient Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, rejuvenated in modern Zionism, is a significant element of the tradition explicitly, indeed vehemently, rejected by Cohen.37) Cohen was a better philosopher than he was a theologian. Contemporary Jewish ideologues—and their non-Jewish counterparts— are not even bad philosophers or bad theologians. They have not struggled with the great tensions between reason and revelation that preoccupy theologically informed philosophers. Recognition of the tensions between the claims of reason and the claims of revelation, plus attempts to correlate them in one way or another, are a perennial feature of Western thought from Philo to Tertullian to Maimonides to Kierkegaard to Leo Strauss. Liberal ideologies, conversely, offer none of the perennial strengths of revelation or reason. Unlike genuine rationalism, these ideologies do not claim to have emerged from the exercise of universal, rational, human nature; and unlike revelation, they certainly do not claim to have emerged from the word of the transcendent God to a singular community within humankind. Accordingly, could anybody seriously offer any ideology, based neither on reason nor on revelation but only on what ends up being mere (usually class) prejudice, as a criterion for selecting and rejecting items from an ancient tradition like Judaism, thereby destroying the autonomy of that tradition in the process? Is it any wonder, then, that more traditional Jews rarely bother to argue against Jewish derivatives of ideologies which themselves offer no real arguments for their having any truth value?

37   See e.g. Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen, trans. E. Jospe

(New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1971), 163-71.

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To their credit, Jewish traditionalists do not play with the Jewish tradition selectively. There is no question about their respect for the autonomy of the Jewish tradition. As such, they do not have the theological problem of the liberals, who seem to defy the clear prohibition of any conditional or partial allegiance on the part of any Jew to the overall authority of the Jewish tradition, a tradition claiming as it does to be rooted in divine revelation.38 Nevertheless, many traditionalists, who enter data from the Jewish moral tradition into the public moral discourse of democratic society, have the same philosophical problem as do the liberals. Neither of them really makes a rational argument for what each of them is proposing out of Judaism. Basically, both liberals and traditionalists expound their positions with direct authority. They both make arguments ad hominem rather than ad rem. Thus the ideologically based arguments of liberals frequently invoke the fact that progressive, educated, liberated people hold these views; hence to disagree with them shows one to be primitive, ignorant, or repressed. In fact, I have been genuinely shocked at the contempt shown by certain liberal elitists who claim to be advocates of democracy for most of their traditionalist fellow citizens who do not share their liberal ideology—dismissing them by ridicule rather than really arguing with them or even against them rationally. The usual ideologically formulated putdown of those they consider beneath themselves is to call them “fundamentalists.” At the other side of the theological-political spectrum, traditionalists frequently invoke the authority of the tradition, especially as most recently bespoken by their own “authorities,” their “great ones” (gedolim). However, they avoid two basic questions (whether consciously or unconsciously): (1) Why should the Jewish tradition, even when ruling on a universal human moral issue in a multi-cultural society, have any authority over non-Jews? (2) Why should any Jewish authority or legal decider (posek) have any authority over Jews who have not designated him (even if only by their tacit acceptance of such authority by virtue of their membership in a community in which such an authority presides) to have authority over them?39 In other words: (1) Why should non-Jews do what the Jewish tradition seems to be 38  

See Tosefta: Demai 2.4-5; Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah: Deut. 27:26.

39  

See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Mamrim, 1.4-5.

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telling them to do? (2) Who authorized anybody to speak authoritatively, even if only to fellow Jews, in the name of the Jewish tradition? To answer the first question: to be logically consistent, any gentile who freely accepts Jewish moral authority ought to convert to Judaism, where their full acceptance into the Jewish community will give them the kind of equal Jewish rights they could not have as “sojourners.”40 In other words, why should anyone outside the Jewish community accept Jewish moral authority unless, of course, this is part of a process of initiation into Judaism, soon culminating in becoming “born again” as a Jew equal to native-born Jews.41 Otherwise, such non-Jewish acceptance of Jewish authority is absurd, both for those advocating it to gentiles and those gentiles who would blindly follow them. Therefore, if these Jewish “authorities” are to avoid this absurdity, they should actively proselytize the non-Jews they are attempting to rule. The fact is, though, they carefully eschew proselytizing, many of them making even wholly voluntary conversion to Judaism almost impossible de facto. In other words, one gets the impression that this kind of exercise of authority is really authoritarian, which might well mean that those who speak this way to gentiles (whether consciously or unconsciously) have an imperialist or triumphalist agenda: wanting to exercise moral authority over others, but others whom they do not want to include as equals in their own community but, rather, keep in a permanently inferior position.42 Yet, when such essentially authoritarian claims are made in democratic public discourse, they very rarely have much effect there since they sound so undemocratic. Moreover, they give the false impression that even traditional Jewish communities are much less democratic than is truly the case in fact. The fact is that the more learned a traditional Jewish community is, the more true it is that its designated authorities have to rule more by persuasion than by authoritative fiat.43 To answer the second question about authority within “the” Jewish community: The fact is that those having legal or halakhic authority among Jews only have that authority because it is given them by those individuals 40  

See ibid.: Melakhim, 10.9.

41  

See Babylonian Talmud: Yevamot 22a and parallels.

42  Cf. Babylonian Talmud: Yevamot 46a and Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Isurei Biah, 13.11. 43  

See ibid.: Avodah Zarah 35a and 36a-b; also ibid.: Berakhot 27b.

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or that particular community who have accepted these deciders to rule on matters of Jewish praxis for them.44 Furthermore, since most major issues of Jewish praxis have a long history of dispute (mahloket) about them, it is rare that a decider for a particular individual or community can say in good faith: “this is the Jewish view on this issue.” Rather, often the most he (or, possibly, “she”) can truthfully say is: “this is a Jewish view on this matter that seems to me to be the right approach to the issue at hand.” In such a case, the questioner can (1) be persuaded by the opinion offered and follow it; (2) can be unpersuaded by this opinion and not follow it (with impunity); (3) can be persuaded by somebody else’s opinion; or (4) can even formulate his or her own opinion and follow it. The only thing that seems to be out of bounds is to reject a valid Jewish normative opinion by non-Jewish criteria, especially when that involves one’s acceptance of a rival normative system, both in general and on any specific question. Furthermore, questioners have the right to a written opinion stating the reasons why they were ordered to do what the halakhic decider ordered them to do. To be sure, these “reasons” might only be citations of the textual sources upon which the decision was made.45 Yet a truly astute decider will state or at least allude to the ends of the law itself which his decision was meant to instantiate. This should be done especially when the question concerns a major moral issue that is being hotly disputed in the community. 44  Clearly, one is only obligated to accept the authoritative answer to an halakhic query from the

designated authority in and for that community to whom one submits his or her query. Such a query is usually to be formally addressed to that person with the words: “May our master instruct us” (yelamdenu rabbenu) — see e.g. Babylonian Talmud: Gittin 81a and 89b. And, in the absence of any centralized Jewish authority (similar to the Vatican for Roman Catholics; cf. ibid.: Sanhedrin 8a; Gittin 88b), such authorities are either elected by the communities for whom they adjudicate, or they are appointed by lay officials of the community, presumably with the tacit approval of the members of the community. Yet, in more private halakhic questions, i.e., those not pertaining to matters of public policy that require adjudication by a rabbinical court (beit din), there does not seem to be any obligation to seek an authoritative ruling from a communal authority, or someone personally designated to be one’s authority in such matters, when those having such queries can research the sources themselves and come to their own reasoned conclusion as to what they ought to do under the circumstances. For that reason, most of the great rabbinic responsa (teshuvot) are not authoritative rulings as much as they are the opinion of one rabbi whose persuasive counsel has been sought by another rabbi—or by a learned person in general. 45  

See Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, Responsa: Noda Biyehudah 2nd ed. (reprint/Jerusalem: Pesaqim, 1961): Hoshen Mishpat, no. 1.

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Here, an astute decider will understand that an intelligent questioner will follow the decider’s decision in his or her case with more conviction of its truth when that questioner has been persuaded that this is what he or she would do anyway, even without being so authorized by somebody else. Thus, the more a halakhic decider engages in rational persuasion for what he has ruled, the more he functions as a philosopher of Judaism. Conversely, the less he engages in rational persuasion for what he has ruled, the more he functions as a religious ideologue, often codifying prejudices that are his or those of his immediate world of discourse. It would seem that in order for a philosopher to speak out of the Jewish tradition on any major moral issue facing his or her multi-cultural society with integrity and self-conscious Jewish identity, it is best that he or she be a philosopher of Judaism primarily. That is, Judaism itself—the Torah—should always be the priority of a Jewish philosopher: the prime subject one bespeaks. Jewish philosophers who affirm this priority can show that their selection of moral teachings from the Jewish tradition for rational consideration elsewhere is not an impersonal or accidental decision. Nevertheless, since they are not asserting the authority of the tradition in the larger world, philosophers who are philosophizing out of Judaism need not indicate to anyone just what their own personal relation to that authority actually is—that is, when so philosophizing outside the Jewish community itself, in the public square. Of course, there is a fundamental difference in the way one speaks of morality within the traditional, law-observant Jewish community and the way one speaks of morality within the multi-cultural democracy (like Canada or the United States) in which one is essentially without the public moral authority of one’s tradition to stand upon. Within the Jewish community, the law is prior to whatever reasons one can surmise for its rulings, even when they can be interpreted according to those reasons and thus appear more persuasive to those who are being bidden to obey them. The law is to be obeyed whether we understand and appreciate its reasons or not.46 But, outside the traditional Jewish community, within the general society where one is, in effect, publicly anonymous, one can only express universal reasons for why one course of action should be 46  

See Babylonian Talmud: Shabbat 88b re Exod. 24:7.

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permitted or even encouraged and why another course of action should be discouraged or prohibited. If any of those reasons either confirm old law or initiate new law, the law they confirm or initiate will not be Jewish law, nor will it have the authority Jewish law has for Jews. Rather, that law will be the law of the state in which one lives (dina de-malkhuta). And that is borne out by the fact that all major issues of public policy, for which a Jewish opinion is sought, inevitably wind up in secular court cases— often “landmark” cases. This has, indeed, been the experience of those of us Jewish scholars who have been asked to participate in such cases, on one side or the other. Accordingly, Jewish moral theorists who are experienced in exercising a maximum of reason and a minimum of authority within the Jewish community are best suited to persuasively bring the ethical riches of the Jewish tradition into public moral discourse in democratic society. Such moralists are doing Jewish philosophy, even if they do not usually call themselves “philosophers.” At home, they are first and foremost philosophers of Judaism, bringing methods from out of the larger world for their treatment of inherently Jewish questions. In the outside world, though, these Jewish philosophers are philosophers of a non-Jewish (but not anti-Jewish), neutral system of norms, bringing insights from out of their Judaism for their treatment of more general, worldly questions. It seems to me that the greatest opportunity for Jewish philosophers who are willing and able to speak out of Judaism within the broader world comes when they are willing and able to be philosophical moralists within that world, attempting neither to dictate to it nor to be dictated by it. The fact that many intelligent, morally earnest people in this broader world seem to be more open to hearing what Jewish thinkers have to say to them, for them, and with them, is an opportunity too tempting for Jewish philosophers to let it simply pass by. Therefore, we need to do that task as well as is humanly possible and always with God’s unseen help.

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R ena issance of Jew ish P hilosophy in A mer ica * Nor b e r t M. S amuel son

I have been asked to reflect on how my constructive work in Jewish philosophy has contributed to what some people call the “renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America” in the second half of the twentieth century. If there has been a renaissance, it is because there were a significant number of important academic studies in Jewish philosophy during this period of time. It is not clear how much these books have been read by people outside the relatively small circle of students of Jewish philosophy, and how much influence any of these publications will have on American culture is largely unknown. Needless to say, my hope is that some of them (including my contributions) will have influence, and that this influence will be positive. However, at this time the hope is only that, a hope. What I will do in this essay is summarize the central claims I have made and am planning to make in print in the area of constructive Jewish philosophy. Then I will reflect on to what extent those conclusions are influenced by the fact that my primary education in both philosophy and Judaism has been in the United States under the influence of Americans who are philosophers, scholars of Judaica, and committed religious Jews. My intellectual sources are a number of American rabbis who guided my commitment to Judaism, and American university professors who guided my interest in the study of both philosophy and Judaism. The rabbis were for the most part Reform, and the teachers in philosophy included phenomenologists and pragmatists (during my undergraduate years), and

* 

I wish to express my thanks to Leora Batnitzky and Michael Morgan for sharing with me their reflections on an earlier draft of this paper.

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intellectual historians of ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy (during my time as a graduate student). Most, but not all, of these influences were American, and others were (in order of importance) Israeli, French, and German. Finally, when it comes to the works of philosophy that have most influenced me, many have been American, but many have not. Certainly in terms of the most important primary texts for my thought, most have not, for these influences have been writings in the history of philosophy in western and Jewish civilizations composed long before the twentieth century. However, undoubtedly I have read these sources through lenses influenced (if not determined) by my predominately American teachers. The goal in the concluding part of this essay will be to make explicit insofar as I can through reflection on my constructive thinking just how much what I think is American. The past claims to be presented in the first part of this paper are to be found primarily (but not exclusively) in two books: Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Revelation and the God of Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The future claim will be found in a book that I am now researching and beginning to write with the tentative title “Light and Enlightenment: The Expectation for Redemption.” All three studies in constructive Jewish philosophy are also works of Jewish intellectual history. (In my opinion, any adequate effort in Jewish religious thought always has been and should continue now to be both.) Some Reasoned Claims about What Jews as Jews Ought to Believe

I begin with a statement summarizing what I believe Jewish philosophy can say about creation, revelation, and redemption. The very fact that I take these three claims as central and that I believe the way to discuss them is both philosophical and historical presupposes a certain conception of the intellectual religious history of the Jewish people. I will not discuss this presupposition in this paper; however, I refer the readers to another book of mine—Jewish Philosophy: A Historical Introduction (London: Continuum, 2003)—where I lay out a general view of the history of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Jewish philosophy that underlies my understanding of how and why one ought to do constructive Jewish philosophy.

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Thinking as a Jew has almost always meant thinking about the meaning of the Hebrew scriptures from any number of different perspectives, one of which is rabbinic. There always have been and continue today to be many different kinds of Judaism. In modern times some of them are religious and others of them are secular, but all of them take as central the claim that the Hebrew scriptures have some degree of epistemic authority. The same claim could be made for Christianity. What at this point separates the two are the communities of readers to whom the thought is directed and the traditions of past commentaries that are taken seriously. In the case of Jewish thinking the community is at least some segment within the Jewish people. In this case the tradition consists of a set of publications that include at least the Mishnah and anthologies of midrash that reflect the early rabbis, as well as diverse commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures (both linear and topical) by medieval rabbis. For premodern rabbis and modern religiously traditional Jews, the goal is to determine readings of these sources that are most likely to be true and which, as such, are considered to be the true intent of those texts. Modern Jewish thinkers, religious and secular, attempt to determine interpretations of the text that are most likely to have been the intended readings of the authors. Determinations of best readings in this sense are judgments of intellectual history. Conversely, determinations of best readings for premodern Jewish thinkers have been ahistorical and philosophical. A contemporary exercise of Jewish philosophy should be modern in the sense that it pays careful attention to the traditional documents as products of human history to be understood within their historical context. However, contemporary Jewish philosophy should also be philosophical. Given the determination of what the text meant in its historical context, the philosopher should go beyond history and reflect on the text as a philosopher. Here, thinking as a philosopher means reflecting on what in the text is and is not true. For a traditional religious Jewish philosopher, that the correct interpretation of the canon is true is at least a working assumption. Liberal religious Jewish philosophers will not make this assumption. For them the truth of the texts is always an open question that must be answered anew for each section of each text, based on the concrete evidence of the texts studied in relationship to other kinds of texts to which the philosophers give epistemic credence. I practice Jewish thinking as a liberally religious philosopher.

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As Moses Maimonides, among other rabbis, affirmed about Judaism, its central activity is conceptual and its fundamental truth claims are three— (1) Creation, that the one God who is worthy of worship is the creator of the unredeemed universe at the origin of time; (2) Revelation, that this same deity is the revealer of the Torah, through the agency of the prophet Moses, to the Jewish people, through the flow of the time of human history; and (3) Redemption, that this same deity is the redeemer of the created world at the end of time. My discussion of the doctrine of creation is based on Jewish philosophical commentaries on the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, and the truth of those interpretations is judged in the light of contemporary scientific studies in physical cosmology and particle physics. In the case of the doctrine of revelation, primary attention is given to Moses Maimonides’ interpretation of Mosaic prophecy in light of important challenges: in political ethics from liberal political theory, in modern psychology from the life sciences, in theology from analytic philosophy of religion, and in intellectual history from academic source critical studies of the bible. Finally, in the case of the doctrine of redemption, my primary Jewish source will be the conceptual content of the traditional Jewish siddur (prayer book), which will be examined in terms of its possible correlation to concepts of light in the history of physics and utopian expressions of hope in the history of political theory. The summary I will present below describes the conclusions I have reached through a process of careful reading of the primary sources listed above, followed by an honest effort to translate the claims made by the two disparate sets of sources (rabbinic and academic) to a shared language so that they may be compared and, where in disagreement, be reflected upon in order to arrive at what I would judge to be the most reasonable beliefs that a contemporary committed, liberal Jew who lives in western civilization can affirm about creation, revelation, and redemption.1 1

  I think it is misleading to say that I am engaged in natural theology. Certainly what I do has some “family resemblances” to the reflections of William Paley, and even more to the arguments of William Ahlston, but these are resemblances and not identities. William Ahlston’s influence is most apparent in my Revelation and the God of Israel. However, the influence of William Paley is less overt. In fact, as is made explicit Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker (London: Penguin, 1986), Richard Dawkins has been more influenced by Paley than I have. (Cf. Dawkins, pp. 4ff.) My goal is not to show that religious claims are “natural,” but that they are “reasonable,” and the two adjectives do not range over identical sets of claims.

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The opening narrative of the Hebrew scriptures presents an ahistorical cosmogony that provides the conceptual basis by which the readers are to interpret the history of the Jewish people from the time of its origins with the patriarch Abraham through the Mosaic theophany at Sinai (in the Torah), through the rise and fall of the first Jewish state (in the section called the Prophets), and through the rise and fall of the second Jewish state (in the section called the Writings). Genesis, chapter 2, begins an epic of humanity from the time of a posited first human (Adam) to the time of the wanderings of the first Jew (Abraham). It is with the story of Abraham that the biblical narrative first claims to be historical. What precedes him constitutes a cosmological and anthropological framework to interpret the temporal sequence of events in the life of the nation Israel as “divine history” (Heilsgeschichte). The biblical conception of the universe is both physical and biological. Genesis, chapter one, lays out the physical story, while chapter two begins the biological story. The physics focuses on the spatial domain of the planet Earth while the biology focuses on the history of the human being. The theory of creation spells out the relationship between God and the physical world, while the theory of revelation spells out the relationship between God and humanity. Genesis presents creation as a single event that is subdivided into seven layers of creation called “days.” On day zero, which is logically prior to God’s act of creation, the universe is not yet anything at all. Creation is the process by which God transforms the eternal nothing into the physical something of our universe. What transforms the initial nothing into an initial something is the creation of light on the first day. The only thing that God actually makes that was not already present in the universe is this light. Everything else already exists, but exists as nothing at all. It is nothing in two different senses. First, it has no positive physical character; second, it is in no sense conceivable. In the language of the scriptures, at first the universe is and what it is is devoid of any

There are, of course, many ways to understand the term “nature.” It is a topic that interests me, but it is not something that I have written about (at least not yet). As for a philosophy of nature, my most important intellectual influences are the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures, the medieval so-called Aristotelians, and Franz Rosenzweig, none of whom were mechanists or materialists.

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affirmative value (i.e., tohu va-vohu) and it is thoroughly dark in every dimension of space. The creation of light enables what is dark within space to become enlightened, and what is unorderly and unintelligible to become ordered and intelligible. What results at the end of creation is a universe that at least in principle can be understood by human beings. The hypothesized pre-created universe (hypothesized because there never is a time that there is no created universe) consists of four elements, each of which represents a potential state of being. At the center of the space of the universe is the solid (earth), conceived geometrically as a sphere, surrounded by a ring of liquid (water), which in turn is surrounded by a ring of gas (light). This surrounding light is a composite of fire with air (i.e., ruah Elohim), whose inherent activity sets the inherently passive states of earth and water into motion. On day two a separation is made between the spatial region of earth and the spatial region of the sky by the imposition of a different set of natural laws. The remaining story of physical creation is the imposition of divine commands on the now distinct regions of space to keep them and their creations distinct. With the sole exception of the human, God plays no active role beyond the creation of light in making new entities. All that is new that is made are the occupants of the earth, the seas, and the sky, which are generated by the earth in obedience to divine command. Every separation constitutes what God calls “good.” Good for the creator of the universe is to become orderly and intelligible, and this order and intelligibility is achieved through clear separations. Life and good are inherently associated with separation, while death and evil are conversely associated with any move that confuses the separation. As on day two the earth and the sky are separated, on day three the waters above and below the earth are separated. Now the earth is commanded to use the waters above and below, in their judged-excellent state of separation, to generate life of its own. That life is called “self replicating plants.” These plants are the foundation of life, for they are the basis of a food chain that gives life to all subsequently generated forms that live in the space of the universe. On day three God orders the earth to generate vegetative life forms to dwell upon the earth. Similarly, on day four God orders the light to generate objects called “lighters” to dwell in the sky. These lighters are what we call “stars” (celestial objects that produce their own light) and “planets” (celestial objects that reflect the light of stars). Both of these inhabitants

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exist with a purpose. That purpose, as we shall see, is to contribute to the food chain for which the universe as a whole is created. In the case of the plants of the earth, that purpose is self-evident in nature. In the case of the celestial objects, the purpose is affirmed clearly and explicitly through divine command. The sky, through the periodic rotation of its inhabitants, enables the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem to determine the different seasons and designated holy days, which determine which animals and plants are to be sacrificed and when they are to be sacrificed. In general, the life forms of the earth exist to feed the different kinds of animals who will provide the sacrifices to be offered in the Jerusalem temple, where the Israelite priesthood will offer the sacrifices in which the Israelite nation will partake daily with its deity, who is the creator of the universe. For the priests who create this narrative in their Torah, the universe exists for the sake of their function of regular and regulated sacrifices in service to the creator deity, in accord with the laws of his revealed Torah to the nation of Israel. On day five the earth generates the insects of the earth, the fish of the waters, and the birds of the sky. These are the creators who live directly off the plants created on day three. Next, on day six, the earth generates the larger animals that live off of each other as well as off the plants and the lower forms of life. The creations of this day culminate in the creation of the human. The human is an animal like all other animals in that he is generated by earth from earth and functions as an inherent part of the food chain of the planet Earth. However, this beast (hayah) differs from the others in two respects. First, God functions as an active partner in this creation; second, this creature is a governor. As the sun and moon are designated by the creator to govern the sky, so the human is commanded to govern the earth. It is this power of governance that is what the text means when it says that the human was created in God’s image. However, that is not how the medieval Jewish philosophers interpreted this claim. Guided by the rational psychology of an inherited synthesis of Aristotelian with Platonic philosophy as transmitted through Latin and Arabic commentaries on these Greek works of natural philosophy, they reasoned that to be created in God’s image meant that it is the essence of the human to seek to know all of creation, whose end is to know the nature of the creator. It is this

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knowledge that constitutes the true objective of all human life, and it is the pursuit of this end that separates the human from all other earth-generated forms of beastly life. The seventh day is the conclusion of God’s single act of creation. What God here creates is not anything that either is or occupies space. It is the Sabbath, which ontologically is nothing at all. But this particular nothing constitutes the end for all that is. As the light that God creates at the beginning of creation enables the differentiation of the space of the universe into the mundane earth and the celestial sky, so the generation of the Sabbath at the end of creation enables the differentiation of the time of the universe into the mundane and the profane. Within the time in which the universe flows between its origin and its end, it is the time of the Sabbath that is good while the time of the week is at best profane. As such, the difference between the Sabbath and the weekdays parallels the spatial division of the universe into the light of day and the dark of night. Finally, note that while the creation of the Sabbath completes creation, it is not the end. It is only the end of the beginning. The end itself is redemption, which the scriptures express in political language as a kingdom (malkhut shamayim). Creation is expressed in political terms, viz., as two domains overseen by governors appointed by an absolute monarch who rules by making statements that are to be interpreted as commandments. These are the commandments stated in the rest of the Pentateuch, as interpreted through rabbinic tradition. As systematized by Maimonides in the twelfth century, the order of these commandments constitutes a detailed political theory whose ultimate goal is to transform the human into something transhuman. As a human, this creature is merely an animal among animals, which has a distinct ability to desire to be transformed into a higher kind of being, whom the prayer book calls the “fearers of God” (yirei ha-shem) and the “fearers of heaven” (yirei shamayim). They are those transformed human beings who achieve the superhuman excellence of true knowledge of God, a knowledge through which all distinctions initiated at creation dissolve. The human, the world, and the divine all disappear into a single form of light (the light of the first day of creation) in which all darkness is transformed. (Where there is no dark, nothing can be seen in the light.) This metaphor of light expresses the anticipated end of the universe. It is an end that is invoked every time the

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Jewish people proclaim, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Deut. 6:4). These are the words following the presentation of the so-called Ten Commandments, which begin the explanation by Moses to the children of Israel about the marriage between the lovers God and Israel. That marriage took place before almost everyone standing with Moses at the entrance to the land of their inheritance was born. That revelation contracted all of Israel, including those not born at that time, for as long as this unredeemed universe will exist, to obey its provisions. It orders the nation to pay attention, because of what its purpose is. Both the Christians and the Kabbalists will take this proclamation to be an affirmation of some form of cosmic trinity. The Jewish philosophers will read it as the expression of an ideal whose infinitely remote end serves to guide all Jewish action in this world both as individuals and as a nation. I have argued in my books on creation and revelation that the beliefs expressed above in my interpretation of the Jewish scriptures are reasonable. I have there defended those claims against apparent counterclaims in the physical and the human sciences. I will not repeat those defenses here. Rather I will just underscore where three of the most sensitive sources of conflict reside. 1. Does the Universe Exhibit Purpose? When viewed solely from the perspective of the physical sciences, the universe exhibits no purpose whatsoever. The laws that determine all natural phenomena—material and spiritual, physical and mental—are mechanical and mathematical.2 In part this is because the sciences, by their methodological definition, cannot admit non-mechanical and non-mathematical causes. However, this essentialist assertion of methodological dogmatism does not settle the question. If there are data that ought to be considered that dictate 2  The material in this section is a dialogue with the biologist Richard Dawkins and the

philosopher Daniel Dennett, as well as with others who share similar judgments about ontology and ethics whose rationale is grounded in contemporary physical and biological sciences.

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an expansion of the rules of scientific procedure, then such rules should be considered. I argue that the data for the different sciences in and of themselves call for a less narrow understanding of scientific method than is currently the case. The arguments presented so far turn, at least in part, on claims described in the following paragraphs: The epistemic status of beliefs requires more grades than just true and false. Whereas medieval philosophers tended to think that whatever is not certain is merely opinion, we can see that such a high bar of passage will render the class of the known devoid of any affirmations that are informative. Between the certainty of 1.0 and the ignorance of 0.0 is an infinite range of probabilities, and in that range we must look for a reasonable line to be drawn between what can be called “knowledge” and “ignorance.” Furthermore, that infinite selection of grades can be further divided between beliefs that are reasonable and beliefs that are unreasonable. Additionally, what constitutes reasonable belief varies depending on the nature of the question asked. Claims about our knowledge of the nature of the universe as such (cosmology) and about its origin (cosmogony) have methodologically a relatively low level of certainty when compared to far simpler claims made in other branches of less cosmic physics. The same is true when it comes to claims about the origins of humanity. On this subject as well, certain beliefs are more reasonable than others, but none of these claims are methodologically susceptible to the same standard for knowledge that we hold out in the case of physics. For example, while by medieval standards of knowledge of certainty claims about evolution cannot be called “knowledge,” that does not mean that we do not have knowledge that evolution is true. By any reasonable bar for drawing the line between what legitimately can and cannot be called knowledge in the life sciences, evolution is sufficiently reasonable to be called “knowledge.” I would argue in the same way for belief in the existence in the deity affirmed in rabbinic Judaism. In this case standards for truth judgment are far lower than they are even in the case of paleoanthropology. Perhaps here the bar is too low to speak of knowledge at all. But we may certainly speak of reasonable and unreasonable belief. I would argue that so understood, a belief in the God of Israel is reasonable.

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2. What Makes the Human “Human”?3 The Hebrew scriptures present a relatively consistent and coherent view of what it means to be human. First and foremost, humans are creatures who, in common with all creatures, are composed primarily of earth, who are born as nothing, spend a short time endeavoring to become something, and in the end return to the nothing of their origin. Whatever value these entities achieve is determined by their obedience to the will of God. That will, expressed through commandments, expresses the sole standard by which their value is to be assessed. As a species, humans are animals who, like all other animals, share a primary commandment to reproduce their species. Their distinctive difference is that in addition to procreating they are expected to function as managers of the earth. The so-called Noachide code (Gen 9:1-17) states the laws by which that governance is to be evaluated. Furthermore, as humanity is differentiated among the class of animals by special divine commandments, so the Jewish people are distinguished by the laws given to Moses on Sinai, and the priestly class is distinguished from the other Israelites by its special commandments. Note that ethics are understood entirely in relational terms. They are not seen as a set of absolute or abstract rules as later philosophers will interpret them; rather, they are concrete expressions of obligations that arise from concrete relations between concrete living things, human and divine. The medieval rabbis operated under the influence of the general natural philosophy that they accepted from a tradition of Arabic judgments about reality, judgments whose foundations are to be found in a Roman synthesis of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic Greek thought. In this period the Jewish philosophers in effect devalued the judgments about humanity presented in the earlier Toraitic and prophetic biblical narratives and focused their hermeneutical skills instead on relatively late biblical texts, notably Proverbs, which present an alternative to this relational view, viz. a virtue conception of the good. In this case human beings cease to be viewed collectively in relationship to other creatures. Instead they are judged as individuals by their ability to realize an absolute standard called 3  The material in this section is a dialogue with the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker

and the social-biologist Edward O. Wilson, as well as with others who share similar judgments about human nature whose rationale is grounded in contemporary human sciences.

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“the Good.” The Good is conceived as a non-material entity that is identical with God. The goal of human life is to unite with it. Such an achievement is an infinite task; hence, no one can succeed absolutely. But all entities can to some extent approximate this goal. To the extent that they are successful they are judged to be “happy,” and to the extent that they achieve happiness they are to be called “good.” In general, the rabbis posited two primary paths that human beings may travel to acquire happiness. One is through obedience to the laws of the Torah and the other is through study—of both the text of divine revelation, as interpreted in rabbinic tradition, and the text of nature, whose laws are deduced from experience by talented natural philosophers. In principle there is no disagreement between them. Hence incoherence between these two kinds of texts is only apparent and never real. What each does is guide the reader to a more adequate interpretation of both. More adequate, but never completely satisfactory. As long as we remain creatures, we can only approximate and never achieve union with God. Hence, there will always be error—in our understanding of the revealed scriptures as well as in our interpretation of the laws of nature. This situation of fallibility will persist at least until the end of days, when, through the establishment of the “kingdom of heaven,” the infinitely remote end will in fact be achieved and we, as a species, will overcome our material nature and become (at the very least) angelic. It is this Platonic-Aristotelian conception of what it means to be human (but less so the original biblical conception) that modern science calls into question. In this case the challenges come from the life sciences rather than physics. What is most challenged is the primary conception of human distinctness in terms of intellect. In the pre-modern rabbinic conception it is human intellect that primarily distinguishes us from other species of creatures and provides the tool by which we achieve happiness. In opposition to this view of being human, modern science (especially evolutionary psychology) raises more than one objection. First, the primary goal of the human species, like all other animals, is to generate more of its own kind. This goal is expressed metaphorically as a struggle for survival in which the successful are to be considered most fit. Second, members of the human species use reasoning primarily as a tool for species survival, and this tool has nothing to do with achieving any unity with a deity. Third, humans are not the only entities who reason. Finally, fourth, reasoning is

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far from the best strategy for survival. For example, compare how viruses survive with how humans survive. The ways used by viruses, which are barely living things at all, let along rational, seem far more effective and successful than the awkward if not crude device of thinking out problems that human beings employ. It is of interest that the modern challenge of evolutionary psychology has been expressed primarily as a conflict with the bible rather than as a conflict with the tradition of western philosophy. There are historical reasons why this is the case, but taken philosophically, outside of its historical context, the challenge is minimal. Certainly it is difficult to preserve belief in the Proverbs-based virtues tradition of Jewish ethics, but no comparable threat is entailed in contemporary forms of Darwinian interpretations of biology to the relational conception of ethics that dominates most biblical narratives. 3. Are the Hebrew Scriptures Divine? At least until the time of Spinoza, what all Jewish thinkers held in common was a belief that in some significant sense the Hebrew scriptures are divine. Modern academic source critical studies of the Bible call that belief into question. What they suggest is that the bible is a fraud. (The fraud may be “pious,” but it remains, nonetheless, a fraud.) If the scholarship is to be accepted, then the Hebrew scriptures are the creation of a class of priests who created what it says in order to support politically their belief that they and they alone should have the authority to govern the people of Israel. Rabbinic Judaism is to be understood as a political revolt against their authority. It was a revolution that replaced the class of ruling priests with a new class, a class of so-called “sages,” whose authority to rule rested not on their birth but on their mastery of a specific tradition of ways to read the scriptures. These new readings radically changed how these scriptures are understood, but the rabbis did not reject the fundamental assumption about them, that the written texts were given by God to Moses at Sinai in an ancient past that preceded the establishment of the first Jewish commonwealth, and that the tradition of the rabbis preserves the original intent of the documents. Modernity, beginning at least with Spinoza, raised critical doubts at the very least about the claim that the rabbis have any

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special access to what the scriptures mean. However, the skeptical claim introduced by modern source criticism is even more radical, for it places into doubt not only what the rabbis know but also their moral authority to dictate religious belief. Reform Judaism is in part a response to this challenge from modern bible scholarship to a biblically-based Jewish faith. It accepts the judgment that the scriptures cannot reasonably be accepted as an expression of divine revelation, which here means as a text dictated by an active God to a passive people, where the tradition of rabbinic textual hermeneutics is simply a discovery of original divine intent. But Reform Judaism also rejects the radical conclusion from this skepticism that the scriptures are purely a human work. On the radical interpretation there is no good reason to favor these texts in any way whatsoever in reaching judgments either about the nature of reality or about the nature of morality in guiding individual and collective human relationships. If the bible is nothing more than a human work, there is no reason why Judaism should survive as a religion, for there is nothing about the story it tells that commands obedience. The alternative that Reform Judaism sets forth is a middle path between revelation and skepticism. The founders of the movement reformed the doctrine of divine revelation into a claim about divine inspiration. The scriptures are the human product of the people’s encounter with God at the time of the nation’s formation, and the tradition of rabbinic commentary to this day is an expression of how the people interact with their deity. The concrete imperatives that this tradition asserts reflect the relationship. As time goes on and the parties of a relationship change, those changes demand changes in the conditions for the relationship. Those changes expressed in the concrete are changes in Jewish law. 4. Is Judaism Humanist? In the late middle ages and the early modern period the Hebrew scriptures were read, by both Jews and Christians, to predict the end of history and the establishment of what the Jews call the messianic age (yamot ha-mashiah), which Christians call the “second coming of Christ.” The messianic age will differ from what the rabbis call “this world” in any number of ways. Most important among them is that human nature will be transformed.

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In the premodern world humanity was seen to be something (at least by comparison to God) that is nothing of value. In contrast, the radical thinkers from the enlightenment on saw that through the use of human reason it would be possible to establish a new kind of government in which humans can become good. For traditional Jews this transformation of humanity into something inherently good is the primary sign of entry into the messianic age. It is my contention that the enlightenment revolutions that produced first the republic of the United States and then the republic of France were expressions of confidence in the realization of the messianic ideals in the here-and-now of lived life. When the history is seen in these terms, then the so-called “humanist” values, both political and individual, that most characterize modernity, will (and I would claim should) be seen as messianic. Hence the establishment of these two western republics is in fact no less messianic than were more obvious messianic movements such as Sabbateanism. Furthermore, the political moral values that we associate with modernity are also to be understood in messianic terms. The three most important values in this political messianism are the inherent goodness of the human, the primacy of the state’s obligation to protect individual rights, and the faith in democracy as the best formal system of government. All of these are values that traditional rabbinic Judaism expressed as possibilities only in the kingdom of God. In contrast, in this world, where people are far from good, the good of the state must take primacy over whatever good individuals believe they desire, and the best system of government is an oligarchy composed of sages. Furthermore, these rabbis claimed that life is about achieving happiness, happiness is to be realized by walking on a path (halakhah) that leads towards happiness (defined as a union with God), and the “wise men” most qualified politically to guide the rest of humanity on this path are the “sages” (hakhamim) who belong to the oligarchy of rabbis. In rejecting this claim, the Reform rabbis who founded their modern expression of Judaism were no less radical and no less messianic than were the earlier seventeenth- and eighteenth-century visionaries of Hasidim. It may also be the case that the secular Zionist movement should be seen from this kind of messianic perspective as well.

O n t h e R e n a i s s a n c e o f J e w i s h P h i l o s o p hy i n A m e r i c a N o r b e r t M . S a m u e lso n

How American is this Philosophy?

I have been invited to reflect on how American is my philosophy whose conclusions are summarized above. In one sense it is thoroughly American, because I am thoroughly American. Except for when I was writing my doctoral dissertation under the direction of an Israeli (Shlomo Pines) all of my teachers have been Americans, in American institutions of higher learning. The same is true of my religious experience. I have never been anything but an American Jew. But in another sense my philosophy is not American at all. In my summary above I talk about Jewish philosophy as a dialogue between historical rabbinic sources and philosophic sources external to the rabbinic canon, and none of the sources considered above are American. They are ancient Israelite (viz., the Hebrew Scriptures), Greek (Plato and Aristotle), Roman (the Stoics), Middle Eastern (the medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers), and European (including most of the rabbinic and academic exegetes of the bible whom I have read). The truth lies somewhere in between. My overt philosophical sources are not American, but the way I read them is entirely American. Let me here, in conclusion, isolate three of the American influences that have affected me. The first source is Jewish. It is Mordecai Kaplan’s conception of Judaism as a Civilization. Everything I say about Judaism is informed by a certain understanding of Jewish intellectual history whose guiding principle is Kaplan’s civilizational approach to Judaism. In my Kaplanesque opinion all thought must be considered within its historical cultural setting to be understood, because all thought is first and foremost intellectual history. The second source is religious. I no longer pray in a Reform worship service because I find its setting too foreign to the rabbinic tradition of prayer which I have mastered. I would not consider myself to be in any sense a “halakhic” Jew, but my actual practices are in fact far more observant than most Jews I know. Jews no longer recognize me as Reform, but in my own eyes at least I still am a Reform Jew, for I observe traditional Jewish practices not because some class of people called “rabbis” tell me what to do, but because I determine autonomously always to listen to and sometimes to heed what they say. For them their statements are imperatives. For me they

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constitute advice from a learned person (in these matters more learned than me), but not always a wise or virtuous source for moral direction. I see the system of Torah to be something divine even though every claim within it is completely human and therefore subject to error. My belief in autonomy is not absolute, for I am quite willing to subject my own will to the will of people whom I consider far wiser than me and greater in virtue. However, I do not think that any individual can command such authority merely by membership in a professional class (be it rabbi or professor). I reserve my autonomy to decide for myself my authorities, because I see no real alternative that is reasonable. The third source is philosophical. The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has had an important impact on my way of viewing reality ever since I first read Process and Reality as an undergraduate at Northwestern University and sat in on seminar lectures by Martin Buber on Heraclites at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Whitehead has influenced me in two primary ways. First, I think that philosophy is and should always be in dialogue with the best insight that can be gained from the sciences. (Process and Reality is to a great extent the product of Whitehead taking seriously relativity theory in early-twentieth-century physics.) Similarly, I have attempted to write my constructive thought in a dialogue with quantum mechanics in physics, inflationary interpretations in cosmology, and neo-Darwinian interpretations of evolution in paleoanthropology and psychology. Second, while I know that in contemporary physics a wave theory cannot be favored over a particle theory, my inclination is generally to think that motion has ontological priority over substance as the reality of states of affair, and is more a matter of describing actions than describing actors.4 In all three respects at least I can say that my thinking is American. While Kaplan was born in Europe, he lived his life in America. While

4 

I am intellectually attracted to philosophers such as Spinoza who, as I understand his Ethics, believed reality to be ultimately a single thing that is neither mental nor material. For that reason I read Brian Cantwell Smith’s The Origins of Objects (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996) with a great deal of sympathy. However, I am not (yet) in a position to pass judgment on the truth of his claim for the ontological primacy of information over both matter and mind. Of course, my “sympathy” and my “intellectual attraction” do not constitute arguments for the truth of his claims.

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Reform Judaism was created in Germany, it flourished in America and was transformed into something distinctively American in this setting. Finally, it is true that Whitehead was British, and a significant part of his academic life was spent in England. But the thought of Whitehead that has most influenced me came late in his life after he became a figure in the very exciting intellectual life of America’s Harvard University at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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C ovenant and S oc i al C ontr ac t: C lassical J uda ism and C lassical L iber al ism Ke nne t h See sk in

I want to begin with a healthy dose of negative theology: God is beyond any praise we can offer or any category we can devise. At a more basic level, God is not our friend, our personal protector, or our personal advisor. If Moses could not look upon the face of God and had to settle for God’s back, the same is true of us. Whatever knowledge we can have is inferential and indirect. According to the passage, God’s “back” refers to the goodness of God. According to Genesis 33:19, “I will cause all of my goodness to pass before you.” I take this to mean that while God is infinite and incomprehensible, the closest we can come to arriving at a workable conception of God is under the rubric of moral agency. I emphasize the phrase the closest we can come. Strictly speaking, God is not a moral agent; thus any attempt to capture God’s greatness through the notions of covenant or contract is at most our attempt to find a way to think about God, not a literal description. From a Jewish perspective, however, covenant has several advantages over other alternatives. First, it does not imply that God is physically present. Approval or disapproval involves the will, not the flesh. Second, it preserves the unknowability of God by telling us what God has agreed to or commanded, not what God is. Third, it allows us to sustain a doctrine of imitatio dei. Although covenants in the ancient world often involved arrangements between stronger and weaker parties, the agreement is not founded on strength per se. If it were, the weaker party would be acting under duress, and the covenant would not be valid. To put this a different way, a genuine covenant provides a context in which might does not make right. Although God has the power to destroy the entire nation at Sinai, and in one Midrash threatens to do so, the actual story reads differently. Not only are no threats made, but an invitation is extended. Thus Genesis 19:15: “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples of the earth.”

Covenant and Social Contrac t: Classical Judaism and Classical Liberalism Ke n n e t h S e e sk i n

In context the passage is striking. Unlike Pharaoh, God does not rule by issuing decrees and backing them up with threats, at least not initially. Though God possesses infinitely more power than Pharaoh, God’s rule is established by asking for the weaker party’s consent. The importance of consent is that it shows that despite an infinite difference between the two parties, it is still possible for the stronger party to respect the weaker: “If you obey my voice” not simply “Obey my voice.” It is noteworthy in this regard that even when God speaks in a mocking voice to Job at the end of the story, the title character is never in physical danger and never told what to say or think. Were this not the case, were God’s authority founded on retaliation rather than respect, the doctrine of imitatio dei would lead to monstrous results. Hence the connection between Judaism and political liberalism. The authority of government arises not from the power it is able to wield but from the degree to which it respects the rights of its citizens. From a historical perspective, the right of a citizen implies a claim that she has over and against the government. Thus I have a right not to testify against myself or be subjected to cruel or unusual punishment. In Judaism this feature of the covenant is represented by the fact that it culminates in a written document to which God too is bound. It could be said therefore that once God enters a covenant with Israel, He relinquishes any claim He might have to being able to act in an arbitrary or whimsical manner. It is on the basis of this point that the rabbis are able to reject the authority of the bat kol by citing God’s Torah against God himself. Let us go deeper. How does a government respect the rights of its citizens? Simply put, the answer is by gaining their consent. I take one of the central features of liberalism to be that consent is a presupposition of obligation. Taken by itself, a list of do’s and don’ts cannot impose an obligation—even a list that has divine authority behind it. Nor can a litany of blessings and curses. From a moral perspective, the question is not “What is it in my interest to do?” but rather “What am I obliged to do?” No amount of lightning or thunder can answer this question. Nor can the fact that the lawgiver is divine. For even if we grant the divine origin of the law, an obligation could not arise unless we first assure ourselves that obedience to God is moral. Though some may object that God’s morality is never in doubt, the Bible indicates otherwise, as God’s disputes with Abraham (Genesis 18) and Moses (Exodus 32, Numbers 14) clearly show.

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To put this point another way, it is not the divine origin of the law that makes it obligatory, but the fact that what the law commands is just. As Kant puts it: a will can only be subject to a law of which it can regard itself as author (Groundwork, 431), where authorship is another name for rational consent. Once consent is given, as it is at Sinai, the law is binding, and the people can be held to account if they do not live up to it. That is why the people are asked to give their consent over and over again. In the words of Nehemiah 10: “We lay on ourselves the obligation to . . .” If all that were needed for obligation to arise was the commanding voice of God, passages like these would be superfluous. The people would be obliged once God speaks, and that would be the end of the matter. The fact is, however, that the process of giving and receiving (i.e., agreeing to be bound by the law) is repeated many times; in fact, according to tradition, is infinitely repeatable! From a philosophic perspective, obligation is not transferable. It is impossible in principle to create an obligation for someone. As I see it, not even God can do this—nor does God try to. Again and again, the prophets berate the people by pointing out that in turning to other gods and abusing the poor, they have broken a promise that they made in full knowledge of what they were doing. Hence the theme of Israel as a wayward spouse. If I am right, then, only a moral agent (or group of agents) can incur an obligation. A moral agent, in turn, is distinguished by the fact it has free will. It would be nothing short of paradoxical if obligation were to arise in a situation where a moral agent were asked to abandon his freedom and follow orders issued by a superior power. The problem with heteronomy is not just that it deprecates us but that by deprecating us, it deprecates God— for it affirms that God created beings with free will, but that in dealing with such beings, declined to respect them. It is much more in line with decency, not to mention the Biblical narrative, to say that God offered the people an arrangement in which the dignity of all sides is respected and preserved. In fact, preserving and respecting the dignity of all sides is the whole point of entering into the arrangement in the first place. The objection can be raised that I have read the biblical narrative in a distinctly modern way, not to mention a distinctly American way. But anyone acquainted with the history of Jewish philosophy can see that this is not so. The argument over what exactly the people heard at Sinai is as old as the Torah itself. Was it a majestic sound, a voice speaking distinct propositions, or simply the commanding presence of God? Stripped of

Covenant and Social Contrac t: Classical Judaism and Classical Liberalism Ke n n e t h S e e sk i n

its metaphorical husk, revelation is not an auditory phenomenon but an intellectual one; not the hearing of a voice but the recognition of the wisdom the voice contains. As such, revelation always involves—has to involve— a judgment on our part. In the case of Sinai, it is the judgment that what God asks of us is nothing other that what we in our better moments would ask of ourselves. In short, the giving of consent. Along these lines, Yehezkel Kaufmann1 points out that neither the idea of law itself nor the particular content of the law originated with Sinai. According to Jewish tradition, basic principles of morality were first given to Noah. But even Noah was not the first to hear them. Cain and the generation of the flood were judged by them, and thus must have been familiar with them. In keeping with rabbinic tradition, Maimonides (Mishneh Torah 14, Kings and Wars, 9.1) argues that six commandments were given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is all a way of saying, as David Novak2 has, that unless the people had prior knowledge of good and evil, or as we might say, the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, their participation in the covenant would be capricious. My point is that if they can distinguish right from wrong, they are moral agents able to understand what it means to be under an obligation and thus to offer their consent. Now let us go one step further. If they are moral agents, then for all their faults they are worthy of respect—from each other and ultimately from God. Indeed, most of all from God, because God is the only one able to see the full nature of what moral agency requires. Does this mean that the Torah, or more generally the Bible, contains an unswerving commitment to humanity as an end in itself? Of course not. The Bible does not even contain an unswerving commitment to monotheism, and that, by most accounts, is the central focus of its teaching. Rather, it means that the Bible can be read as putting us on a trajectory according to which the dignity of every moral agent is the obvious conclusion. We can see this in the claim that all humanity is made in the image of God, that it offends God when innocent blood is shed, that God loves the stranger, the 1 

Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Ancient Israel, trans. M. Greenberg (1937, rpt. New York: Schocken, 1972), 233.

2 

David Novak, Jewish Social Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 28-35.

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widow, and the orphan, that it is wrong to abhor an Egyptian, and that one must love the stranger as one loves oneself. We can view these claims as either divine commandments or as consequences and presuppositions of rationality, but however we view them, we must insure that the dignity of every moral agent remains intact. Thus any claim to the effect that God does not respect the dignity of humans, or that we do not have to, must be rejected. I repeat: to respect the dignity of a moral agent is to ask for his/her consent. Needless to say, consent is a complicated notion. Whether in philosophical parlance or in everyday legal matters, there can be implied consent, virtual consent, or actual consent. Though I have not formally declared my allegiance to the Bill of Rights, and was not present when it was ratified, it makes perfectly good sense to say that by remaining an American citizen, I have offered my consent. By contrast, a minor who agrees to have sexual relations with an adult has not given her consent, no matter how much she may insist that she wants to become involved. Nor has a person who volunteers to become a slave. It is even possible to say that if I do something I regret, I disapprove of what I did, and in that sense did not really consent. Clearly there is more to this issue than I can cover here. Let me simply say that in the sense in which I am using it, consent involves more than saying yes. In particular, it involves a minimal level of maturity and understanding as well as sufficient clarity about the action at hand. That is why Moses is careful to write down all of God’s words very clearly (Deuteronomy 20). The idea is that the people have not just said yes but have done so with an appreciation of what they are doing. As we saw, they are already aware of the immorality of murder, stealing, lying, and promise-breaking. As far as I can tell, there are no passages where the people offer their consent in ignorance of what they are doing. Even the famous words na`aseh venishma (Exodus 24:7) occur after the ten commandments and the body of law known as the “covenant code” have been offered, accepted, and read back at least once. Looking beyond Sinai and the authority of the written law, there is even Maimonides’ theory (Mishneh Torah, Introduction) that ordinances and decrees promulgated on the basis of rabbinic authority are binding because all Jews agreed to live by them. That brings me to America and the twenty-first century. In principle this is a nation committed to the principles I have defended. In view of the

Covenant and Social Contrac t: Classical Judaism and Classical Liberalism Ke n n e t h S e e sk i n

historical circumstances in which it was founded, it had little choice but to leave God out of the equation: if it had brought God in, it may well have kept Jews out. From a Jewish perspective, the problem with America (or any liberal democracy) is that it is designed to protect life and property, to promote happiness and insure tranquility, but not to seek spiritual or metaphysical perfection. That is left to the individual. Strictly speaking, the government is neutral with respect to religious matters, which means that in principle it neither promotes religion nor interferes with it. The classical objection to such a view is that a government that ignores the spiritual needs of its citizens ignores the single most important thing about them. Maimonides would say that such a government is concerned with their social and bodily needs but not their intellectual ones. The reply is that because spiritual questions cannot be answered with certainty, and the citizens of a modern state typically come from a wide range of religious and ethnic traditions, it is best for governments to leave spiritual matters alone. I need not point out that this view of government has been a great boon for Jews, and that for centuries Jews have supported liberal movements and causes of various descriptions. But again let us go deeper. Maimonides would be the first to admit that not all spiritual questions can be answered with certainty. What separates him from a liberal is that for him, the fact that spiritual questions cannot be decided with certainty is regrettable, something we do not like but have no choice but to accept. If such questions could be decided with certainty, we would stand a better chance of refuting ignorance and bringing more people to a state of intellectual perfection. For the liberal, the opposite is true: it is a good thing such questions cannot be decided with certainty because certainty in such matters would amount to dogmatism. Do we really want religious issues to be decided with the same finality that we decide the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem? Recall that Kant’s main objection to metaphysics is not the conclusions it reaches but the certainty with which it reaches them. For the liberal, then, certainty in matters relating to God, the soul, and the afterlife is not only suspect but morally objectionable, because it compromises the freedom of each person to seek her own answer or no answer at all. To paraphrase Kant, the liberal wants to limit government to make room for faith. If every moral agent is an end in him/herself, every moral agent must be given the space in which to search for answers to ultimate questions. This does not mean that

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religious tradition has nothing worthwhile to say on such matters, but that the judge of whether it has anything worthwhile should be the agent him/ herself, not a body of government officials. There is no simple answer to the question, “To what form of government is Judaism committed?” and maybe no complex answer either. Maimonides thought it was kingship, but there is too much evidence to the contrary for this answer to hold up. I have tried to make a case for liberal democracy, but honesty forces me to admit there is contrary evidence here as well. Theocracy? Maybe, but I suspect the idea of a nation of priests was intended as a rejection of politics as we normally understand it, rather than a well-articulated alternative. As a liberal, I take comfort in the fact that our tradition has no shortage of people who rise to challenge authority, whether human or divine, whether Jewish or Gentile, whether in Israel or the Diaspora. Indeed, the religion was founded by a person who left his native culture and set out for a strange, new land. Its greatest prophet first heard the voice of God as a criminal in exile. For a variety of reasons, it has always been wary of kings, princes, and established centers of power. In short, it is a religion that takes the claims of conscience seriously, that resists proselytizing and forced conversion, and that has ample experience of what it is like to live—or die—under tyranny. That takes me back to my central theme: the extent to which Judaism goes out of its way to ensure that God not be pictured as a tyrant. This is, after all, a God who, despite possessing infinite power, seeks the consent not only of people in positions of authority but of women, children, even hewers of wood and drawers of water (Deuteronomy 29). In sum, it is a religion in which a liberal can feel very much at home. As for America, if it succeeds as a nation, it does so because it eschews many of the things that others nations take pride in: a common language, common religion, common history, common ethnicity, and common cuisine—even a common way of life. I am well aware that these things are familiar themes in Fourth of July orations, but from my perspective, they are a pack of lies. America is an abstract nation founded on rights rather than similarity in material circumstances. Unlike the French Revolution, it offers liberty and equality but not fraternity. Thank heavens! It is, in other words, an abstract nation just as the Jewish God is an abstract God, a God who asks for consent but has no material form or circumstance. So here I am, a Jew and an American, saying Hurrah for abstraction!

and

P hilosophy, Jew ish T hought, the A mer ican S e t t ing in M y W ork Mar t in D. Yaffe

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. . . . May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants— while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.1

I I have written at length on several widely scattered topics. These include, for example, how Maimonides and Aquinas read the biblical Book of Job,2

1  Letter of George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, August, 1790 (George

Washington: A Collection, ed. W.B. Allen [Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988], 548; I have emended “factions” to read “sanction,” as have other editors.) 2  Thomas Aquinas, Literal Exposition on the Book of Job: A Scriptural Commentary on Providence,

trans. A Damico, interpretive essay and notes by Martin D. Yaffe (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); “Providence in Medieval Aristotelianism: Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas on the Book of Job,” in The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job, ed. L.G. Perdue and W.C. Gilpin (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992).

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whether Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is anti-Jewish,3 and what makes Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise (1670) the philosophical starting-point for what is distinctively modern in modern Jewish life and thought.4 If my work has a unifying theme, it is the ongoing tension between Athens and Jerusalem—more exactly, between philosophy on the one hand and Jewish thought on the other. I keep noticing how this tension shows up in the particular books I have mentioned (and others). Still, I have not written in a vacuum. After saying more about how I understand that tension, I will indicate how the American setting in which I live and work has alerted me to the pressing need to explore it further. I can then say something about each of the three tension-riddled topics just mentioned. By philosophy, I mean philosophy as understood by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. Socrates kept discovering in his conversations and his reading that he was not wise, though he would have liked to be. Instead he had to be content with being a “lover of wisdom”—a philosophos in the strict meaning of that Greek word. By Jewish thought, on the other hand, I mean the wisdom embodied in the Torah. The Torah puts a description of its wisdom in Moses’ mouth: See, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, just as the Lord my God has commanded me—to do thus in the midst of the land that you are coming into to possess. You shall keep them and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations, who will hear all these statutes and say: Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. (Deut. 4:5-6)

Whereas Socratic philosophers do not see themselves as wise except in connection with their lack of wisdom (though that is something), the Torah goes so far as to parade its wisdom “in the eyes of the nations,” i.e., to invite outside examination and comparison of its divinely revealed laws. Whether or how the Torah displays the wisdom sought by Socratic philosophers, then, turns out to be a question somehow encouraged by the Torah itself.

3 

Martin D. Yaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

4  Benedict Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. Martin D. Yaffe (Newburyport, MA.: Focus

Philosophical Library, 2004).

P h i l o s o p hy, J e w i s h T h o u g h t , a n d t h e A m e r i c a n S e t t i n g i n M y Wo r k M a r t i n D. Ya f f e

At any rate, it is a question at the nerve-center of my scholarly investigations. Or so I would say in retrospect, though I do not recall starting this or that investigation by trying to force-fit it into a prefabricated mold to that effect. Instead I have been prodded and guided considerably by the live American setting in which I find myself. Let me indicate in general how that is so, by reflecting on the sentiments expressed in George Washington’s famous letter of August 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. Washington addresses the Newport congregants not only as “the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land,” but also as his fellow citizens. Echoing the prophet Micah, he hopes they will “continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Echoing as well the Declaration of Independence and the recently ratified Constitution, he points out that “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. . . .” “[H]appily,” he adds—in words undoubtedly meant to resonate further—“the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Instead all that Government requires of those “who live under its protection” is “that they . . . demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” In other words, notwithstanding that Jews are a theological and political minority, indeed just because they are a minority that exemplifies the theological and political heritage of “the stock of Abraham,”5 they both can and should flourish peacefully under the unprecedented tolerance fostered 5  Consider John Adams’s remark in a letter to F.A. Van der Kemp, February 16, 1809: “I will insist

the Hebrews have contributed more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. . . . They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.” See Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United State (10 vols.; Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856), IX, 609-10. Thanks to Kenneth Hart Green for calling my attention to the letter (and its source).

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by the newly founded republic—provided only that their public behavior and private loyalties fit with the high moral standards expected of good citizens. Now, I do not mean to say that I began each of my scholarly investigations by recalling Washington’s words explicitly. I mean only that I could not help starting with his sentiments, since they are embedded as well in our founding documents and, from there, in our laws and habits even as we speak. Let me therefore restate those sentiments and their implications as I seemed to be aware of them on the eve of each of my investigations. First, Washington implies that theological diversity among Christians and Jews is to be not only tolerated, but welcomed and even encouraged. Still, he does not say how that diversity is supposed to play out on a strictly theological level. What, I wondered, are the prospects in principle for mutual understanding, particularly between thoughtful Christians and Jews, regardless of whether they happen to be our immediate contemporaries or even our fellow citizens? This question led me to examine the differences between Maimonides and Aquinas concerning the Book of Job—inasmuch as Maimonides looks at the biblical book against the backdrop of Judaism as a religion of law, whereas Aquinas, indebted as he is to Maimonides, looks at it against the backdrop of Christianity as a religion of faith. Second, in referring to the ongoing need for good will among Americans of diverse theologies, Washington acknowledges that theological differences could provoke or underwrite conflict on a strictly human level. Practically speaking, then, if and when theologically induced conflict occurs between Christians and Jews, what if anything do the two religions share with a view to restoring the amicable relations indispensable to good citizenship? This question led me to examine the situation of the unfortunate Jewish villain Shylock, in Shakespeare’s theologically and politically unsettling comedy The Merchant of Venice. Finally, in the interest of securing the politically peaceful and theologically tolerant future concerning which Washington is so hopeful, would it be better to modify or reform Judaism and/or Christianity so as to minimize or marginalize their theological differences? This question led me to Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, which has that very aim in mind. Let me now say how each of these investigations addresses one or another of the questions I have traced to Washington’s letter. I will talk at

P h i l o s o p hy, J e w i s h T h o u g h t , a n d t h e A m e r i c a n S e t t i n g i n M y Wo r k M a r t i n D. Ya f f e

some length about the first question, so as to get by with being briefer about the other two. II Can Jews, as Jews, understand Christians as Christians understand themselves; and, vice versa, can Christians, as Christians, understand Jews as Jews understand themselves? This question occurred to me as I came across Aquinas’ Literal Exposition [i.e., Commentary] on the Book of Job,6 since, once I began reading it, I noticed many mirror-images of Maimonides’ account of the Book of Job in Guide of the Perplexed III.22-23. I therefore wondered what, if anything, Aquinas had learned from Maimonides. That Aquinas somehow misunderstood or misappropriated either the biblical teaching or that of his erstwhile Jewish mentor seemed unlikely, since the very theme of the Book of Job has to do with misunderstanding and/ or misappropriating a biblical teaching, a theme both Maimonides and Aquinas treat with extraordinary care and delicacy. I had to probe further. The Book of Job is the story of a morally exemplary man, Job, whom God lets suffer catastrophically. Job loses, in quick succession, his chattel goods, his children and his health, without evidently deserving to. We the readers, like Job in the story, cannot help asking why. In the story, Job’s question is answered at some length by three pious friends, and later a fourth, in a series of one-on-one debates with Job. The friends insist, contrary to what we learn in the book’s frame-narrative, that Job’s suffering is God’s punishment for past sins.7 Not surprisingly, since what the friends say is counterfactual, the debates quickly bog down. Job soon gives up 6  The adjective “literal” in Aquinas’ title means that his line-by-line commentary explicates the

plain meaning of the text without superimposing any allegorical, moralistic or eschatological meanings. See Summa theologiae, Part I, Question 1, Article 10 (ed. P. Caramello [3 vols.; Turin: Marietti, 1952], I, 8-9; translated in Basic Writings of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis [2 vols.; New York: Random House, 1944], I, 16-17); see also Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay,” in Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, 8-12. 7  The punishment may seem excessive—as one of the friends is quick to admit—but if so, the

excess is only a temporary imbalance that God will set straight by rewarding Job in future; meanwhile the friends keep saying, in evident agreement with the sacred tradition they share with Job but in naïve unawareness of what Job and God each know separately, that Job’s suffering is God’s punishment.

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responding point-for-point and instead appeals to God for vindication. Eventually God intervenes, if only to confront Job with his ignorance about the vast, heterogeneous, beautiful yet at bottom mysterious world that God has created—and which had not as such entered fully into the purview of the debates. God’s rebuke somehow quiets Job and satisfies him. Even so, God then vindicates Job and criticizes the friends and, at last, restores Job’s losses: his health returns; his chattel goods are doubled from what they were before; and his ten children, who had all been killed, are, as it were, replaced.8 So far, I found the story barely distinguishable from a humaninterest feature that might have appeared on the ancient equivalent of television news. But there was more, since the story in its own terms prompts a question to which it does not give a clear and distinct answer: Why does God’s rebuke satisfy Job? More is at stake here than Job’s personal or cultural idiosyncrasies. There is the larger question of divine providence. In Leviticus 25-26, for example, God promises to reward obedience to the Law by providing the rains that will ensure agricultural abundance and material prosperity, and threatens to punish disobedience by withdrawing the rains to the point of causing drought, lawlessness and even exile, with their attendant personal sufferings. The Book of Job asks, accordingly: if some, though not all, suffering is deserved from God’s point of view, how can we tell the difference, so as to account for or reconcile ourselves to undeserved suffering? In stretching out this question for a whole book, the author makes us wonder whether a satisfactory answer can be given within the purview of the Law, even or especially in the light of God’s promises and threats in support of that Law. The book thus seems to call for a further explanation that would spell out in plain prose (not just in the historical or parabolical style of the biblical narrator) the scope and limits of divine providence as such. Such is the task Maimonides and Aquinas each set for themselves.

8  Before the book ends, the narrator mentions the names Job gives to each of his three

replacement daughters and, as a passing detail, their inheritance rights as being equal to their brothers’—a detail that suggests that the narrator may have more than a simply Pollyanna ending in mind. See Robert Sacks, The Book of Job with Commentary: A Translation for Our Time (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 340-56.

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Their differences, I found, correspond to their different addressees. Whereas Aquinas writes for thoughtful students of Christian theology, Maimonides writes for thoughtful adherents of rabbinic law. Maimonides presupposes his reader’s competence in talmudic casuistry. What that reader needs to learn concerns homiletical speculation and apologetics. He is particularly attracted to apologetical teachings influenced here and there by philosophical sources and called by Muslim theologians kalām. He therefore wonders whether the kalām succeeds in demonstrating satisfactorily what it claims about, say, divine providence. Yet he is not necessarily in a position to judge competently here. His training is in the Law—a divinely revealed Law that claims to be comprehensive and complete—rather than in philosophy or science. Yet Maimonides says that natural science (Aristotle’s in particular) is a prerequisite for knowing what may or may not be demonstrated about divine providence. The pious training of Maimonides’ reader is thus somewhat at odds with what he needs to know. Nor does Maimonides confront him point-blank with his educational shortcomings. Instead he proceeds cautiously. By fortunate coincidence, the Book of Job is admirably suited to this task. Maimonides can identify the views of Job’s friends with apologetical views already familiar to his reader.9 Job thus confronts the friends’ views and examines their limitations with regard to his particular case. Still, he does not know those limitations at the outset because, as Maimonides tells us, Job at the outset is perfectly just but not perfectly wise. Instead he stands to acquire a certain wisdom as a result of his questioning. He is the example of the perfectly just man, the ideal adherent of rabbinic law, who is on the brink of the discovery that if he is to understand divine providence any better than he already does, he must become more philosophical— even if, or just because, he must come to grips with the tension between philosophy and Jewish piety, a tension that is just now dawning on him

9  Eliphaz is said to represent the view of the Torah and Jewish tradition, which maintains that

all things are governed by divine justice; Bildad, the apologetical view which maintains that all things are governed by divine wisdom; and Zophar, the apologetical view which maintains that all things are governed by divine will. Job himself is said to hold, however unwittingly, the view of Aristotle, who maintains that divine providence governs species but not individuals. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed III.22-23 (trans. Shlomo Pines, intro. Leo Strauss [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963], 487-97).

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thanks to his undeserved suffering. Such is the meaning, in so many words, of God’s rebuke according to Maimonides. The story of Job is thus a parable that Maimonides’ reader is invited to apply to his own comparable circumstance. Whereas Maimonides says that Job is perfectly just but unwise, Aquinas says that he is perfectly wise but unjust. Aquinas’ Job is, as it were, the perfect student (or, rather, professor) of theology.10 He is an unfailingly skilled debater, who rebuts his friends’ theologically embellished insinuations with equanimity and ease. Even so, he fails to convince the friends. We are meant to ponder why. Aquinas’ answer is, in part, that Job argues enthemymatically. In particular, Job does not spell out the crucial if anachronistic premise on which his equanimity is said to rest, namely, the Christian teaching of personal immortality and bodily resurrection.11 That teaching, needless to say, falls outside the purview of Job’s friends, the first three anyway. The unfortunate result is that the theological implications Job draws from it strike the friends as merely incongruous and harden their conviction that their insinuations about Job’s sinfulness are correct.12 Job’s quasi-professorial attempt to persuade his friends is thus at cross-purposes with his friends’ lack of openness to being persuaded. Such is the meaning Aquinas finds in God’s rebuke. Aquinas’ Job, to his credit, understands God’s meaning perfectly. Whereas for Maimonides Job’s shortcoming was at bottom intellectual, for Aquinas it is largely practical. As Maimonides’ quasi-rabbinic Job repents of his having blurred theological apologetics with philosophical understanding as such, so Aquinas’ quasi-professorial Job repents of having blurred intellectual clarity about Christian theology with his prospects for converting others to that theology.

10  His series of replies to his friends resembles Thomas’s own series of replies to the objections

that come up for scrutiny in the various articles of the Summa—minus, of course, the Sed contra’s and Respondeo dicendum’s. See Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay,” 25-28. 11   See, e.g., Summa theologiae, Part I, Question 12, Article 3, ad 1. (ed. Caramello, I, 53; Basic

Writings, I, 95). 12  Perhaps the most instructive moment during the debate occurs when Aquinas’ Job tries to

make that teaching plain to one of the friends, Bildad. In the circumstances, Job not only fails to persuade Bildad, who remains oblivious to what Job is getting at, but also succeeds in confusing at least one other of the friends, Zophar. That is to say, Job’s intention vis-à-vis his friends not only fails, but backfires. See Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay,” 28-59.

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To return to the question at hand, which I have traced to Washington’s letter: Can Jews as Jews understand Christians as Christians, and vice versa? In light of the two foregoing examples, the answer seemed to be: Yes, full mutual understanding looks possible, albeit with the friendly, minimallyobtrusive help of philosophy—understood Socratically—insofar as the latter illuminates from a distance how each religion finds itself engaged in self-imposed thought-experiments for the purpose of clarifying its scope and limits for itself. III This last answer helped me face the second question I have traced to Washington’s letter: What common teachings, if any, promote JewishChristian amity, notwithstanding the considerable legacy of mutual mistrust and persecution? Here Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice proved most instructive. But to see my way to it, I had to brave the thick fog of inaccurate and misleading scholarly testimony concerning the playwright’s alleged hostility and/or insensitivity to Jews. Central to Shakespeare’s plot is the longstanding hatred between a Christian merchant, Antonio, and a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. At least three morally shocking incidents occur. Shylock grants Antonio an emergency loan interest-free, but with a pound of Antonio’s flesh as collateral—shock number one! Shylock soon finds occasion to sue in court to collect his collateral—shock number two! Ultimately Shylock’s suit backfires, when the court surprisingly finds him guilty of violating a forgotten law prohibiting resident-aliens from endangering the lives of Venetian citizens, though when it then shows mercy by softening the statutory punishment of death and full expropriation,13 it does so only with Antonio’s further stipulation that Shylock convert to Christianity—shock number three! How could anyone who writes such stuff, one wonders, have been very nice to Jews? 13   The statute would have given half Shylock’s property to the state and the other half to his

intended victim. The court instead reduces the state’s half to a fine and agrees to the stipulation by the intended victim, Antonio, that he merely administer his own half as trustee for Shylock’s heirs. As with his further stipulation that Shylock convert, here too Antonio’s stipulation adds insult to injury: Shylock’s only daughter has eloped with a Christian and meanwhile converted. See Yaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question, 77-79.

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I found that, just as injecting someone with a virus is hardly reprehensible if done for purposes of vaccination, so Shakespeare injects his play with a smattering of Jew-hatred for the purpose of stifling it, not spreading it further. He thus buffers or offsets the foregoing shocks to make his intended audience—especially his reading audience14—think twice about the incidents of the play. First, Shylock turns out to be not exactly a stock or stereotypical Jew, but one who deliberately breaks with Jewish law.15 In his first scene, for example, Shakespeare has him pointedly refuse a dinner invitation by Bassanio, the spendthrift beneficiary of Antonio’s loan, since eating out would violate kashruth; yet in his very next scene, Shylock tells his daughter that he is going anyway, “to feed upon / The prodigal Christian,” as he says (II.v.14-15),16 i.e., to help Bassanio fritter away the loan and increase the chance that Antonio might default and forfeit his collateral. Second, as the trial begins, the Duke of Venice tries to talk Shylock out of his lawsuit by reminding him publicly that he has a Jewish upbringing and therefore knows how to be merciful.17 The inescapable inference is that, if only Shylock had lived up to routine Jewish teaching, the whole trial situation would never have happened. Third, in her famous “quality of mercy” speech in court, Bassanio’s new bride Portia, disguised as a young law-scholar, appeals to Shylock to be merciful by, among other things, reminding him that Christians and Jews share a theological teaching of forgiveness.18 Because this teaching as Portia understands it bears directly on the second of the three questions I have traced to Washington’s letter—what common teachings foster JewishChristian amity?—I must say more about it. 14   Shakespeare—say John Heminge and Henry Condell in their exhortation “To the great Variety

of Readers” which introduces the First Folio (1623)—“as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together. . . . Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe. . . .” See William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Alfred Harbage (revised Pelican text; New York: Viking, 1969), xvii. 15   Shylock and the Jewish Question, 4-6. 16  Citations to the play are to The Merchant of Venice, ed. George Lyman Kittredge, rev. Irving

Ribner (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966). 17   Shylock and the Jewish Question, 14-16, 75f. 18   Ibid., 73-77.

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Portia’s theological premise is that what Christians call the Lord’s Prayer is a Jewish prayer as well (see IV.i.197-200, with Matt. 6:9-13). Yet though the teaching of the prayer—that mercy is a necessary supplement to justice—is common to both Jew and Christian, each is apt to misinterpret it one-sidedly (cf. IV.i.195-201 with I.iii.173f.). Jews, habituated to Jewish law, tend to emphasize justice and slight mercy, while Christians, habituated to the New Testament’s sanctification of love, or charity, tend to emphasize mercy and slight justice. The proper mean, Portia insists, is for mercy to “season” justice (IV.i.195). Now, because she is in the first instance addressing Shylock, her rhetoric emphasizes mercy. Still, being mindful of Shylock’s intra-Jewish shortcomings does not make her unmindful of the corresponding shortcomings of the play’s arch-Christian, Antonio. Oddly, that is just why she goes out of her way to invite Antonio to exercise mercy in helping to reformulate Shylock’s sentence (IV.i.376). While ostensibly showing mercy to Shylock, Antonio—typically— overdoes it.19 His excesses go a long way toward absorbing, or rather accounting for, what I have called the play’s third moral shock, Shylock’s forced conversion. Antonio’s excesses turn out to be the understated theme of the play as a whole. From word one, Shakespeare presents Antonio as a morose man. Yet moroseness is for Catholic Christians a sin—a “capital vice,” as Aquinas calls it, for while forgivable in itself, it leads to other vices.20 In Antonio’s case, that vice is connected with his putatively saintly charitable behavior—which every Venetian admires though no one actually imitates—including his unyielding one-man crusade to replace usury on the Rialto with old-fashioned charity and his unstinting private generosity in financing Bassanio’s string of prodigal, money-losing business ventures. Because Antonio lacks a corresponding sense of justice, or at any rate of proportion, in his treatment of both Shylock and Bassanio, his form of charitableness cannot in the end be distinguished from meddlesomeness— in Shylock’s legally tolerated and economically necessary loan business, for example, as well as in Bassanio’s marriage. (To say the least, Antonio’s trial pointedly interrupts Portia’s wedding night!) 19   Ibid., 77-83. 20   See Summa theologiae II-II.35.4, with I-II.84.3-4 (ed. Caramello, II, 194-95, with I, 384-85;

Basic Writings, II, 689-93).

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What Portia only exposes indirectly in court, she subsequently corrects at home. As the dénouement to her subtly contrived ring-plot— whereby, still in disguise, she induces Bassanio to give her his wedding ring in gratitude for her saving Antonio’s life—she ultimately prompts Antonio to swear spontaneously to give up meddling, in her own family at least (V.i.238, 249-53). But to see Portia’s indirect critique of Christian charitableness here, and to recognize just why she had to proceed indirectly for the play’s vaccinal medicine to work, we must reconsider each incident as it occurs, shocks and all, with the prospect of her twin theological teaching in mind. None of this is to deny that Shakespeare injects his play with moral abuses against Jews. Rather, it is to see where he faces those abuses unblinkingly and constructively, in a statesmanlike way, to let his Christian audience see and judge them for what they are. IV Shakespeare’s assessment of both Shylock’s Judaism and Antonio’s Christianity—like Maimonides’ and Aquinas’ respective assessments of the biblical Job—is made possible by the self-effacing presence of Socratic philosophy. Or so I discovered by noting the resemblance between Portia’s descent into Venice from her country estate in Belmont and the Socratic philosopher’s descent into the city, represented by a cave, in Plato’s familiar image in Republic VII. According to Plato’s Socrates, the philosopher must be “compelled” to return to the city and accommodate himself (or herself) to its ways, having “been better and more perfectly educated” outside its limits and so having become able to “see ten thousand times better” than those who stay inside (Republic 517d-520d, trans. Bloom).21 Thanks to her Socratic home-schooling outside Venice,22 Portia can both conform in her demeanor to its intricate ways and show as a semi-insider

21   The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (2nd ed.; New York: Basic Books, 1991), 196-99. 22  Bassanio compares her to “Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia” (I.i.166). According to Plutarch,

Cato’s daughter was “addicted to philosophy, a great lover of her husband, and full of an understanding courage”; see “Marcus Brutus,” in Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. John Dryden, rev. A.H. Clough (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 1193. Cato himself is said to have preferred Plato to all the other philosophers and, having long resolved to commit suicide, when the time came reread Plato’s Phaedo immediately before; see ibid., 1187, with “Cato the Younger,” ibid., 955, 957.

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how Jewish-Christian rapprochement is theologically and politically possible in its newfound cosmopolitan-commercial setting. Still, given that Socratic figures like Shakespeare’s Portia, or at least discerning readers of Shakespeare’s play, are not always on the spot when needed in political life,23 one might well wonder, as I did, whether the benefits of her theologicopolitical sermon could be transferred from the dramatic stage and adapted for everyday use in practical politics. This question—the third of the three questions I have traced to Washington’s letter—soon led me to Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise. If I now conclude by summarizing the Treatise’s argument all too briefly, I do so to show that far from simply resolving the Jewish-Christian tension which Shakespeare’s Portia addresses, to say nothing of the AthensJerusalem tension of which she is cognizant as well, the Treatise indicates despite itself a need to return to thinkers like Shakespeare, Aquinas and Maimonides. Spinoza’s Treatise is the philosophical founding-document of modern liberal religion, by way of being the philosophical foundingdocument, on the one hand, of modern biblical criticism, and, on the other hand, of modern liberal democracy. Spinoza addresses Christians “who would philosophize more freely if this one thing did not stand in the way: they deem that reason has to serve as handmaid to theology” (P.6.2, trans. Yaffe).24 By loosening their attachment to old-fashioned biblical theology, the Treatise would draw them to the theological and political benefits of a philosophy or science emancipated from traditional theological and political constraints.

23  As Madison says: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm” (Federalist #10);

see Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States, ed. E.M. Earle (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 57. 24   I.e., Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. Yaffe, xxiii. For the explanation of the citation

format in parentheses, see ibid., viii or 351: Spinoza’s Latin is characterized by paragraphs and sentences of often considerable length. My translation eases the burden on the Englishspeaking reader and, at the same time, facilitates references to Spinoza’s text by numbering each Latin paragraph, as well as each sentence within that paragraph. It then treats each numbered sentence as a separate paragraph and punctuates Spinoza’s Latin half-stops as English full-stops. Thus, the third Latin sentence of the second paragraph of the first chapter of the Treatise, for example, is 1.2.3. In the present instance, P.6.2 refers to the second sentence of the sixth paragraph of Spinoza’s Preface.

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Spinoza understood his project to be as pressing as it was farreaching. Christians and other adherents of biblical religion were divided into competing, mutually persecuting sects. Despite widespread lip-service to it, then, the Bible could hardly function effectively as Europe’s social bond. Originally, the Treatise argues, Christianity taught simply “love, gladness, peace, continence, and faith toward all” (P.4.1). It became a sectarian, persecuting, religion only after it began defending its teachings by means of imported—Platonic and Aristotelian—philosophical arguments. These, being inherently controversial, led adherents into insoluble theological disagreements among themselves as well as with outsiders. Could the Bible be made to speak to adherents with a single voice again, Spinoza wondered, if both biblical theology and political society were refashioned on some new, scientifically validated basis? His Treatise is a thought-experiment designed to answer this question philosophically and, at the same time, pave the way theologically and politically.25 Of the Treatise’s twenty chapters, the first fifteen treat theological matters: redefining theological terms, establishing a scientific biblical philology modeled on modern natural science, and supplying a non25  As Spinoza’s Treatise deconstructs biblical theology to win philosophically inclined Christians

to theological and political liberalism in general, so his Ethics Demonstrated in a Geometrical Order deconstructs natural (Platonic-Aristotelian) theology to win them to modern philosophy or science in particular. Its rhetorical structure imitates Euclid’s Elements. It purports to derive pantheistic conclusions about God, mind, and the emotions “geometrically,” i.e., from antecedent definitions and axioms. Yet these, being merely stipulated rather than proved or even fully explained, appear rigged to favor conclusions resting as well, or instead, on independent empirical claims. The Ethics, then, is no homogeneous “system.” Rather, its pantheistic façade houses strictly naturalistic arguments disjoined from anything theological. Among other things, Spinoza identifies God with the inexhaustible laws of nature, arranges mind and body in a strict parallelism (so that thoughts always correlate with whatever outside bodies affect the thinker’s own body), and conceives emotions behaviorally so as to allow their scientific management by minds trained into shape by the Ethics. In sum, the Ethics is not exactly pantheistic nor simply atheistic but, oddly, both. It leads its addressee partly by deductive steps, partly by inductive leaps, to the introspective insight that our bodies and emotions are entirely subject to God’s or nature’s law-abiding necessities except while, and insofar as, we contemplate them “geometrically” on the premises of modern mathematical physics. Cf. Richard Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Kennington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 293-318; reprinted in Kennington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. P. Kraus and F. Hunt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 205-28.

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sectarian theology based on the new philology. These chapters culminate in a civil religion consisting of seven dogmas meant to be acceptable to all sectarians: (1) a supremely just and merciful God exists; (2) God alone requires our highest admiration, devotion and love; (3) God is everywhere, and (4) all-powerful; (5) worshiping God consists solely in justice and charitableness; (6) such worship alone brings salvation, whereas hedonistic self-indulgence brings undoing; (7) God forgives the penitent. Such dogmas need not be true, the Treatise intimates, so long as they promote just and charitable behavior (14.1.34-37).26 Spinoza seems to have formulated them scientifically, by counting the frequency-of-occurrence of biblical “tenets” (sententiae), i.e., opinions articulated at least once in the biblical text and isolable as sound-bites. The seven listed, being in effect the most frequent, are least likely to foment controversy and are inherently compatible with the new philology, which identifies the Bible’s most basic teachings with its most frequently repeated teachings. The Treatise’s last five chapters consider the democratic basis of all political society, the pros-and-cons of the biblical theocracy, and the respective limits of religious and political authority. Political society, Spinoza argues, originates in a compact among self-interested individuals, each of whom transfers all his right or power to other self-interested individuals charged with making and enforcing laws for everyone’s self-protection and self-enhancement. Individuals are apt to rebel, however, if they suspect rulers of abusing their delegated power. Practically speaking, the best society will be the most stable one, consistent with individuals’ enlightened self-satisfaction. It will not be a theocracy, nor a monarchy or aristocracy, but a democracy, since politically informed democratic majorities tend 26  Arthur Hyman, “Spinoza’s Dogmas of Universal Faith in the Light of their Medieval Jewish

Background,” in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 183-95, argues that Spinoza nevertheless leaves open the possibility that some of the dogmas might be true, e.g., God’s existence and unity. Hyman appeals in part to Leo Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft. Untersuchen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischem Traktat (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1930), 240-46; reprinted in Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, Band I: Die Religionskritik Spinozas und zugehörige Schriften, ed. Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart and Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 1996), 307-16; translated as Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1965), 241-50. For Strauss’s fuller statement on Spinoza’s seven dogmas (“or ‘roots,’ as the Jewish medieval thinkers would say”), see his Preface to the English translation, 20f.; reprinted (and slightly revised) in Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 245f.

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to restrict individuals’ freedom least (16.6.7-8). More exactly, it will be a liberal democracy, where every individual remains free to think what he likes and say what he thinks. Even so, Spinoza places organized religion under the thumb of the political, to safeguard that freedom. How then does Spinoza’s radical reconstruction of the Bible compare with Shakespeare’s Socratic evocation of it? Spinoza dismisses Aristotelian and Platonic—i.e., Socratic—philosophy from its timehonored role as friendly observer and respectful defender of biblical theology. His new hermeneutic aims to trim the Bible of any spur to philosophical wonderment. The seven dogmas of his civil religion are designed to be clear and distinct, i.e., transparent and uncontroversial, to any enlightened citizen. Even so, they read more like the aphorisms of Poor Richard’s Almanack than the often harsh demands of the non-transparent biblical God who dwells in the outermost darkness yet makes covenants with the children of men, i.e., more like counsels of prudence than divine commands. The harshest of Spinoza’s dogmas, no. 6—to the effect that selfindulgence without justice and charitableness is self-destructive—is hardly a ringing rebuke of self-indulgence.27 From the biblical viewpoint per se, Spinoza is overly accommodating to the acquisitiveness of cosmopolitan commercial republics—as if the prophet Elijah’s complaint against King Ahab’s acquiring Naboth’s vineyard were just another expropriation case,28 or the prophet Nathan’s parable of the rich sheep-rancher’s stealing the poor homesteader’s one and only lamb were just another example of burglary (or perhaps, to acknowledge Nathan’s political reference: adultery by a headof-state and its lethal cover-up).29 It is not too far-fetched to imagine either or both of these crimes being excused, on strictly Spinozist premises, in terms of reasons of state, whereas the originals taken in their own terms illustrate just how morally unconscionable it would be to excuse these crimes in terms of reasons of state. I therefore wonder: unless citizens living under Spinoza’s new political dispensation, the liberal democratic state, are already devoted to biblical morality as presented in its naïve, pre-Spinozist form, does not his new civil theology, taken simply in its own terms, come 27  Cf. Num. 15:37-40. 28   See I Ki. 21. At the very least, of course, it is a defamation-plus-mistaken-execution case. 29   See I Sam. 11.

P h i l o s o p hy, J e w i s h T h o u g h t , a n d t h e A m e r i c a n S e t t i n g i n M y Wo r k M a r t i n D. Ya f f e

off as morally obtuse? In other words, is not Spinozist morality without the biblical God self-defeating—and therefore self-contradictory? To sort these matters out has seemed to me to require, pace Spinoza, a return to the pre-Spinozist ways of thinking of the Bible and, where necessary, Socratic philosophy.30

30

  Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made for permission to reproduce portions of two previously published articles of mine: (1) Martin D. Yaffe, Review Essay on James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews, AJS Review 23, no. 2 (1998): 235-44 (copyright © 1998 Association for Jewish Studies; reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press). (2) [Martin D. Yaffe,] “Spinoza, Benedict or Baruch (1632-77),” in The New Encyclopedia of Belief, ed. Tom Flynn (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 732-33.

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Jew ish P hilosophy

and

A mer ican D emocr ac y

W il l iam A . G al s ton

I offer these concluding remarks on this section of our study as a meditation on the central theme of this portion of the volume—namely, the idea of “Jewish philosophy.” Every derash needs a text. Fortunately, David Novak’s essay has provided just what I need. Novak has argued that a Jewish philosopher must be personally committed to the Jewish tradition. Without that full existential commitment, a Jewish philosopher is no more than a philosopher who happens to be a Jew. I agree with Novak that the activity we loosely call Jewish philosophy requires just such a commitment. That question then becomes, in what sense is this kind of committed reflection philosophizing? Consider a proposition whose form parallels Novak’s: “An Athenian philosopher must be personally committed to the Athenian tradition.” This is oddly jarring. Socrates, after all, was not an Athenian philosopher; he was a philosopher who happened to be an Athenian. We may well wonder whether the activity of philosophy, rightly understood, is compatible with an existential commitment to anything other than that activity itself. Our query becomes inescapable when we notice that in Novak’s account, a Jewish philosopher is a Jew first and a philosopher second. Philosophizing reaches its limit at the border of what commitment to the tradition requires. This is a distinction that makes a difference. Novak tells us that “The task of philosophy is to show how revelation is possible in the world.” This makes perfect sense, given a faithful Jew’s commitment to a tradition that has revelation at its core. If revelation is actual, it must be possible, in the same way that the fact of everyday human hearing implies its possibility. It is then a task of rational inquiry to explain how this remarkable feature of our humanity is possible, rather than to question its existence; and similarly with revelation. But for Spinoza, a philosopher who happened to be Jewish,

J e w i s h P h i l o s o p hy a n d A m e r i c a n D e m o c r a c y Wi l l i a m A . G a ls to n

the task of rational inquiry was exactly the reverse—namely, to achieve the full and final vindication of philosophy by demonstrating that miracles, of which revelation is a central instance, are impossible. Leo Strauss may be said to have taken a position between—but not a compromise between—Novak and Spinoza. For Strauss, the philosopher’s true question is not how but rather whether revelation is possible. His answer: Spinoza was wrong because philosophy cannot show that revelation is impossible. If so, commitment to the Jewish tradition is not, as dogmatic atheism would have it, a species of irrationality. But neither is it is a dictate or conclusion of reason. “Religion within the limits of reason alone” does not suffice to yield any of the major faith traditions. Locke argued for the “reasonableness” of Christianity, not its rational necessity. Revelation is beyond but not strictly speaking against reason. In this context, it becomes possible to see Jewish philosophy in the manner Steven Kepnes proposes, as instrumental rather than foundational— as a useful way of clarifying the principal modes and categories of Jewish existence, such as revelation and miracles, law, community, covenant, commandment, history, and interpretation itself. The Jewish tradition in all its diversity, complexity, and contradiction furnishes the primary data; Jewish philosophy addresses itself to these data. Jewish philosophy becomes “American” when it focuses on the distinctively American instantiation of the tradition or, alternatively, when it draws on distinctively American modes of philosophizing, such as pragmatism. Another potential function of Jewish philosophy is practical— namely, supplementing the ongoing work of halakhic interpretation in applying fundamental Jewish commitments to a range of practical issues, including public policy. For the most part, Judaism is not neutral regarding these issues. It represents a legitimate trans-communal voice in American public life, though of course without the intra-communal authority that it enjoys for faithful believers. It is important for policy-makers to know that traditional Jews and traditional Catholics do not agree on issues such as abortion and stem-cell research. While Jewish philosophy, so understood, is addressed to public authority, its principal commitment is to the tradition. This means that in principle, Jewish philosophy embodies a reservation against all forms of political authority. As Jewish Americans, our embrace of democratic authority always comes with an implied caveat: if democratic authority

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commands what our tradition forbids, and if the matter is serious enough, we may have no choice but to resist and even to disobey. While this may seem like a purely abstract and unlikely possibility, eminent political philosophers have recommended banning kosher slaughter on the grounds that it represents cruelty to animals, which the state has the right to prohibit. American Jews are reluctant even to consider the possibility of such a tension, and it is not hard to understand why. We begin with simple gratitude, because American liberal democracy has been more hospitable to Jews than any other non-Jewish polity, ever. And we have an aversion to cognitive dissonance: because we believe both that Judaism is good and that liberal democracy is good, we find it hard to accept the possibilities that these goods can conflict. But our tradition also forces us to consider the seductions of abundance, pleasure, and unfettered liberty as sources of affinity to liberal democracy, perhaps against the strictures of tradition. After all, the classic rabbinic suspicion is that resistance to halakhic norms is at base epicurean. The potential tension is moral as well as psychological, because liberal democracy cannot be understood as an ensemble of morally and metaphysically neutral procedures. Not even John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” interpretation of the primal contractual scene is neutral in this sense. This raises the question of whether liberal democracy’s core commitments are fully compatible with those of Judaism—whether there is a relation of simple congruence between the liberal democratic conceptions of freedom, equality, and authority through consent, on the one hand, and the traditional Jewish understanding of these matters on the other. Martin Yaffe provocatively suggests that the morality of modern liberal democracy makes no sense without, indeed depends upon, the morality of the Torah. If so, that would solve the problem. But is it so? I agree completely with a central contention of Novak’s work, that Jews could only be party to a social contract that is secondary to their primary commitment to the Covenant. I am less confident than he is that a social contract understood through the prism of traditional Judaism will yield a polity that is in essential respects identical with American constitutionalism. To cite but one example: as Kenneth Seeskin rightly suggests, one of the central features of liberalism is that “consent is a presupposition of obligation.” But rabbinic Judaism is hardly of one

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mind on the question of whether a valid covenant presupposes uncoerced consent. We can extend this worry beyond the philosophy of liberal democracy to encompass key aspects of American democratic culture as well. Can an Emersonian be a good Jew in anything like the traditional sense of that term? What is the relation between fidelity to halakhic Judaism and conceptions of human life based on authenticity, self-reliance, and antinomianism? There may be American parallels to the price German Jews paid for accepting so much of German life and thought as the basis for understanding their own Jewishness. Leora Batnitzky’s essay is an important cautionary note in this vein. Having raised these somber concerns, I close on a more harmonistic note. Jewish moral and psychological realism—in particular, suspicion of political power and the “authorities”—bears at least a family resemblance to the fundamentals of Madisonian political thought. With its multiple complex divisions of and limitations on political power, liberal democratic constitutionalism may be the most adequate translation of Jewish realism into sustainable institutional form. And liberal democracy’s protected sphere of private liberty offers American Jews the ongoing opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and their distinctively Jewish obligations. In the end, however, we are left with Batnitzky’s challenge: “Surely Jews can align themselves with democratic politics because, unlike other political orders, democracy leaves them alone, but for what reason can or should Jews actually acquire democratic virtues?” Jewish philosophy in America will reach maturity when it delivers a convincing answer consistent with a rigorous understanding of the Jewish tradition . . . or when it demonstrates that no such answer exists.

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R esponse Paul Mende s - Fl ohr

In his introduction to this book section assembling finely crafted essays attesting to the “renaissance of Jewish philosophy in America,” Alan Mittleman calls upon me to reconsider an “obituary” for Jewish philosophy I penned some ten years ago.1 The lament for the demise of the Jewish philosophical tradition was indeed written, as Mittleman notes, “tongue in cheek.” It was a deliberately ironic allusion to Mark Twain’s laconic response to an obituary published in the New York Herald Tribune announcing that he had passed away: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I did voice, however, my concern that Jewish philosophers were a dying breed, that the Jewish philosophical tradition was mortally ill. My elegiac musings were, I must admit, largely prompted by a myopic focus on the State of Israel, where I have lived since 1970. The philosophical activity of American Jewry was beyond my purview. Yet one must also acknowledge that it is precisely in the last decade that we have witnessed the flowering of Jewish philosophy in America. Parallel to a general “philosophical turn to religion,”2 inspired by deconstructionist critiques of onto-theology and, concomitantly, a renewed interest in hermeneutics, a growing number of scholars have engaged Judaism with the analytical methods forged on the philosopher’s anvil. I thus joyfully join Alan Mittleman in celebrating the renewed interest in Jewish philosophy. May it continue to flourish, and “go from strength to strength.” Nonetheless, I should like to reiterate and elaborate upon the reasons I adumbrated in my “obituary” why, in my judgment, a philosophical

1  Paul Mendes-Flohr, Jewish Philosophy: An Obituary. The Fourth Frank Green Lecture Series.

(Oxford: Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1999). 2 

See Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999).

Response Pa u l M e n d e s- Fl o h r

Auseinandersetzung with Judaism is an exigent task. Again, I fear, Israel is my point of departure. In my “obituary” I expressed my misgivings about tendencies to employ certain versions of post-modernism as quasiphilosophical sanctions for an unabashed relativism allowing one to privilege Jewish values without critical assessment, or, as is often claimed, without apology. But apology per se is not such a bad thing. Indeed, as Franz Rosenzweig noted, it “can be one of the noblest of human occupations.”3 As an other-directed communication of religious beliefs, apologetics is a venerable and noble practice; in our pluralistic and multicultural universe, I would even argue that apologetics is an indispensable exercise, a necessary prophylactic against cultural narcissism and axiological parochialism. Addressing an audience external to one’s faith community, apologetics entails translation into a language and ideational discourse understood by that audience. In seeking to “defend” the faith it represents against misunderstanding, criticism, and calumnious defamations, apologetics, therefore, employs terms and conceptual references that establish a shared universe of discourse with those who dwell beyond the cognitive boundaries of one’s community. From its very beginnings with Philo of Alexandria, Jewish philosophy was at bottom a form of apologetics. It shared an apologetic motive with Christian and Islamic philosophy. The encounter between the monotheistic faiths, grounded in divinely revealed knowledge, and Hellenistic philosophy and the epistemological claims of autonomous reason gave birth to philosophical apologetics. In bringing the faith claims of their respective communities before the tribunal of reason and philosophical scrutiny, the defenders of theistic faith employed the intellectual apparatus of Greek wisdom to explain and clarify those claims. Since the ensuing debate was often with one’s self or other members of one’s faith community who had internalized the philosopher’s creed, it was, in effect, also an act of self-clarification. Through philosophical clarification not only were new insights into the nature of God’s being and will attained, but, as viewed from the perspective of the universal compass of reason, the significance of biblical faith for all of humanity was also highlighted.

3 

Franz Rosenzweig, “Apologetic Thinking” (1923), in “The Jew”: Essays from Martin Buber’s Journal Der Jude, 1916-1928, selected, ed. and introduced by Arthur A. Cohen, trans. by Joachim Neugroschel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 272.

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We should of course also be alert to the limits of apologetics. A desire to gain favor in the eyes of the philosophers can lead the apologist to tendentious, even self-abnegating, conceptual gyrations. But the limits of apologetics, as Rosenzweig suggests, are ultimately ontological. In its most noble expression, Rosenzweig avers, apologetics goes “to the very bottom of issues and souls, and ignoring the petty device of lies, ex-culpates itself (entschuldigt sich) with truth, the whole truth.” In doing so, genuine apologetics does “not embellish anything, much less evade a vulnerable point. Instead, [apologetics] would make the basis of defense the points of greatest jeopardy. In a word: it would defend the whole, not this or that particular. It would not be a defense in the usual sense, but an open presentation—not of some random thing but of one’s own province.”4 But here is the rub. For probing with the philosopher’s scalpel, the innermost, universal essence of Judaism, the apologist, indeed, “sees this essence,” but, paradoxically, “is far from seeing himself.” The philosophical apologist is “. . . not alone in his innermost essence; he is also his outermost as well, and most particularly the link binding both the road on which the inner and outer must associate with each other. He, however, with no further circumspection, equates his inmost with his self, and fails to realize that his inmost, the more inward it becomes, becomes the inmost of every human being. Thus, although meaning himself, he speaks about man, about all men. And thus his own self, the binding of the elements of mankind into something that he is himself, remains a mystery to himself. This barrier is never crossed by apologetic thinking.”

One’s deepest essence is intrinsically bound to one’s utmost particularity, a reality which the philosopher’s gaze refuses to see precisely because it is so utterly particular; yet it is this reality that is most human, and as such is the most pristine quality one shares with all other particular human realities. Here at this epistemic impasse apologetics reaches its limits; due of its cognitive astigmatism, philosophical apologetics is “denied the ultimate strength of knowledge and spared the ultimate suffering of

4 

Ibid. (italics added). In this article, Rosenzweig specifically speaks of “literary apologetics,” but clearly his reflections also bear upon philosophical apologetics.

Response Pa u l M e n d e s- Fl o h r

knowledge. Ultimate knowledge no longer defends; ultimate knowledge judges.”5 It is the laudable merit of the essays of this section of the volume to recognize the ontological limits of apologetics, and to realize that the universal essence of Judaism is also to be found in what renders it distinctive. This methodological caveat should not be construed, however, as a license to forgo a rigorous philosophical review of Jewish faith commitments and values. For what is at stake is the ribono shel olam, the God who, Rosenzweig reminds us, “created the world, not religion.”6 From this perspective, it is necessary to maintain a clear distinction between philosophy and theology.7 Unlike the latter, philosophy assumes a position from without, stands at a critical distance from the object of its scrutiny. I could do no better than to cite Lenn E. Goodman, who is in his contribution to this volume observes: The meta-tradition that keeps a practice or idea fresh is a culture of critical appropriation. That kind of culture is especially apposite in America, where the world itself seems still new and young. And it suits the culture of Israel, since we are, as our historic Lover rightly paints us, a stiff necked people, not readily bent to the yoke of credence or obedience. [. . .] We triangulate from what we see, and that allows us (pace the postmoderns) a measure of self-criticism and objectivity. We can stand outside ourselves to some extent, even as we learn to live comfortably (but never too comfortably) in our own skin.

In contrast to the Middle Ages, when philosophers for the most part subordinated their efforts to theology—thus the difficulty intellectual historians have in distinguishing medieval philosophy and theology8— 5 

Ibid.

6  Cf. “Gott hat eben nicht die Religion, sondern die Welt geschaffen.” Rosenzweig, “Das neue

Denken,” in idem, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1937), 389.

7 

Similarly, a discourse inflected with learned references and the often-arcane language of the academy is not necessarily philosophical. Sermons can be very learned, but their objective is primarily to be instructive and emotionally edificatory.

8  Cf. “The term ‘medieval Jewish philosophy’ is, in reality, a misnomer. The medieval thinkers

pursued theology rather than philosophy in that, despite being undoubtedly influenced by Greek thinkers, they began and ended with faith.” Louis Jacobs, “Theology,” Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Detroit/New York: Thomson Gale, 2007), vol.19, p. 695. Isaac Husik reached a similar conclusion: “The attempt of medieval Jewish philosophers to establish Judaism on

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modern philosophers have asserted their independence from theology and faith.9 This posture, of course, can be traced back to Spinoza. In the Preface to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, he boldly stated a thesis that would radically reorient the relation between philosophy and theology: “[In] the whole course of my investigation . . . I became thoroughly convinced that the Bible (Scriptura) leaves reason absolutely free, that it has nothing in common with philosophy, in fact, that Revelation and Philosophy stand on totally different footings.”10 Immanuel Kant would elaborate Spinoza’s thesis and firmly establish philosophy’s independence from theology. In Conflict of the Faculties (1798), Kant advocated securing the autonomy of philosophy institutionally11 and specifically called for the erection of a “wall” separating the territory of reason from that of the “dogmatic theologians.”12 Within this context, Kant introduced a seminal, if problematic, distinction between biblical or scriptural theologians and philosophical theologians. The former, the scriptural theologians, are expressly committed to the foundational beliefs and statutory laws of their faith community; their scholarship and thought are circumscribed by foundational texts deemed to be the word of God and the traditions held to be derived from a divine origin. In contradistinction, Kant insists, philosophical theologians should not regard themselves as bound by such scriptural and normative constraints. Philosophical theology

a philosophical basis could not, from the nature of the case, have been a success.” I. Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1940), 432. Leo Strauss concurred with Husik, and averred that “Jewish philosophy is not merely non-existent but impossible.” L. Strauss, “Preface” to Isaac Husik, Philosophical Essays: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, ed. M. Naham and L. Strauss (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), xli. 9   For an incisive analysis of this development, particularly as it bears upon contemporary religious

philosophy, see Adriaan T. Peperzak, Thinking: From Solitude to Dialogue and Contemplation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 131-137. Cf. “A new phase in the history of philosophy and thought began when [in the modern period] philosophers reclaimed their independence from both theology and faith, in order to discover what autonomous thought had to say about truth and wisdom.” Ibid., 131.

10   Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, trans.

R.H.M. Elws (New York: Dover Publications, 1951), vol. 1, 9.

11   Immanuel Kant, “Der Streit der Fakultäten,” in Kant, Werkausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel

(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch,1977), vol. 2, 289-295.

12   Ibid., 286.

Response Pa u l M e n d e s- Fl o h r

“must have complete freedom to expand as far as its science reaches, [so long as] it remains within the limits of reason alone and makes use of history, sayings, books of all peoples, even the Bible, in order to confirm and explain its propositions, but only for itself, without carrying the propositions into biblical theology or change the latter’s public doctrines.”13 Philosophers have subsequently sought to tame the antagonistic position Kant assigned philosophical theology toward biblical theology, and allow one to develop modern religious philosophies specifically directed to Judaism, Christianity or Islam. But the tension remains.14 However one assesses the tension, it clearly induces the critical perspective enjoined by Lenn Goodman and other contributors to this volume. This tension, as the Catholic scholar Adriaan T. Peperzak has recently observed, is as much axiological as it is epistemological. Constituted as a Republic of Universal Thought, he notes, modern philosophy has developed a distinctive ethos espousing an overarching “loyalty to humanity,”15 challenging the votaries of the theistic faith communities to assert their devotion to the Oneness of God’s children. Post-modern philosophers have taught us that the universal thrust of philosophy can frequently over-extend itself, capriciously censoring all particularities. Jewry rightly affirms its right to be different. A celebratory acknowledgement of cultural and religious diversity is intrinsic to the very structure of our ancient faith. But this affirmation of diversity is not a warrant for mutual indifference. While we attend to our communal, cultural and religious integrity, we are beckoned to serve a Universal God (hence, the Universal Good). This bi-valent tension is our unique spiritual patrimony, and it is the task of Jewish religious philosophy to sustain that tension.

13   Kant, Religion within the Limits of Religion Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H.

Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 8. (For the sake of clarity, I have modified the syntax of the translation.) 14   See Michael Theunissen, “Philosophie der Religion oder religiöse Philosophie?” in

Phaenomonologie der Religion, ed. Markus Enders and Holger Zabotowski (Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2004), 89-99. Also see Jacques Derrida, “Moloch,” in Logomachina: The Conflict of Faculties, ed. Richard Rand (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 1-34. 15  Paperzak, Thinking, 136.

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M a imonides

on the

E terni t y

of the

W orld

Ho w ar d Kre i sel

Introduction

Maimonides’ stance on the creation of the world has attracted considerable debate over the centuries. Those who arrived at the conclusion that Maimonides maintains an essentially Aristotelian picture of divine governance of the world, and presents an esoteric position on all the theological issues in which God is regarded as playing a personal role in human affairs, could hardly take Maimonides’ defense of creation at face value.1 Though I belong to the camp of those who adopt an esoteric reading 1  The most important modern exponent of the esoteric reading of Maimonides is Leo Strauss; see

his classic study “The Literary Character of The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Essay on Maimonides, ed. Salo Baron(New York 1941), 37-91 (reprinted in Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, [Glencoe: Free Press, 1952], 38-94). For a survey of esoteric vs. exoteric readings of Maimonides’ thought see in particular Aviezer Ravitzky, “The Secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed: Between the Thirteenth and the Twentieth Centuries,” in Studies in Maimonides, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 159-207. See also Howard Kreisel, “Moses Maimonides,” in History of Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (London: Routledge, 1997), 245-280. For some recent studies of Maimonides’ esotericism see Sara KleinBraslavy, King Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism in the Thought of Maimonides [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996); Yair Loberbaum, “On Contradictions, Rationality, Dialectics and Esotericism in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” Metaphysics 55 (2002): 711-750; Aviezer Ravitzky, “Maimonides: Esotericism and Philosophical Education” [Hebrew], Daat 53 (2004): 43-62; Howard Kreisel, “Esotericism to Exotericism: From Maimonides to Gersonides,” in Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. Howard Kreisel (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006), 165-184. For a study of this issue in medieval Jewish philosophy in general see Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: The Secret and its Boundaries in Medieval Jewish Tradition [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: A. Hess, 2001); Dov Schwartz, Contradiction and Concealment in Medieval Jewish Thought [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002). It should be noted that even among those scholars who favor an esoteric reading of Maimonides, not all of them agree that his motive was essentially political—that is to say, to hide certain truths he accepted from the masses. See W.Z. Harvey, “How Leo Strauss Paralyzed

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of Maimonides and maintain that he attempted to understand Judaism in light of Aristotelian thought—and that he did not seek to develop a position which steers a middle course between the personal God of tradition and the impersonal God of philosophy—I confess that it is hard to read Maimonides’ account of creation without feeling that he not only pays lip service to the idea but really means it. Why else would he go to such pains to defend this doctrine philosophically and not only on religious grounds? Moreover, Maimonides does not simply go through the motions of proving creation, but displays a great deal of philosophic ingenuity, and develops some solid philosophic arguments that improve upon those found in his sources, while still not abandoning the principles of Aristotelian physics to which he is committed. This is hardly the move we would expect of someone hinting to an esoteric position. The presentation of standard but weak philosophic arguments to rebut the stronger arguments of an opponent is indeed a possible way of subtly alluding to an esoteric position.2 But that a strong philosophic argument should be interpreted as not being seriously held by its author—such an interpretation appears to be the product of perverse thinking. It is easy to see the motivation of some of the medieval interpreters in making such a move. Joseph Kaspi and Moses Narboni, for example, suggest that Maimonides in fact believed in the eternity of the world and develop an esoteric reading of his statements on this issue.3 They themselves were convinced in the truth of the Aristotelian position, Maimonides’ explicit arguments notwithstanding, and were at pains to interpret their master, Maimonides, as agreeing with the truth as they saw it. But the modern interpreter no longer is burdened with this consideration; the opposite is

the Study of the Guide of the Perplexed in the 20th Century” [Hebrew], Iyyun 50 (2001): 387-396. For a recent strident attack against the esoteric reading of Maimonides in general see Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 387-402. 2 

See Leo Strauss’s masterful discussion of methods for conveying secret teachings that oppose the prevailing orthodoxy in his Persecution and the Art of Writing, 22-37.

3 

See Joseph Kaspi, Maskiyot Kesef, Solomon Werblunger ed., Frankfurt 1848, 99-101; Moshe Narboni, Be’ur le-Sefer Moreh Nevukhim, Jacob Goldenthal ed., Vienna 1852, 23b, 34a-b, 52a (both commentaries are reprinted in: Sheloshah Qadmonei Mefarshei Ha-Moreh [Jerusalem, 1961]).

M a i m o n i d e s o n t h e E t e r n i t y o f t h e Wo r l d H o wa rd K re ise l

the case. Maimonides’ belief in creation, even creation ex nihilo, is more in keeping with contemporary science. Thus his stated position on this issue is the one that those interested in interpreting tradition in light of science should take pains to defend. Nevertheless, I would like to advance the claim that despite all the considerable evidence to the contrary—much of it brought in painstaking detail by Kenneth Seeskin in his recent book, Maimonides on the Origin of the World4—Maimonides in fact secretly favored the belief in the eternity a parte ante of the world.5 The primary path I will adopt in arguing that Maimonides in essence accepts the position that he vociferously argues against is the textual one—a path long favored by the esotericists and most in keeping with Maimonides’ remarks in the introduction to his treatise.6 Comments made by Maimonides in passing often do not belong to the thrust of his argument in the context in which they appear, and in fact clarify his opinion on issues he discusses elsewhere. Moreover, a close look at some of his comments reveals that they in fact undermine the gist of his argument and support the position he purportedly rejects. There is a midrashic quality to such reading—looking for the textual irregularities in the Maimonidean text and then offering an interpretation that seems to fly in the face of what the text literally states, or that reads much between the lines.7 While each of 4  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 5 

I am not claiming that Maimonides was absolutely convinced of this position and that he thought the philosophers had in fact presented a demonstrative argument proving eternity. I am prepared to grant that Maimonides continued to entertain doubts on this issue. My claim is that he felt that the eternity of the world was the preferable position from a philosophic standpoint and was in all likelihood the esoteric position of Jewish tradition.

6 

Maimonides writes: “If you wish to grasp the totality of what this Treatise contains, so that nothing of it will escape you, then you must connect its chapters one with another; and when reading a given chapter, your intention must be not only to understand the totality of the subject of that chapter, but also to grasp each word that occurs in it in the course of the speech, even if that word does not belong to the intention of the chapter. For the diction of this Treatise has not been chosen at haphazard, but with great exactness and exceeding precision, and with care to avoid failing to explain any obscure point. And nothing has been mentioned out of its place, save with a view of explaining some matter in its proper place (p. 15).” All English translations are taken from the translation of Shlomo Pines (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963).

7 

In other words, just as the midrash often focuses on the verbal “irregularities” in the biblical text, isolates them and develops their meaning, frequently appealing to verses that deal with

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these readings taken individually are open to refutation, together they seem to support the view that there is an esoteric subtext to Maimonides’ treatise, one that extends also to the issue of creation. The Esotericist Reading of Maimonides

Let us for a moment review the gist of Maimonides’ position in the Guide in regard to creation. According to Maimonides, the monotheistic idea is proven if one accepts either creation or the eternity of the world (Guide 1.71).8 God’s unique existence is not the issue here. Nor is the order of nature the issue, for Maimonides accepts the order of nature in its Aristotelian form even if the world is created, while rejecting the Kalām’s view on this matter (Guide 1.71-72; 2.3-12). One may further argue that Maimonides regards creation as providing a better foundation for accepting the order of nature as posited by Aristotle than does the doctrine of eternity. Maimonides equates the doctrine of eternity with the doctrine of necessity, and necessity cannot adequately explain the purposive functioning of the order of nature (Guide 2.19-22). Yet it is not that creation provides a better philosophical explanation for the existence of the order of nature, which is the main point Maimonides wishes to argue; rather, creation proves that God possesses volition that is not limited to the order of nature. Only by accepting the notion of divine volition can we have revelatory religion and all the theological doctrines associated with it (Guide 2.25). The God of Aristotle has no role to play in history, is not a Law Giver, does not choose prophets to send on missions, and cannot perform miracles. Nor does Aristotle’s deity reward and punish individuals in accordance with their actions. The God of Aristotle is the deity of an eternally unchanging natural order. Even if creation provides a better explanation for the existence of this order than does eternity, one hardly needs creation to posit such an order. One needs creation to posit the exceptions to the order. As Julius Guttmann succinctly notes regarding Maimonides’ doctrine of creation,

entirely different matters, so one must use this method in reading Maimonides. As shown in the previous note, Maimonides himself appears to counsel employing this method in reading his treatise. 8  Cf. Guide 2.1 (third proof of God’s existence).

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“It relieves Maimonides of the necessity of interpreting the religious ideas of God’s activity and his relationship to the world in terms of immanent, teleological, and largely impersonal dynamism. He can now reinvest these ideas with their original meaning, though he makes only sparing and very cautious use of this possibility.”9 Or as Maimonides himself phrases it in Guide 2.25: “Know that with a belief in the creation of the world in time, all the miracles become possible and the Law becomes possible (p. 329).”

Yet a close reading of the issues involved has led a number of interpreters of Maimonides’ philosophy to conclude that he in fact interprets God’s activity and His relationship to the world in terms of an “immanent, teleological and largely impersonal dynamism.” Maimonides treats prophecy as a natural phenomenon, except for the caveat that God can miraculously withhold prophecy from one who is worthy to attain it. At the same time, he invalidates his own examples for the miraculous withholding of prophecy, leaving such a miracle only a theoretical possibility that never materialized and apparently never will. In this manner he signals his essential agreement with the Aristotelian position )Guide 2.32).10 Only Mosaic prophecy and the Revelation at Sinai continue to be treated by him as supernatural phenomena, as in his earlier writings. But in this case too there are passages in the Guide that can be interpreted as alluding to an esoteric position, which views Moses as the immediate author of the Law on the basis of the prophetic illumination he attained and understands the Revelation at Sinai in a naturalistic manner.11 9 

Philosophies of Judaism, David Silverman trans. (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 192.

10   For a discussion of Maimonides’ three opinions concerning prophecy and the ramifications of

his view of prophecy regarding the problem of creation, see Lawrence Kaplan, “Maimonides on the Miraculous Element in Prophecy,” HTR 70 (1977): 233-56; Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides’ Secret Position on Creation,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 16-40. W.Z. Harvey, “A Third Approach to Maimonides’ Cosmogony-Prophetology Puzzle,” HTR 74 (1981): 287-301; Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 222-230; Roslyn Weiss, “Natural Order or Divine Will: Maimonides on Cosmogony and Prophecy,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 15 (2007): 1-26. 11   See Alvin Reines, “Maimonides’ Concept of Mosaic Prophecy,” HUCA 40 (1969): 325-362; Kalman

Bland, “Moses and the Law According to Maimonides,” in Mystics, Philosophers and Politicians, ed. Jehudah Reinharz and Daniel Swetschinski (Durham: Duke University Press, 1982), 49‑66.

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Maimonides scatters certain hints in his writings that God did not in fact personally inform Moses of each commandment word for word by means of a created audible voice, nor was such a voice miraculously created by God for Israel’s benefit at Sinai.12

When one turns to Maimonides’ discussion of providence, an esoteric position, in essential agreement with Aristotle, is presented in a manner that borders upon the exoteric. Maimonides begins his discussion by indicating that according to the opinion of the Law, human beings possess free will and everything that befalls them, good and bad—whether a person is hurt by a thorn or receives even the slightest pleasure—is determined according to their just deserts (Guide 3.17). After presenting this view that posits personal divine intervention in all matters that befall human beings, he immediately modifies his view to indicate that individual providence, now treated as only the protection experienced by humans and not calamities, is in proportion to the perfection of the intellect, while everything else that happens to them is by chance, as is the case with the other species (Guide 3.18). Maimonides leads us step by step to the conclusion that the intellect itself is the mode of providence given to human beings, since it allows the individual to anticipate most evils and to take action to avoid them. It also directs the individual to leading a lifestyle which minimizes the physical evils normally befalling human beings. Finally, the perfect individual has attained an identity of pure intellect, in whose case all physical evils that befall the corporeal aspect of his being no longer affect him.13 The fact

See also Kreisel, Prophecy, 230-239, 260-262. Already some of the medieval philosophers, such as Nissim of Marseilles, understood these phenomena in a naturalistic manner and maintained that Moses was the immediate author of the Law. See my discussion of this issue in “The Prophecy of Moses in Medieval Jewish Provençal Philosophy: Natural or Supernatural?” [Hebrew], Moses the Man: Master of the Prophets, ed. Moshe Hallamish, Hannah Kasher and Hanoch Ben-Pazi (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2010), 179-203. 12   See Howard Kreisel, “The Voice of God in Medieval Jewish Philosophic Exegesis” [Hebrew], Daat

16 (1986), 29-38. See also Prophecy, 215-216, 231-234, 281-284; Jacob Levinger, Maimonides as Philosopher and Codifier [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1989), 39-48. 13   A number of scholars have convincingly argued this reading of Maimonides. See, for example,

Alvin Reines, “Maimonides’ Concepts of Providence and Theodicy,” HUCA 43 (1972): 169-206. Charles Touati, “Les Deux Théories de Maïmonide sur la Providence,” in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History, ed. Siegfried Stein and Raphael Loewe (Alabama: Alabama University Press, 1979), 331-344. This position was already advanced by Maimonides’ earliest

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that Maimonides in his commentary on Job distinguishes Elihu’s opinion, ostensibly representing Maimonides’ own, and the opinion of Eliphaz, which he treats as false and equates with the opinion of the Law (Guide 3.24), hardly leaves any doubt that Maimonides eschews the view of God’s immediate role in extending providence to individuals. The intellect is the human being’s guardian angel, while Satan, representing the privations associated with matter, is powerless to affect the perfect immortal intellect.14 As for miracles, Maimonides’ position on how to understand them is far from clear. In the case of the most important miracle associated with the faith, namely the resurrection of the dead—leaving aside the Revelation at Sinai, which Maimonides treats as a unique event belonging to a different category altogether15—he apparently did not accept it according to a literal understanding of resurrection, his disclaimers to the opposite in his Treatise on Resurrection notwithstanding. The immortality of the perfect intellect is the only form of “resurrection” that Maimonides recognizes. This is at least the conclusion to which a close reading of all his pronouncements on the subject appear to lead.16 Other miracles he seems to regard as anomalies in nature. I have argued elsewhere that he may even have accepted the view that the prophet himself is the author of some of the miracles,17 though the evidence for this view is admittedly sketchy at best.

commentators. See the interpretations of Maimonides’ remarks on providence presented by Samuel and Moses Ibn Tibbon published by Zevi Diesendruck, “Samuel and Moses Ibn Tibbon on Maimonides’ Theory of Providence,” HUCA 11 (1936): 341-366. 14   For an in-depth study of Maimonides’ commentary on Job see Robert Eisen, The Book of Job

in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 43-77. See also Hannah Kasher, “The Image and Views of Job in the Guide of the Perplexed” [Hebrew], Daat 15 (1985): 81-89. 15   See “Laws of the Foundations of the Torah” 8.1. Maimonides agrees that miracles occurred at

Sinai, but the voice heard at Sinai is not to be placed in the category of miracles; see Guide 2.33. See also Kreisel, Prophecy, 191-195, 230-232. 16   For an esotericist reading of Maimonides’ treatise see, for example, Robert Krischner,

“Maimonides’ Fiction of Resurrection,” HUCA 52 (1982): 163-193. 17   See “Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 75 (1984): 106-114. For

a discussion of Maimonides’ approach to miracles see also Hannah Kasher, “Biblical Miracles and the Universality of Natural Laws: Maimonides’ Three Methods of Harmonization,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 25-52.

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Overall, there is a good deal of scholarly literature on each of the topics mentioned above showing that there is a strong basis for arguing that Maimonides held an esoteric position.18 Hence, when one looks at the issues Maimonides discusses after he lays down the doctrine of creation, one not only sees that on the exoteric level after showing God’s volition to act freely and in a direct manner he “makes only sparing and very cautious use of this possibility” in the words of Guttmann; one sees reasons for questioning whether he made any use of this possibility at all. If one accepts the evidence for an esotericist reading of Maimonides on these issues—certainly a big “if ” for those who have not closely examined the issues or have examined the issues and remain unconvinced—one arrives at a strange conclusion: Maimonides believes in creation on religious as well as philosophic grounds, but treats the divine governance of the world, including the phenomena associated with revelatory religion, in a manner that is in complete harmony with the philosophic world view. Let us keep in mind that Maimonides had before him the model presented by Alfarabi, a philosopher he greatly admired, who explained revelation and the fundamental doctrines of revelatory religion in a naturalistic manner.19 It is true that Maimonides labels creation the most important principle of the Law after the unity of God (Guide 2.13). The reason he does so is not difficult to discern: it is his appreciation of the fact that the vast majority of believers could not accept the divine origin of the Torah without belief in creation.20 It is no wonder that Maimonides works hard to defend this belief, given the stakes involved. After writing the Guide, he goes so far as to reformulate the fourth principle—God’s eternal existence—of the 18   It should be noted that Herbert Davidson in his recent book, Moses Maimonides (above, n. 1)

chose to ignore many of the stronger arguments for an esotericist reading of Maimonides while dismissing this reading out of hand. 19   See, for example, Alfarabi’s description of the laying down of perfect law in The Political

Regime, translated by Fauzi Najjar in Medieval Political Philosophy, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 36-37. The theological doctrines of revelatory religion are treated by Alfarabi as philosophic truths presented in a figurative manner. For the influence of Alfarabi on Maimonides’ views on the origins and function of revelatory religion and its relation to philosophy, see in particular L.V. Berman, “Maimonides, the Disciple of Alfarabi,” IOS 4 (1974): 154-178. 20  One may further argue that many would even question the very existence of God without belief

in creation, as Maimonides’ comments in Guide 2.31 imply.

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thirteen principles of faith he had laid down in his Commentary on the Mishnah: Introduction to Pereq Heleq to include creation. According to the original formulation, which stresses the unique nature of the eternity of God, one could accept this principle while still believing in the eternity of the world.21 Up to this point in the argument, I have not made any direct case for interpreting Maimonides as believing in eternity. My argument has simply been that if Maimonides holds an esoteric position regarding a number of major theological issues—a position which is a far easier one to prove— then at least one has grounds to wonder if the same is not the case with creation. This is not simply to claim that an esoteric stance on one issue inevitably implies esoteric positions on other issues as well. In this case, the issue of creation is the fundamental one underlying the other issues. Hence, if Maimonides maintained an esoteric position on the major “derivative” issues, one has good reason to suppose that this is the case with the core issue. Moreover, Maimonides had every reason to present his true position on this issue in an even more veiled manner than he did on the others. By proving creation, Maimonides has removed the philosophic obstacles to a literal reading of Scripture on these issues, though he nevertheless rejects such a reading on many points quite explicitly. He could have utilized the doctrine of divine volition which he has purportedly proven to advance a completely miraculous understanding of prophecy, more in keeping with a literal reading of Scripture, as well as a supernatural approach to divine providence, rather than treat them as esoteric doctrines belonging to the secrets of the Torah that are not to be understood in accordance with a literal reading of Scripture (Guide 1.35). Given this fact, one has good reason to question whether Maimonides esoteric position on creation is his true opinion. Moreover, one can easily understand why from a politicalpedagogical perspective Maimonides would publicly uphold the doctrine of creation even if privately he did not agree with it.

21   For a discussion of this point see Howard Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought (Albany:

SUNY Press, 1999), 217-221. The original formulation, God’s absolute eternity, appears to be predicated on Avicenna’s notion of God’s necessary existence—namely God’s essence is the cause of His existence. Hence even if other entities are eternal, their eternity is not of the same nature as that of God since they possess only possible existence. They require an external agent—namely, God—to actualize this possibility.

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The Esotericist Reading of Maimonides’ Position on Creation

The textual evidence in support of the interpretation that Maimonides believed in a world without beginning is certainly of a subtle nature, as the studies on this issue show. Maimonides’ stated position in Guide 2.25 that if the eternity of the world would be proven demonstrably, he could certainly interpret Scripture accordingly, just as he did in the case of the corporeal descriptions of God, which is a more difficult move from a textual standpoint, was already picked up in the Middle Ages as a possible hint to an esoteric position, insofar as it makes the interpretation of Scripture subservient to human reason. Moreover, it is strange that Maimonides favors a literal reading of Scripture on a topic he characterizes as belonging to the secrets of the Law while on all other issues belonging to this category Maimonides chooses a figurative interpretation.22 The favorite piece of evidence for esotericists on the issue of creation relates to Maimonides’ presentation of three opinions on prophecy in Guide 2.32 (God gives prophecy to whomever He chooses; prophecy is received by all those possessing the necessary preconditions and only by them; certain fixed conditions are necessary for attaining prophecy but God can miraculously withhold prophecy from one who possesses all the necessary qualifications), explicitly comparing them to the three opinions he presents on the question of the creation of the world in Guide 2.13 (creation ex nihilo; creation from eternal matter; the eternity of the world). The mental gymnastics practiced by the exotericists who tried to show that creation ex nihilo most closely corresponds to the opinion brought by Maimonides in the name of the Law, that prophecy is a natural phenomenon which God at times miraculously withholds from the worthy, and that creation ex nihilo does not correspond to the opinion of the masses that God grants prophecy to whom He wills without the person possessing any fixed qualifications—a position Maimonides completely dismisses—simply is not convincing, particularly in light of the problematic nature of the other match-ups that result if one adopts this view. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo, which imposes no limits on God’s volitional activity except for what

22  A similar point is made by Roslyn Weiss in her review of Seeskin’s Maimonides on the Origin of

the World (above, n. 4), in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75 (2007): 739.

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is conceptually impossible, most clearly corresponds to God’s ability to bestow prophecy upon whomever He wishes.23 Seeskin’s suggestion that one should not look for a one-to-one match-up is also problematic, since why would Maimonides then point out the relationship between the two subjects.24 One other frequently adduced bit of evidence for an esoteric position is Maimonides’ apparent contradiction involving emanation. In 2.11 of the Guide he agrees with this doctrine (cf. 1.58 and 1.69), while in 2.22 he criticizes it in detail. Arthur Hyman and Herbert Davidson argue that there is no contradiction, since Maimonides could hold the view that the world begins emanating from God with the volitional act of creation, a doctrine that Altmann has shown is in fact the view of Isaac Israeli.25 Seeskin criticizes this view,26 correctly in my opinion, but his own view that Maimonides never really embraces the doctrine of emanation I find to be equally problematic.27 Maimonides alludes to his acceptance of the doctrine of emanation already in the Mishneh Torah, in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah28—where he also bases his abridged proof of God’s existence and unity on the doctrine of the eternity of the world29—as 23   For the bibliography dealing with this issue see above, n. 10. 24   See Maimonides on the Origin of the World, 178-179. 25   See Arthur Hyman, “Maimonides on Creation and Emanation,” in Studies in Medieval Philosoph,

ed. J.F. Wippel (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 45-61; Herbert Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 208-209; Alexander Altmann, “Creation and Emanation in Isaac Israeli: A Reappraisal,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (above, n. 10), 1-15.

26   Maimonides on the Origin of the World, 145-146. 27   Ibid., 119-120. 28   In Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 2:5 Maimonides writes: “In what manner are the Forms

[=Separate Intellects] separate from each other though they are not bodies? They are not equal in their existence but each one is below the level of the other and exists by virtue of his power [ve-hu matzui me-koho], one above the other. All of them exist by virtue of the power of God and His goodness.” This is a clear allusion to the doctrine of emanation, at least in regard to the Separate Intellects. Maimonides, however, does not allude to the immediate origin of the spheres in this context. See below, n. 31.

29   Maimonides bases his proof of the existence and unity of God on the Aristotelian notion of

the eternal motion of the sphere; see Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 1:5, 7. In Guide 1.71, however, he explains this move as follows: “[. . .] For this reason you will always find

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well as in other chapters of the Guide.30 The main criticism Maimonides presents against the doctrine of emanation in 2.22 focuses on the issue of how each Separate Intellect can be the source of emanation of a corporeal sphere. In other words, how can matter emanate from pure form? On this point Maimonides’ position in 2:11, where he embraces the doctrine of emanation, is less than clear and is worthy of a separate study.31

that whenever, in what I have written in the books of jurisprudence, I happen to mention the foundations and start upon establishing the existence of the deity, I establish it by discourses that adopt the way of the doctrine of the eternity of the world. The reason is not that I believe in the eternity of the world, but that I wish to establish in our belief the existence of God, may He be exalted, through a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect (p. 182).” It is not clear that Maimonides’ explanation in the Guide in fact represents his original intent in formulating his position in his legal works. For a discussion of this point see W.Z. Harvey, “The Mishneh Torah as a Key to the Secrets of the Guide,” in Me`ah She‘arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life, ed. Ezra Fleischer et al (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 15-17. 30   Maimonides in several passages in the Guide treats God as the source of emanation of the

world; see 1.58, 69; 2.6.

31   In his brief presentation of the philosophic doctrine of emanation in 2.4, he does not explicitly

attribute to the philosophers the doctrine that the spheres themselves emanate from the Separate Intellects—a doctrine that we find in Alfarabi and Avicenna, summarized by Halevi in the opening of the Kuzari, and subsequently brought by Maimonides in his critique of the philosophic position in 2.22. Rather, Maimonides treats each Separate Intellect as the immediate agent of the intellect of each sphere. When he presents the doctrine of emanation in his own name in 2.11, however, he appears to allude to the position that the Separate Intellects are also the source of the body of the spheres and not only the sphere’s form or intellect. He writes: “For the overflow coming from Him, may he be exalted, for the bringing into being of separate intellects overflows likewise from these intellects, so that one of them brings another one into being and this continues up to the Active Intellect. With the latter, the bringing in being of separate intellects comes to an end. Moreover a certain other act of bringing into being overflows from every separate intellect until the spheres come to an end with the sphere of the moon. After it there is the body subject to generation and corruption, I mean the first matter and what is composed of it (p. 275).” In the latter passage it appears that only the question of the origin of sublunar matter is left open. Yet in a previous passage in the same chapter he writes: “[. . .] that from the benefits received by the intellect, good things and lights overflow to the bodies of the spheres (p. 275).” From this passage it appears that the bodies themselves do not have their origin in the Separate Intellects, only their form, and perhaps this is what Maimonides had in mind when he speaks of the emanation of the Separate Intellects that involves the bringing about of the spheres. This leaves open the problem of how Maimonides understood the origin of the bodies of the spheres, or of matter in general, if he did not in fact believe in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. It appears that Maimonides at least entertained doubts regarding the emanation of matter from what is incorporeal even if he favored the doctrine of the eternity of the world. One should add that the problem of whether the bodies of the spheres emanate from the Separate Intellects is discussed explicitly in the Short Commentary to the Metaphysics by Averroes, where the author rejects this notion.

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An examination of the terminology used by Maimonides regarding creation shows that the terms he employs are equivocal, or that the biblical terms he explains are treated by him as being equivocal. Avraham Nuriel has analyzed the term “creator” (al-bari) in the Guide showing that Maimonides does not employ this term when dealing with the creation of the world but in contexts which are more in harmony with the notion of an eternal world, thereby alluding to an esoteric view in this matter.32 Sara Klein-Braslavy has shown that Maimonides interprets the Hebrew term for create, bara in an equivocal manner; it need not refer to creation ex nihilo but can refer to the emanation of form on matter, a doctrine that is in harmony with the notion of an eternal world.33 Given Maimonides’ view on the equivocal nature of biblical terms it is more than plausible that he should hint to his esoteric views by means of the equivocal meaning of the terms he employs. He alludes to this technique in his admonition to the reader to “grasp each word that occurs in it in the course of the speech” of his treatise (Guide introduction, p. 15). When one starts looking at the Guide with at least a suspicion that he holds an esoteric position, one finds more and more signs in support of this interpretation. Perhaps in some cases these readings can be attributed to the overly creative imagination of the interpreter, but I certainly do not think all of them can be so easily dismissed. It appears to me that Maimonides adopted a gamut of esoteric techniques to hint to his true view on this matter.34

32  Avraham Nuriel, “The Question of a Primordial or Created World in the Philosophy of

Maimonides” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 33 (1964): 372-387 [reprinted in Nuriel, Concealed and Revealed in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000), 25-40]. 33   Sara Klein-Braslavy, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story of Creation [Hebrew] (Jerusalem:

Reuben Mass, 1987), 81-90. 34  Herbert Davidson dismisses the strongest argument for Maimonides’ esotericism—namely

that Maimonides explicitly indicates that he has incorporated contradictions in the Guide on purpose in order to veil his views—by arguing that Maimonides wrote the introduction before writing the bulk of his treatise; he subsequently changed his mind about using this technique, or any other, for masking his true views, which he proceeds to present quite openly. See Moses Maimonides (above, n. 1), 330, 391. Even if one accepts Davidson’s view about the writing of the introduction, one need not accept his conclusion. Rather than retract his intention to write a treatise containing an esoteric level, Maimonides may have in fact developed additional strategies for alluding to his esoteric views.

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Let me list a few such readings which I have presented in a recent Hebrew article.35 One of the techniques for conveying an esoteric position is to attack a doctrine held by an opponent who does not belong to your “camp,” though this doctrine essentially characterizes your own tradition’s position. The average reader, even if he senses that there is a problem, will not pay too much attention to it since he is accustomed to dismiss out of hand the truth of the doctrines of those who belong to different traditions. The careful reader, on the other hand, discerns that this attack hints to the fact that the author does not accept his own tradition’s view on the matter. Maimonides appears to adopt this technique when he discusses one of the Kalām’s positions, a theology of which he is exceptionally critical. According to Maimonides, instead of exploring the major questions of speculation based on a profound understanding of the principles of reality, the Moslem theologians invent their principles in accordance with the criterion of how best to defend religious doctrines.36 In the course of presenting the Aristotelian proofs for the eternity of the world in Guide 2.14, Maimonides presents the following argument: He [Aristotle] asserts that with respect to everything that is produced in time, the possibility of its being produced precedes in time the production of the thing itself. And similarly with respect to everything that changes, the possibility of its changing precedes in time the change itself. From this premise he made a necessary inference as to the perpetuity of circular motion, its having no end and no beginning. His later followers in their turn made it clear by 35   “The Guide of the Perplexed and the Art of Concealment” [Hebrew], in By the Well: Studies in

Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein, ed. Uri Ehrlich, Howard Kreisel, and Daniel Lasker (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008), 487507. In this article I also deal with a number of additional techniques not described below. On the issue of esoteric writing I am very much indebted to Leo Strauss’s masterful essay cited above, n. 2. There are no set rules for esoteric writing, for the premise of esoteric writing is that the reader will pick up on certain “irregularities” in the text, treat these irregularities as deliberate in character and draw deductions regarding their purpose. Much then depends on the mind of the reader. Maimonides explicitly brings one such type of irregularity – arguments based on contradictory premises. As argued in the previous note, this technique hardly exhausts the possibilities for esoteric writing and the other techniques Maimonides may have chosen to employ. 36   Guide 1.71.

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means of this premise that the world was eternal. They said: Before the world came into being, its production in time must have been either possible or necessary or impossible. Now if it was necessary, the world could not have been nonexistent. If its production in time was impossible, it could not be true that it ever would exist. And if it was possible, what was the substratum of this possibility? For there indubitably must be an existent thing that is the substratum of this possibility and in virtue of which it is said of the thing that it is possible. This is a very powerful method for establishing the eternity of the world. However, an intelligent man from among the later Mutalallimun thought that he had solved this difficulty. He said: Possibility resides in the agent and not in the thing that is the object of action. This, however, is no reply, for there are two possibilities. For with respect to everything produced in time, the possibility of its being produced precedes in time the thing itself. And similarly in the agent that produced it, there is the possibility to produce that which it has produced before it has done so. There are indubitably two possibilities: a possibility in the matter to become that particular thing, and a possibility in the agent to produce that particular thing (p. 287).

In the passage above Maimonides presents an Aristotelian argument, brings the objection of the Kalām, and then brings the rebuttal of the philosophers to this objection, which he treats as successfully dismissing the objection. In order for something to be generated there must exist two types of possibility. Yet Maimonides himself in the previous chapter championed the opinion that the world was created ex nihilo, hence there existed no matter in which the possibility of the world resided. In a subsequent chapter, he dismisses the Aristotelian argument based on possibility as follows: [. . .] We shall make a similar assertion with regard to the possibility that must of necessity precede everything that is generated. For this is only necessary in regard to this being that is stabilized—in this being everything that is generated, is generated from some being. But in the case of a thing created from nothing, neither the senses nor the intellect point to something that must be preceded by its possibility (Guide 2.17: 297).

According to Maimonides, the law that nothing is generated unless it is preceded by possibility found in matter only holds true after creation ex nihilo and is not an absolute law covering all conceivable existence. Thus

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God can create a world without there existing any substratum. The fact that Maimonides holds the view that there is an argument that rebuts the philosophic position on this issue raises the question of why he bothers to bring the argument of the Kalām against the philosophers and then reject their argument. Ostensibly Maimonides’ position is similar to the one they bring—namely, that there need not exist any matter supporting the possibility for creation, and it is sufficient that God as agent possesses the capacity to create. One may answer that Maimonides is critical of the Kalām because they were of the opinion that they were able to rebut the view of the philosophers based on the philosophers’ own principles. Maimonides shows that they failed in this regard. Maimonides’ own argument is not based on the principles of the philosophers, which he accepts, but upon a different principle—the difference between the laws of nature governing the world after it was formed and conceptual laws that necessarily characterize every activity, including divine activity. That everything generated must be preceded by a substratum that supports the possibility of generation is a physical law and not a logical one, in his view.37 Thus Maimonides’ argument against the philosophers is far different than the objection raised by the Kalām, despite a certain similarity between them. There is, however, the alternative of interpreting Maimonides as alluding here to an esoteric doctrine. By bringing the Kalām’s argument in Guide 2.14, which appears to be extraneous to the discussion since it belongs to his subsequent discussion and rejection of the philosophic arguments in chapter 17, Maimonides hints that he does not in fact accept the doctrine that he brings in chapter 13 and defends in chapter 17—namely, God’s ability to create the world ex nihilo. His rebuttal of the Kalām’s argument, which arouses no problems in the average reader, while subsequently presenting an argument which essentially supports a similar 37  One should also note that in Maimonides’ presentation of the philosophic position is Guide

2.14 he talks of the possibility in the agent if one posits creation, a point that he knows is conceptually impossible since no possibility can exist in God. This too is one of the arguments of the philosophers against creation. God’s activity must remain constant through eternity. Maimonides acknowledges that this indeed is a great difficulty that he proceeds to address in Guide 2.18, though in a manner that is not completely convincing. The distinction between natural impossibilities and conceptual possibilities underlies Maimonides’ discussion of the impossible in Guide 3.15.

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position as the one advanced by the Kalām when defending the traditional position, is the manner he signals to his more astute readers that he is not committed to the traditional view. My second example is one in which a certain philosophic position is rebutted by the author, but then the rebuttal itself is answered by the author, essentially allowing the philosophic position to stand. In 2.22, in the midst of his critique of the doctrine of emanation, Maimonides ridicules this doctrine by claiming that it leads to the disgraceful conclusion that, “it would follow that the deity, whom everyone who is intelligent recognizes to be perfect in every kind of perfection, could, as far as all the beings are concerned, produce nothing new in any of them; if He wished to lengthen a fly’s wing or to shorten a worm’s foot, He would not be able to do it” (p. 319). In short, the deity of the Aristotelian philosophers is completely impotent—certainly a conclusion that no one is prepared to accept. What is significant in this case is Maimonides’ next sentence, one in which he essentially undermines his own argument. “But Aristotle will say that He would not wish it and that it is impossible for Him to will something different from what is; that it would not add to His perfection but would perhaps from a certain point of view be a deficiency.” Maimonides does not proceed to rebut Aristotle’s counter-argument as we would expect him to do but allows Aristotle to have the last word on this matter, thereby subtly signaling his agreement with Aristotle’s position. Indeed, for Maimonides, God created the world in a perfect manner, so how could He wish to introduce any change, certainly any permanent change, in what he created, as Maimonides himself argues in 2.29.38 A third example of a possible allusion to an esoteric position on the issue of creation is a comment made in passing in 3.45 in his discussion of the reason for the image of two cherubim on the ark of the Law. Maimonides begins his discussion with the following remark: “It is known that the fundamental principle of belief in prophecy precedes the belief in the Law. For if there is no prophet, there can be no Law. The prophet receives prophetic revelation only through the intermediary of an angel. (p. 576).” Maimonides concludes: “Consequently it has been made clear 38   Maimonides indicates there that God may wish to introduce temporary changes, i.e. miracles,

for historical ends. His discussion in 2.22, however, appears to be dealing with the possibility of permanent changes.

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that belief in the existence of angels precedes the belief in prophecy and the belief in prophecy precedes the belief in the Law.” The question immediately arises of where in the picture one finds creation, which in Guide 2.25 was the basis for belief in the Law. This is exactly the point: one doesn’t. Belief in angels upon which prophecy and the Law are dependent, that is to say belief in Separate Intellects and the faculties of the soul of the prophet, is in harmony also with the doctrine of eternity. In short, one may believe in prophecy and the Law even if one does not believe in creation. Lest this point be completely lost on his readers, Maimonides repeats it in the continuation of his discussion: “Thus it has become clear through what we have stated before that the belief in the existence of angels is consequent upon the belief in the existence of the deity, and that thereby prophecy and the Law are established as valid [. . .] this correct opinion, coming in second place after the belief in the existence of the deity, constituting the originative principle of belief in prophecy and the Law, and refuting idolatry, as we have explained (p. 577).” Note that belief in angels does not simply supplement belief in creation in this context—it replaces it. No longer does creation come in second place after belief in the existence of the deity.39 This may an example of the seventh type of contradiction discussed by Maimonides in the introduction of his treatise: In speaking about very obscure matters it is necessary to conceal some parts and to disclose others. Sometimes in the case of certain dicta this necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of a certain premise, whereas in another place necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one. In such cases the vulgar must in no way be aware of the contradiction; the author accordingly uses some device to conceal it by all means (p. 18).

The contradiction in the case of basing the Law on belief in angels as opposed to basing it on the world’s creation is far from glaring, for belief in creation hardly contradicts belief in angels. The contradiction only becomes evident when one recalls that belief in angels (as Separate Intellects as well as the 39   Maimonides speaks specifically of creation following the unity of God. It appears that he treats

the existence and unity of God as essentially the same principle, though he divides them in his list of thirteen principles.

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forces of nature) is in harmony with the philosophic view of the eternity of the world. Thus one may claim that the missing premise upon which Maimonides bases his remarks on Guide 3.45 is that the world is eternal. In this case, one can summarize the seventh form of contradiction as follows: Sometimes in the case of certain dicta this necessity [to defend the religion] requires that the discussion [in Guide 2.25] proceed on the basis of a certain premise [the creation of the world], whereas in another place [Guide 3.45] necessity [to present the truths of speculation] requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one [the eternity of the world]. In such cases the vulgar must in no way be aware of the contradiction; the author accordingly uses some device to conceal it by all means [he plants in the course of his discussion of the reasons of the commandments a remark that is in harmony with the eternity of the world—namely, that belief in the existence of angels follows belief in God and is the basis for belief in the Law—in order to allude to his stance. The vulgar do not discern that the premise upon which his discussion is based contradicts the notion that the world is created].

A final example: as we have seen above, the most important theological reason that Maimonides advances for favoring the view that the world is created is that, “with a belief in the creation of the world in time, all the miracles become possible and the Law becomes possible, and all that may be asked on this subject vanish. Thus it might be said: Why did God give prophetic revelation to this one and not to that (Guide 2.25: 329)?” Following is a list of additional questions whose answers are ostensibly based on belief in creation, such as: “Why did God give this Law to this particular nation, and why did He not legislate to the others; why did He legislate at this particular time and why did He not legislate before it or after; why did He impose these commandments and these prohibitions [. . .].” The belief in creation allows one to answer all these questions in terms of a divine will that intervenes in history: “The answer to all these questions would be that it would be said: He wanted it this way or His wisdom required it this way (p. 329).” Yet in his discussion of prophecy immediately following his discussion of creation, Maimonides in effect answers the question of why God gives prophetic revelation to one rather than another by upholding a naturalistic model—one who has attained all the conditions for prophecy

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receives the prophetic emanation, and one who has not completed all the requirements does not. This suggests that a naturalistic model may also provide the answers to the other questions. Belief in creation is necessary for belief in the divine origin of the Law only in the case of the average believer, since his commitment to the Law hinges on viewing the revelation of the Law as a supernatural phenomenon. A Philosophic-Esotericist Reading of Maimonides’ Position on Creation

Despite the strength of Maimonides’ philosophic arguments in favor of creation, there appear to be a number of flaws in his reasoning. Flaws in a philosophic argument in themselves certainly do not indicate an esoteric position. I would like to point out at least one flaw, however, that seems to involve a contradiction in Maimonides’ own thought, hence perhaps signaling an esoteric position in accordance with the seventh form of contradiction. Maimonides’ version of the doctrine of particularization is different than the argument of Al-Ghazali against the philosophers in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, as Herbert Davidson has shown.40 Kenneth Seeskin has picked up on this point and elaborated upon it in Maimonides on the Origin of the World.41 In Al-Ghazali’s version, particularization of the poles around which the spheres revolve or their direction of motion is the result of an arbitrary will. God’s will is capable of choosing between two completely similar possibilities. Even according to the principles of the philosophers, according to Al-Ghazali, it would make no difference whatsoever if two other equidistant points were chosen, rather than the North and South Poles around which the spheres rotate, or if the highest sphere moved from West to East rather than from East to West, while the other spheres rotate in the opposite direction.42 Similarly,

40  Herbert Davidson, “Argument from the Concept of Particularization in Arabic Philosophy,”

Philosophy East and West 18 (1968): 299-314. 41  Pp. 127-143. 42  Al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Michael Marmura trans. (Provo, UT: Brigham

Young University Press, 2000), 1:48-64, 24-27.

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Al-Ghazali maintains that God can choose when to create a non-eternal world, though there is no difference between the possible moments of creation. Once I can establish that things are particularized without any reference to wisdom, that wisdom has no role at all to play in certain choices, I can establish a meaningful notion of divine volition. The very act of giving existence to the world, let alone when to give existence to the world, can be regarded as an arbitrary choice. There is no reason from the standpoint of wisdom to favor existence over non-existence. Maimonides does not go this route, a route which in a crucial sense may be a more convincing way to prove creation. Rather, Maimonides appears to treat all divine decisions as reflecting purpose, and I interpret the notion of “purpose” in Maimonides’ thought as an act reflecting the combination of wisdom and will.43 Indeed, Maimonides frequently introduces the notion of divine wisdom and not just will alone in dealing with the act of creation.44 Moreover, in 3.25 he treats all of God’s actions as good and excellent, namely, “that accomplished by an agent aiming at a noble end, I mean one that is necessary and useful, and achieves that end (p. 503).”45 Hence Maimonides feels that the direction and size of the spheres are not products of arbitrary will but of an unfathomable divine wisdom. Maimonides’ argument is that a carefully designed world in which all details have a purpose—that is to say, are the product of wisdom and will—can only be maintained if one regards such a world as being created. An eternal world is a necessary one, one in which all parts of heaven should be uniform, and not a world that reflects a wisdom guiding the will to act in a purposive—and not an arbitrary—manner by giving existence to the many different qualities possessed by the heavenly bodies in accordance with the divine purpose (Guide 2.19-21).46 Moreover, it appears that for

43   Guide 2.19; see Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World, 141-142. 44   Guide 2.18-19, 27, 29; 3.23, 25. 45   For a discussion of the concept “good” in Maimonides’ thought see my Maimonides’ Political

Philosophy (above, n. 21), 93-124. 46  Let me add parenthetically that even the details of the commandments are not arbitrary for

Maimonides, despite his statement to the contrary in Guide 3.26; see Joseph Stern, Problems and Parables of Law (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), 25-33.

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Maimonides the very act of choosing to create the world is a product of wisdom and not will alone, existence being preferable to non-existence.47 I find Maimonides’ reasons for dismissing the possibility of an eternal creation of such a world in accordance with divine purpose unconvincing. I do not see why the two propositions, 1) that the world always existed and 2) that it is the product of divine purpose, are treated by Maimonides as irreconcilable, in particularly in light of the otherness of divine wisdom and the activities resulting from it in Maimonides’ thought. Why must purpose necessarily precede action and not exist with it simultaneously? Let us recall that one of the criticisms Maimonides aims against Aristotle is that the eternity of divine wisdom does not necessitate the eternity of the world, since the unknowable divine wisdom may have regarded it as preferable to create a world having a temporal beginning (Guide 2.18).48 This argument, however, can be turned against Maimonides himself. The unknowable divine wisdom may have regarded it as preferable to create an eternal world according to the divine purpose. Eternal creation is certainly not a conceptual impossibility, so why dismiss this option? 49 Furthermore, if existence is preferable to non-existence from the standpoint of wisdom, the option to create an eternal world appears to be the preferable one, at least from a human perspective. Furthermore, if every divine choice is to Maimonides a product of wisdom, could God ever choose to act differently? Does not His very essence necessitate every choice? Only if we posit that there exist arbitrary choices, and that the very purpose underlying the creation of the world as we know it is such a choice, can we escape this dilemma. Yet Maimonides, as I have argued, does not appear to accept the existence of arbitrary choices—

47   Maimonides’ position on the purpose of the existence of the world in its entirety is ambiguous.

He concludes Guide 3:13: “When man knows his own soul [. . .] his thoughts are not troubled by seeking a final end for what has not that final end; or by seeking any final end for what has no final end except its own existence, which depends on the divine will—if you prefer you can also say: on the divine wisdom (456).” Maimonides may be interpreting in saying that existence is a final end in itself and the choice between existence and non-existence is not between similar possibilities from the perspective of divine wisdom. 48   For the inscrutability of divine wisdom see also Guide 3.23. 49  Among later Jewish philosophers, Hasdai Crescas treats the doctrines of divine will and creation

ex nihilo as in harmony with the doctrine of the eternity of the world. See Or Ha-Shem 3.1.5.

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all divine actions are good and excellent in reference to their ends and not only to their means (Guide 3.25), even if we do not always fathom the wisdom underlying them. In short, we have arrived at the conclusion that God could never act differently than He does, He cannot arbitrarily choose either to will or not will something, for He can never act contrary to wisdom and all choices are the product of divine wisdom. Though Maimonides at times speaks of divine choices and God’s ability to act in different ways,50 these “choices” appear to be purely theoretical and can never be actualized. The Aristotelian philosophers are accused by Maimonides of ascribing necessity to God by positing eternal creation (Guide 2.21), yet the necessity of creating a non-eternal world is the conclusion to which Maimonides’ argument leads. The way out of this dilemma is to posit that necessity and volition are not necessarily contradictory terms, and an act can be from a certain perspective necessary while from another volitional.51 If this is the case, the obstacle to positing eternal creation is removed—the act of creating an eternal world is necessarily mandated by divine wisdom, yet at the same time is a voluntary act not caused by any reasons external to God. As I have already noted, a philosophic flaw in the argument in itself hardly points to an esoteric position. Contradictions in Maimonides’ stance, however, may. In this case we can certainly point to what looks like a contradiction. Maimonides argues, as we have seen, that what is eternal and not changing is necessary, and necessary and volition are mutually exclusive. This argument appears to be based on the Aristotelian principle that what is possible must be realized in the course of eternity.52 Yet does Maimonides consistently maintain this position? The answer is no. Consider Maimonides’ position in regard to the destruction of the world. In 2.27 he writes: “However, in view of our claim, based on the Law, that things exist and perish according to His will, may He be exalted, and not in virtue of necessity, it is not necessary for us to profess that when He,

50   See, for example, Guide 2.17: “And its Creator may, if He wishes to do so, render it [the world]

entirely and absolutely nonexistent (p. 297).” 51   See for example Hasdai Crescas’ discussion of human volition in Or Ha-Shem 2.5.5. 52   See Physics 3. 4, 203b; Metaphysics 9. 4, 1074b; cf. Guide 2.1 (third proof for the existence of

God).

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may He be exalted, brings into existence a thing that had not existed, He must necessarily cause this existent to pass away. Rather does the matter inevitably depend on His will: if He wills, He causes the thing to pass away; and if He wills, He causes it to last; or it depends on what is required by His wisdom. It is accordingly possible that He should cause it to last for ever and ever and to endure as He Himself, may He be exalted, endures (pp. 332-333).” The argument at first glance is a simple one. The Aristotelian natural principle that what is generated must also pass away53 does not hold in the case of the passing away of the world. Its continuous existence is due to divine will and not natural necessity, just as is the case with its creation. But this leaves us with the strange conclusion that what is eternal—namely the existence a parte post of the world—is not necessary but the product of volition. Or let us formulate Maimonides’ position in a slightly different manner: God could destroy the world but He never will. This certainly sounds like another way for saying that the eternal existence of the world is necessary. Isn’t that what Maimonides maintained in reference to the eternity a parte ante of the world? If in regard to the future existence of the world eternity does not exclude volition, how can Maimonides deny that this is not also the case with the past existence of the world? There is yet another passage where Maimonides treats an eternal action as the product of choice and not necessity. In his description of the spheres and Separate Intellects in 2:7 he writes: “[. . .] they apprehend their acts and have will and free choice (irada wa-’ikhtiyar) with regard to the governance committed to them, just as we have will (irada) with regard to that which from the foundation of our existence has been committed to us and given over to our power. Only we sometimes do things that are more defective than other things, and our actions are preceded by privations; whereas the intellects and the spheres are not like that, but always do that which is good (p. 266).” In short, volition on one hand and acting through eternity in the same manner without change in accordance with wisdom on the other hand, are not regarded by Maimonides as mutually exclusive propositions. Again we may ask, why does Maimonides subsequently argue differently when it comes to the origin of the world? There seems to be different definitions of will and volition at the heart of Maimonides’ 53   Maimonides brings this principle also in Guide 2.14.

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different discussions,54 not all of them contradicting the notion of the willful creation of a world without beginning. Conclusion

The problems and even contradictions in Maimonides’ argument on behalf of creation that I have pointed out are probably not insurmountable, and they should certainly not obscure the fact that Maimonides does present an excellent defense of creation. So why was Maimonides so philosophically ingenious in his defense of creation, if he did not really favor this doctrine from the standpoint of speculative truth? Perhaps he was interested in making an exceptional effort in hiding his esoteric position on this issue, given his perception of the religious stakes involved. It was important for him to provide his co-religionists with good philosophical reasons to adopt creation in order to strengthen their commitment to the religious tradition. In short, what better defense against the philosophers can there be than by showing that their position not only conflicts with religion but also with philosophic reasoning, even if secretly Maimonides favored the philosophic position and felt that all the salient doctrines of tradition could be understood in accordance with the philosophic world view. At any rate, I think that the esotericist can only hope to show that there are valid reasons for adopting this type of interpretation of Maimonides’ treatise in regard to the issue of creation, even if none of the arguments when taken individually are absolutely convincing. Given the strength of Maimonides’ explicit defense of creation, that in itself is no small task.

54   For a detailed study of the two terms Maimonides uses for divine will—irāda and mašhī’ya—

and the significance of his usage for the understanding of his philosophy, see Avraham Nuriel, “The Divine Will in More Nevukhim” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 39 (1970): 39-61 [reprinted in Nuriel, Concealed and Revealed in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 41-63].

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Appendix The Platonic View of Creation from Eternal Matter and an Esotericist Reading of Maimonides

In his article “Maimonides’ Secret Position on Creation,”55 Herbert Davidson argues against the esotericist interpretation of Maimonides. He indicates, however, that if one is prone to adopt an esotericist interpretation, it is far easier to defend the view that Maimonides agrees with the Platonic position of creation from eternal matter rather than with the Aristotelian position. In his latest book, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, Joel Kraemer accepts this interpretation.56 There is much merit in the claim that the hints to Maimonides’ acceptance of the Platonic position are more manifest than his hints to the Aristotelian one. In 2.13 he classifies the Platonic position with the Aristotelian one, arguing: “For they believe in eternity; and there is in our opinion no difference between those who believe that heaven must of necessity be generated from a thing and pass away into a thing or the belief of Aristotle who believed that it is not subject to generation and corruption. For the purpose of every follower of the Law of Moses and Abraham our Father or of those who go the way of these two is to believe that there is nothing eternal in any way at all existing simultaneously with God (p. 285).” While refraining from discussing the Platonic position in the following chapters, in 2.25 he adopts a different position altogether on how he views creation from eternal matter: “For if creation in time were demonstrated—if only as Plato understands creation—all the overhasty claims made to us on this point by the philosophers would become void. In the same way, if the philosophers would succeed in demonstrating eternity as 55   See above, n. 10. 56  New York: Doubleday, 2008, 382-387; see also 576-577, n. 153. Alfred Ivry argues that

Maimonides accepts a Neoplatonized version of the Platonic view on this issue rather the Neoplatonized version of Aristotle’s view; see Ivry, “Maimonides on Creation” [Hebrew], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 9 (1990): 115-137.

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Aristotle understands it, the Law as a whole would become void, and a shift to other opinions would take place (p. 330).”57 Rather than identifying Plato’s position with Aristotle, in that they both posit something coeternal with God, he now identifies Plato’s position with the position of the Law in that they both ascribe volition to God. Maimonides goes on in the next chapter to suggest that Rabbi Eliezer may have accepted the Platonic view, thereby showing that this view apparently had the sanction of a leading rabbinic authority. Maimonides’ explicit position in 2.32 that prophecy is a perfection that God can miraculously withhold from the worthy individual most closely corresponds to the Platonic position that combines naturalism with divine voluntarism. One may add that some of Maimonides’ allusions mentioned above to the eternity of the world can be viewed as being as much a support of the Platonic position as of the Aristotelian one. Several approaches may be adopted in dealing with the problem of why Maimonides appears to hint to two different positions regarding the world’s eternity while explicitly upholding the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. One is to dismiss altogether the view that he favored the Aristotelian position. As we have seen, most of the allusions to his acceptance of Aristotle’s view are exceptionally subtle and, it may be argued, originate in the mind of the interpreter rather than reflect Maimonides’ true intent. His hints to Plato’s view, on the other hand, are more evident. The Neoplatonized version of Aristotle’s view, which posits the emanation of matter from incorporeal being, was particularly problematic from a philosophic perspective, perhaps not less than the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The doctrine of creation from eternal matter at least avoids this particular difficulty. Another approach is to ascribe to Maimonides a quasi-skeptical position on this issue. He tended to accept the philosophers’ view that matter must be eternal, but debated between the Aristotelian and Platonic positions. His hints to both views allude to his uncertainty on this question. A further approach, the one which I favor, is to view Maimonides as incorporating in his treatise levels of esotericism. He hints to both the Platonic and Aristotelian positions because of the common denominator between these positions—an incorporeal God cannot create matter. He

57  There is an interesting parallel between Maimonides’ statement and the position voiced by

Judah Halevi in Kuzari 1.67.

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provides more overt hints to the Platonic position insofar as it is a less problematic position from the standpoint of the masses’ belief in the Law, while avoiding the major difficulty with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In short, it is a good compromise position for those readers who would find the Aristotelian position too radical, too greatly opposed to tradition, yet at the same time are disturbed by the traditional position from a philosophic perspective. For this reason Maimonides employs a more moderate esotericism in alluding to it.58 Hence, while he favors the Aristotelian position, his hints to this position are far more subtle, to be grasped only by the most elite readers, because of its potential harm to the average believer. Of course one may argue that there is another alternative, the exoteric reading of Maimonides, but as I have tried to show there are many good reasons for questioning this reading.

58   For the notion of different levels of exotericism/esotericism in Maimonides’ Guide see Sarah

Klein-Braslavy, “Maimonides’ Exoteric and Esoteric Biblical Interpretation in the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. Kreisel (above, n.1), 137-164; Lawrence Kaplan, “Monotonically Decreasing Esotericism and the Purpose of The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Maimonides after 800 Years, ed. Jay Harris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 135-150.

M a imonides

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Ke nne t h See sk in

Let me begin with a methodological assumption. The only way to determine Maimonides’ view of creation is to evaluate the strengths (or weaknesses) of his arguments. Here I am in substantial agreement with Herbert Davidson, who said we can imagine a philosopher presenting bad or sophistic arguments on behalf of a position he does not hold.1 (In my view, Plato does this in the Protagoras, when he has Socrates argue that virtue is a matter of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.)2 But it is hard to see why a philosopher would present good and in some cases ingenious arguments in defense of something he regarded as false. So I take my task to be assessing what Maimonides says in light of the evidence at his disposal. It should be clear to anyone who has studied the arguments that the term creation is ambiguous. Let me therefore distinguish between creation de novo (huduth) and creation ex nihilo. By creation de novo, I mean that there is a first moment of time or a moment that initiates time. Put otherwise, creation de novo maintains that the universe is finitely many years old. Pines translated huduth as creation “in time,” but this is misleading because it suggests there was time both before and after the moment of creation. As Maimonides remarks several times in Guide 1.13, time is an accident consequent on motion; hence the idea of a time before the first motion is incoherent. 1  Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides’ Secret Position on Creation,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish

History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 38-40. 2  Note, however, that Plato offers ample evidence in other dialogues to show that Socrates was

not a hedonist. The purpose of the argument in the Protagoras is to show that the many are inconsistent if they accept hedonism and the possibility of akrasia. By implication, Protagoras is inconsistent if he thinks he is simply giving voice to the view of the many.

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By creation ex nihilo, I mean that God alone is a sufficient cause for the existence of the universe so that no other force or factor, in particular no material cause, is needed. Creation ex nihilo does not mean that God mysteriously transforms nothing into something. The whole point of this view is that creation is a unique act, not a change or transformation. As I read the alternatives presented at Guide 1.13, the Mosaic view is committed to a creation that is both de novo and ex nihilo, the Platonic view to a creation that is de novo, the Aristotelian view to neither. Another way to understand the Aristotelian view is to say that it is committed to an eternal world whose structure is explained by the continuous information of matter through a process of emanation. Such emanation is not the result of a divine decision as we normally understand the term part but follows by metaphysical necessity. I Maimonides’ arguments regarding creation take two forms: the first group tries that show that the creation of the world de novo is possible.3 The second group tries to show that based on everything we know, the creation of the world de novo is the best explanation of the evidence we have. I take it as uncontroversial that even if these arguments are valid, Maimonides would not have demonstrated creation de novo.4 All he would have done is show that it is a reasonable alternative, and in a best-case scenario, the most likely one. It could be said therefore that the burden of proof on this issue rests with Maimonides’ opponents, for they have to show that the creation of the world de novo is impossible, that it constitutes a logical or metaphysical 3 

See, for example, Guide 2.13:281. All quotations from the Guide are taken from the Pines translation of Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). The reason “creation in time” is misleading is that according to Maimonides, time is an accident of motion, and motion is an accident of what is moved. It follows that if there were a first motion, there would have to be a first instant of time, which is to say an instant with no time before it. Cf. 2.13: 282: “Hence God’s bringing the world into existence does not have a temporal beginning.”

4 

Sarah Klein Braslavy argues that, because none of Maimonides’ arguments meets the standard of demonstration, he settled for a skeptical epoche. See “The Creation of the World and Maimonides’ Interpretation of Gen. I-IV,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiahu Yovel. (Dordrecht: Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), 65-71.

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absurdity. By the same token, those who think Maimonides rejected creation de novo have a similar burden of proof, for they have to show that he regarded it as a logical or metaphysical absurdity. To the best of my knowledge, no one has met either burden. Let us now ask what these arguments are. At Guide 2.14, Maimonides divides them between arguments derived from the nature of the world and arguments derived from the nature of God. I will take the arguments derived from the nature of the world first. In assessing them, we encounter an inference whose implausibility is hard to miss: we can infer something about the origin of the world by observing how it is at present. Put otherwise: If there is no evidence of creation de novo in the things we observe, the creation de novo of the world as a whole is impossible. Here in abbreviated form are those arguments: (1) It is impossible for motion to come to be or pass away, because if there were a first motion, there would have to be another motion prior to the first motion. Therefore the idea of a first motion is absurd. This argument assumes that motion requires an agent and a patient. If there were a first motion, something would have to rouse the agent of that motion into activity. The act of doing so would involve a motion prior to the first motion; hence the absurdity. (2) Prime matter is not subject to generation or corruption because if it were generated, it would have to be produced out of something prior to prime matter, which is absurd. Therefore prime matter is eternal. (3) Heavenly matter has no contrary because its nature is to move in a circle. If it has no contrary, it cannot be generated or destroyed. (4) Everything that is generated must have the possibility of generation prior to the act of generation. What substratum accounts for the possibility of its generation? Assuming that the universe was created de novo, there could be no such substratum. Maimonides’ response to all four arguments is to say, correctly in my opinion, that they assume the principles that explain the origin of a thing are the same as those that explain its current or perfected state. In philosophic terms, they assume creation is a species of change and therefore must involve a transition from potency to act. But, Maimonides insists, we have been given no reason to think this is so, and contrary to Aristotle, experience suggests it is not: the form an animal assumes when it has grown up is often very different from the circumstances of its conception

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or gestation. Thus nothing we have been given prevents us from saying that creation is a unique event. If it is, nothing prevents us from saying that while prime matter cannot be generated in Aristotle’s sense of the term, it can be created. The arguments derived from the nature of God involve another assumption whose implausibility is hard to miss: that we know enough about the nature of God to make these arguments work. Students of Maimonides will recognize that in his opinion, all we can know is that God is, not what God is. This was not true for Aristotle, who lists multiple attributes of God without the slightest hesitation (Metaphysics 1072b 23-29). Again in abbreviated form, the arguments are as follows: (5) If God created the world de novo, then God must have gone from potency into act. For any number of reasons, this is impossible. (6) An agent acts at one time rather than another due to impediments or incentives. Because neither applies to God, the idea that God created the world de novo is absurd. (7) If God is perfect, anything God makes must be perfect. If the world is perfect of its kind, and serves no purpose beyond itself, it must be eternal. Likewise, if God’s wisdom is eternal, and the world was created from God’s wisdom, the world must be eternal as well. (8) How could God be idle at one minute and active at another? In fact, how could God be idle at all? Beyond these arguments, there is a further consideration: all people affirm the eternity of the heavens. Although these arguments derive from Proclus rather than Aristotle, they are all based on the assumption that the effect must resemble the cause. Maimonides states this assumption at 2.22:317: “Any thing at random does not proceed from any other thing at random, but there subsists necessarily a certain conformity between the cause and its effect.” If causal similarity in this sense is true, from the fact that God is active and eternal, it would follow that the world must be active and eternal as well. Maimonides’ strategy for answering these arguments is to say that the similarity that obtains between cause and effect need not obtain between an act of will and the object willed in the act. Recall that according to 2.18:301, the nature of the will is that it can either will or not will. This means that unlike a normal cause, the will does not have to issue in a predetermined result: it can either accept or

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reject. More specifically, it can select a particular option from a range of alternatives. I vainly wish Maimonides had said more about this subject than he does. Nevertheless, the point he seems to be making is sound. Unlike a normal cause, the will can be present and active and the effect delayed: it is possible to will today to do something tomorrow, or next month, or next year. By the same token, a single act of will—say, the intention to write a book—can result in multiple effects over a long period of time. At 2.22:319, Maimonides sums up his position by saying that questions of particularity do not affect those who believe in will but do affect those who think everything happens by necessity. In other words, free will is the source of particularity. These arguments allow Maimonides to suggest—I emphasize that it is only a suggestion—a further distinction, made famous by Thomas Aquinas, between willing change and changing one’s will.5 The purport of this distinction is that only the latter implies imperfection in God. Had God willed to do one thing and changed his mind when new circumstances presented themselves, absurdity would result. But there is no absurdity in saying that God willed eternally for the world to go through different epochs. Here too we must be careful with the burden of proof. Maimonides is not saying, nor could he say, that he knows for certain that God exercises free will. That would take him well beyond the limits of negative theology. All he is saying is that it is possible God does. If it is possible, arguments 5-8 do not constitute a demonstration either singly or collectively. It is, I submit, difficult to see how Maimonides could have thought otherwise, given his repeated insistence that a philosopher of Aristotle’s ability could not fail to have appreciated what constitutes a demonstration and what does not.6 This insistence is of a piece with Maimonides’ earlier claim (1.31:66) that “in all things whose true reality is known through demonstration there is no tug of war and no refusal to accept a thing proven” unless one is an ignoramus. As he reminds us, philosophers have been debating creation and eternity for thousands of years (1.71:180). 5  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1. 46.1. 6 

See, for example, 2.15: 291.

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II That takes us to arguments for the likelihood of creation. Here Maimonides makes repeated use of the Argument from Particularity. Why, the argument asks, are things this way rather than that?7 Maimonides indicates that for some things—why did this leaf fall from the tree before that one?—there is no reason to expect science to give an answer because science deals with regularities.8 But there is every reason to think science ought to be able to explain planetary orbits, whose regularity is well known. The problem is that we have regularity with no available explanation and no real hope of finding one. More specifically, we have the problem of explaining the diversity of the celestial spheres, the direction of their rotation, and the speed of their rotation. Given the obvious starting point for medieval astronomy—different movements imply different forms—we can conclude that while the matter of the celestial spheres is one, as shown by the fact that all move in a circular fashion, their specific forms are different, since some rotate from east to west while others rotate from west to east. Since the matter of the stars and planets is fixed in that of the celestial sphere in which they are situated, one type of matter moves because it is carried around by something else, while the other type moves by itself. This leads Maimonides to conclude that there must be two types of celestial matter (2.19:309): one for the star and one for the sphere. If so, how can one type be attached to another and not mix with it? Given that the matter of the sphere is everywhere the same, why are the stars and planets attached to their respective spheres at one point rather than another? And why are certain stretches of the sphere of the fixed stars heavily populated while others are relatively empty? Indeed, why are there multiple spheres at all? If God is one and simple, and if the spheres proceed from God by necessity, how do we get from a unitary cause to a plurality of effects, given that “It is impossible that anything but a single simple thing should proceed from a simple thing”

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For a helpful discussion of this argument, see Seymour Feldman, “‘In the Beginning God Created’: A Philosophical Midrash,” in God and Creation: An Ecumenical Symposium, ed. by David Burrell and Bernard McGinn (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 3-26.

8 

Guide 3.17:471.

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(1.22:317). According to Aristotelian principles, the only thing God could produce is another simple thing, and the only thing that could proceed from that is yet another simple thing, so that even if there were a thousand steps in the process of emanation, everything should be simple—a conclusion plainly at variance with the facts. Again what the Aristotelians lack is a source of particularity, which Maimonides locates in the will. Beyond these difficulties, there is the fact that some spheres rotate faster than others. For example, the spheres of the planets rotate faster than the sphere of the fixed starts. To make matters worse, while there are nine primary spheres, there had to be over forty secondary spheres to account for the specific motion of the planets. What causes one sphere to receive one form and another sphere to receive a different one? As Maimonides points out, Aristotle and his followers are stuck with facts that do not seem to have any reason or purpose. It is not just the diversity of the spheres that poses a problem but the specifics of their movement. Since each sphere imparts motion to the one below it, it would be natural to suppose that the closer one gets to earth, the slower is the rotation. But experience confirms that this is not the case. As Maimonides observes (2.19:307): “We see that in the case of some spheres, the swifter of motion is above the slower; that in the case of others, the slower of motion is above the swifter; and that, again in another case, the motions of the spheres are of equal velocity though one be above the other. There are also other very grave matters if regarded from the point of view that these things are as they are in virtue of necessity.” In addition to the velocity of celestial motion, there is also the question of its direction. Why does it often appear to reverse itself with one sphere moving in the opposite direction of the one directly above it? The need for reverse movement, or what Aristotle (Metaphysics 1073b381074a5) called a “counteracting sphere,” can be understood if we recognize that the retrograde motion of every planet is unique to it.9 Thus the secondary spheres needed to explain the motion of Saturn must be reversed when we start to explain the motion of Jupiter, and Jupiter’s reversed when we start to explain the motion of Mars. In all, 22 counteracting spheres 9 

For further comment, see Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 12001687 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 275-277, as well as D. R. Dicks, Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 199-201.

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were needed for Aristotle’s system to work. Reverse motion is all the more difficult to explain given the belief that there is no space or vacuum between one sphere and another. In effect, they are like the layers of an onion. The problem is that the various layers seem to change direction for no good reason. Finally there is the question of why the fixed stars do not exhibit retrograde motion, the planets do, and the sun and moon, which according to Aristotle are closest to the earth, also do not. Maimonides considers Aristotle’s suggestion that the particularity exhibited by the spheres can be accounted for by the separate intellects with one intellect assigned to each sphere, but he responds by saying that the separate intellects are of no help on this matter. Since the intellects are not bodies, they have no spatial position relative to the sphere with which they are connected. It is then hard to see why desire for one intellect would result in motion from east to west at one speed while desire for another would result in motion from west to east at another. With his usual respect for Aristotle, Maimonides claims (2.22:320) that he himself realized that his account of the heavens is weak and makes reference to “grave incongruities and perversities that manifestly and clearly appear as such to all the nations.”10 As Maimonides recognizes, there is always the possibility that someone will come up with an explanation of phenomena that now seem puzzling (2.24:327). We should keep in mind, however, that he says this in a context that assumes part of the Aristotelian theory is true: namely the account of natural motion, which rules out epicycles or eccentric orbits. To explain what is puzzling one would have to retain the idea of natural motion and account for all the phenomena mentioned above. I think it is relevant to say that not only did no one succeed in doing so, but that to this day, no one has come close. We may conclude that Maimonides’ skepticism about astronomy was perfectly justified given the tools he had to work with. Citing Psalm 115:16 (“The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath He given to the sons of man”), he concludes that only God knows the nature, substance, motions, and causes of the heavenly bodies and that they are too far away and too high in place or rank for us to agree on assumptions from which conclusions can be drawn.

10   For Aristotle’s comments on the uncertain nature of astronomy, see De Caelo 286a4-7, 291b25-

28, 292a14-18, as well as Metaphysics 1074a14-16.

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All of this leads Maimonides to say (3.13, 452): “What exists, its causes, and its effects, could be different from what they are.” Put otherwise, the world that we inhabit does not present itself as a system governed by strict necessity but as a system in which, for all we know, things might have been different. Needless to say, the move from this to will and purpose in nature is fraught with peril. The best Maimonides can claim is that will and purpose are compatible with contingency but not with necessity. But remember: this is not a proof for the certainty of creation, only its likelihood. Given everything we know, it is more likely that nature exhibits will and purpose than that it does not. If so, creation is more likely than eternity. If there is an error in this reasoning—an error that a subtle reader is supposed to pick up—I fail to see what it is. Medieval astronomy was as speculative and as doubtful as Maimonides indicates. Copernicus was a long way off, and no one could have predicted that astronomy would change as radically as it did. If Maimonides was committed to an eternal world, then somewhere in the Guide there ought to be indications of how the arguments presented in chapters 2.19-2.24 are to be answered. Where are they? My reason for asking this question is to suggest that Maimonides’ skepticism about astronomy is much easier to reconcile with belief in creation than it is with belief in eternity. If he wished to defend eternity, he would have to answer the Argument from Particularity—at least as applied to the motions of the heavenly bodies. But nowhere are the outlines of such an answer given. III Let us now take up the Platonic alternative.11 We saw that this represents a compromise between the extremes represented by Moses and Aristotle. Insofar as it accepts creation de novo, it is compatible with the

11   In addition to Davidson n. 1, see Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides on Creation,” in Creation and

the End of Days, ed. Norbert Samuelson and David Novak (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), 185-213; Norbert Samuelson, “Maimonides’ Doctrine of Creation,” Harvard Theological Review, 84 (1991): 249-71, Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and Works of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. (New York: Doubleday. 2008), 382-387. For a medieval version of this alternative, see Raphael Jospe, Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Sem Tov Ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1988), 156 ff.

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claim that the world exhibits will and purpose. As Maimonides indicates (2.25), it also makes good sense of many obscure passages in the Torah and elsewhere. It was obviously the interpretation that Rashi preferred. Maimonides allows is as a second best. The question is whether behind this admission there is reason to think he actually prefers it. From a textual standpoint, there is no reason to think Maimonides followed Rashi by rendering the opening lines of Genesis as “When God was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was unformed and void . . .” On the contrary, he takes the opening line as: “In the beginning [bereshit], God created what is high and what is low.” The chief difficulty with the Platonic alternative is philosophic. Did God need a material substratum to bring the world into being, or is God a sufficient cause for the world’s existence by Himself? The internal logic of monotheism suggests the latter. We can see this by asking what the nature of this substratum is. If it is eternal and exists independently of God, it would have to contain an infinite amount of power in order to sustain itself in existence forever. If it contained an infinite amount of power, it would either rival God or in some deeply esoteric sense be God. The alternative is to say, as Maimonides does at 2.13 when characterizing the Platonic view of creation, that God is the cause of its existence. Creation, then, would be a two-step process: God would be the eternal cause of the material substratum and the cause de novo of the order of the world. Although there is no logical absurdity in affirming this, two points need to be emphasized. First, the Platonic alternative overlooks the point established at 2.14: that there is no reason to think creation is a species of chance. The changes we witness—cold to hot, wet to dry, healthy to sick—all involve a material cause. But Maimonides has gone to great pains to argue that creation may be different. Second, if God is the cause of the material substratum and the order of the world, then we are back to maintaining that God alone is a sufficient cause for everything that exists. In short, the Platonic alternative, when examined closely, runs the risk of collapsing into creation ex nihilo. So once again, Maimonides is being straightforward with his reader: the Platonic alternative is a possible option, but not the best option.

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IV When I wrote Maimonides on the Origin of the World, 12 I made a big mistake for which I could kick myself—hard: I failed to send a draft to Roslyn Weiss asking for comments. In any case, Roslyn recently published a review of my book, showing that I had failed to answer a number of objections and thus failed to relieve all doubts.13 So, with Roslyn’s help, let me try to do a better job. The first objection points out that Maimonides bases his arguments for the existence and unity of God at Guide 1.71, pp. 180-181, on the assumption that the world is eternal. Note however that the passage occurs in a context where Maimonides is trying to distance himself from the Mutakallimun, who thought they could establish God’s existence by first proving creation. The strategy is simple: if creation occurred, there must be a creator. Maimonides insists, however, that no demonstration of creation is available. So any proof of God’s existence that assumes creation is doubtful. He goes on to say that he will side with the philosophers and prove God’s existence by assuming eternity. True, the philosophers’ proof is more rigorous than that of the Mutakallimun, but it would be a mistake to think Maimonides was completely satisfied with it either. In fact, he indicates that the full scope of his arguments is as follows: Creation implies the existence of God. Eternity implies the existence of God. Therefore God exists. Later, at 2.2:252, he is more explicit: God exists “regardless of whether the world has come into being in time . . . or whether it has not come into being in time . . .” Maimonides is clear that for the purposes of this proof, eternity is a hypothesis (p. 239), not an established fact. Later (p. 245), he continues to refer to a believer in eternity as an adversary. There is nothing fishy about this procedure. For example, it has long been noted that of Aquinas’ five proofs for God’s existence, the third assumes the eternity of the world even though Aquinas himself regards creation de novo as an article of faith. While Aquinas’ predilections do not

12   Kenneth Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World (Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2005). 13  Weiss, Roslyn, “Review of Maimonides on the Origin of the World,” Journal of the American

Academy of Religion, 75, no. 3 (2007): 736-739.

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clinch the case for creation in Maimonides, they do show that Maimonides’ strategy for establishing God’s existence was a common one. This is consistent with Maimonides’ saying at 1.71 that the reason he is assuming eternity is not that he believes it or because he wants to concede it to the philosophers. If the only way to prove the existence of God were to assume eternity, then all the arguments Maimonides offers against eternity at 2.14-24 would also count as arguments against God’s existence. And if this were so, there is every reason to think Maimonides would have done something to show they can be answered. But again I ask: where does he do this? The second objection points out that when Maimonides sums up his position at 2.25, he does not say we should accept creation because the stronger argument supports it. Instead he says we should accept it because eternity destroys the foundation of the Law. My answer is that 2.25 is intended for those unable to understand astronomy and metaphysical causality and therefore deals with creation from a practical standpoint. If you don’t accept creation, how can you accept the idea of commandment? Obviously this is not Maimonides’ strongest argument, and it is noteworthy that he does not devote much space to it. By contrast, when discussing the theoretical implications of creation at 2.19:303, he said that the Argument from Particularity comes close to being a demonstration. This would be an unusually strong endorsement for something he does not believe. Later at 2.30:349, he says that he supports the reading of bereshit that is compatible with creation. Even at 2.25, he maintains (a) that the eternity of the world has not been demonstrated, and (b) that if the world were eternal, one would have to ask the questions raised by the Argument from Particularity, and concludes that there would be no way to avoid them “except through a recourse to unseemly answers . . .” The third and fourth objections have to do with the external sense of Scripture. If, as Maimonides says, creation de novo and ex nihilo is the external sense of Scripture, does this not provide strong evidence that he rejected them? This is, I admit, a sticky problem. Much of the Guide is a polemic against taking the external sense of Scripture as the true meaning. At 2.17:298, Maimonides says that when it comes to creation, Scripture must not be taken in its external sense. But at 2.25:329, as Roslyn points out, he says he will take it in its external sense. What is going on? Here I follow Pines (p. 298, n. 8) in holding that when Maimonides says

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he is not going to take Scripture in its external sense, he is referring to the idea that creation is a temporal act, meaning an act with a beginning, middle, and end, that is supposed to take place over six days. If, as Maimonides insists, time is an accident consequent on motion, this is impossible. This point comes out clearly at 2.30:350, where Maimonides claims that everything in heaven and earth was created simultaneously. I take this to mean that, contrary to the impression one might get by reading Scripture literally, creation is a unique act that constitutes the origin of time and cannot be measured by time. This is perfectly compatible with saying that creation is both de novo and ex nihilo. In fact, it follows from any reasonable interpretation of what is meant by de novo. I believe my interpretation is strengthened by Maimonides’ comment at 2.29:346, where he says: “Not everything mentioned in the Torah concerning the Account of the Beginning is to be taken in its external sense as the vulgar imagine.” “Not everything” does not mean “nothing.” In other words, this comment leaves open the possibility that some part of the Account of the Beginning is to be taken in its external sense. The fifth objection asks how we would know the secret views of the Torah unless we studied physics and metaphysics. Put otherwise, we need physics and metaphysics to guide us or else we will wind up attributing patent nonsense to Scripture. Why, then, should we expect Scripture to teach us about the truth of creation? The answer is that we should not allow Scripture to teach us about the truth of creation if that means allowing it to trump physics and metaphysics. But this is clearly not Maimonides’ strategy. The thrust of his critique of physics and metaphysics is not that they violate Scripture— remember that the gates of figurative interpretation are not shut—but (1) they have not produced a demonstration of eternity, and (2) they have not given us adequate scientific explanations of planetary motion according to their own understanding of science. In other words, they have failed on their own terms by replacing demonstration with (2.22:320) “something analogous to guessing and conjecturing.” Were they to succeed on their own terms, Maimonides would have no choice but to follow them. In addition to the objections raised by Roslyn, there is one part of my interpretation that strikes even me as problematic. Maimonides is notorious for claiming (1.51:113):

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There is no oneness at all except in believing that there is one simple essence in which there is no complexity or multiplicity of notions, but one notion only; so that from whatever angle you regard it and from whatever point of view you consider it, you will find that it is one, not divided in any way and by any cause into two notions; and you will not find therein any multiplicity either in the thing as it is outside of the mind or as it is in the mind . . .

If this is true, there cannot be a distinction in God between will and wisdom. In most cases, Maimonides refers to divine will when emphasizing particularity, and divine wisdom when emphasizing the order and structure of the world.14 As he sees it, neither the Aristotelians, who ignore will, nor the Mutakallimun, who ignore wisdom, are right. His compromise is that God does exercise choice, but that choice is never arbitrary in the sense of having no purpose or justification. In some passages (e.g. 3.13:456), he refers to will and wisdom as being essentially the same. Maimonides’ lack of precision on this issue opens the way for someone to argue, as Spinoza did, that God must will everything he knows.15 If this is true, and every possibility in God’s mind is actualized, it is hard to see how God could exercise a choice and thus account for particularity. After all, the crux of my interpretation is that God chose this rather than that. It is not my intention to minimize the philosophic difficulties Maimonides has created for himself. The problem of how will and wisdom are related in God is real, and few people would argue that he provides us with a neat solution. My claim is simply that he saw the world as neither arbitrary nor necessitated. Where does all this get us? In my view, it puts Maimonides in the enviable position of being both respectful and critical of the material at his disposal. He respects physics and metaphysics when they succeed as science. When they can produce a demonstration, no appeal to prophetic or rabbinic authority can overturn them. But Maimonides is critical enough 14  Examples of the former are 2.21:316, and 3.13:452-54. Examples of the latter are 3.25:505,

and 3.26:506. 15   Spinoza, Ethics 1, Prop. 33, sch. 2. A similar point is made by Warren Zev Harvey in “A Third

Approach to Maimonides’ Cosmogony-Prophetology Puzzle,” in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Joseph A Buijs. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 77.

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to realize that they cannot produce a demonstration on every question they set for themselves; hence his remark that philosophers have been debating creation for over three thousand years. By the same token, Scripture is for Maimonides a source of truth. The problem is that identifying that truth can be a difficult and time-consuming process. In either case, there is then no short-cut to careful analysis. This takes us back to the point at which I began. To determine Maimonides’ position, we have to follow the arguments and assess their cogency. When this is done, I believe the weight of the evidence points clearly in the direction of creation. As with Aquinas, so with Maimonides, the eternity of the world is still a logical possibility. Unless this were true, Maimonides could not use it as a hypothesis in proving God’s existence. But saying that it is a logical possibility is a long way from saying it was his real view.

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I have had the pleasure and privilege of reading two wonderfully insightful and challenging papers on Maimonides on creation, Kenneth Seeskin’s “Maimonides on Creation,” and Haim Kreisel’s “Maimonides on the Eternity of the World.” I wish to acknowledge at the outset how much I learned from both papers and express my gratitude to Professor Seeskin for inviting me to comment on them. Professor Seeskin’s paper presents a forceful and thorough defense of the view that Maimonides believes, as he repeatedly says he does (1.71 [twice]; 2.6; 2.13; 3.10), that the world is created. Professor Kreisel, while acknowledging the strong case Maimonides makes for creation, and the good and even ingenious and original arguments he marshals for it, nevertheless mounts his own effective case for an esotericist reading of Maimonides: Kreisel seeks to show that Maimonides, despite what he repeatedly says, thinks the world is eternal a parte ante. In addition, Kreisel suggests a plausible motivation for Maimonides’ having argued so powerfully for a position that he may not, after all, subscribe to. Let me begin by addressing several preliminary issues. First, there is the matter of burden of proof. Seeskin would not only have those in the eternity camp shoulder the burden of proof, but he conceives their burden to be to show that de novo creation is a logical or metaphysical absurdity— and that Maimonides so regards it. Unless, however, we take at face value Maimonides’ assertion that in the absence of a full-blown demonstration of the world’s eternity Scripture is to be interpreted literally and the creation view embraced (2.25:328; on this, see below), surely the burden of proof should be assumed equally by those on either side of the dispute: does Maimonides regard creation or eternity as the view best supported by the

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evidence and arguments? Neither side should be required to establish the impossibility or absurdity of the opposing view. Second, Kreisel wonders what might motivate those who are not themselves Aristotelians like Kaspi and Narboni to attribute to Maimonides an esoteric eternity view—especially now that contemporary science tends to support the creation view. Surely, what drives Maimonides’ interpreters is first and foremost a desire to know what Maimonides really thinks. And there is, of course, the question of how conflicts (real or apparent) between faith and science are to be negotiated. In addition, there is the political dimension of such negotiation: might not a responsible person in a position of authority find it necessary to conceal the truth as he sees it for the good of those in his care?1 Third, Kreisel recognizes that his paper takes Maimonides to be writing in a way that might best be characterized as “midrashic.” To read the Guide as midrashic, is, I think, arguably appropriate for the case at hand. After all, for Maimonides, the “science of Law in its true sense” is midrash nearly all the way down: the Torah is midrashic with respect to reality, the rabbis are midrashic with respect to the Torah, and all the rest is commentary. The truth, Maimonides warns, must be conveyed only in hints and whispers, flashes and concealments, brief illuminations followed by darkness. It would seem, then, that to treat the mystery of Maimonides’ view of the origin of the world, no less than to treat the mystery of the origin of the world itself, as if it is plain as day, is more likely than not to prove misguided. I turn now to two matters that Kreisel and Seeskin appear to agree on. First, both contend that Maimonides provides strong arguments, not just standard weak ones, to bolster the creation position, and that, methodologically speaking, the construction of powerful philosophical arguments—rather than the rehearsal of weak ones—indicates concurrence on the part of their constructor with the view the arguments support. Kreisel indeed suggests that it is somehow “perverse” for one to advance good arguments in support of a position with which one disagrees.

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It would be interesting to know what it is that motivates Professor Kreisel’s own esotericist reading of Maimonides.

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Two separate claims are being made here: (1) that Maimonides’ arguments for creation are good ones, and (2) that offering good arguments for a position implies agreement with it. With respect to the first claim, I believe that Kreisel’s paper adequately shows that although Maimonides’ arguments are not weak, they do contain weaknesses; I remain puzzled as to why, in light of the flaws Kreisel finds in Maimonides’ creation arguments, he nevertheless touts their great merit. (I shall discuss some of the arguments briefly below.) With respect to the second claim, Kreisel’s response is well-taken (and argues against the very “perverseness” he alleges): when the stakes are high—in this case, it is the very allegiance of Maimonides’ readers to their faith that is on the line—one dare not rely on obviously flawed arguments.2 On the contrary, one’s arguments would have to be fairly strong, and their defects left unchallenged. We need not be surprised, then, as Seeskin is, by the absence in the Guide of a defense of eternity or a rebuttal of the arguments in 2.19-2.24 favoring creation.3 Maimonides is hoping, after all, to persuade almost all of his readers that the world is created.4 Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish two levels of esotericism in the Guide—the exoteric and the esoteric—the latter signaling the presence of ideas more dangerous to faith than the former. At the exoteric esotericist level Maimonides reveals his “secrets” fairly openly, as, for example, when he contends that the Torah’s anthropomorphic language for God is for

2 

Seeskin cites Plato’s Protagoras to show that an author will use only bad or sophistic arguments to support a position with which he disagrees. The fact is, however, that Socrates argues strenuously for hedonism in the Protagoras, and many Plato scholars find his arguments so compelling that they have come to regard Socrates as a hedonist. When confronted with other Platonic dialogues in which Socrates opposes hedonism, these scholars argue either that the hedonism he now takes exception to is different from the one he supports in the Protagoras, or that it is his anti-hedonism that is merely apparent. Those who can believe, even in the face of Socrates’ spirited defense of hedonism, that Socrates is nevertheless not its advocate should surely be open to the possibility that Maimonides is no creationist.

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Is it surprising that there is no refutation of hedonism—or of Socrates’ arguments for it—in the Protagoras?

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Maimonides will want to give some small segment of his readership reason to doubt the sincerity of his endorsement of the creation view. For, as he says, a wise man is not permitted to keep his knowledge to himself; he is obliged to indicate the truth “in flashes” to others. He may not, however, “be explicit about it.” See 2.29:347.

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the benefit of the vulgar, who cannot conceive of non-bodily existence; or when he warns in 1.59 against divulging to the multitude that God’s attributes as they appear in the books of the prophets are either attributes of His actions or indicate the negation of their nonexistence in God; or when he maintains at 3.28:512 that the “correct opinion” that God gets violently angry, while not true in itself (indeed, it is demonstrably false), is nevertheless indispensable to the promotion of “political welfare”; or when he exposes the “divine ruse” of animal sacrifices in 3.32.5 At the esoteric esotericist level, by contrast, Maimonides labors to conceal his beliefs. Here his discourse is far more subtle; he may even deny outright the view to which he subscribes. At this level are found the things concerning which scholars continue to disagree: Maimonides’ view on creation, for one, as well as his position on miracles, prophecy, providence, free will—particularly divine free will—and resurrection. Prophecy, as it appears to me—and to Kreisel—may be one of Maimonides’ less guarded secrets. As a somewhat more open secret it may provide a key to the more closed secret that is creation. The secrets Maimonides is exceedingly careful to keep hidden are those most threatening to the piety of all but a very few. A second point on which Seeskin and Kreisel agree is that Maimonides’ proof for the existence of the deity takes the form of a simple constructive dilemma: if the world is created, then there is a God; if the world is eternal, then there is a God; the world is either created or eternal; hence, there is a God. There is some reason, however, to be suspicious of this argument and of Maimonides’ sincerity in advancing it. First, it appears rather late in the game in 1.71, almost as an afterthought—a “save,” as it were, after the second of at least three rounds of excoriations in this chapter of Kalām arguments in support of creation. Second, Maimonides registers no doubt that the eternity arguments can and do establish the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God on their own; they require no help from the deeply flawed creation arguments. Third, Maimonides notes that to ground divine 5  That these salutary beliefs are false is stated explicitly at 1.55:128-29. See, too, Maimonides’

Commentary to Sanhedrin 10 (commonly known as Pereq Ḥ eleq), where he identifies the target of Avtalyon’s warning in Avot 1:3, “Sages, mind your words!” as Antigonos Ish Sokho, who famously said: “Do not be like servants who serve the master for the sake of reward; rather be like servants who serve the master not for the sake of reward” (Avot 1:11). Although Maimonides undoubtedly shares Antigonos’s view, he nevertheless evidently does not approve of its being promulgated to the masses.

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existence in creation is to hold that there is a deity if and only if the world is created—it is to hold, in other words, that if the world is created there is a deity; but if the world is eternal, there isn’t (180). Yet, if one horn of the dilemma is the if-and-only-if–proposition, is not the second horn automatically excluded, and does the argument not consequently lose its force? Fourth, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Maimonides approves of the arguments for eternity; after all, he is willing to establish the most foundational of truths about God on those arguments. Indeed, he makes a point of saying that in his “books of jurisprudence,” that is, in his halakhic works, whenever he seeks to establish the existence of the deity, “I establish it by discourses that adopt the way of the doctrine of the eternity of the world” (1.71:182).6 The same cannot be said of his view of creation arguments; on the contrary, Maimonides cautions that we dare not base the deity’s existence on so doubtful (180), so shaky (182), a foundation. (Not to mention his odd remark that one can always prove creation by the sword [180].) If Maimonides believes he has creation arguments that are not only distinct from and superior to the Kalām ones but also more trenchant than the available eternity arguments, why does he not ground the existence, unity, and incorporeality of the deity in them?7 Why does he insist instead that only an eternal world, only “the permanent nature of what exists, a nature than can be seen and apprehended by the intellect” (1.76:130-31), provides a foundation for divine existence, unity, and incorporeality? Fifth, in “permitting” acceptance of the creation alternative he actually lauds (“bravo for you,” he says on 1818) those who subscribe to creation even 6 

In the Mishneh Torah, there is no mention of the constructive dilemma; God’s existence is proved on the basis of the eternally revolving sphere (just as it is in the notorious Premise 26 of the Introduction to Part 2 of the Guide, and in 2.2:252). See Hilkhot Yesodei Hatorah 1:5, 7; see also Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 1:3, where it is said that Abraham derived God’s existence from the eternally revolving sphere.

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Seeskin contends that, although it is true that Maimonides in 2.25 recommends adoption of the creation view not because of the superior arguments that support it but because it is required by the literal sense of Scripture, the reason he does so is that he is now addressing an audience not sufficiently sophisticated to understand his creation arguments. There is no reason to suspect, however, that the Guide’s audience is not the same throughout.

8  The Arabic is: fa-yā ḥ abbadhā. It probably means something like: “then, O excellent or charming [one]!” Schwarz renders it “tov ve-yafeh.” Kafi ḥ has: “ye‘erav lakh.” Ibn Tibbon: “ani

ohev zeh.” 

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on the basis of the egregiously deficient Kalām arguments, and registers no objection to those who take creation on faith, that is, on faith in the prophets.9 Doesn’t Maimonides’ allowing and even approving of belief in creation on the basis of faulty arguments or solely on the word of the prophets suggest that for him this belief is just like other false beliefs—for example, the belief that God gets angry—whose acceptance Maimonides encourages on the grounds that they are politically beneficial (3.28:512)? Sixth, and most important, is the matter of whether the deities at the ends of each of the two horns of the dilemma are the same deity. When Maimonides speaks of the God who is derived from the creation alternative, he says the following: “If it [the world] is created in time, it undoubtedly has a creator who created in time. . . . Accordingly the creator . . . is the deity” (1.71:181). But when he speaks of the God who is derived from the eternity alternative, he says: “If, however, the world is eternal, it follows necessarily because of this and that proof that there is an existent . . . who is not a body and not a force in a body and who is one, permanent, and sempiternal; who has no cause and whose becoming subject to change is impossible. Accordingly he is a deity. Thus it has become manifest to you that the proofs for the existence and the oneness of the deity and of His not being a body ought to be procured from the starting point afforded by the supposition of the eternity of the world” (1.71:181-82). When Maimonides continues, “for in this way the demonstration will be perfect, both if the world is eternal and if it be created in time” (1.71:182), he surely means that the reason the demonstration will be perfect is because one part of it, the eternity part, will demonstrate all that needs to be proved about the true God and not just the existence of some God, the creator. For the demonstration of a deity who is one and incorporeal, only the eternity arguments will do. To this point 2.2:252 may be relevant as well, for Maimonides contends there that, regardless of whether the world is eternal or created, the demonstration of the deity’s necessity, oneness, and incorporeality proceeds by “philosophic methods.” Philosophic methods, as we know from 1.71:182, are eternity arguments.10 9  But see Maimonides’ deprecatory remark at 2.23:321: “Whoever prefers one of two opinions

because of his upbringing or for some advantage is blind to the truth.” 10  At 1.71:179, Maimonides says that once the Mutakallimun “prove” that the world is created de

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We turn now to the matter on which Seeskin and Kreisel diverge: does Maimonides regard the universe as created or eternal? Kreisel helpfully collects some of the many nuggets scattered throughout the Guide that, certainly jointly, raise doubts about the sincerity of Maimonides’ professions that he endorses the creation view. He points to 2.32, where Maimonides, highlighting the correspondence between the three opinions on cosmogony on the one side, and the three on prophecy on the other, signals his disapproval of the Torah’s view of cosmogony; to 2.22, where Maimonides criticizes the emanationist model that he seemed to approve of in 2.12; and, most instructively, to 3.45:576, where the Law is said to require prophecy, and prophecy to require in turn belief in the existence of angels—not, as we might have expected, belief in creation. As Kreisel strikingly argues, belief in angels now replaces belief in creation as the foundation for revelation and the Law. The chain that links the Law to angels via prophecy constitutes a naturalized version of the non-natural chain that links the Law to creation via miracles. But what, then, is one to say in response to Seeskin’s (and even Kreisel’s) contention that Maimonides’ arguments for creation are good ones?11 It was refreshing to see in Seeskin’s recent book, Maimonides on the Origin of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), as well as in his current paper, an exposition and assessment of Maimonides’ actual arguments. Seeskin is certainly right to think that until

novo and thus must have “a maker who has created it in time,” they then find arguments to establish God’s oneness and from there His incorporeality. The reader suspects that Maimonides does not consider any of these Kalām arguments reliable. Indeed, as the passage continues, Maimonides suggests again that whatever arguments the Mutakallimun adduce to establish the creation of the world de novo, what these arguments establish as true is (only) “that the deity exists.” 11  One wonders if Maimonides’ case for creation, as Seeskin presents it, does not actually

undermine his two most cogent arguments against Aristotle. In the case of arguments from the nature of the world, as Seeskin reports them, Maimonides first declares that one cannot infer anything about the nature of the world in its gestation from its nature once in existence; but he then appeals to experience for corroboration, noting that in our world things fully formed are different from things not yet formed. Similarly, according to Seeskin, in the case of arguments from the nature of God, Maimonides, after contending that we know nothing of how divine will operates, nevertheless looks to human will for support, arguing that there is no reason why divine will—like the will that operates in us—cannot accommodate delay between intention and act.

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we have worked through the arguments and evaluated them we have no business making pronouncements regarding Maimonides’ stance on the origin of the world. Yet at the same time it must be said that we are not at liberty to set aside the matter of how Maimonides himself regards his own arguments for creation. As we have seen, it is because Maimonides has little respect for creation arguments generally that he rests his case for divine existence, unity, and incorporeality not on them but on eternity arguments. One argument that Seeskin cites approvingly contends that if God is simple, and is no creator, there would be no way to account for the multiplicity and diversity of our world. Yet, does the problem of the world’s multiplicity and diversity dissolve if God is a creator? It remains unclear how a God who is simple could in any way produce—even by creation— a world that is multiple and diverse. The matter of God’s simplicity does indeed trouble Seeskin, as he confesses in the final section of his paper, and it seems to undercut what is perhaps Maimonides’ best argument for creation, the argument from particularity. The particularity argument contends that unless there is creation, there is no contingency, and things could not be other than they are;12 yet, if things could not be other than they are, then God’s freedom to choose is severely compromised. As Seeskin recognizes, however, if God is simple, His will cannot be distinguished from His wisdom.13 And if God’s will and His wisdom are not distinct, then things indeed could not have been otherwise than they are.14 Yet, the

12  The passage Seeskin quotes in support of his view that for Maimonides creation is likely

because the world is a system in which, as Seeskin puts it, “for all we know, things might have been different,” is 3.13:452: “What exists, its causes, and its effects, could be different from what they are.” Yet the full quote is: “Now this being so and, in addition, given the belief in the production of the world de novo, what exists, its causes, and its effects, could be different from what they are . . .” (emphasis added). That things might have been different follows, then, from creation; it is not an argument for it. (The quote is at any rate taken out of its context: it arises in connection with the question of whether things are their own final cause or whether man is the final cause of all other things.) 13  Note that Maimonides at 3.13:453 says that God’s will “is His essence.” He is here no doubt

referring back to 1.53:121, where it is denied that divine attributes are attributes of God’s essence: all there is is God’s essence; if there are attributes, they are attributes of God’s actions. 14  Note that at 1.71:179, the Mutakallimun are criticized for thinking that how things are is

“merely a custom; and from the point of view of the intellect it could well be different.”

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only alternative to a God whose will is constrained by His wisdom is one who is capricious, in which case there is simply no rhyme or reason to the way things are.15 Might an eternal and necessary world be compatible with divine volition? Kreisel cites 2.7:266, where the spheres are said to have volition but to be unchanging, and 2.27:332-333, where it seems as if God’s volition with respect to not destroying the world is necessary,16 to support the notion that for Maimonides divine volition and necessity are not at odds, that is, that divine volition, volition constrained by perfect wisdom, yields a world that is the only way it can be.17 I would add to Kreisel’s argument that the very fact that Maimonides does not shrink from assigning volition to Aristotle’s God suggests that he regards eternity—and its companion, necessity—as compatible with divine volition. Witness, for example, 2.13:284, where Maimonides characterizes Aristotle’s cosmogony position as that “it would be an impossibility that will should change in God or a new volition arise in Him; and that all that exists has been brought into existence, in the state in which it is at present, by God through His volition; but that it was not produced after having been in a state of nonexistence. . . . He [Aristotle] thinks it is impossible that a volition should undergo a change in Him or a new will arise in Him” (emphasis added). Note that 15   Maimonides frequently links God’s will to His wisdom, removing thereby any hint of whim

or caprice. See 2.25:329; 3.13:452; 3.13:456; 3.25:504-506. The commandments in the Torah are likewise for Maimonides products of divine wisdom—whether or not we can discern the wisdom behind them. See 3.26:506-507; 3.31: 523-24; 3.49:605. 16   Kreisel argues that since Maimonides seems to accept the compatibility of divine volition with

the eternity of the world a parte post, he is likely to accept its compatibility with the world’s eternity a parte ante as well. This may well be so, but there is nevertheless an important difference between the two cases, insofar as the argument that a thing needn’t be the same “before” it exists as it is once it exists is relevant only to the world a parte ante and not to the world a parte post. In the case of the universe’s condition a parte post, the question is: can a world that already exists and has a fixed “eternal” nature be susceptible to annihilation? If the answer is that it cannot, it is striking that Maimonides still insists on assigning God’s not bringing the world to an end to His volition. See my “Maimonides on the End of the World,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992‑3): 195‑218. 17   It is not easy to avoid the suspicion that for Maimonides, “will” or “volition,” as applied to God

and as applied to the spheres, may be no more than metaphorical, intended to signal that the universe is not, at least at the species level and above, without purpose, a product of dumb chance.

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the terms applied here to Aristotle’s God (“will”—irādah, and “volition”— mashī’ah) are identical to those Maimonides applies to the God of “all who believe in the Law of Moses our Master” and who hold the first cosmogony opinion (2.13:281). Or consider 2.22:319: “But Aristotle will say that He [God] would not wish (yarūmu) it and it is impossible for Him to will (an yurīda) something different from what is.” See as well 2.29:346: “. . . we agree with Aristotle with regard to one half of his opinion and we believe that what exists is eternal a parte post and will last forever with that nature which He, may He be exalted, has willed.”18 That volition is compatible with necessity is, however, challenged in 2.25, where Maimonides points to several features of the world as we know it that seem resistant to explanation in terms of necessity. Why, he asks, did God give prophetic revelation to this one and not to that? Why did God give this Law to this particular nation, and why did He not legislate to the others? Why did He legislate at this particular time, and why did He not legislate before it or after? Why did He impose these commandments and these prohibitions? Why did He privilege the prophet with the miracles mentioned in relation to him and not with some others? What was God’s aim in giving this Law? Why did he not, if such was His purpose, put the accomplishment of the commandments and the nontransgression of the prohibitions into our nature? Let us observe, first, with respect to these questions, that for some of them Maimonides furnishes naturalistic answers, and that there is therefore, in principle, no reason why he couldn’t do so for the rest. Second, these questions, far from “vanishing” once creation is accepted (as Maimonides boldly asserts in 2.25), are actually activated by the creation assumption. For only if things might have been otherwise do we have cause to wonder why they are thus; there is nothing to wonder about if everything is necessary, if everything is reflective of God’s wisdom and hence “best” as it is (even if His wisdom and goodness surpass human understanding). As Kreisel notes, Maimonides leaves unrefuted the Aristotelian view that: “. . . for Him to will something different from what is . . . would not add to His perfection but would perhaps from a certain point of view be a deficiency” (2.22:319).

18  Aristotle’s universe is also a teleological one; he maintains that nature does everything for

a purpose.

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It is worth noting that Maimonides does not include among the matters he claims that only creation can resolve the puzzles and anomalies of astronomy: how the two types of celestial matter can be attached to each other without mixing; why the stars and planets attach to their respective spheres at one point rather than another; why some stretches of the spheres of the fixed stars are heavily populated and others sparsely so; or any questions concerning the diversity of the spheres and the specifics of their movements. Creation, it seems, enables one to embrace revelation, commandments, and miracles; what it does not do is provide a satisfactory solution to nature’s mysteries. To be sure, divine will is Maimonides’ answer to the questions he does raise: “He wanted it this way” (2.25:329). Yet, he immediately adds: “or His wisdom required it this way.” By conjoining these two clauses, Maimonides invokes the very identification of divine will with divine wisdom that makes God’s will compatible with necessity. Indeed, Maimonides goes on to speak of the workings of the divine will as something of which we human beings are ignorant but which is nevertheless guided by wisdom: “we do not know His will or the exigency of His wisdom that caused all the matters” (2.25:329). Furthermore, Maimonides’ only reason for disqualifying necessity as the answer to his questions is that it would “annul all the external meanings of the Law with regard to which no intelligent man has any doubt that they are to be taken in their external meanings. It is because of this that this opinion is shunned” (329-30). Does such a reason, however, for Maimonides, constitute adequate grounds for rejecting the necessity answer—and with it, eternity? It is true that Maimonides continues, “The Law as a whole would become void,” but it was just a page or two earlier that he qualified a similar statement with “unless—by God!—one interprets the miracles figuratively” (2.25:328). Although figurative interpretation would involve, Maimonides claims, so-called “crazy imaginings” and “unseemly answers” (329), neither craziness nor unseemliness renders a view false. Let us suppose, then, that Maimonides does not believe that creation is needed to preserve volition. But, what if he had? Would Maimonides subscribe to a view because it is needed from a religious point of view? He certainly might defend it for that reason, but would he embrace it? Is it not precisely this method of proceeding that he rails against in 1.71 (see also 2.23)? The truth is what it is, not what we need or want it to be. And to get to metaphysical truth, we must take as our starting point what we know of the

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natural world and go from there. As Maimonides says: “I have already let you know that there exists nothing except God, may He be exalted, and this existent world and that there is no possible inference proving His existence, may He be exalted, except those deriving from this existent taken as a whole and from its details. Accordingly it necessarily behooves one to consider this existent as it is and to derive premises from what is perceived of its nature” (1.71:183). Yet, when Maimonides urges adoption of the creation position, what he regularly points to are the religious purposes it serves: it safeguards miracles, revelation, divine volition, the Law, the literal sense of the Torah, and the common motives for virtue: hope and fear. And it is for the same sort of reason that he advises shunning the belief in eternity: it is “harmful” or causes “evil” (2.22:320). Maimonides clearly fears the power of the eternity view to diminish the piety of ordinary people; he need not for that reason think it false. Interestingly, Maimonides reassures his readers in 1.71 that the eternity of the world need not spell the end of prophecy; they should wait, he says, to see what he has to say on the matter (181). And indeed, prophecy, as Kreisel argues, turns out to be pretty much, and for all intents and purposes, a natural phenomenon. Yet if prophecy is a natural phenomenon compatible with eternity, then so are revelation, miracles, divine volition, and the Law. And if the Law is not undermined by eternity, then gone is the need to read Scripture literally and perhaps, too, the crude motivations for observing the commandments: hope for reward and fear of retribution. The kind of prophecy and Law that is compatible with eternity is, however, decidedly not for everyone. Let us consider, at last, the matter of interpretation. Is literal interpretation for Maimonides the interpretation of choice, to be rejected only when a bona fide demonstration establishes a truth that conflicts with it? The simple answer is no. On the contrary, figurative interpretation is Maimonides’ preferred mode for everything but halakhic matters, as he daringly states in his Introduction (11). Maimonides designates both the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot “parables,” and likens parables to screens—between the reader and the true meaning of the text—that need to be removed if the deeper meaning is to be discovered (Intro., 14). Parables, or the text’s literal sense, Maimonides says, have only political value, which, though not to be unduly disparaged, stands to the truth as silver stands to gold (Intro., 11-12). Silver and gold are qualitatively different; the difference between them is not a simple matter of degree—

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witness the anecdote in 1.59 concerning R. Hanina and his reprimand of the prayer-leader who multiplies God’s epithets beyond those prescribed by the Men of the Great Assembly. The fault in the prayer-leader’s excesses lies not, for Maimonides, in that his praise falls short of the truth but rather in its not being praise at all: the prayer-leader’s deed is not to be compared to praising a king for having one hundred gold pieces when he has millions of them; it is rather to be seen as insulting him—and this is the way R. Hanina actually puts it—by saying that he has millions of silver pieces when what he has is millions of gold ones. Similarly, the external sense of the Torah is not simply less true than its internal sense; rather, it is not true at all. I cannot therefore agree with Seeskin that for Maimonides the default position is the literal sense, which is to be adhered to except in the face of a demonstration to the contrary. So, too, am I unsympathetic to Pines’s attempt (2.17:298, n. 8), followed by Seeskin’s, to confine Maimonides’ assertion in 2.17 that the literal text (presumably of Gen. 1) is not to be taken in its external sense solely to the matter of creation being temporal (as discussed in 2.30). It is true that Maimonides says in 2.29 only that “not everything” in the text of the Account of the Beginning should be read literally. Yet he can hardly be expected to say in 2.29 that nothing in the text should be read literally, having just said in 2.25 that this very text is to be taken in its external sense. Furthermore, if only one small piece of the Account of the Beginning is not to be taken literally, why would “the men of knowledge” have been “chary of divulging [the truth] with regard to it,” and why would the Sages “have expatiated on its being kept secret and on preventing the talk about it in the presence of the vulgar” (2.29:346-47)? The Sages’ general alarm with respect to Scripture’s external sense can hardly be limited to the matter of the temporality of creation. Interestingly, Maimonides worries, too, about the dangers posed by the literal reading of the text. Literal reading might lead, he says, to “evil opinions with regard to the deity, or to an absolute denial of the action of the deity and to disbelief in the foundations of the Law” (2.29:347). It would seem, then, that, whereas Maimonides sees the eternity view as a hindrance to piety among the masses, he sees the creation view as having the potential to lead astray those who embrace philosophy: it might cause them to spurn God and His commandments. As he says in the Introduction (6), the man who does not allow himself “to be drawn on together with intellect” would perceive “that he had brought loss to himself and to his religion.”

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In light of the foregoing discussion, we can suppose that Maimonides regards the two reasons he himself proffers in 2.25 for taking the account of creation in the Torah literally as woefully inadequate. The first, that eternity has not been demonstrated, would seem to support a turn to the strongest arguments—not recourse to the literal sense of the text. The second, that eternity precludes miracles and hence revelation, and thus undermines the very foundation of the Torah, flies in the face of Maimonides’ opposition in 1.71 to making the state of things fit one’s conclusions rather than making one’s conclusions fit the state of things. If, then, Maimonides’ real view is that Scripture, apart from its halakhot, is in the first instance to be read figuratively, the question arises: how are we to know how to do so correctly? It would seem that what is required is a firm grasp of physics and metaphysics. As Maimonides says, for example, at 2.2:254: Accordingly in whatever chapter you find me discoursing with a view to explaining a matter already demonstrated in natural science, or a matter demonstrated in divine science, or an opinion that has been shown to be the one fittest to be believed in, or a matter attaching to what has been explained in mathematics—know that that particular matter necessarily must be a key to the understanding of something to be found in the books of prophecy, I mean to say of some of their parables and secrets. The reason why I mentioned, explained, and elucidated that matter would be found in the knowledge it procures us of the Account of the Chariot and the Account of the Beginning or would be found in an explanation that it furnishes of some root regarding the notion of prophecy or would be found in the explanation of some root regarding the belief in a true opinion belonging to the beliefs of Law (emphasis added).19

If the “secular” sciences, then, hold the key to the interpretation of parables, Scripture cannot be for Maimonides a separate path to truth that we are bidden to follow unless physics and metaphysics contradict it; on the contrary, physics and metaphysics are our guides to understanding it. The 19  As Maimonides says at Intro., 9, “the perfect man,” the man who will comprehend the Account

of the Beginning otherwise than the multitude, is the man “who is already informed.” The Guide is after all addressed to those who, having “studied the sciences of the philosophers and come to know what they signify” (Intro., 5; also 10), find the Torah’s literal text perplexing.

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Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot may indeed be shown to contain, beneath the surface, the truths of physics and metaphysics; but the truths themselves will have to be learned, first, elsewhere.20 In an Appendix later added to his original paper Kreisel considers where Maimonides stands with respect to the Platonic view of creation, and suggests, as I have,21 that whereas the Platonic position may provide a “compromise” for the faint of heart, it is not the one Maimonides endorses. In my view,22 the fact (noted by Kreisel) that Maimonides aligns Plato’s view first with Aristotle’s (2.13:285) but subsequently with the Torah’s (2.25:330) signals that he rejects Plato’s position along with the Torah’s. It is important to note, however, that if Maimonides indeed subscribes to an Aristotelian view of cosmogony, then surely in his eyes this view is in the end the more pious one, insofar as it is the one that represents things as they are rather than as one would wish, or as one would “imagine,” them to be (Intro., 6; 1.60:146; 3.51:620-21). It is truth, after all, that pleases God; falsehood only angers Him (2.47:409).

20   See 3.51:619. 21   Kreisel’s view is similar to the one I propose in my “Natural Order or Divine Will: Maimonides

on Cosmogony and Prophecy,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 15 (2007): 1-26; see pp. 24-26. 22  Weiss, “Natural Order or Divine Will,” 14-24.

C omments

on

P rofessor K reisel’ s Paper

C har l e s H. M anek in

I thank the editors for the opportunity to comment on Professor Kreisel’s thought-provoking paper. I would like first to make some general comments on the dismissal of Maimonides’ creationism by some medieval and modern readers, a phenomenon that I shall call “creationism-denial,” and suggest what I believe to be the proper methodology that historians of philosophy should adopt when examining questions such as this. “A wise man,” writes David Hume, “proportions his belief to the evidence.” As in life, so, too, in the history of philosophy: where the evidence is overwhelming on behalf of a certain view—such as Plato’s belief in the existence of Forms, or Descartes’ belief in the indubitability of the Cogito— possible contrary interpretations of individual passages are not sufficient to undermine that view. One has to provide iron-clad arguments as to why the philosopher could not possibly have held the view that he professes to hold. And the greater the evidence in favor of his holding it, the weaker the case for those who wish to provide a contrary—and contrarian— reading. The textual evidence for the view that Maimonides, at least from the time he wrote the Guide of the Perplexed and subsequently, believed that the world was created “after absolute nonexistence,” “out of nonexistence” or “not from a thing,” is overwhelming. It is not only that Maimonides devotes a great part of the Guide to articulating and defending his view of creation, a view that rules out the eternity a parte ante of the heavens, and of time; nor that he formulates a new set of proofs for creation; nor that he claims that belief in creation is a foundation of the Law second only to the belief in the unity of God; nor that key doctrines and entire chapters in the Guide are incomprehensible if he secretly denied creation. It is also that Maimonides reaffirms his belief in creation in work after work written after the Guide, including the Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead, the

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Letter on Astrology to the Sages of Montpellier, the Letter to R. Hisdai haLevy, the Medical Aphorisms, and the “revised version” of the fourth of the thirteen foundations of the Law in the Commentary on the Mishnah.1 In his last work, the Medical Aphorisms, Maimonides devotes an entire chapter to refuting Galen on the subject. All this is compelling evidence that creationism is not only a foundation of the Law for Maimonides, but a foundation of his entire religious and philosophical worldview, at least in the Guide and subsequent writings.2 Some may think that Maimonides’ creationism is incompatible with the naturalist thrust of his philosophy, that it is incorrect, or even incoherent. Some may think him a worse philosopher for it. But the textual evidence for Maimonides’ adherence to creationism is so overwhelming that were one to discover among the Cairo Genizah fragments a scribbled note in Maimonides’ handwriting, saying, “My true view is eternal creation,” it would be more reasonable to question the note’s authenticity, or at least, to consider it inconsistent with the tenor of Maimonides’ philosophy, than to reject the abundant textual counter-evidence for creation.3 Present-day deniers of Maimonides’ creationism draw some of their arguments from medieval commentators, and that seems to lend the weight of tradition to their view, so it may be worthwhile to point out that the closest members of Maimonides’ immediate circle, as well as his contemporaries, were creationists. That includes his son Abraham;4 his prized student for

1 

For precise sources, see my “Divine Will in Maimonides’ Later Writings,” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 189, n. 2.

2 

It is unlikely that the medieval creationism-deniers were aware of the amount of evidence; one suspects that this is also true in the case of some of their modern counterparts, since they rarely mention anything except the Guide and the Mishneh Torah. Professor Kreisel also mentions Maimonides’ revision to the Thirteen Principles. By the way, the bizarre idea that with the dissemination of the Mishneh Torah and the consequent controversy over resurrection Maimonides needed to camouflage his own views for the welfare of the multitude, and perhaps for his own, could possibly “explain” why he emphasizes creation in the Treatise on Resurrection—but not in the Medical Aphorisms, a technical treatise for physicians. The creationism-deniers have generally ignored this work.

3 

See Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 398, n. 145 for some examples and rebuttals of creationism-denial.

4 

Milhamot Ha-Shem (Vilna, 1821), fol. 6a.

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whom he wrote the Guide, Joseph ibn Simeon;5 and his friend and (perhaps) study-partner in Fez, Joseph ibn Aqnin.6 Nothing in the writings of his translator and commentator, Samuel ibn Tibbon, including the newly-edited notes to the Guide, suggests that he considered Maimonides’ adherence to creationism to be disingenuous.7 On the contrary, he criticizes Maimonides’ scriptural exegeses and comments that are critical of the rabbinic sages who believed in eternity. Samuel was apparently a believer in the eternity of the heavens, and arguably the originator of the “radical esoteric” reading in Maimonides—but not on creation.8 Shem Tov b. Joseph Falaquera may also have held a version of eternal creation, but nothing suggests in his commentary on the Guide that he didn’t take Maimonides at his word. During the Maimonidean Controversies of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Maimonides’ views on resurrection, anthropomorphism, and the proper use of allegory were subjects of dispute, but nobody, as far as I know, 5 

See Joseph’s “Epistle of the Silencing” in Reshito shel Pulmus ha-Rambam ba-Mizrah (Jerusalem, 1999), sec. 8, p. 5: “Know that the combination of bodies after their decay, and the return of the soul to them, is not necessary through rational speculation, and not impossible because of the ability of the Creator and his origination of the world, but rather possible. . . .” The context rules out an Avicennan notion of eternal origination.

6 

For the testimony that Ibn Aqnin was the talmid-haver of Maimonides for the duration of the latter’s stay in Fez, see Steinschneider, Gesammelte Schriften, p. 75, cited in A. Halkin’s edition of Ibn Aqnin’s commentary on the Song of Songs (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim Society, 1964), p. 11. Ibn Aqnin calls Maimonides “yedid libi” (p. 431) and refers to the Guide by name once (p. 399); his comment that the difference between Aristotle and his faction and us on the origin of the world is that they believe the world proceeds of necessity from God, whereas we hold that it is the result of Divine purpose (p. 7; cf. p. 299), is close to Maimonides’ remark in Guide 2.6, p. 265 (Page references following part and chapter number are to The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963]). Halkin states that Ibn Aqnin’s literary activity ended in1195; in that case, his is one of the first testimonies to the circulation of the Guide.

7 

See Carlos Fraenkel, Min ha-Rambam le-Shmuel Ibn Tibbon: Darko shel Dalalah Al-Ha’irin leMoreh ha-Nevukhim (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007). Fraenkel, pp. 162-176, labors at length to tease out from the short comments of Ibn Tibbon an intimation that Ibn Tibbon himself attributed to Maimonides an eternity thesis. But his attempts are belied by Tibbon’s critical attitude toward Maimonides’ exegesis on this point.

8 

See Gad Freudenthal, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Avicennian Theory of an Eternal World,” Aleph 8 (2008): 41-129, esp. 84: “Ibn Tibbon falls away from Maimonides, whom he takes to have affirmed that both the supra- and the sublunar realms were created ab novo. Thus, whereas Maimonides took Genesis to describe the creation of everything that exists, Ibn Tibbon held it to describe the coming-to-be of the lower world only.”

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questioned his fundamental adherence to creation. The same can be said for the majority of his commentators throughout history. The denial of Maimonides’s creationism seems to be found first in the writings of some fourteenth-century Jewish Averroists, Joseph ibn Kaspi, Moses of Narbonne, and, tentatively, Isaac Albalag,9 from which it enters the exegetical literature. The methodology of these Averroists is to determine Maimonides’ intentions by making them conform with what they consider to be the truth, i.e. Aristotelian-Averroist philosophy. As Moses of Narbonne writes: [Rabbi Moses’] statements may be explained in such a way as to conform with the truth, and it is the task of the exegete to interpret the statements of the sage in such a way as to conform to the truth, whenever it is potentially embodied in his statements. This is even more the case when the interpreter finds in some passages statements which openly conform with the truth, for this obliges him to understand some passages on the basis of others, to link them and combine them until they take on a single, homogeneous form that accords in general with truth found in a few passages.10

Or to put Moses of Narbonne’s principle more crudely: if some passages of the Guide assume Aristotle’s position and others don’t, reinterpret the latter to conform to the former. Narboni’s hermeneutical principle informs creationism-denial to this day.

9 

For Joseph Kaspi, Maskiyyot Kesef, ed. S. Werbluner (Frankfurt a. M., 1848), 99-101 and 107. See Moses of Narbonne (Narboni) Be’ur le-Moreh (Vienna, 1852), 29b, 34a-b, and 36b. (These passages are cited in Steven Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987], p. 114 n. 51). For Isaac Albalag, see Sefer Tiqqun ha-De‘ot, ed. G. Vajda (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1973), 50, l. 20-21, 51, l. 9-10. “Would that I knew why the Master did not reveal his mind in this manner . . . perhaps, ‘he who is trustworthy in spirt conceals the matter,’ and so he didn’t want to reveal what the Torah had hidden from the multitude.” In other words, Albalag speculates, rather than claims, that Maimonides was an eternalist, since he provided “false arguments” against the Aristotelians.

10   Narboni’s Commentary on the Guide 3.15, fol. 52a, cited in Aviezer Ravitsky, “The Secrets of

Maimonides: Between the Twelfth and the Thirteenth Centuries,” in his History and Faith: Studies in Jewish Philosophy (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1996), 246-303, esp. 255 (with slight emendations).

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Moses of Narbonne and Joseph Kaspi extended the esotericist reading beyond what early esotericists like Samuel ibn Tibbon envisioned. This, interestingly, happened again in the twentieth century, with the revival of the esotericist reading of the Guide by Leo Strauss. Strauss thought the Guide to be a deeply esoteric work, and Maimonides to have concealed religiously problematic ideas from his readers. But when it came to Maimonides’ creationism, Strauss, at least exoterically, was no “Straussian.”11 The eternalist reading doesn’t only draw on the esotericist reading for its allure. There are passages in the Guide which are compatible with the eternity-thesis. And while Maimonides emphasizes at length the importance of the belief in creation, and while he contrasts his view on creation with that of eternity (including eternal creation), and creation from eternal prime matter, he does not spend much time spelling out what he understands creation to mean. For example, Maimonides claims that God existed alone and then created the world after absolute nonexistence. But he also claims that time itself was created, and since time is the measure of the motion of the sphere, this implies that there is no time at which the world does not exist. If all we mean by the eternity of the world is that the world exists at all times, then this is, in effect, a corollary of Maimonides’ overt position. Another example: although Maimonides holds that world is not eternal a parte ante, he agrees “with half of what Aristotle says,” i.e., that it is eternal a parte post, although he grants that God could destroy the world should He so desire. He also suggests that the stable nature of things as they are now indicates to us that the world is eternal, unless we consider a few celestial phenomena that indicate its createdness. Since he states flatly that “all that Aristotle states about that which is beneath the sphere of the moon is in accordance with reasoning,” (Guide 2.24: 326), he implies that the sublunar phenomena and their explanations are compatible with the

11   See, e.g., “The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in his Persecution and the Art of

Writing (New York: Free Press, 1952), 40; “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed,” in the Pines translation of the Guide [note 6 above], pp. xi-lvi, esp. liv. Herbert Davidson, on the other hand, says that the passage on p. 40 “has to be read with the realization that it is laced with Straussian irony,” and “at the very minimum, Strauss suggests that Maimonides did not in his heart of hearts believe in the creation of the world after its nonexistence….” (Maimonides: The Man and His Works, p. 397).

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hypothesis of the world’s eternity. And Maimonides is prepared to accept much of Aristotle’s cosmology as well. In short, according to Maimonides’ exoteric doctrine, God creates out of nothing a world that, with few exceptions, looks and behaves as if it were eternal. Small wonder, then, that passages can be found that are grist for the mill of the creationism-deniers. Moreover, all the evidence for Maimonides’ belief in creation, and the importance he attaches to that belief, is found only in his later writings, from the Guide onwards. His earlier writings, including the Commentary on the Mishnah and the Mishneh Torah are not only compatible with the thesis of the eternity of the world; they directly imply it, as Maimonides himself recognized (1.71: 81-2). I have suggested elsewhere that Maimonides’ views evolved on the issue of creation between his early writings and his later writings.12 This, of course, is a speculation; in any event, it is undeniable that the early writings provide no indication that creation is even an issue for Maimonides, much less a foundation of the Law, and that the eternity of the heavens is assumed. If my speculation that Maimonides’ views evolved is correct, then using the Mishneh Torah to show that Maimonides really believed in the eternity of the heavens in the Guide13 is besides the point, since on this crucial issue his views evolved. Of course, the medievals who did not have as full a picture of his work as we do may have been misled to think otherwise. Another explanation of why it is easy to misread Maimonides on creation is his practice in the Guide of emphasizing different, even inconsistent, principles in different discussions, because of the requirements of context and the nature of the material. This may actually be what he means by his famous seventh cause of contradiction. The seventh cause has been understood by the radical esotericists to imply that Maimonides contradicts himself in order to conceal his true, Aristotelian, views from the multitude. I do not find any evidence for this reading in the text, but the text 12   See “Divine Will in Maimonides’ Later Writings” (note 1 above) and “Maimonides’ Theological

Conservativism in His Later Writings,” in Maimonides: Between Tradition and Revolution, ed. Jay Harris and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 207-230. 13   See Warren Z. Harvey, “The Mishneh Torah as a Key to the Secrets of the Guide” in Me’ah

She‘arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. E. Fleischer, G. Blidstein, C. Horowitz, B. Septimus (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 11-28.

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does support another reading, namely that when discussing deep matters, different contexts may require the adoption of contradictory assumptions. These contradictory assumptions follow from the nature of the material and are unavoidable. Since drawing attention to the contradiction would confuse the philosophically unsophisticated, some device to conceal the contradictory assumptions should be adopted. Whether this idea captures correctly Maimonides understanding of the seventh cause of contradiction or not, it helps us explain the discrepancy between the assumption in Guide 2.25 that some of God’s choices are in principle unknowable, and the assumption in Guide 3.26-49 that the reasons for most or all of His laws are in principle knowable. Clearly in the former chapter, where God’s will is emphasized in connection with creation, the ways of God appear more inscrutable than in the latter chapter, where God’s wisdom is emphasized. Maimonides’ fundamental contrast is not between will and wisdom, however, but between Divine agency, which is purposive,14 and non-Divine agency, which is not. According to Maimonides, there is no necessity that requires God to create a certain world in which there will be a certain Law or a certain prophet chosen. This, however, does not imply that the world He does create, or that the Law He does give, cannot be understood in great measure by humans. While the differing contexts require that the discussion proceeds according to contradictory premises, the doctrine of the earlier discussion is not incompatible with that of the latter. In fact, one of the questions asked in the “will-chapter” of Guide 2.25, “Wherefore did God not create humans so that they naturally obey commandments and keep from transgressing prohibitions?” appears again in the “wisdom chapter” of Guide 3.32—and in both places it is considered unanswerable. The answer “Because God cannot create a naturally obedient human” begs the question, because it assumes that the human which God decides to create possesses the nature of what we know as humans. So, too, to answer the question “Wherefore did God give prophetic revelation to this one and not to that?” (Guide 2.25: 329) with “Because the first was naturally worthy of prophecy whereas the second was not”15 begs the question of 14  The Maimonidean sense of “purposive” is discussed below. 15  Cf. Narboni, Commentary on the Guide, ad loc, where Narboni provides answers to the list of

Maimondes’ questions in Guide 2.25.

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what was the divine purpose in creating the world such that the first was naturally worthy of prophecy whereas the second was not. With these general comments in mind, I shall comment on some of the texts adduced by Professor Kreisel as evidence for creationism-denial, starting with the so-called “Maimonides’ Cosmogony-Prophetology Puzzle”16 According to Professor Kreisel, “Maimonides explicitly compares [the three positions on prophecy] to the three opinions he presents on the creation of the world” and then implies that we can learn things about his true opinion by matching up the opinions in a one-by-one correspondence. In fact, Maimonides does nothing of the sort. He begins his discussion on prophecy with the following remark: [a] The opinions of people concerning prophecy are like their opinions concerning the eternity of the world or its creation in time. [b] I mean by this that just as the people to whose mind the existence of the deity is firmly established have, as we have set forth, three opinions concerning the eternity of the world or its creation in time, so are there also three opinions concerning prophecy. (Guide 2.32: 360.)

The opening statement [a] asserts a similarity between the opinions of prophecy and creation; the continuation [b] limits that similarity to the number of opinions in both instances, i.e., three. In Guide 3.17, Maimonides states, “The opinions of people about providence are five in all.” Here, of course, Maimonides could not have compared the number of opinions to the previous ones, since the number is five and not three. These are the only three instances in the Guide where the number of opinions on a doctrine is given. Now, that there are the same number of opinions in the two doctrines is usually not worthy of note; although for somebody interested in numbers like Maimonides, it could very well be.17 But in any event, Maimonides explicitly limits the comparison to the question of the number and gives no indication, here or anywhere else in the book, that he believes that the

16   For the latest crack at this perennial chestnut, see T. J. Alcoloumbre, “Prophecy Revisited:

A New Approach to Maimonides’ Cosmogony-Prophetology Puzzle.” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 11 (2009): 243-276. 17   “The number four is wondrous and should be an object of reflection” (Guide 2.10, 272).

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opinions are to be matched up, or follow from each other, in a one-to-one correspondence. But more than this—I cannot think of any other place in the Maimonidean oeuvre where an example of a similar matching is stated or implied, or where a matching methodology is proposed or hinted at. This is a fatal consideration for this method of interpretation. A Maimonides scholar must be willing to consider the possibility that certain comments of Maimonides are an instance of say, the seventh sort of contradiction, whatever he means by it, since we are told by the author himself that he will employ such contradictions. But where does Maimonides say that he will employ a one-for-one matching methodology to decode his true intention? And where else does he actually do so? Isn’t it more reasonable to see this sort of “decoding” as simply ingenious medieval eisegesis? So whose idea was it, anyway? Two fifteenth-century thinkers, Isaac Arama and Isaac Abravanel, may lay claim to have “discovered” the method. Arama finds that Maimonides implies “a great relationship and a tremendous quality” between the two sets of opinions; he associates Maimonides’ moderate view on prophecy with the Platonic view of creation in order to discredit the former. Abravanel, for his part, attempts to justify his reading by arguing that were the only point of comparison between Maimonides’ views on prophecy and his views on creation the number three, than that would be “very weak,” for there are many things that come in threes (e.g., the three sorts of existents, the three patriarchs, the three castes, the three main sections of the Jewish Bible, etc.). Why doesn’t Maimonides compare the number of views of prophecy with these? But is it serious to suppose that Maimonides would ever write, “The opinions of people concerning prophecy are like the forefathers—I mean that just as there are three of the former, so too there are three of the latter.” And as for the question, “Why bother to draw a comparison at all?” a similar question would be asked if no comparison were drawn. For in that case the answer would be that Maimonides omitted mention of the comparison because he did not wish to draw attention to it, since he assumes that the careful reader will follow his instructions in the introduction of Part One (pp. 15-6) and join together the opening statements of 2.13 and 2.32. What the matching method of Arama and Abravanel demonstrates is that tendentious exegesis is not only a characteristic of the fourteenth-century creationism-deniers, but also of their fifteenth-century opponents. Maimonides’ CosmogonyProphetology puzzle is more accurately named “Arama/Abravanel’s

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Cosmogony-Prophetology puzzle,” since it says more about their exegetical practices than about Maimonides’ method.18 Does Maimonides’ own biblical exegesis suggest that he secretly held the eternity thesis and denied creation? We should exclude as evidence any exegesis of the Account of Creation that does not relate directly to the specific question of the origin of the world, for Maimonides explicitly identifies the Account of Creation with the principles of Aristotelian physics, and the Account of [Ezekiel’s] Chariot with those of Aristotelian metaphysics, i.e., the principles of a world that on the whole looks Aristotelian (as interpreted by the falsafa.) So to argue that a Maimonidean explanation of a verse is compatible with the world’s eternity is of no help for determining his view, secret or explicit, on the world’s origin. After the first verses of Genesis 1, we are in the realm of cosmology, not cosmogony.19 In Guide 2.30 Maimonides interprets Genesis 1:1 as pertaining to cosmogony in a passage whose difficulties I do not wish to minimize.20 As I read the passage, Maimonides provides both simple and figurative explanations of the opening verses: he accepts the simple one and rejects the figurative one, which he attributes to some of the sages. The purport of the simple one is that God created in an atemporal act the heavens and the earth; of the figurative one that time preceded creation, that creation is a temporal process, and that God brought order to the heavens and the earth that had hitherto been unordered. The first explanation implies creation of time; the second, creation within time, i.e., within the order of time. The difference between the simple and figurative interpretations, between Maimonides’ and those of “some of the sages,” does not hinge on the interpretation of the term bara’, which he understands as “bringing the world from existence out of nonexistence,” but rather on the interpretation of the term reishit. Now, when Maimonides mentions baro’ later in the chapter he contrasts it with 18   See Isaac Arama, Aqedat Yitzhak, ch. 35; Isaac Abravanel, Commentary to the Guide of the

Perplexed, ad 2.32. Cf. Alvin J. Reines, Maimonides and Abrabanel on Prophecy (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1970), 4-7. 19  The point is made by Sara Klein Braslavy in “The Creation of the World and Maimonides’

Interpretation of Gen. I-V” in S. Pines and Y. Yovel, Maimonides and Philosophy (Amsterdam: Springerl, 1986), 65-78, esp. 65. 20   Sara Klein-Braslavy, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story of Creation (Jerusalem: Rubin

Mass, 1988) (Hebrew), 114-54.

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qano (possess, acquire) a word that “tends toward the belief in the eternity of a certain matter” (Guide 2.30: 358). So whatever he means by creating the world “out of nonexistence,” that meaning must exclude the eternity of the world; otherwise, there would be no contrast. Professor Kreisel refers to Sara Klein-Braslavy’s having shown that Maimonides interprets the term for create, bara’, in an equivocal manner, which may allow for eternal creation, or a Platonic view of creation from eternal matter. Now, had she done this, that would prove little, since Maimonides explicitly tells us how to take the verb in this context. And, as we just saw, his interpretative dispute with some of the sages is not over bara’ but over reishit. But in fact Klein-Braslavy doesn’t show that Maimonides interprets the term bara’ in an equivocal manner; she does indeed argue that Maimonides was aware of the equivocality of the phrase min al-adam/ min ha-he‘eder (“out of nonexistence”)21 but that isn’t sufficient. One has to show i) that Maimonides understood baro’ in a way that preserved the equivocality of min al-‘adam; ii) that Maimonides assumed that his readers were aware of the equivocality; and iii) that Maimonides assumed that his readers would know that they are to grasp the equivocal meaning in this context, despite his contrast between baro’ and qano. I don’t see any textual evidence for i)22 and ii), and I don’t know what would count for textual evidence for iii), since, by hypothesis, iii) goes against the text.23 Professor Kreisel introduces three of his own arguments for the eternalist position. The first involves Maimonides’ rebuttal, on behalf of

21   Klein-Braslavy, Perush, 82, argues that from the fact that Maimonides uses phrases like “after

pure absolute nonexistence” “from nonexistence” and “from ‘special nonexistence’” that he was aware that the phrase min al-adam may be equivocal. 22   Klein-Braslavy argues that from the fact that Maimonides recognizes the equivocality of min

ha-he’eder and uses it with bara’, he recognizes bara’ to be equivocal or, perhaps, amphibolous. 23  Professor Kreisel remarks that Avraham Nuriel has shown that Maimonides uses the term al-Bari

as a name for God in places that do not exclude the world being eternal. That is not surprising, since al-Bari simply means the Creator and is used inter alia by Avicenna, who believed in eternal creation. Maimonides also refers to God as Necessary of Existence, another phrase used by Avicenna. But what does this indicate? Had Maimonides said that the term al-Bari can only refer to a God that brings the world into existence out of absolute nonexistence—in other words, had he claimed that according to Maimonides, the Arabic cognate behaves like the Hebrew baro’, then the name of God may have been relevant to our discussion.

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the philosophers, of an objection to their position “by an intelligent man from among the later Mutakallimun.” Maimonides refers to a technical point about what sort of substratum must be assumed for the possible to inhere in. This need not concern us here, since Professor Kreisel provides a reasonable explanation of all the postions. But he then writes that there is an alternative of interpreting Maimonides as alluding to an esoteric doctrine. Given Professor Kreisel’s own perfectly reasonable explanation of the text, what motivates him to give an alternative explanation against the text? Surely, the issue is not whether one can, by disregarding the evidence of the text, come up with an alternative reading. That sort of possibility inheres in any reader. The issue is whether one should come up with an alternative reading, whether there is good reason to do so. If the esoteric reading is simply an exercise of how one can read a text, why prefer it over the exoteric reading? And if it is not—and surely the medieval esotericists thought it to be much more than that—then what motivates it in this case? The second bit of evidence he cites is where Maimonides claims that were the world to be eternal, it would be impossible for God to alter nature even in the slightest, and this would constitute a deficiency in God. But then he immediately adds that Aristotle would not see this as a deficiency because God would not wish to alter nature, since it is impossible for Him to will something different what it is. On this Professor Kreisel notes, “Maimonides does not proceed to rebut Aristotle’s counter-argument as we would expect him to do but allows Aristotle to have the last word on this matter, thereby subtly signaling his agreement with Aristotle’s position.” 24 But the last thing we would expect Maimonides to do is to rebut Aristotle, since Maimonides has told us all along that he has no rebuttal—in the form of a conclusive demonstration—against Aristotle on the origin of the world, with its implications for the criterion of what is possible and what is impossible. In fact, the nub of the dispute is precisely over what is possible for God to do or not do, and that argument is left unresolved in the Guide, with broad, though not total agreement. Maimonides notes the differences between the various schools on the question, and wonders,

24  Likewise, when Maimonides concedes that the case of Barukh Ben Neriah may not be an

example of miraculously-withheld prophecy, Professor Kreisel and his medieval predecessors see a clever ruse; others see intellectual honesty.

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Would that I knew whether this gate is open and licit, so that everyone can claim and assert with regard to any notion whatever that he conceives: This is possible; whereas someone else says: No this is impossible because of the nature of the matter. Or is there something that shuts and blocks this gate so that a man can assert decisively that such and such a thing is impossible because of its nature? Should this be verified and examined with the help of the imaginative faculty or with the intellect? And by what can one differentiate between what is imagined and that which is cognized by the intellect? (Guide 3.15: 460).

The creationism-deniers can only read the above as a disingenuous smokescreen, since they hold that Maimonides secretly accepts the criterion of the philosophers for what is possible. The same is the case for Guide 1.75, where Maimonides says, “We wish consequently to find something that would enable us to distinguish the things cognized intellectually from those imagined.” If Maimonides is a closet eternalist, then there is nothing for him to find that the philosophers haven’t found already. The creationist-deniers aim their arguments against Maimonides’ explicit acceptance of miracles, and especially the physical resurrection of the dead. These are topics that I have discussed in the two articles mentioned above, but here I should make clear that Maimonides does not merely posit the possibility of miracles occurring. He claims that they actually have occurred, and that scripture attests to them in passages that cannot be figuratively interpreted by any intelligent person. The criteria he suggests for preferring the literal over the figurative in Guide 2.25 should be compared with what he has to say on the subject in the Treatise on Resurrection. And speaking of that work, there is no reason to doubt Maimonides’ sincerity in the points he makes there either. The physical resurrection of the dead is a doctrine that carries the weight of consensus25 of all the Jewish sects; resurrection, like other miracles, is possible, since God can suspend nature; its purpose is to motivate the performance of the commandments; the bodies that are resurrected will die once again, etc. While there were controversies first in the East, and then in the West, concerning Maimonides’ acceptance of physical resurrection, those

25  This consensus (the actual terms used are mujtama’ and wa-jtama‘at) seems to be Maimonides’

main reason for accepting physical resurrection.

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controversies came to a close when Maimonides’ Treatise on Resurrection was circulated, although his conservative opponents were still not happy with his devaluation of physical resurrection and his spiritualization of the World-to-Come.26 Professor Kreisel’s third argument is based on Guide 3.45, where he reads Maimonides to claim that belief in God, angels, and prophecy is sufficient to establish religious Law. This is indeed strange, because we are told in 2.25 that belief in creation is a necessary condition for the existence of the Law, but belief in creation is not mentioned here at all. Of course, belief in eternity is also not mentioned; the question of the origin of the universe has nothing to do with the chapter, and we know that Maimonides explicitly warns his student against introducing the creation-eternity debate into a discussion where it is not the issue at hand (e.g., Guide 1.69: 168). Maimonides’ point in Guide 3.45 is to explain the purpose of the commandment to establish the cherubs over the ark, which is to reinforce the belief that there are angels that communicate to prophets. For without belief in angels, there cannot be belief in prophecy or religious law. But all this implies is that belief in angels is a necessary condition for belief in prophecy, and prophecy for the Law, not that belief in angels and prophecy are jointly sufficient for establishing the Law. Likewise, the world’s being created is a necessary condition for the existence of the Law in its fundamentals, but not a sufficient one. Still, one may ask: if creation is such an important principle for Maimonides, why wouldn’t there be a commandment reinforcing the belief in creation, to wean the people away from the Sabian belief in eternity, as there is a commandment reinforcing the belief in angels? The answer, of course, is that there is such a commandment: the commandment to observe the Sabbath. With regard to the Sabbath, the reason for it is too well-known to have need of being explained, for it is known how great a rest it procures . . . At the same time it perpetuates throughout the periods of time an opinion whose value is very great, namely that the world has been created. (Guide 3.43: 570) 26   See Bernard V. Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of

Ramah (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 39-60, esp. 52-60.

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The first reason for the Sabbath already appears in the Mishneh Torah; the second reason is an innovation of the Guide, and is consistent with the newfound emphasis on voluntary creation in the Guide and subsequent writings.27 In his last section before the conclusion, Professor Kreisel marshalls no new evidence on behalf of the creationism-deniers. Instead, he argues against Maimonides’ moderately voluntaristic view of Divine agency from an Aristotelian standpoint. His objections apply to other moderate voluntarists besides Maimonides in the history of philosophical theology from Aquinas to Leibniz. Some of them already appear as objections in the discussion of these topics in Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae; they need not concern us here. One point in this section does call for comment, and that is the apparent inconsistency between Maimonides’ acceptance of the intellectualist conception of will and choice with respect to the celestial spheres and incorporeal intellects, and his rejection of the same with respect to God. Yet there is no inconsistency, for Maimonides himself makes clear the grounds for distinction: Divine will is purposive and particularizing; the will of the celestial spheres and intellects are not. Hence the intellectualist conception appropriate for the latter is not appropriate for the former. The notion of purpose, at least in Guide 2.20, reflects more than what Professor Kreisel calls the mere combination of wisdom and will. It implies bringing into being something that may exist in the way it does or that possibly may not exist in that way. I wish to consider here another text that has been adduced by Warren Zev Harvey to show that Maimonides secretly adhered to the eternity position. In Guide 2.2, Maimonides presents his own “disjunctive” proof for the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God, after he has presented several methods of the Aristotelian philosophers in the previous chapter. In his own proof, he argues that whether heavens are created or eternal, God’s existence follows. Then he argues the same for God’s unity and incorporeality, saying, For the demonstration that He is one and not a body is valid, regardless of whether the world has come into being in time after having 27  This was pointed out to me by Professor Septimus.

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been nonexistent or not—as we have made clear by means of the third speculative method [in the previous chapter] (Guide 2.2: 252).

Here Maimonides appeals to the third speculative method in support of his own disjunctive proof. That proof for the existence of God, although it looks at first glance like Avicenna’s metaphysical proof for the Necessary of Existence, may actually rely on the premise of the eternity of the heavens. If this is correct, and if Maimonides was aware of this, then it seems that Maimonides’ constructs his own proof for the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God by appealing to proofs that use the eternity premise. Since Maimonides calls his own proofs “cogent and certain demonstrations,” he therefore hints not only that the world is eternal but that the eternity of the world is demonstrated.28 There are, it seems to me, at least two ways to respond to this argument. The first is to argue that the third speculative method does not rest on the eternity of the heavens.29 The second is to argue that part of it does, but that Maimonides’ own proof of God’s unity and incorporeality, which refers to the third philosophical speculation, does not rely on that part.30 The first way is difficult because Maimonides himself says that the philosophical demonstrations in Guide 2.1 assume the eternity

28   See Warren Zev Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas, pp. 73-87. In the line “For

without [an uncaused Necessary Existent], there would be no existent at all, neither one that is subject to generation and corruption, nor one that is not subject to them—if there is a thing that exists in this matter, as Aristotle states.” Harvey takes the emphasized words as indicating that the proof is valid regardless of the truth or falsity of the eternity of the heavens. But Maimonides is saying, rather, that assuming that Aristotle is right in positing ungenerated entities, the proof demonstrates the existence of an entity that is necessary with respect to its own essence. And, indeed, the proviso “if there is a thing that exists in this matter” could be added to all the methods, including the first philosophical method, which explicitly assumes the eternity of the heavens. 29   Cf. Falaquera, Moreh ha-Moreh, ed. Shiffman, p. 229. “It appears to me, according to my meagre

knowledge, that the method taken from the existents is more correct [than the previous methods], for with it we don’t need the assumption of the eternity of motion, and to say that the world is eternal, for this is opposed to religious belief (emunah).” 30   This independence of the second part of the third philosophical speculation from the first part

was noticed by Josef Stern, See his “Maimonides’ Demonstrations: Principles and Practice,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001): 47–84, esp. 69.

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of the heavens.31 True, he does not mention the premise explicitly in the third philosophical method, but he also doesn’t mention it explicitly in the second philosophical method. In any event, let us assume that it does rely on the eternity of the heavens and that Maimonides was aware of this. That still won’t help the creationism-deniers, since Maimonides’ disjunctive proof for the unity and the incorporeality of God does not rely on the first part of the third philosophical method that assumes the eternity of the heavens. Indeed, the proof of the unity and incorporeality of God in the third speculative method itself does not require the premise, for that part of the proof proceeds according to metaphysical and not physical lines; Maimonides argues that the Necessary of Existence in respect to its own essence can be neither a body nor a force in a body, nor can it exist in two things; to do this he analyzes the concept of Necessary of Existence, based on premises 20-22, which are not based upon premise 26, the eternity of the heavens.32 So however the Necessary of Existence in respect to its own essence is shown to exist—whether through the assumption of the eternity of the heavens or through the assumption of creation—that Necessary of Existence must be unique and incorporeal. The mistake of the creationism-deniers here is to assume that the third speculative method is intended as one long demonstration, with Maimonides demonstrating first God’s existence and then, based on that, His unity and incorporeality. To conclude: it is indeed possible to read a thinker in a variety of ways, but it does not follow that all these ways are legitimate, much less

31   See Herbert Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic

and Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 381 and n. 13. 32   In his Maskiyyot Kesef, ed. S. Werbluner (Frankfurt a. M., 1848), 89, Joseph Kaspi writes that

the disjunction of existents in the third speculation merely demonstrates the existence of an existent that is not subject to generation and corruption, not that it is unique and incorporeal; the latter follows from “other things.” He then writes that God’s not being a force in a body does not follow unless the premise of eternity is assumed, “and he [Maimonides] hinted this at the end of the third method, but he (of blessed memory) arranged this language here with great cunning and artistry (be-tahbulat melakha gedolah).” I do not know what Kaspi is referring to in the line I have emphasized, and which is omitted in Harvey’s citation. In fact, the Averroist Kaspi ignores entirely the Avicennan metaphysical premises on which the proof for incorporeality and unity are based.

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intended by the author.33 In my view, creationism-denial not only reads Maimonides incorrectly; it goes about reading Maimonides incorrectly because it brackets vast amounts of texts in the pursuit of an preconceived, idealized Maimonides, using exegetical methods that Professor Kreisel describes as “midrashic.” Some canons of interpretation belonging to the Middle Ages should not be adopted for academic history of philosophy. The task of the latter is to interpret Maimonides’ view, uninfluenced by whether that view is more in conformity with Aristotelian or contemporary science, or whether it is philosophically or religiously attractive.

33   For an opposing pluralistic reading of the Guide that is attractive to modern sensibilities, see

Moshe Halbertal, Ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 2008), 299-302, esp. p. 301: “It seems to me that it is difficult to deny that the Guide of the Perplexed presents the reader with open possibilities, and it may be that this was Maimonides’ intention . . . one can be a Jew in the manner of eternity (al derekh ha-qadmut) or a Jew in the manner of creation (al derekh ha-hiddush).” Halbertal neglects to mention here the punishment prescribed by Maimonides for those who have adopted incorrect opinions: “Necessity at certain times implies killing them and blotting out the traces of their opinions, lest they should lead astray the ways of others.” (Guide 3.51, p. 619.) If doctrinal openness is the secret of the Guide, it is a well-hidden one.

T he I dent i t y

of the

S abi ans : S ome I nsights *

Hag gai Ma zuz

Introduction

In the third part of The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides mentions the Sabians frequently. He believed that by studying Sabian ritual he would gain insight into the logic behind the commandments (Heb. ta‘amei hamizvot) and their meanings.1 Maimonides ascribed many variant beliefs and customs to the Sabians. As a result, some scholars have argued that, for Maimonides, the name “Sabians” was simply a general term for idolatry. 2 To justify his arguments regarding the Sabians, Maimonides cited the various sources he used. One of these sources was The Book of Nabatean Agriculture (kitāb al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya), ascribed to Aḥmad b. Waḥshiyya,3 who claimed to have translated the book from Chaldean into Arabic. Modern scholars disagree as to the authenticity of the book, * 

I would like to thank Professor Dov Schwartz, Professor Raphael Jospe, and Professor David Powers for their invaluable comments.

1 

“I shall now return to my purpose and say that the meaning of many of the laws became clear to me and their causes became known to me through my study of the doctrines, opinions, practices, and cult of the Sabians, as you will hear when I explain the reasons for the commandments that are considered to be without cause.” See Maimonides, Dalālat al- Ḥ ā’irīn, 3:29. Translation taken from Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, translated and with Introduction and Notes by Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).

2  E.g., Shlomo Pines, “The Philosophic Sources of Maimonides,” in Idem (ed.), Studies in the

History of Jewish Philosophy: The Transmission of Texts and Ideas (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1977), 103-173, at 164. 3 

“I shall mention to you the books from which all that I know about the doctrines and opinions of the Sabians will become clear to you so that you will know for certain that what I say about the reasons for the laws is correct. The most important book about this subject is the ‘Nabatean agriculture’ translated by Ibn Wa ḥ shiyya.” See Maimonides, Dalālat al- Ḥ ā’irīn, 3:29.

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with some claiming that it is genuine while others hold that Ibn Waḥshiyya himself composed it in the tenth century. 4 According to Maimonides, most of the sources dealing with the Sabians are lost, and only a small part of the remainder was translated into Arabic. Nonetheless, he held that the extant literature contained a great deal of information on the Sabians and their religion. 5 He concluded that despite his efforts, there were many details of the Sabian religion that he had yet to discover: “To sum up: Just as, according to what I have told you, the doctrines of the Sabians are remote from us today, the chronicles of those times are likewise hidden from us today. Hence if we knew them and were cognizant of the events that happened in those days, we would know in detail the reasons of many things mentioned in the Torah.” 6 The Sabians’ identity and religion were subjects of investigation among Muslim scholars prior to the time of Maimonides. Among those 4  Etienne Marc Quatremère believed it to be a translation of a Chaldean work of the period of

Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC). E. Meyer dates it to the first century CE. Daniel Chwolson went so far as to claim that the book is an authentic work written at the beginning of the fourteenth century B.C. This theory has been subject to a great deal of criticism. By contrast, scholars such as Alfred Von Gutschmid and Theodor Nöldeke have argued strongly against authenticity. For a detailed discussion, see Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition [Henceforward EI 2] (Leiden: Brill, 1986-2004), s.v. Ibn Wa ḥ s hiyya (T. Fahd). For a criticism of Chwolson, see Pines, “The Philosophic Sources of Maimonides,” 163. 5 

“All the books that I have mentioned to you are the books of idolatry that have been translated into Arabic. But there is no doubt that they are but a very small part of this literature if compared to the writings that have not been translated and are not even extant, but have perished and been lost in the course of the years. However, the books extant among us today contain an exposition of the greatest part of the opinions and practices of the Sabians; some of the latter are generally known at present in the world.” See Maimonides, Dalālat al- Ḥ ā’irīn, 3:29.

6 

Maimonides, Dalālat al- Ḥ ā’irīn, 3:50. See also, “In the case of most of the statutes whose reason is hidden from us, everything serves to keep people away from idolatry. The fact that there are particulars the reason for which is hidden from me and the utility of which I do not understand, is due to the circumstance that things known by hearsay are not like things that one has seen. Hence the extant of my knowledge of the ways of the Sabians drawn from the books is not comparable to the knowledge of one who saw their practices with his eyes; this is even more the case since these opinions have disappeared two thousand years ago or even before that. If we knew the particulars of those practices and heard details concerning those opinions, we would become clear regarding the wisdom manifested in the details of the practices prescribed in the commandments concerning the sacrifices and the forms of uncleanness and other matters whose reason cannot, to my mind, be easily grasped.” Maimonides, Dalālat al- Ḥ ā’irīn, 3:49.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

who pursued the subject were ‘Alī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Mas‘ūdī (896-956), ‘Abd al-Jabbār al-Asadābādī (935-1025), Muḥammad al-Bīrūnī (973-1048), ‘Alī b. Aḥmad b. Ḥazm (994-1064), and Muḥammad al-Shaharastānī (1086-1153). Muslim scholars also continued to investigate the issue after Maimonides’ death. We find, for example, a short treatment of the subject in fourteenth-century historian ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥaldūn’s (1332-1406) Muqaddima. The first Muslims lived side by side with non-Muslims, and as a result, the issue of how to relate to non-Muslims appears as early as the Qur’ān itself. Most Qur’ānic references to non-Muslims refer to Jews and Christians, who are usually called People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb). The Qur’ān also refers, albeit only once, to the Zoroastrians (Qur’ān [henceforth Q.] 22:17), who resided in Persia. In addition to the People of the Book, the Qur’ān also refers to the non-monotheistic religion of the idolatrous Quraysh tribe, which had settled in the city of Mecca and persecuted Muḥammad. The subject of this paper is another religious sect that is mentioned three times in the Qur’ān— the enigmatic people referred to as the Sabians (Q. 2:62, 5:69, 22:17). The paucity of details provided by the Qur’ān led to a great deal of speculation on the identity of the Sabians by medieval Muslim scholars. While the Muslim scholars’ theories on the subject are plentiful, they are also confusing and often contradictory.7 As a result, the question of the Sabians and their religion has also plagued modern western scholars of Islam, who have proffered numerous opinions on the subject.8 For the 7 

See Sarah Stroumsa’s summary, “The Sabians of Ḥarrān and the Sabians of Maimonides: On Maimonides’ Theory of the History of Religions,” Sefunot 7/22 (1999): 277-295 [Hebrew].

8  The scholarly literature on the Sabians is very rich and varied. Although not the subject of this

article, a brief survey of the most prominent scholars on the subject follows: Daniel Chwolsohn argued that the Sabians were Mandaeans, a Christian sect that emphasized baptism. The Mandaeans were based in Mesopotamia and included aspects of Jewish and Persian religion in their belief system. Certain scholars have proposed that the Syriac word ṣ ābā , which means “to baptize,” indicates a connection between the Sabians mentioned in the Qur’ān and the Mandaeans, who worshipped John the Baptist. See Shlomo Dov Goitein, The Islam of Mu ḥ ammad: How a New Religion Came Into Being in the Shadow of Judaism (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975), 86 [Hebrew]. According to François De Blois, the Sabians were Manicheans (zanādiqa sg. zindīq) who lived among the Quraysh tribe. see EI 2, s.v. Ṣ ābī (F.C. De Blois). De Blois criticizes Chwolsohn’s theories and laments that, for years, students in the West unquestioningly accepted his baseless conclusions. See François De Blois, s.v. Sabians, in Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.)

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most part, modern scholars have concluded that the Sabians described by Muslim scholars of the ‘Abbāsid period are not the Sabians mentioned in the Qur’ān.9 There has been no major scholarly research, however, into the earliest period of Muslim scholarship—beginning with ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abbās (d. 688), known as the father of Qur’ānic commentary, and continuing through the tābi‘ūn (the second generation of Muslim authorities) and tābi‘ū tābi‘īn (the third generation of Muslim authorities)—and their opinions on the Sabians. To the best of my knowledge, the only modern scholar who has researched the issue of the Sabians in the Muslim exegetical tradition is Jane Dammen McAuliffe.10 In her article on the subject, McAuliffe presents the writings of various interpreters of the Qur’ān (mufassirūn) on the subject of the Sabians’ identity; though she does not cite any of the earliest Muslim scholars by name.

Encyclopedia of the Qur’ān (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 4:511. In the second century AD, a Jewish-Christian sect sometimes referred to as Sabians resided on the east bank of the Jordan. There are some indications that they eventually immigrated to an Arab country. According to Shlomo Dov Goitein, “This was probably a tradition that continued up till the days of Mu ḥ ammad, that is, a tradition of baptizers who believed in Judaism and, in some ways, in Christianity, who practiced baptism just as Mu ḥ ammad insisted upon doing at the beginning of his journey.” See Goitein, The Islam of Mu ḥ ammad, 86-87; Charles Cutler Torrey, The Jewish Foundation of Islam (New York: Jewish Institute of Religion Press, 1933), 3. J. Pedersen adopts both De Blois’s and Chwolsohn’s theories on the basis that both Manichaeism and Mandaeism included elements drawn from Gnosticism, especially a dualistic worldview. See Stroumsa, “The Sabians”, 279. Judaism has generally regarded Gnosticism as a religion based on emotion and imagination—both of which are considered misleading—and as a threat to the basic principles of Judaism. During the first century C.E., a special prayer against heretics and informers was added to Jewish liturgy by Shmuel ha-Q aṭ an (literally: little Samuel). It appears that the concept of “heretics” referred, in part, to various Gnostic sects, which are also described as heretical in Rabbinic literature. It is possible that, during the earliest period of Christianity, the Rabbis did not distinguish between Gnosticism and Christianity, and may have believed that Christianity was a Gnostic sect. The early Muslim commentators appear to have had similar difficulties in regard to the Sabians. 9  The city of Ḥ arrān, close to the Euphrates river on the border between Syria and Asia Minor, was

home to a syncretistic sect that combined worship of the stars and constellations with Hellenistic philosophy. During the medieval period, members of the sect succeeded in convincing Muslims that they were the Sabians referred to in the Qur’ān. As a result, they were permitted to practice their religion. See EI, s.v. Ṣābī (F.C. De Blois). The Sabians of Ḥ arrān fall outside the scope of this article. For more about them, see the article by Stroumsa mentioned above.

10   Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Exegetical Identification of the Ṣābi’ūn,” The Muslim World 72

(1982): 95-106.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

In this article, I intend to examine the opinions that are attributed to Ibn ‘Abbās and his students as well as to their immediate successors, on the question of the Sabians’ identity. This is not a simple task, for several reasons: the earliest Qur’ānic commentators were not in agreement on the identity of the Sabians; the Islamic sources often present their ideas on the subject in a cryptic and self-contradictory manner; and, sometimes, the sources combine separate theories on the Sabians into a synthesis, which is then presented as a theory in its own right. As we shall see, the problematic nature of the early Qur’ānic commentaries on the Sabians exercised a detrimental influence on attempts by later Muslim scholars to deal with the subject. Maimonides stated that he had read many monographs on the Sabians and claimed that a great deal had been known about the Sabian religion in the past; but this knowledge had since been lost. Modern scholars have examined Maimonides’ sources in depth,11 but I believe that research into the opinions of the earliest Qur’ānic commentators might expose another, very early, source of information on the Sabian religion; a source that has been relatively unexamined thus far and which may help to clarify Maimonides’ views on the subject. A comparison between the third part of The Guide of the Perplexed and the various partial descriptions of the Sabians given by Maimonides to the opinions of the earliest Qur’ānic commentators reveals some interesting parallels. This raises a question I will attempt to answer below: was Maimonides familiar with the opinions of the earliest Qur’ānic commentators on the subject of the Sabians? The Earliest Qur’anic Commentators

Islamic literature cites the early Qur’ānic commentator Abī al-Ḥajjāj Mujāhid b. Jabr al-Makkī (Mecca, 642-722) as the source of several contradictory opinions on the Sabians. According to one citation, Mujāhid 11   For example, see Dov Schwartz, Amulets, Properties and Rationalism in Medieval Jewish Thought

(Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2004), 22-34. For details on the sources Maimonides used, see Idem, Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press 1999), 99-101; Stroumsa, “The Sabians,” 285-292; Pines, ”The Philosophic Sources of Maimonides,” 103-173.

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claimed that the Sabians were a religious sect that mixed Zoroastrian and Jewish practices (al-Ṣābi’ūn: bayna al-majūs wa’l-yahūd).12 Mujāhid wrote the same in his tafsīr and added that the Sabians had no religion,13 by which he meant that the Sabians had no religion unique to themselves.14 According to a different citation, however, Mujāhid reported that the Sabians combined Zoroastrianism with Christianity rather than Judaism, though he maintained his claim that they had no religion of their own (qawm bayna al-naṣārā wa’l-majūs, laysa lahum dīn).15 Mujāhid’s description of Sabian rituals in the latter citation, however, indicates that they were similar to the rituals of Manichaeism. Mani (216-276), the founder of Manichaeism, tried to combine the teachings of previous prophets, especially Zoroaster and Jesus. Despite Mani’s attempt at syncretism, the Manichaean religion was primarily based on Zoroastrianism, which embraced dualism and saw the world as the scene of a metaphysical battle between good and evil.16 12  Abū Ja‘far Mu ḥ ammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān fī Tafsīr al-Qur’ān, (Cairo: Dār alMa‘ārif, 1953), 2:146; Abū ‘Abd Allāh Mu ḥ ammad b. A ḥ mad b. Abī Bakr al-An ṣ ārī al-Qur ṭ ubī, al-Jāmi‘ li-A ḥ kām al-Qur’ān, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Turāth al-‘Arabī, 1965), 1:434; ‘Imād alDīn Ismā‘īl b. ‘Umar Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dār I ḥ yā’ al-Kutub

al-‘Arabiyya, 1950), 1:104.

13  Abī al-Ḥajjāj Mujāhid b. Jabr al-Makkī al-Makhzūmī, Tafsīr Mujāhid, 2 vols. (Beirut: al-

Manshūrāt al-‘Ilmiyya, n.d.), 77. 14   Modern scholars have demonstrated that Judaism and Zoroastrianism share many

characteristics, especially in regard to issues of impurity and purification. See e.g. Haggai Mazuz, “Qur’ānic Commentators on Jewish and Zoroastrian Approaches to Menstruation,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism 15/1 (2012), 89-98. Some of the scholars have concluded that, for the most part, these similarities are the result of Persian influence on Judaism. George William Carter claims that, just as Greek culture influenced Judaism during the period of the Hellenistic empires, the same was the case during Persian rule. See George William Carter, Zoroastrianism and Judaism (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 34-35. For a detailed study of Persian influence on Judaism, see Shaul Shaked, “Iranian Influence on Judaism” in The Return to Zion— Under Persian Rule, ed. Haim Tadmor (Jerusalem: ‘Am ‘Oved Press, 1983), 236-250 [Hebrew]. For further information, see James Barr, “The Question of Religious Influence: The Case of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53/2 (1985), 201-35. 15   ‘Abd al-Ra ḥ mān b. ‘Alī b. Mu ḥ ammad Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr fī ‘ilm al-Tafsīr, 9 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī li’l-Ṭibā‘a wa’l-Nashr, 1984), 1:92; ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Umar al-Bay ḍāwī, Anwār

al-Tanzīl wa-Asrār al-Ta’wīl, 2 vols. (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1968), 12; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 1:104.

16  A.V. Williams Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism 13 (Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 102, 165.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

Mujāhid’s description of Sabian customs as essentially Manichaean is supported by Yazīd b. Abū al-Ziyād (667-753), who claimed that the Sabians believed in the teachings of all previous prophets, fasted thirty days a year, and prayed five times a day facing the direction of Yemen, i.e., south.17 This is in accord with Mujāhid’s description of Sabian rituals and beliefs.18 Yet another tradition holds that Mujāhid described the Sabians’ religion as a mixture of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.19 It is possible that all three descriptions of the Sabian religion attributed to Mujāhid are accurate. Mujāhid may have observed a Sabian ritual that, in addition to Zoroastrian elements, contained remnants of Jewish customs that had not yet been removed from Christianity. If Mujāhid had doubts about which religion the Sabians were imitating, he may have ascribed their rituals to both Christian and Jewish origins. Nonetheless, it seems clear that Mujāhid was certain that many Sabian customs were of Zoroastrian origin. A mixture of Zoroastrianism and Judaism would be similar to Mandaeism; while a mixture of Zoroastrianism and Christianity would be similar to Manichaeism. The issue becomes still more complicated when we consider another statement attributed to Mujāhid: “The Sabians are not Jews and not Christians and they have no religion.”20 If this statement is accurate, then the only possible answer to the question of the Sabians’ religion is that they were Zoroastrians. However, it is unlikely that the Qur’ān intended to identify the Sabians as Zoroastrians because, as mentioned above, the Qur’ān clearly refers to the Sabians and the Zoroastrians as separate religious sects. (Q. 22:17). Yet another theory is attributed to both Mujāhid and Wahb b. Munabbih (Yemen, d. 728). It states that the Sabians did not follow the customs of the Jews, the Christians, the Zoroastrians, or the idolaters.21 17   Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 1:104. 18   On fasting among the Manichaeans, see Shlomo Dov Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and

Institutions (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 92.

19   Mu ḥ ammad b. ‘Alī al-Shawkānī, Tafsīr Fat ḥ al-Qadīr, 5 vols. (Cairo:‘Ālam al-Kutub, 1964), 1:76. 20   Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 2:146. 21   The sects referred to in this list include practitioners of pure monotheism (Judaism), a more

controversial form of monotheism (Christianity), dualism (Zoroastrianism), and polytheism (idolaters). Thus, Mujāhid and Wahb b. Munabbih included all religious beliefs known to them at the time.

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Instead, the commentators assert that the Sabians were remnants of the fiṭra and had no fixed religion (lā dīn muqarrar lahum yatba‘ūnahu).22 The fiṭra is a term mentioned in the Qur’ān23 that, according to Qur’ānic commentators, is a divine religion imprinted on man at the moment of his creation (dīn Allāh alladhī faṭara khalkatan).24 This interpretation of fiṭra is based on a quote from Muḥammad that is cited in the ḥadīth, “Every infant is born in the state of fiṭra” (kull mawlūd yūladu ‘alā al-fiṭra).25 According to many opinions that appear in the Islamic tradition, the fiṭra is the religion of Islam; that is, every human being is given the potential to become a Muslim at birth, and only because they are taught to adopt other religions, they become non-Muslims.26 Most commentators, however, assert that fiṭra is simply the recognition of God (al-iqrār bi-Allāh wa’l-ma‘rifa bihi).27 According to Mujāhid and Wahb b. Munabbih, then, the Sabians practiced a primordial form of monotheism. A different opinion as to the identity of the Sabians is given under the name of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd b. Aslam al-‘Adawī al-Madanī (Medina, d. 798). Although Islamic literature presents ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd’s view of the Sabians as independent of other commentators’ ideas on the subject, it in fact elaborates on the opinions of Mujāhid and Wahb b. Munabbih. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd claims that the Sabians were members of a religion that was common in Mosul (jazīrat al-mawṣil), Iraq.28 The practitioners of

22   Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 1:104. 23   “So set thy face for religion, being upright, the nature made by Allāh in which He has created men (fi ṭ rata Allāh allatī fa ṭ ara al-nās). There is no altering Allāh’s creation. That is the right religion—but most people know not” (Q. 30:30). The Arabic root f. ṭ .r. has a number of

permutations, such as “having a certain inborn characteristic,” “natural,” and “ancient.”

24   E.g., see Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. Mu ḥ ammad al-Māwardī, Tafsīr al-Māwardī: al-Nukat wa’l-‘Uyūn,

4 vols. (Kuwait: Wizārat al-Awqāf wal-Shu’ūn al-Islāmiyya, al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1982), 1:266

25   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 6:300. 26   For example, see Abū Zakariyya Ya ḥ yā b. Sharaf Mu ḥ yī al-Dīn al-Nawawī, Ṣ a ḥ ī ḥ Muslim bi-Shar ḥ al-Nawawī, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1990), 1:212. One can assume

that, if the Sabians were Muslims, the Qur’ān would not have described them as a separate sect.

27   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 6:301. 28   Yāqūt b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Ḥamawī al-Rumī al-Baghdādī, Mu‘jam al-Buldān, 7 vols. (Beirut: Dār

al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1990), 5:258-59.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

this religion were monotheists who believed in a single, unique God, and referred to him with the phrase: “There is no other God than Allāh, alone (faqaṭ).”29 This concept of Allāh is considered acceptable to Muslims. According to the ḥadīth, members of the idolatrous Quraysh tribe would become confused when Muḥammad’s Companions (ṣaḥāba) would pronounce the “testament” (shahāda, i.e., “There is no other God than Allāh and Muḥammad is Allāh’s messenger”), thinking that the Companions had become Sabians. It appears, then, that one of the major differences between the Muslims and the Sabians was the Muslims’ recognition of Muḥammad as Allāh’s messenger and prophet, the acknowledgement of which composes the final part of the “testament.”30 In addition, the Sabians were different from the Muslims in that they had no unique religious customs (‘amal), book (kitāb), or prophet (nabī).31 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd’s description of the Sabians matches the traditional Islamic depiction of the fiṭra. The Sabians, like the fiṭra, recognized the uniqueness of God but lacked any unique customs, book, or prophet. According to Islamic tradition, then, the Sabians practiced a primitive monotheism identical to that of humanity when it was first created. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd’s description of the Sabians also indirectly negates the possibility that the Sabians were Mandaeans, Manichaeans, or People of the Book, because all of these groups had unique customs, prophetic books, and prophets of their own. As we shall see, he was not the only one who thought so. Another theory regarding the Sabians was expressed by al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. 787), who claimed that the Sabian religion was similar to Christianity. Al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad also states that the Sabians practiced the “religion of Noah” (dīn Nūḥ) and prayed facing “the way the wind blew 29  We can conclude from this that the Sabians did not recognize Mu ḥ ammad as a prophet. See

al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 2:146.

30  This is expressed in the following story by Rabī‘a b. ‘Ubbād: “I saw the All ā h’s messenger (i.e.,

Mu ḥ ammad) when I was a pagan. He was saying to people, ‘If you want to save yourselves, accept there is no god but Allāh.’ At this moment I noticed a man behind him, saying: ‘He is a Sabian.’ When I asked somebody who he was he told me he was Abū Lahab, his uncle.” See Ibn Ḥanbal, A ḥ mad b. Mu ḥ ammad, Musnad al-Imām A ḥ mad Ibn Ḥ anbal (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī li’l-Ṭibā‘a wa’l-Nashr, 1969), 4:341.

31   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1:92.

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in the middle of the day” (inna qiblatahum naḥwa mahabb al-janūb ḥiyāl muntaṣaf al-nahār ).32 The expression “religion of Noah” refers to Q. 42:13, which states, “He has made plain to you the religion which He enjoined upon Noah.”33 According to Islamic tradition, Noah was the first prophet to receive laws from Allāh.34 Among other things, these laws prohibited marriage to sisters and mothers (i.e., incest), stipulated that God is unique, and banned idolatry (taḥrīm al-ākhawāt wa’l-ummahāt wa’l-tawḥīd wa-tark al-shirk).35 According to Muqātil b. Sulaymān (Balkh, d. 767), “The Sabians are a cult which separated from the Christians because of a desire to practice the ‘religion of Noah’ (ṣabā’ū ilā dīn Nūḥ), but they erred and were not successful because the ‘religion of Noah’ was like the religion of Islam” (waza‘amū annahum ‘alā dīn Nūḥ ‘alayhi al-salām wa-ākhṭā’ū li-ānna dīn Nūḥ ‘alayhi al-salām kāna ‘alā dīn al-Islām).36 If this description is accurate, it appears that the terms fiṭra and “religion of Noah” actually refer to Islam. This raises the question, however, of why Islamic tradition identified the Sabians as an independent group in the first place? One possible answer is that the Sabian religion was not Islam but, as other arguments suggest, a religion that existed at the dawn of humanity. According to Islamic tradition, the pre-Islamic era can be divided into two sub-periods. There are two schools of thought on the first of these pre-Islamic periods (al-jāhiliyya al-ūlā). According to one of them, this period began with Adam and continued until Noah. The second school of thought holds that this period began with the life of Noah and ended with Idrīs (generally identified as the Biblical Enoch).37 According to 32   Al-Māwardī, al-Nukat wa’l-‘Uyūn, 1:117. 33   Translation taken from Mu ḥ ammad ‘Alī Maulana, The Holy Qur’ān: Arabic Text, English Translation and Commentary (Lahore: The Lahore A ḥ madiyya Movement in Islam, 1998 [First

Edition, 1917]).

34   Jalāl al-Dīn Mu ḥ ammad b. A ḥ mad al-Ma ḥ allī and Jalāl al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Ra ḥ mān b. Abū Bakr alSuyū ṭ̣ ī , Tafsīr al-Jalālayn (Cairo: Mu’assasat al-Mukhtār, 2004), 465. 35   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 7:276. 36   Muqātil Ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil Ibn Sulaymān, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya,

2003), 1:312. 37   Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, ed. S.M. Stern, trans. C.R. Barber and S.M. Stern (Piscataway,

NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2006), 202.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

both theories, however, the life of Noah demarcates the first pre-Islamic period, and only Noah and his family survive it; making Noah the father of a “new humanity”—the generation born after the Flood. As a result, Islamic tradition sees Noah’s personal behavior, together with the laws he received from Allāh—especially regarding the uniqueness of God—as the first religion in human history. It appears, then, that according to many of the Qur’ānic commentators, the fiṭra is recognition of the existence of one God and is therefore synonymous with the “religion of Noah” itself.38 As mentioned above, according to ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd, the Sabians lived in Mosul, Iraq. ‘Aṭā’ b. Abī Rabāḥ (Mecca, 647-732) and his student ‘Abd al-Malik b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Jurayj (Mecca, d. 767) also indicated the geographic location of the Sabians, but claimed that they lived in the Sawād, an area south of Mosul.39 Ibn Abū Ziyād, citing his father, reported that the Sabians lived in Kūthā, Iraq. According to the geographer Yāqūt b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Ḥamawī al-Rūmī al-Baghdādī (1179-1229), there were three different places referred to as Kūthā. One of these three was a Kūthā located in the Sawād in Iraq. There appears to be agreement, then, between ‘Aṭā’ b. Abī Rabāḥ, Ibn Jurayj, and Ibn Zayd as to the Sabians’ location.40 The river Kūthā is named after one of the sons of Arfaḥshad (Heb. Arpakhshad), the son of Sham (Heb. Shem), who was, in turn, one of the sons of Nūḥ (Noah) and grandfather of Abraham. Yāqūt’s claim, as well as the fact that he takes the trouble to point out that Kūthā belonged to the family of Noah, the father of the “new humanity,” appears to confirm al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad and Muqātil b. Sulaymān’s statement that the Sabians practiced the “religion of Noah.” Yāqūt also writes that Abraham himself was born and buried in Kūthā, and it was there that Abraham was miraculously saved from the fiery furnace into which he was thrown by Nimrod.41 Therefore, according to the commentators mentioned above, the homeland of the Sabians in Kūthā is directly connected to both Noah and Abraham. Muslims believe that Noah was the first man to receive a direct revelation of God’s uniqueness; and that Abraham was the first man who, 38   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 7:276. 39   Yāqūt, Mu‘jam al-Buldān, 3:309. 40   Ibid., 4:553-54. 41   Ibid., 4:554.

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after the many idolatrous generations that followed the life of Noah, chose to return to monotheism (Q. 3:76; 37:84). Another commentator, Qatāda b. Di‘āma al-Sadūsī (Baṣra, d. 736), rejects the opinions of al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad and Muqātil b. Sulaymān regarding the Sabians by claiming that the Sabians were actually the Chaldeans (kaldānīyūn),42 from whom Abraham was descended. The Chaldeans, he claims, worshipped the heavens (aflāk) and the stars. Astrology, he tells us, was not only widely practiced among them but dictated their lives. Abraham, however, rejected these beliefs, which eventually led him to leave the Chaldeans and embrace belief in Allāh.43 It seems, therefore, that although the commentators mentioned above agree that the Sabians lived in Iraq, this has not helped us clarify their identity. While the commentators agree on the location of the Sabians, they do not agree on the characteristics of their religion. Ibn Jurayj states that the Sabians were not Zoroastrians, Jews, or Christians, but does not mention any religious characteristics that would help identify them.44 Similarly, Ibn Zayd claims that they had no religious customs, book, or prophet.45

42  An Aramaic tribe residing in Babylon during the seventh century BCE. had the city of Ūr

Kaśdīm as its capital, from which Abraham set forth. See Gen. 12:32. While the Torah states that Abraham set forth from Ūr Kaśdīm, al-Rāzī used the word “Chaldeans.” The Chaldeans are not referred to in the Bible, but the Talmud mentions them as Keldaēy, which means “seeing in the stars” (Heb. rō’īm ba-kōkhavīm). See BT, Sanhedrin, 95a; BT, Yevamōt, 21b; BT, Shabbat, 119a, 156b; BT, Berakhōt, 64a. It appears that worship of the stars and the practice of astrology was fundamental to Chaldean culture, as was the case in many surrounding cultures. The Talmud states that Abraham, the first monotheist, continued to practice astrology until God forbad him from doing so: “Abraham pleaded before the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘Sovereign of the Universe! One born in mine house is mine heir.’ ‘Not so,’ He replied, ‘but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels.’ ‘Sovereign of the Universe!’ cried he, ‘I have looked at my constellation and find that I am not fated to beget child.’ ‘Go forth from [i.e., cease] thy planet [gazing], for Israel is free from planetary influence.’” See BT, Shabbat, 156a. 43   Fakhr al-Dīn Mu ḥ ammad b. ‘Umar al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr, 17 vols. (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub

al-‘Ilmiyya, n.d.), 3:105.

44   Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 2:146. 45  The claim that the Sabians lived in Kūthā was eventually combined with Ibn Zayd’s

suggestion that they practiced a primordial form of monotheism. As mentioned above, however, Ibn Zayd originally argued that the Sabians lived in the region of Mosul (jazīrat al-Maw ṣ il).

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

Ibn Abū Ziyād, on the other hand, does give us a few indications as to Sabian customs, claiming that they believed in all the prophets, fasted thirty days every year, and prayed five times a day facing Yemen. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (Medina-Baṣra, 642-728/737), appears to have been open to several possibilities regarding the identity of the Sabians. According to some sources, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī believed that the Sabians practiced Zoroastrianism (qawm ka’l-majūs).46 Qatāda quotes Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as saying that the Sabians combined Jewish beliefs with Zoroastrianism and that they had no religion.47 ‘Abd Allāh b. Abī Najīḥ (Meccan, d. 749) agreed with this,48 as did Mujāhid, as mentioned above. In contrast to Mujāhid and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, who emphasized Zoroastrianism as the primary element in Sabian ritual, other commentators emphasize the Christian and Jewish aspects of the Sabian religion. The greatest of the Qur’ānic commentators, Ibn ‘Abbās, reported that the Sabians were Christian pilgrims who shaved the centers of their heads (al-sā’iḥūn almuḥallaqa awsāṭ ru’ūsihim), a common identifying practice among Christians; while Sa‘īd b. Jubayr (Kūfa, 665-714) claimed that the Sabians mixed Judaism and Christianity.49 As noted above, the Qur’ān mentions the Sabians three times. Each time, the Sabians are referred to in relation to believers (i.e. Muslims), Jews, and Christians. In Q. 2:62, the Sabians are mentioned after the Christians; while in Q. 5:69 and Q. 22:17, they are mentioned after the Jews and before the Christians. This variation in the Sabians’ order of appearance caused certain difficulties of interpretation, and a study of the tafsīr shows that the Qur’ānic commentators found it confusing. As we have seen, many of the early Qur’ānic commentators believed that the Sabians were a sect of Judaism or Christianity. We can assume from this that the commentators considered the Sabians to be People of the Book. For example, a story is told about Ismā‘īl b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Suddī (Kūfa, d. 745), who was asked about the Sabians and replied that they were

46   Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 1:10; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1:92. 47   Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 2:146. 48   Qur ṭ ubī, al-Jāmi‘, 1:434. 49   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1:92.

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People of the Book.50 Abū al-‘Āliya Rufay‘ b. Mihrān al-Riyāḥī (d. 709) also held that the Sabians were People of the Book because, he claimed, they used to read from the Book of Psalms (yaqra’ūna al-zabūr).51 Ibn ‘Abbās, however, who believed the Sabians were a group of Christian pilgrims (ṣinf min al-naṣārā) who shaved the centers of their heads,52 stated that it was forbidden to eat from the Sabians’ sacrifices or to marry their wives.53 This indicates that Ibn ‘Abbās did not believe that the Sabians were People of the Book. Moreover, if we cross-reference Ibn ‘Abbās’ statement with the Qur’ānic verses “marry not the idolatresses until they believe” (Q. 2:221) and “forbidden to you is that which dies of itself, and blood, and flesh of swine, and that on which any other name than that of Allāh has been invoked . . . and that which is sacrificed on stones set up for idols” (Q. 5:3), it appears that Ibn ‘Abbās considered the Sabians idolaters. If true, under Islamic law the Sabians would have been given a choice between death and conversion to Islam.54 It is possible that Ibn ‘Abbās excluded the Sabians from the People of the Book because they shaved the centers of their heads. This opinion may have been based on an order given by Muḥammad just before embarking on a military campaign in the year 630 CE. Muḥammad instructed his army not to harm monks who were hermits, but to decapitate those who shaved the centers of their heads because, he claimed, they worshipped Satan.55 Ziyād b. Abū Sufyān (i.e., Ziyād b. Abīhi. d. 672),56 who served as governor of Iraq under the first Umayyad caliph, rendered an opinion

50  Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 2:146. 51   Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1:92. 52   Ibid., 1:92. 53   Qur ṭ ubī, al-Jāmi‘, 1:434. 54  This law was derived from the following verse: “So when the sacred months have passed, slay

the idolaters, wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush. But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free. Surely Allāh is Forgiving, Merciful” (Q. 9:5). This verse is referred to in traditional Islamic sources as the “verse of the sword” (āyat al-sayf). 55   Mu ḥ ammad b. ‘Umar al-Wāqidī, Kitāb al-Maghāzī, 3 vols. (London: Oxford University Press,

1966), 2:310.

56  The literal meaning of Ziyād’s name is “Ziyād the son of his father.” On the identity of Ziyād’s

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

that may help explain the early commentators’ confusion regarding whether the Sabians were People of the Book. According to Ziyād b. Abū Sufyān, Muḥammad discovered that the Sabians prayed five times daily while facing the qibla (i.e., Mecca). Because this was similar to Muslim practice, Muḥammad agreed to include the Sabians in the People of the Book in exchange for payment of a poll tax (jizya). At a later date, however, Muḥammad was informed that the Sabians worshipped angels. As a result, he removed them from the People of the Book.57 Qatāda gives a similar opinion on the Sabians. He claims that the Sabians worshipped a number of beings and that their rituals included customs from five different religions. Of these five religions, “four of them are from Satan (al-shayṭān) and one of them from the Merciful One” (alRaḥmān, one of the ninety-nine beautiful names for Allāh). According to Qatāda, the Sabians worshipped the angels and practiced the rituals of the Zoroastrians—who “worship fire” (wa-hum ya‘budūna al-nār); [the rituals] of the idolaters “who worship graven images” (wa-alladhīna ashrakū ya‘budūna al-awthān), [the rituals] of the Jews, and [the rituals] of the Christians.58 It appears that these four religions (Judaism and Christianity were considered a single religion) are “from Satan,” while that of the “Merciful One,” left unmentioned in the text, is Islam. If Qatāda’s description is correct, then it seems that the early Muslims found it difficult to understand the Sabians and their religion because the Sabians practiced a mixture of rituals drawn from all the major faiths of the time Islam was founded. Al-Qurtubi’s Confusion

The question of the Sabians and their identity continued to concern later generations of Qur’ānic commentators, who struggled with the issue throughout the Middle Ages. Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Anṣārī al-Qurṭubī (d. 1237) interpreted Q. 22:17 as indicating that

father, see Uri Rubin, “‘Al-Walad li’l-Firāsh’: On the Islamic Campaign against Zinā,” Studia Islamica 77-78 (1993), 5-26, at 13-14. 57  Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 2:147. 58  Al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr, 3:105.

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the Sabians worshipped the stars (qawm ya‘budūna al-nujūm).59 In his commentary on Q. 5:69, however, he held that they converted to Judaism (qad dakhalū fi’l-yahūdiyya).60 It may be possible to reconcile al-Qurṭubī’s statements if we posit that the Sabians began as a pagan sect, but later embraced Judaism. This theory becomes problematic in light of al-Qurṭubī’s commentary on Q. 2:62, in which he claims that the Sabian religion was not that of the People of the Book (qad kharajū min dīn ahl al-kitāb). If the Sabians did accept Judaism, as al-Qurṭubī stated in his commentary on Q. 5:69, they should have been considered People of the Book.61 Al-Qurṭubī’s commentaries on the Sabians may also be reconcilable by examining the Qur’ānic passages in which they appear according to the order of their appearance. Qur’ānic commentator ‘Aṭā’ al-Khurāsānī (d. 757) claimed that the three Qur’ānic chapters that mention the Sabians were revealed to Muḥammad during his time in Medina. The first chapter to be revealed was Chapter 2, followed by Chapter 22, and finally Chapter 5.62 Examining al-Qurṭubī’s commentaries in the order set out by ‘Aṭā’ al-Khurāsānī appears to confirm the theory that the Sabians originally worshipped the stars, but later embraced Judaism. However, this does not answer the question of why the Qur’ān does not identify the Sabians as Jews, or why the Sabians are consistently described as an independent sect. Possibly, the answer may be found in Muḥammad b. ‘Alī al-Shawkānī’s (1759-1839) opinion on the matter. Al-Shawkānī sought to establish “the order of things” regarding the Qur’ānic chapters referring to the Sabians, and thus alleviate the confusion surrounding the issue. In his commentary on Q. 2:62, he reversed the narrative described above, and stated that the Sabians were a sect of Judaism or Christianity that began to worship angels. As a result, they were no longer considered People of the Book (wa-sammū hādhihi al-firqa ṣābi’a, li-ānnahā kharajat min dīn al-yahūd wa’l-naṣārā wa‘abadū al-malā’ika).63

59  Al-Qur ṭ ubī, al-Jāmi‘, 12:22. 60   Ibid., 6:246. 61   Ibid., 1:434. 62   Mu ḥ ammad b. Ayyūb Ibn al-Ḍurays, Fa ḍ ā’il al-Qur’ān (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1987), 33-34. 63  Al-Shawkānī, Fat ḥ al-Qadīr, 1:76.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

Al-Qurṭubī and other commentators attempted to reconcile these contradictions through an etymological examination of the Sabians’ Arabic name, specifically the Arabic root ṣ.b.’., which, they argued, means “converting religion.” As a result, these commentators argued that a Sabian was someone who changed his religion in favor of another (man kharaja wamāla min dīn ilā dīn). As evidence for this claim, the commentators cited various traditions according to which Muḥammad, after he abandoned idolatry, was referred to as a Sabian.64 Other commentators attempted to analyze the individual verses that refer to the Sabians instead of comparing the verses to each other. Maḥmūd b. ‘Umar al-Zamakhsharī (1074-1144), for example, analyzed Q. 22:17 by dividing the religions it cites into two groups: the believers [i.e., Muslims] and the Jews in one group, and the Sabians and Christians in the other. According to al-Zamakhsharī, Allāh referred to the Sabians and the Christians as a single group because the Sabians were a sect of Christianity (ju‘ila al-Ṣābi’ūn ma‘a al-naṣārā li-ānnahum naw‘un minhum).65 In their commentaries on Q. 2:62, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (13891459) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (1445-1505) argue that the Sabians were a sect (ṭā’ifa) of Judaism or Christianity.66 By contrast, their commentaries on Q. 5:69 and Q. 22:17 identify the Sabians as a Jewish sect (firqa).67 The commentators divided the religions mentioned in Q. 22:17 into three groups: the believers in one group, the Jews and Sabians in a second group, and the Christians in a third group. The differences between the commentaries of al-Jalālayn seem to indicate that the Christians they refer to were actually an early Judaizing sect of Christianity that still followed many Jewish customs.68 64  Al-Qur ṭ ubī, al-Jāmi‘, 1:434. 65   Ma ḥ mūd b. ‘Umar al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf ‘an Ḥ aqā’iq al-Tanzīl wa-‘Uyūn al-Ta’wīl fī Wujūh al-Ta’wīl, 3 vols. (Egypt: Mu ṣṭ afā al-Nātī al-Ḥalabī wa-Awlāduhu, 1948), 1:343. 66  Al-Ma ḥ allī, Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, 13. 67   Ibid., 157. 68   It is interesting that many of the late Qur’ānic commentators argued that the Sabians were

a Christian sect, while some of the above mentioned early Qur’ānic commentators specifically stated that they were not Christians. The argument according to which the Sabians are not Christians can be found among later scholars such as the Mu‘tazilite theologian ‘Abd al-Jabbār al-Asadābādī (935-1025). He argued that we can not deny the possibility that the Sabians

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The Sabians According to Maimonides

A study in the third part of The Guide of the Perplexed, as well as the various partial descriptions of the Sabians given by Maimonides, along with a comparison to the opinions mentioned above, reveals some interesting similarities. We have seen that in all the opinions given by Mujāhid, he mentions a Zoroastrian element in the Sabians’ religion. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī also claims that the Sabians practiced Zoroastrianism (qawm ka’l-majūs). In the forty-seventh chapter of the third part of The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides describes the Sabians as the remnants of the Zoroastrians (baqiyyat al-majūs).69 Qatāda, as we saw above, claimed that the Sabians were the Chaldeans (kaldānīyūn), Abraham’s ancestors. This view was shared by Maimonides’ view as well.70 The Chaldeans, according to Qatāda, worshipped the heavens and the stars, and used astrology to dictate the course of their lives. Some of Maimonides’ references to the Sabians also accuse them of practicing astrology and witchcraft.71 Ibn Abū Ziyād, citing his father, reported that the Sabians lived in Kūthā, Iraq. Maimonides wrote that the Sabians believed Abraham had been raised in Kūthā.72 Maimonides claimed that his research into Sabian ritual relied extensively on Ibn Waḥshiyya’s Book of Nabatean Agriculture.73 In ancient times, according to Maimonides, agriculture was intimately connected with idolatrous rituals. When they discussed the Sabians, the early Qur’ānic commentators also dealt, albeit indirectly, with the subject of agriculture. This appears to be revealed by studying the details given in separate Qur’ānic commentaries. ‘Aṭā’ b. Abī Rabāḥ and his student Ibn Jurayj claimed that the Sabians lived in the Sawād, a large and fertile center of agriculture in mentioned by Muslim jurists had become extinct. See ‘Abd al-Jabbār al-Asadābādī, Kitāb al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-Taw ḥ īd wa’l-‘Adl (Cairo: al-Dār al-Mi ṣ riyya li’l-Ta’līf wa’l-Tarjama, 1961), 5:152-154. Translation taken from Schwartz, Amulets, 283-285. 69   Maimonides, Dalālat al- Ḥ ā’irīn, 3:47. 70   Ibid., 3:47. 71   Ibid., 1:63; 3:37. 72   Ibid., 3:29. 73   Ibid., 3:29.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

Iraq. Ibn Abū Ziyād, for his part, held that Kūthā is in the Sawād. Qatāda and Maimonides agreed that Abraham originally came from Kūthā, a place of idolatry. Kūthā, as we have seen, is in the Sawād. After the Muslims conquered the Sawād they allowed the original residents—who, according to some of the above mentioned commentators, were Sabians—to remain, so they could work the land and provide the conquerors with tax payments. A second claim ascribed to Qatāda holds that the Sabians worshipped a number of beings, and that their rituals included customs from five different religions. They worshipped the angels and graven images, and they practiced rituals taken from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. Maimonides claims that the Sabians built a statue for the stars, golden statues for the sun, and silver statues for the moon.74 He also asserted that some of them worshipped demons.75 Ibn ‘Abbās argued that the Sabians were Christian pilgrims who shaved the centers of their heads. Yet he forbade eating from the Sabians’ sacrifices because he did not believe that the Sabians were People of the Book. As we have seen, this opinion may have been based on an order given by Muḥammad that called on Muslim soldiers to decapitate those who shaved the centers of their heads because, Muḥammad claimed, they worshipped Satan. Maimonides wrote that even though the Sabians considered blood to be highly impure, they ate it because it was the food of the devils.76 Despite the apparent similarities between Maimonides’ and the earliest Qur’ānic commentators’ views on the Sabians, there is one aberration. Muqātil b. Sulaymān and al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad argued that the Sabians practiced the “religion of Noah,” or at least tried to. Maimonides claims that the Sabians condemned Noah because he never worshipped an idol.77 Based on the similarities cited above, can we argue that Maimonides was familiar with the literature that cited the earliest Qur’ānic commentators 74   Ibid., 3:29. It is noteworthy that the well-known Cordovan Qur’ānic commentator Mu ḥ ammad b. A ḥ mad al-Qur ṭ ubī (d. 1237)—more than fifty years after Maimonides—also claimed (and

he was not the only one) that the Sabians worshipped the stars (qawm ya‘budūna al-nujūm).

75   Ibid., 3:46. 76   Ibid., 3:46. 77   Ibid., 3:47.

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on the Sabians’ identity? In his missive to the sages of Provence, Maimonides declares that there is no monograph in Arabic that deals with astrology (an art ascribed to the Sabians) that he has not read and fully understood. According to Dov Schwartz, “It is likely that if Maimonides troubled himself to read negligible monographs, as he testifies of himself, he also read common theological monographs that contained heresiographic descriptions of different forms of idolatry.”78 Schwartz mentions the Jewish and Islamic sources that might have shaped Maimonides’ perspective on the motives of idolaters79 and points out that, as opposed to other scholars and philosophers, Maimonides cites his sources. Indeed, Maimonides cited various sources on the subject, such as Ibn Waḥshiyya, but he did not mention the Qur’ānic commentators. Thus, we cannot say for sure that he was familiar with their views regarding the Sabians. It is interesting, however, that so many of the opinions ascribed to the early Qur’ānic commentators are collected in chapters forty-six andforty seven of the third part of The Guide of the Perplexed. Sara Stroumsa’s article, “The Sabians of Ḥarrān and the Sabians of Maimonides,” includes a possible explanation: Maimonides’ knowledge of Arabic opened before him a world of philosophic and heresiographic literature, through which he knew about the Sabians—not those being searched for by modern research, but the confusing myth of the Sabians as a collective name that includes various familiar nations of the twelfth century, a myth in which Maimonides believed he discovered the essence of idolatry.80 Conclusion

As we have seen, the early and late Qur’ānic commentators provided many answers to the question of the Sabians and their identity. Sometimes

78   Schwartz, Amulets, 22-23. For details on the sources that Maimonides used, see Schwartz,

Astral Magic, 99-101. 79   Ibid., 24-32. Possible influences are discussed until 34. See also Stroumsa, “The Sabians,” 285-

292; Pines, ”The Philosophic Sources of Maimonides,” 103-173. 80   Stroumsa, “The Sabians,” 290.

The Identity of the Sabians: Some Insights Haggai Mazuz

there was agreement and synthesis between them, sometimes profound disagreement. As a result, Islamic tradition presents the Sabians as everything from monotheists to idolaters to syncretists, to a sect lacking any religion at all. Muslim scholars were scattered throughout the Muslim empire, from Khawarizm and Baṣra to Cordova. The day-to-day life of these scholars was taken up with religious polemic and discussion, as well as studying with their teachers. As a result they were rarely “in the field,” so to speak.81 Therefore, it appears that they based their ideas about the outside world on reports they received from wanderers, merchants, and Islamic missionaries, all of whom traveled in the lands of the Sawād, which comprised an enormous territory. Because of the Sawād’s great size, it was quite religiously and ethnically diverse. The tābi‘ūn and tābi‘ū tābi‘īn, therefore, would have received extremely varied reports about the various religious sects and peoples living in the region. Although it is not possible to arrive at an unambiguous conclusion to the question of the Sabians’ identity, the description which is likely closest to the truth and combines all the ideas and interpretations presented in this article regarding the identity of the Sabians is that of historian Abū Ḥayyān ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023). Al-Tawḥīdī’s description of the Sabians matches Qatāda’s second description of the Sabians mentioned above, and may help explain the varied opinions expressed by Mujāhid. According to al-Tawḥīdī, “The Sabians, more than anybody else, are interested in different religions and the study of them and they try to achieve knowledge of their truths.”82 We have seen that Maimonides believed the Sabians to be an ancient nation that had existed since the days of Shet, the son of Adam. During the three millennia between the time of Shet and the appearance of Christianity (and then Islam), Judaism was the only non-idolatrous religion in the world. Thus, the world in that era was divided between the Children of Israel and the idolaters—us and them. Maimonides referred to idolaters

81   Mujāhid is exceptional in that he was known to be willing to go to great lengths to discover the true meaning of a Qur’ānic verse, and was considered a well-traveled man (ra ḥḥ āl). 82  Abū Ḥayyān ‘Alī b. Mu ḥ ammad al-Taw ḥ īdī, Kitāb al-Imtā‘ wa’l-Mū’ānasa, 3 vols. (Cairo: Lajnat

al-Ta’līf wa’l-Tarjama wa’l-Nashr, 1939), 81.

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of all kinds as Sabians. The Sabians, then, were the antithesis of Judaism. Through opposition to and differentiation from the Sabians, the Jew defines his identity.83 This theory, it seems, was the reason Maimonides was so eager to discover the truth about the Sabian religion. The early Qur’ānic commentators ascribed to the Sabians all the religions and beliefs that were common to the Semitic territory of their era: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, a pure monotheism unrelated to any religion, and, finally, idolatry. According to one of their theories, the Sabians prayed five times a day facing Mecca, fasted thirty days a year, and believed in a single, unique God, referring to him with the phrase: “There is no other God than Allāh.” This is half of the Muslim “testament” (shahāda). The other half recognizes Muḥammad as Allāh’s messenger. The prayer, the fast and the “testament” are three of the five pillars of Islam (arkān al-Islām).84 They are also the most frequently practiced of the five pillars. This description appears to indicate that Sabian practice was almost totally Islamic. Yet in all of the various opinions given by the early Qur’ānic commentators, the Sabian is everything but a Muslim. It appears, then, that in addition to the apparent similarities between Maimonides’ and the earliest Qur’ānic commentators’ views on the Sabians, both of them had the same perception of the Sabians. They used them as a tool to define their own identity regarding the other and as a symbol of all outside and exterior beliefs and perceptions. 83  

It is worth pointing out that the Muslims had a similar principle. Islamic sources indicate that Muslims often sought to distance and differentiate themselves from other religions such as Judaism, as well as Christianity and Zoroastrianism. This principle was called mukhālafa, i.e., doing the opposite of those around you. On Islam’s desire to differentiate itself from other religions, see Haggai Mazuz, “Menstruation and Differentiation: How Muslims Differentiated Themselves from Jews Regarding the Laws of Menstruation,” Der Islam 87 (2012), 204-223; Idem, Menstruation and Its Legislation: The Evolution and Crystallization of the Law of Menses in the Islamic Juristic Tradition. With an introduction by Moshe Sharon (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, forthcoming) [Hebrew]; Idem, “The Relationship between Islam and Judaism: A Neglected Aspect,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism (Forthcoming).

84  The other two pillars are the pilgrimage to Mecca ( ḥ ajj) and alms-giving (zakāh). The

pilgrimage to Mecca is a pillar that the Muslim has to perform only once in his lifetime. If he can not perform it—physically or financially—he is not required to do so. We have seen that, according to one of the opinions mentioned above, the Sabians prayed towards Mecca. In other words, the city had a ritual and a mystical significance for them; just as it did for Muslims.

M oses I bn T ibbon ’ s C oncep t

of

V i tal Heat

A Reassessment of Peripatetic Epistemology in Terms of Natural Science O t t f r ie d Fr a i sse

One of the questions which has bothered Western thinkers over the centuries concerns the relationship between body and soul, the physical and the intellectual world. An important inspiration for this discussion is provided by the two paradigms inherited from ancient Greek philosophy: according to the Platonic model, the material world receives its form by means of emanation from outside itself; according to the Aristotelian model, sublunar existence is principally explained by means of sublunar causes, i.e. a “necessitation from below.” However, in later Peripatetic tradition, for example in Themistius’ work, a blending of both positions can be observed. In addition to sublunar causes, supralunar causes were also employed to explain generation, existence, and corruption of all beings. It is well known that much later the Arabic philosopher Ibn Rushd struggled to regain a supposedly pure Aristotelian position on these questions and to drive back emanation in order to avoid the absurdity, as he called it, that “something would come out of nothing.”1 He arrived at a theory in which the biophysical activities of an agent inherent in matter or seed, i.e. vital heat, lends forms to inanimate and animate nature up to the level of the animal soul. The contention of this paper is that two generations later the Jewish translator and philosopher Moses ibn Tibbon proceeded down Ibn Rushd’s path. However, he did so less with the intention of further cleaning up Peripatetic traditions than of struggling against any dualism 1  Cf. Ibn Rushd in his commentary on De generatione animalium (quoted according to H.A. Da-

vidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 242.

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in understanding the created world, i.e. of unifying the world. Thus, he hinted at an un-Aristotelian Aristotelian solution of also including the rational soul (of the young man) within the cycle of generation and corruption. The Aristotelian Concept of Vital Heat

The notion which Ibn Rushd rediscovered in order to prevent any emanation of forms from outside the sublunar world being superimposed upon matter was Aristotle’s notion of vital heat, soul heat, or natural heat (θερμότης ψυχική, ‫)החום הטבעי‬. As Gad Freudenthal has shown, Aristotle developed the concept of vital heat parallel to his notion of the vegetative soul in order to repair some shortcomings of the traditional theory of the four elements and the four qualities.2 Aristotle was aware of the fact that the four-element theory does not provide a satisfactory answer to the questions of how forms spontaneously arise in matter and how composite substances persist over time. With his solutions for both problems, i.e. to explain how not only organic but also inorganic matter is organized and structured from within itself and in such a way as to prevent immediate disintegration of substances composed of opposing and thus repulsive elements (earth, water, air, and fire), Aristotle furnished his concept of vital heat. Just as in living organisms the vegetative soul is responsible for sexual reproduction, so too vital heat is informing matter both in animated nature (human beings, animals, plants) and inanimate nature (minerals).3 Thus, vital heat is not just an efficient cause (like the ordinary heat of fire), but continuously endows homoeomeric compounds with forms, producing the coming-to-be and persistence of composite substances. However, because of the partial shortcomings of both theories, i.e. the vegetative soul in organic substances and vital heat in animated or inanimate nature, in explaining all phenomena of informed matter, Aristotle draws in parallel

2 

Gad Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

3  The observation which inspired Aristotle to claim vital heat as an informing principle in all

matter was the case of spontaneous generation, i.e. generation of bees out of putrefying matter. Cf. Aristotle, History of Animals 5.1, 539a23.

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on both theories.4 Aristotle’s intention to extend the physiological account of vital heat to all functions of the psychological soul concept was possibly the motivation, as Freudenthal suggests, for another Aristotelian theory fragment, i.e. connate pneuma (defined as “hot air”). In order to ascribe to vital heat the natural upwards motion in living beings upon which the soul’s functions in Aristotle’s tripartite soul heavily depend, he had to endow the vital heat with а substrate. This he found in connate pneuma, therewith transforming vital heat into an independent formative substance. It appears that the physiological principle of vital heat (produced in the heart) underlies the functions of nearly the entire soul, i.e. not only the vegetative soul but also the animal soul. More and purer vital heat brings forth higher soul functions—with the exception of rational soul. Aristotle’s theory of vital heat did not receive the attention in Peripatetic tradition which it deserved because this theory was not comprehensively worked out and set up as a theoretical concept of its own.5 We now turn to Ibn Rushd to see how he fell back on the notion of vital heat in order to reassess the relationship between the physical and intellectual world. Ibn Rushd and the Active Intellect as the Cause of Existence In order to understand Moses ibn Tibbon’s elaborations of the concept of vital heat, we first have to review the position of Ibn Rushd, who 4  As already mentioned, Aristotle’s soul theory falls short of explaining cohesion and persistence

of inanimate substances, whereas vital heat is in a position to do that. In contrast, vital heat falls short of explaining the material persistence of entire organisms (anhomoeomerous substances) which the soul theory does indeed allow. Furthermore, the concept of the soul cannot explain its change over time. The vitality of an Aristotelian soul is an “either/ or” phenomenon which does not match reality. However, the theory of vital heat can easily help one to understand increase and decrease of the vitality of the soul, because the latter being based on vital heat naturally corresponds to generation and corruption. Cf. Freudenthal, Substance 184f. 5  There are only hints, for example, in his De generatione et corruptione, his Meteorologica and

De anima. Instead of elaborating on Aristotle’s fragments of theory of vital heat and connate pneuma in the function of lending forms to all sublunar substances, Peripatetic tradition fell in love with the active intellect (nous poietikos) as a “Giver of Forms” via emanation out of the supralunar world. This way, Aristotle’s alternative to Plato’s theory of ideas was partly suspended.

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rediscovered the Aristotelian intention with the principle of vital heat. Ibn Rushd was confronted with a long tradition of commentators on Aristotle in which the active intellect (De Anima 3.5)—another marginal, even enigmatic concept in Aristotelian thinking—was nearly exclusively burdened with the task of actualizing forms not only in the soul but in inanimate matter too. Therefore, the problem which Ibn Rushd had to tackle was one of harmonizing the conflict of competences between the informing powers of the active intellect and the principle of vital heat—the latter of which he aimed to strengthen. He had to find a new allocation of duties between vital heat’s biophysical activities from below and the active intellect’s emanation of forms from outside. Being mainly interested in Ibn Rushd’s final position—extant in his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics—we can be brief about his earlier views. In his Epitome of the Parva Naturalia, Ibn Rushd—following Ibn Bājja’s interpretation—regards the forms of the four elements to be the product of celestial motion. The movements of the heavens heat sublunar matter and, as a result, turn it into the four elements and mix them into a multitude of configurations. However, the lending of plant and animal forms was traced to the active intellect.6 In his Epitome of the Metaphysics, Ibn Rushd repeats this position in a somewhat more elaborated form. However, in some manuscripts there are annotations by Ibn Rushd’s own hand, as H.A. Davidson has admirably set forth, which prove some modification of Ibn Rushd’s thought. Now, the motion of the celestial bodies not only causes the existence of inanimate natural forms, but their heat is also charged as the cause of animate forms—both in the case of sexual reproduction and spontaneous generation—through the mediacy of physical soul-powers emanating from the heavens’ heat. Thus, in Ibn Rushd’s intermediate position we can already observe that the idea of physical powers as a cause for the coming-to-be of higher sublunar forms is gaining momentum in Ibn Rushd’s train of thought—at the expense of a direct cosmic emanation of forms. Ibn Rushd only allows the active intellect to account for human intellect. His commentary on De Generation Animalium states even more 6  This is similar to the position of Alfārābī’s Risāla fī al-‘aql, which shows an active intellect as

emanating cause for all natural forms above the level of the four elements, whereas Ibn Sīnā describes an active intellect as emanating the material substratum for the entire world, in addition to its emanation of all the natural, sublunar forms. Cf. Davidson, On Intellect, 232.

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clearly that the soul of an organism emerges through soul-heat as the immediate cause, working within the physical realm. Nevertheless, Ibn Rushd still traces the true agent as the ultimate cause of soul-heat beyond the sun, probably to the active intellect.7 However, Ibn Rushd’s Long Commentary on the Metaphysics claims to definitely settle the issue in accordance with the “propositions and principles” of Aristotle’s philosophy.8 Now, Ibn Rushd rejects any incorporeal source for any sublunar natural form. His final position assumes that all forms are potentially present in prime matter and all forms are elicited from matter by physical forces. Plant and animal forms are brought into actuality by soul-heat. The latter is produced by seed or semen in conjunction with the heat of the sun, blended with the heat of the other stars. “The active intellect plays no role, and its function accordingly shrinks back to what Aristotle established in the De Anima, to the actualization of the potential human intellect.”9 However, the amalgamation of soul heat with heat of the sun and the other stars—as a surrogate of soul heat—still seems to be inconsistent. The notion of soul heat is based on the idea of movement from within matter, which becomes considerably weakened if combined with any other kind of external causes.10 Moses Ibn Tibbon on Vital Heat and the Active Intellect There are some characteristic indications that Moses ibn Tibbon took up Ibn Rushd’s reassessment of the active intellect as cause for sublunar existence. We are in the fortunate situation of possessing with Moses ibn Tibbon’s Olam Katan a treatise which deals extensively with the relationship between the sublunar and supralunar world.11 As a requirement of the 7 

Davidson, On Intellect, 243.

8 

Ibid., 247.

9 

Ibid., 257.

10  The same holds true for the importance of the position of the sun, to which Aristotle ascribes

in conjunction with his concept of vital heat. Furthermore, the fact that the sun heats is an anomaly within Aristotelian later cosmology because the cosmic “fifth element,” devoid of the element’s qualities, cannot be hot. Cf. Freudenthal, Substance, 26 (note 54). 11  Zvi Almog, Critical edition of Moses Ibn Tibbon’s ‘Olam Katan with an Essay on the History of

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central position of the macrocosm/microcosm idea in this book, Moses ibn Tibbon had to spell out how, according to him, the transition from the supralunar to the sublunar realm is to be understood.12 For example, he says about the lower spheres, i.e. the spheres of the planets, of which the moon as the sphere of the active intellect is the lowest, that from there only physical powers, not intellectual forms, arrive on the earth: The lowest part of all kinds of spheres, the closest to the level of the material world, [. . .] engenders streaming powers which are completely material and which are done by nature, not in [the conscious way of] an imagined notion.13

Later he says about the spheres and the souls (lent to them by their respective intellects), that they have a permanent effect on heat in the sublunar world “through their movements and light.” About these spheres he says: The activity of each of them happens to be in the sublunar world within the heat, renewing [their activity] out of themselves on it [i.e. the sublunar heat] through their movement and light.14

Microcosm in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (PhD, Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, Philadelphia 1966). The quoted page numbers refer to his edition unless indicated otherwise. On the writings of Moses ibn Tibbon, see Haim Kreisel in H. Kreisel, Colette Sirat, Avraham Israel (ed.), The Writings of R. Moshe Ibn Tibbon, (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2010), 9-35 [in Hebrew]. 12  The idea of macrocosm/microcosm goes back to Antiquity but was only systematized by the

Islamic secret society of the Brethren of Purity in Bosra, Syria. The analogy between the human soul and the universe is used to draw conclusions from the known to the unknown. There are many traces of this concept in Medieval Jewish philosophy, for example in Joseph ibn Zaddik’s Olam Katan or Moses ben Maimon’s More Nebukhim. Cf. Almog, ‘Olam Katan III-XI. Moses ibn Tibbon possibly became acquainted with this concept through Muhammad ibn alSīd al-Batlayūsī’s Book of Circles (Kitāb al-Hadā’iq) who adopted it from the the Brethren of Purity. Moses ibn Tibbon made a Hebrew translation of this book. The overall orientation of Ibn Tibbon’s thoughts shows many similarities to the Kitāb al-Hadā’iq. Cf. Ottfried Fraisse, Moses Ibn Tibbons Kommentar zum Hohenlied und sein poetologisch-philosophisches Programm. Synoptische Edition, Übersetzung und Analyse (Berlin: Walter DeGruyter, 2004), 573-576. 13  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫] התחייב‬...[ ‫החלק השפל ממיני הגלגלים הקרוב למדרגת העולם החמרי‬

‫( ממנו הכחות והרוחות שהם חמריים גשמיים מאד ונעשים בטבע לא בציור ולא בדמיון‬p. 10).

14  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ מתחדש מהם עליו בתנועתם ואורם‬,‫ופעולת כל אחד בעולם השפל בחום‬

(p. 16). Even the intra-cosmic emanation of spheres and intellects, as Al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā

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However, there are even more direct indications that Moses ibn Tibbon follows Ibn Rushd’s rediscovery of the Aristotelian vital heat as a means to drive back emanation in sublunar existence. In his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, Ibn Rushd gives his account of the coming-to-be of sublunar forms and the role of vital heat in it.15 He chooses as point of departure a quotation from Themistius’ commentary on the Metaphysics. In this quotation the neoplatonic concept of universal soul figures prominently. It also appears that in Moses ibn Tibbon’s account of the coming-to-be of sublunar forms, in his Olam Katan, the universal soul is allotted an important role (quoting Themistius, nearly literally).16 Because of Themistius’ use of the notion of the universal soul, Ibn Rushd criticizes him severely for not having understood how generation occurs.17 Moses ibn Tibbon also seemingly falls back on the universal soul. However, he combines it with Ibn Rushd’s vital heat, a formative material power. How can this be elucidated?

taught, becomes a matter of doubt to Moses ibn Tibbon. Cf. his Ma‘ase Bereshit: ‫אמנם אם‬ ‫נתהוו על סדר הנחת’ ר”ל מהשכל הראשו’ הגלגל העליון ומהשני לו הגלגל השני אשר בו ספק‬ (MS Oxford 2282/9, IMHM 20974, 85a, edited in Fraisse, Kommentar 595-602, here 598). Moses ibn Tibbon seems to say that all celestial entities are standing in the same direct relationship to the First Cause. This position points to a gloss of Ibn Rushd’s Epitome of the Metaphysics, in which he states that the rule affirming “from one only one can proceed” is only valid for the efficient cause. Therefore, the unitary being of the First Cause defined as the formal and final cause, indeed, can have multiple effects like different spheres and intellects. In other words, the First Cause is no longer construed as the starting point of a hierarchy of emanation. Cf. Davidson, On Intellect, 226-228. 15  Charles Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics. A Translation with Introduction of Ibn Rushd’s

Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Lām (Leiden: Brill, 1984, 105-112 (Textus 18 with Commentary). 16  Of course, this is not a conclusive argument that Moses ibn Tibbon knew Themistius via Ibn

Rushd’s Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, because there also was a Hebrew (and Arabic) translation of Themistius’ Commentary on the Metaphysics. Cf. S. Landauer (ed.), Themistii in Aristotelis Metaphysicorum librum Λ paraphrasis, Berlin 1903 (the original Greek and the Arabic translations are not extant). It is only the combination of quoting from Themistius and the subject of vital heat that suggests that Ibn Tibbon indeed consulted Ibn Rushd’s Long Commentary on the Metaphysics. 17   “It is evident from what he says that he did not understand how generation comes about

and what we mean when we say that the thing generated is generated from its synonym in definition and substance.” Cf. Genequand, Metaphysics 107.

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Themistius observed a problem in Aristotle’s concept of procreation which, according to Themistius, its author had overlooked. Aristotle believed that sublunar animal forms come into being by procreation only, from an individual man to an individual man: “For man begets man, the individual begetting the particular person.”18 However, Themistius feels the necessity to complete this argument because, according to him, Aristotle: [. . .] had [. . .] overlooked the many animals which are not born from their likes, in spite of their great number; for we see that a kind of hornet is born from the bodies of dead horses, bees from the bodies of dead cows, frogs from putrescent matter and the jarjas, a kind of fly with a small body, from wine when it becomes sour. We see that nature does not generate these things from their likes in form.19

Themistius regards these spontaneous generations as: [. . .] somehow inspired by a cause nobler, worthier and higher in rank than themselves, i.e. the world-soul, which Plato thought has been produced by the secondary gods and Aristotle by the sun and the ecliptic. Therefore, its activity is guided towards the end although it does not understand it [. . .].20

Thus, in order to respond to both reproduction and spontaneous generation, Themistius combines Aristotle’s sun with Plato’s world soul or universal soul because he cannot discern in the sun’s heat a formal cause which would be sufficient to explain the coming-to-be of all sublunar forms. At least in choosing the universal soul (as complement to the sun) he remains just below the rank of the active intellect (“secondary gods”). As mentioned earlier, Ibn Rushd rebukes Themistius for tracing the existence of natural forms, particularly animal souls, to a transcendent

18  Hugh Tredennick, The Metaphysics: Books X-XIV (London: 1977), 130. 19   Genequand, Metaphysics, 105f. Actually, Aristotle discusses spontaneous generation in his His-

tory of Animals (5.1, 539a23; 5.19, 551a1 f.) and in his Generation of Animals (2.9, 737a3 ff.), and decides that vital heat is indeed sufficient to initiate spontaneous generation. Cf. Freudenthal, Substance 25f. 20   Genequand, Metaphysics, 106.

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cause. According to Ibn Rushd, in this respect there is not even a difference between the theologians’ concepts of the creation (Mutakallimun), Ibn Sīnā’s “Giver of Forms” and Themistius’ agent in two different states: separate from matter (universal soul) and not separate (the sun’s heat). For his part Ibn Rushd rather preferred to stretch Aristotle’s doctrine “the synonym is generated from the synonym” in the sense that it would not be necessary “that the agent should be a synonym identical in every respect.” The meaning of the agent need not be “that the synonym makes by its essence and its form the form of its synonym, but that it makes the form of its synonym pass from potentiality into actuality.”21 “The agent produces only the compound from matter and form by moving matter and changing it to educe the potentiality it has for the form into actuality.”22 However, Ibn Rushd does not seem to conscientiously stick to his own rule not to employ transcendent, efficient, or formal causes. On the one hand he states that “heat does not impart heat from outside to the body which becomes hot, but the potentially hot becomes actually hot.” On the other hand, both in the case of spontaneous generation and in the case of sexual procreation he refers to the sun to explain the origin of vital heat: “this heat endowed with form is in the seeds, begotten by the possessor of the seeds and the sun” and “it is the heat of the sun and the stars which is generated in water and earth which generates the animals generated from putrefaction.” The same inconsistency regarding external influences can be observed where Ibn Rushd explains the difference between ordinary heat and vital heat. In order to argue why vital heat “is not fire, nor of fire because fire destroys animals and does not generate them” he cannot withhold—albeit in the name of Aristotle—from likening the potentiality of animal heat “to art and intellect.” The “potentialities contained in the seeds which produce animated things” are “divine because there is in them the faculty to give life.”23 To summarize: Ibn Rushd also applies a hybrid explanation for the abilities of vital heat, similar to Themistius. In spite of his interpretation of Aristotle’s dogma “the synonym is generated form the synonym,” he also obliges external “divine” or “intellect-like” powers in order to explain the 21   Ibid., 110. 22   Ibid., 109. 23   Ibid., 110f.

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actualization of forms being in the state of potentiality within vital heat. What is Moses Ibn Tibbon’s solution? As mentioned earlier,24 Moses ibn Tibbon approved of Ibn Rushd’s later cosmology. The rule that from one only one proceeds does not apply to the First Cause, nor does the First Cause initiate a hierarchy of emanation. It seems to be that Moses ibn Tibbon simply extends this structure to below the sphere of the active intellect, i.e. the sublunar world. Directly from the First Cause all the cosmic spheres receive a separate intellect or angel. Each angel lends a soul to her sphere and moves this sphere by presenting herself to the rational soul of the sphere as an object of desire.25 Extending this construction to the sublunar world, Moses ibn Tibbon regards prime matter as the sphere of the active intellect and the universal soul as the rational soul which moves prime matter by desiring the active intellect. Thus, Themistius’ universal soul in a way resurfaces in Moses ibn Tibbon’s account with an opposite intention, i.e. of moving prime matter instead of emanating forms. Nevertheless, there cannot be any doubt that Moses ibn Tibbon quotes Themistius, probably through Ibn Rushd, because Ibn Tibbon supports the latter’s criticism of cosmic emanation in favor of the notion of vital heat. Before we try to understand how Moses ibn Tibbon puts the universal soul on a new basis, we quote the relevant passage: One angel is the active intellect which moves prime matter, separate from all forms, and puts on it the universal soul which receives all forms suitable to it, and which are in the state of potentiality and possibility in it. At the same time, this potentiality and possibility is, according to me, the universal soul, which was given to it by the active intellect, according to Plato, or by the sun, according to Aristotle.26

24   See note 14. 25  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ועליהם [הגלגלים] מלאכים נשפעים ממציאות השם ואע”פ שהם שכלים‬

‫נפרדים יש לכל אחד מהם יחס וערך לגלגל אחד מיוחד ומניע אותו ומשפיע בו נפש משתוקקת לו‬ (p. 16).

26  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ומלאך אחד הוא השכל הפועל מניע ההיולי הנפרד כל הצורות ומשפיע‬

‫בו נפש כללית מקבלת כל הצורות הראויות לו ואשר הם בו בכח ובאפשרות לקבלם והכח הזה‬ ‫והאפשרות הוא לפי דעתי הנפש הכללית הנשפעת לו מן השכל הפועל לפי דעת אפלטון או מן‬ ‫( השמש לפי דעת אריסטו‬p. 27).

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The central question which rises from this paragraph is how to understand the relationship between the “potentiality and possibility” of all forms in prime matter and the “potentiality and possibility” interpreted as the universal soul. With respect to this problem, we are in the comfortable position of dealing with a macrocosm/microcosm structure. As intended by this philosophical idea, microcosm is invoked in order to understand macrocosm. If we do that, we can observe that Moses ibn Tibbon construes the three principal organs (brain, heart, liver), their ministering spirits or pneumas (ruhot), and the three faculties (human faculty, animal faculty, and vegetative faculty) in parallel with the spheres (galgalim), their souls (nefashot), and the angels or intellects (sekhalim).27 In other words, since the universal soul figures at the lowest position in the descending order of cosmic souls, Moses ibn Tibbon parallels the universal soul with the pneumas of the lowest principal organ,28 and since prime matter figures at the lowest position in the cosmic spheres, Ibn Tibbon likewise parallels prime matter with the lowest human organ. Finally, inasmuch as the human faculties are incorporeal substances, but at the same time are in an individual relationship to a specific corporeal organ (including their corporeal pneumas), the lowest intellect, i.e. the active intellect, must be an incorporeal substance, but at the same time possess an individual relationship with prime matter (including its ministering spirit, i.e. the universal soul).29 Thus, insofar as the universal soul desires the active intellect, the latter moves the universal soul’s sphere, i.e. prime matter including all its forms

27  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫וכמו שבגוף האדם משלשת החלקים הנזכרים מן האברים הראשים והרוחות‬

‫והכחות אשר עליהם יתחלקו וירבו עד תשלם בהם פעולתו ותכליתו כן בכל אחד משלשה מיני‬ ‫הגלגלים ירבו הגלגלים ונפשותיהם והמלאכים אשר עליהם המניעים אותם והמשפיעים בהם‬ ‫( נפשותם עד שתשלם בהם פעלתו ותכליתו‬p. 16f.). See Almog’s discussion of the analogies on p. 25f. of his analysis.

28  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫והרוח אשר בכל אחד מן האברים הראשים השלשה בדמיון נפש הגלגל‬

‫ורוח כל אבר מהם אובדת לכח אשר עליו כמו שנפש הגלגל משתוקקת למלאך המניע הגלגל כי‬ ‫( הוא המשפיע אותה בו וכל דבר מביט לשרשו‬p. 18).

29  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ובו [הגוף] שלשה אברים ראשים המוח והכבד והלב ועליהם שלשה כוחות‬

‫נשפעים מהנפש והם אע”פ שאינם גשמיים יש לכל אחד מהם יחס וערך אל אבר מיוחד הכח‬ ‫הנפשי אל המוח והחיוני אל הלב והטבעי אל הכבד ובהם שלש רוחות הנפשית במוח והחיונית‬ ‫בלב והטבעית בכבד ורוח כל אחד מן האברים עובדת לכח אשר עליו להשלים ולעשות הפעולה‬ ‫המיוחדת לו ופעלת כל אחד מהם בגוף כחם משוער לכל אבר ורוח לפי טבעו ופעולתו כן בעולם‬ ‫ הסבה הראשונה‬... (p. 15f.). See also note 25.

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in the state of “possibility and potentiality”; insofar as the active intellect lends to its sphere a soul, i.e. the universal soul containing the “possibility and potentiality” of all sublunar forms, the active intellect stays separate from any matter and acts as an incorporeal substance. What does Moses ibn Tibbon achieve for the case of vital heat by lending prime matter a form, i.e. the universal soul, defined as pneuma? While prime matter in and of itself does not exist in actuality and is no corporeal substance, it becomes an actual corporeal substance when combined with a form like the universal soul. This means that with this compound Moses ibn Tibbon has a nucleus at his disposal which is able to actualize all natural forms— and depends only on a physical agent. Before we proceed, it should be asked whether there are any improvements compared with Ibn Rushd’s account of vital heat. Does Moses ibn Tibbon still make any use of supralunar influences, either cosmic forms or the sun’s heat? The active intellect, according to Moses ibn Tibbon, moves prime matter, but he finds it important to interpret this as the activity of the physical force of vital heat.30 Thus, there is still a cosmic influence but not an “intellect-like” one. Now, the active intellect is no longer involved in the coming-to-be of sublunar forms—except as prime matter’s moving cause by presenting itself as an object of desire for prime matter’s soul, i.e. the universal soul. In microcosm this activity parallels the corporeal activity of the principal organ’s pneumas through vital heat. The same holds true for the role of the sun, which is no longer charged to supply heat but only to move vital heat—like all supralunar entities—“through their movement and light,” but not as a formative cause.31 It seems that Moses ibn Tibbon implements Ibn Rushd’s conception of the agent (for sublunar forms) more consistently in the sense “that it makes the form of its synonym pass from potentiality into actuality” only. Indeed, about Moses ibn Tibbon’s agent, i.e. the universal soul, it can be stated that “the agent produces only the compound from matter and form by moving matter and changing it 30  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ומזג כל אבר ואבר ופעולתו אשר לו מעצמו ורוחו כצורת תבנית כל גלגל‬

‫וגלגל ותנועתו אשר לו מעצמו ונפשו ופעולת האברים הראשים הם מתפשטות בגוף בחום המגיע‬ ‫מאתם המשוער עם הקור בכל אחד מהם בכאוי לו ולפעולתו כהיות פעלת הגלגלים בעולם‬ ‫( השפל בהם המגיע מאתם המשוער בם בתנועתם ואורם‬p. 18f.). See also the quotation in the preceding note.

31   See the quotations in note 30 and 13.

M o s e s I b n T i b b o n's C o n c e p t o f V i t a l H e a t O t t f r i e d Fra is se

to educe the potentiality it has for the form into actuality.” However, the criticism can be expressed that this sublunar compound of prime matter and the universal soul itself has intellect-like qualities because, as we will see, the formative cause of vital heat provides forms up to the level of the rational soul. This is why Moses ibn Tibbon called the universal soul the “wise nature.”32 Therefore, this will be the point where Ibn Rushd and Moses ibn Tibbon part company, because although Moses ibn Tibbon follows the late Ibn Rushd with his naturalizing account for the coming-tobe of sublunar forms, he could not follow his denaturalizing notion for a material intellect as incorporeal eternal substance.33 How Moses Ibn Tibbon Bases all Physical, Emotional, and Rational Activities of the Soul on Vital Heat

According to Aristotle, prime matter appears in the modus of potentiality. This means that without a form, prime matter can not be predicated as complete reality or actual substance (Metaphysics 1041b 8-10). Thus, in his Physics (1.6 and 1.7), Aristotle arrives at the conclusion that prime matter is not the ultimate, independently existing substance, but rather that the four elements are. However, the intermediate position of prime matter being more or less material did not satisfy the commentators on Aristotle. They claimed that even prime matter has to be called a being in every respect, which means that it is an individual substance with a form on its own. This form was called corporeal form (in Hebrew: zurah rishonah) and the compound of corporeal form and prime matter was called body (in Hebrew: geshem).34 According to Moses ibn Tibbon, “wise nature,” or the universal soul, extends from the body, i.e. corporeal form and prime matter, to the heavens, when he says that wise nature’s “connecting lines [stretch out] between the active celestial matter and the activated bodies

32  Almog, Olam Katan: ]‫והכח הזה והאפשרות הוא לפי דעתי הנפש הכללית הנשפעת לו [ההיולי‬

‫מן השכל הפועל לפי דעת אפלטון או מן השמש לפי דעת אריסטו ואולי זה הוא הטבע החכם‬ (p. 27).

33  Cf. Davidson, On Intellect, 282-295. 34  Arthur Hyman, “Aristotle’s ‘First Matter’ and Avicenna’s and Averroes’s ‘Corporeal Form,’” in his

Essays in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Philosophy (New York: Ktav, 1977), 335-356.

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which are within each element and every compound from the minerals up to the plants and living beings.”35 Since in this way first or corporeal form is included in the universal soul, first form, so to speak, becomes charged up with the universal soul’s “possibilities and potentialities.”36 In other words, on the shoulders of the compound of corporeal form and prime matter rests the coming-to-be of every sublunar form. However, the notion of “wise nature” seems to indicate that Moses ibn Tibbon also wants to include intelligibles within those “possibilities and potentialities” which are rational forms understood by the human soul only.37 In this respect, he went beyond Ibn Rushd by ascribing to vital heat (in human blood) the capability of actualizing rational forms as well. Can this suspicion be corroborated in Moses ibn Tibbon’s thought? In medieval times there was a strong conviction among philosophers that the true physician also had to be a philosopher. These physicians consequently tried to substantiate their philosophical concepts in human anatomy and psychology. Hence, when the philosopher and physician Moses ibn Tibbon changes the classification of the faculties among the three soul parts, it is philosophically highly significant.38 Concerning the tasks of the lowest soul part, the vegetative soul, he follows the consensus among such diverse philosophers as Ibn Sīnā, Joseph ibn Zaddik, Ibn Falaquera and Maimonides. The purpose of the vegetative soul is, among other things, to guarantee growth, reproduction and nutrition. However, Moses ibn Tibbon does not participate in this philosophical consensus as it concerns the distribution of the faculties between the animal soul 35  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ואולי זה הוא הטבע החכם אשר בפועל זה והפעלות הנקשרים בין הגרמים‬

‫העליונים הפועלים ובין הגשמים הנפעלים אשר בכל יסוד ובכל מורכב מהם ממתכות וצמחים‬ ‫( ובעלי חיים‬p. 27).

36  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ולכל מין מהם ולכל איש מאישי המין לקבל צורתו ותבניתו וציור חלקיו‬

‫ואבריו ושנוי מראיהם המיוחד לכל אחד לפי טבעו ומזגו וסגלתו ולהתגדל ולשמור מציאותו‬ ‫הזמן שאפשר לו והוא שקראו שמחזאי […] והצורה הראשונה שקבל החומר השפל היותר‬ ‫( פחותה וחשוכה ושפלה היא צורת הארץ‬p. 27f.).

37  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ואחר צורת הארץ צורת המים ואחר צורת האויר ואחר צורת האש‬

‫ומהרכבתם צורת המתכות והצמחים ובעלי חיים בלתי מדברים וצורת בעלי חיים המדברים‬ (p. 28). Cf. Fraisse, Kommentar, 566-569.

38  Cf. Raphael Jospe, Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati:

Hebrew Union College Press, 1988), who provides a very useful account of the different sources and conceptions of medieval philosophical psychology.

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and the rational soul. There, the faculty of collecting data from external senses (common sense) as well as the faculty of deliberate movement in limbs and nerves are regarded as belonging to the animal soul. Moses ibn Tibbon, however, ascribes those abilities to the faculties of the rational soul, which also includes the properties of imagination, understanding and remembering. In his Olam Katan, he says: The spiritual faculty is divided into nine parts, [. . .] the five senses with their known organs, the deliberate movement in nerves and limbs, imagination, understanding and remembering [located] in the three parts of the brain.39

Moses ibn Tibbon’s different distribution of the faculties among the three soul parts is an unmistakable indication that new philosophical concepts are behind his deviant psychology. In order to trace these philosophical concepts, we have to become better acquainted with the structure of his psychology. As one of the defining characteristics of the neoplatonic concept of macrocosm/microcosm, its hierarchical structure is marked by the quality that the higher principle always includes and produces the lower principle, whereas the lower principle is without any significance for the existence of the higher principle. If we remember Moses ibn Tibbon’s reinterpretation of neoplatonic cosmology, which tried to avoid the principle of emanation, it can hardly be surprising that he also tries his hands at modifying the neoplatonic conception of the notion of macrocosm/microcosm. Whereas he sticks to the inclusive-hierarchical structure in the cosmic realm, he turns it upside down in the sublunar realm of the human soul. There, the lowest sphere, i.e. the vegetative soul, is the most comprehensive and includes the higher spheres, i.e. the animal and rational souls. In the following quotation, Ibn Tibbon initially stresses the proportion of similarity between the supralunar and sublunar world: The diurnal sphere is like the brain; the sphere of the fixed stars is like the heart and the spheres of the planets are like the liver. And

39  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫והכח הנפשי מתחלק לתשעה חלקים לכל חלק כח מיוחד ולכל אחד רוח‬

‫מיוחדת ופעולה מיוחדת באבר מיוחד חמשה החושים בכליהם הידועים והתנועה הרצונית אשר‬ ‫( באברים בעצבים והדמיון והתבונה והזכרנות בשלשה בטני המוח‬p. 6).

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the whole body—bones, flesh, skin, arteries, nerves and the rest—is like the material world.40

However, in the following he goes further and describes the structure of the three levels of the human soul as inclusive from below to above (and no longer as inclusive from above to below): Although in the big world the active bodies are the surrounding and the activated bodies are surrounded—and the more distinguished the active [bodies] are, the more surrounding and outward they become—in the case of men it is the opposite: for the main organs and the active [bodies] are the surrounded and the activated bodies are the surrounding. The most distinguished organ among the active [bodies] is the most surrounded and guarded. Therefore the liver is just surrounded by an inner skin and the heart being more distinguished than it [i.e. the liver] possesses in addition to an inner skin a tent-like shelter and fat, [and] also the ribs of the chest. The brain as the most distinguished among all [active bodies] possesses in addition to a thin tent-like surrounding skin, a thick [surrounding] tent-like skin cleaving to matter, also the surrounding skull.41

As a result, the neoplatonic hierarchy of inclusive spheres in macrocosm was changed into a mirror structure in microcosm: the structure of embedded spheres from above to below into a structure of embedded spheres from below to above. As the sublunar part is reproduced in mirror image, there is no longer a correspondence between the highest celestial and the highest sublunar sphere, but rather a correspondence between the highest celestial and the lowest sublunar sphere—which is the vegetative soul related to the 40   Moses Ibn Tibbon, Olam Katan: ‫ונשים הגלגל היומי בדמיון המוח וגלגל הכוכבים הקיימים בדמיון‬

‫הלב ומן גלגלי הכוכבים הרצים לדמיון הכבד והגוף כלו עצמות ובשר ועור ועורקים ועצבים‬ ‫( ומיתרים בדמיון העולם השפל‬p. 19). Cf. Almog, ‘Olam Katan p. 29-33 in his analysis.

41   Moses Ibn Tibbon, Olam Katan: ‫אולם בעולם הכולל הגרמים הפועלים הם מקיפים והגשמים‬

‫הנפעלים מוקפים וכל אשר יהיה יותר נכבד מן הפועלים הוא יותר מקיף וחיצון ובאדם הוא‬ ‫בהפך כי האברים הראשים והפועלים הם המוקפים והגשמים הנפעלים הם המקיפים והאבר‬ ‫היותר נכבד מן הפועלים הוא יותר מוקף ושמור ולכן הכבד בלתי מוקף כי אם בעור הבטן והלב‬ ‫להיותו יותר נכבד ממנו יש לו זולת עור הבטן חומה מיריעה ושומן גם צלעות החזה והמוח‬ ‫להיותו יותר נכבד מכולם יש לו זולת העור יריעה דקה מקפת בו ועור יריעה גסה דבקה בעצם‬ ‫( הגולגולת מקפת גם כן‬p. 19).

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liver. With this reinterpretation, the question of what kind of philosophical concept Moses Ibn Tibbon pursued in his psychology becomes even more pertinent. How do both his enlargement of the rational soul by the external senses and the movements of the nerves, and his circular structure in the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm, fit together? We must first defend Moses ibn Tibbon against the accusation that he did not adhere to his own philosophical model. Indeed, even Maimonides preceded him in this modification of the macrocosm/microcosm idea. In Maimonides’ More Nevukhim (I, 72), in which he falls back on the concept of microcosm, he also says that the most distinguished organ in the microcosm is surrounded by the ruled parts in contradistinction to the cosmos. In order to understand the following quotation, we only have to remember that, according to Aristotle as well as in the opinion of Maimonides, the most distinguished organ is the heart: The heart of every living being possessing a heart is in its middle; thus the other ruled parts surround it so that the utility deriving from them should extend to it wholly in that it is protected and safeguarded by them in such a way that harm coming from outside cannot rapidly reach it. Now in the world as a whole, the position is inverse. Its nobler part surrounds its inferior part, for the former is secure against receiving an influence from what is other than itself.42

We hear that Maimonides used the idea of microcosm as a mirror image of the macrocosm in order to protect the most distinguished organ, in this case the heart, from outside influences. However, this seems to be the opposite of the effect which Moses ibn Tibbon pursued with his microcosm in mirror image of the macrocosm. He was precisely interested in these kinds of outside influences or activities on his most distinguished organ, the brain. He claims that the lower organs, the liver and the heart (or the vegetative soul and the animal soul), both transmit activity to the higher organs surrounded by the lower organs—this movement of activity from below to above should be irreversible:

42   Shlomo Pines, The Guide of the Perplexed (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1963), vol. 1,

192; Salomon Munk, Dalālat al-Hā’irin (Jerusalem: 1929), 133.

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In the sublunar world the first of the three main organs which are active in the body, is [located] in nature; as the most simple it is the absolute minimum. The following [organ] is more compounded. The preceding minimum has very little power and activity, but its powers and activities are all found in the following [organ] and in the following [organs] thereafter. The [organ] following [after the minimum] possesses more powers and activities which are all not found in the preceding [organ]. Therefore all the powers and activities of the liver are found in the heart and in the brain; and all the powers and activities of the heart are found in the brain— irreversibly.43

The result is that although Moses ibn Tibbon and Maimonides use the same structure for the microcosm, their intentions are diametrically opposed: Maimonides wants to protect his most distinguished organ from outside bodily influences, whereas Moses ibn Tibbon wants to guarantee precisely the transmission of these outside bodily influences. Indeed, we can describe Moses ibn Tibbon’s psychology as inspired by the intention to enable the transmission of powers and activities from the lowest organ, the liver, via the heart to the highest organ, the brain. The Epistemological Intentions of Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Psychology Based on Vital Heat

Provided that Moses ibn Tibbon’s intention is to supply the rational soul with intelligent forms through the physical force of vital heat, how must this transmission, starting from prime matter and continuing up to the rational soul, be described? Starting at the level of the body, i.e. the compound of prime matter and corporeal form, Moses ibn Tibbon claims that the faculty of reproduction (ha-molid) lends its form to every genus— not only in case of sexual procreation but also spontaneous generation. Both the actualization of the potential forms within the body by the faculty 43  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫ובעולם השפל משלשת האברים הראשים הפועלים בגוף הקודם בטבע‬

‫והיותר פשוט הוא הפחות והשפל והשני לו יותר מורכב והקודם והשפל הוא במעט כחו ופעולתו‬ ‫וכחותיו פעולותיו נמצאות כלם בשני לו והבאים אחריו והשני לו רב כחות ופעלות ולא ימצאו‬ ‫כחותיו ופעולותיו כולם בקודם לו ולכן כל כחות הכבד ופעולותיו כלם נמצאות בלב ובמוח וכל‬ ‫( כחות הלב ופעולותיו נמצאות במוח לא נהפך‬p. 20).

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of reproduction and their development by the faculty of growth (ha-gidul) are caused by vital heat.44 In the case of a being which possesses not only a vegetative soul but also an animal and a rational soul, Moses ibn Tibbon informs us that once again all the three faculties (‫ )הכחות‬and their pneumas (‫ )הרוחות‬are supplied and powered by natural heat. This heat is produced by the heart and is distributed by the arteries: You should also know that the activity of the [three] faculties [of the soul] and [their] pneumas takes place by natural heat which comes from the heart and goes through the whole body by means of the arteries—[the heat] being adjusted to each organ and to each pneuma according to the quantity [of heat] needed by them.45

Ibn Tibbon located all the pneumas of these three faculties very close to the bloodstreams: the vegetative pneuma in the veins, the animal pneuma in the arteries, and the rational pneuma in the nerves which connect the bloodstreams with the rational soul. This design of an intimate contact between the pneumas of the three faculties of the soul around the blood vessels seems to support the idea of transmitting activities from the lowest faculty, the vegetative soul, to the highest faculty, the rational soul.46 Moses ibn Tibbon’s sensual basis for the rational soul, as mentioned above, fits perfectly together with this paradigm. Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Falaquera and Ibn Daud, to mention a few prominent figures in medieval psychology, were in agreement as to the location of the faculty for collecting data from the five external senses and for the deliberate movement of the limbs 44  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫והמוליד הוא בבריאות בגשם לתת בו צורתו המינית והוציאה אל הפועל‬

‫אם בזרע […] או בדברים מתילדים והיציאה מן הכח אל הפועל היא בהגיע אליו מגיע מחוץ‬ ‫כח חום או גשם יתערב עמו […] והגדול הוא במשיכת קטריו לכל הצדדים והפעולה הזאת‬ ‫( היא מיוחדת לחום‬p. 6f.). Actually, the work in the faculty of reproduction is done by two physiological factors which Galen called the first and the second formative powers (‫מצייר‬ ‫)ראשון ומצייר שני‬.

45  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫וצריך שתדע גם כן כי פעילות הכחות והרוחות בחום הטבעי היוצא מן הלב‬

‫( והולך אל כל הגוף בעורקים הדופקים המשוער לכל אבר ולכל רוח בשעור הצריך אליהם‬p. 5).

46  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫והרוח הטבעי בעורקים בלתי דופקים עם הדם […] והרוח חיוני בעורקים‬

‫הדופקים עם הדם במרכבת החום […] הרוח הנפשית דקותה הולכת בעצבים מבלעדי לחות‬ ‫( בהם ומרכב זולתו‬p. 5). One pneuma is built upon the other: ‫ושלשת הרוחות האלו הם במעלות‬ ‫( זו על גב זו בדקות ובזכות וכללות כי הנפשית יותר דקה ומיוחדת מכלם‬p. 4).

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through the nerves within the animal soul. In contrast, Moses ibn Tibbon incorporates them into the rational soul because the close complex of vital heat, pneumas, and nerves are intended to supply the human faculty with rational forms. From this we can derive both that Moses ibn Tibbon first of all regards thought as (sensual) imagination and that he is very skeptical regarding all higher forms of intellect which are allegedly separate from imagination.47 However, Moses ibn Tibbon is no agnostic. He has indeed a philosophical answer in his natural epistemology to the question of how the physical force of vital heat can be a substratum for separate intellectual forms. As we have shown above, the cosmic movements and lights which enable vital heat are completely material in the sense that they cannot be directly intellectualized. The forms inherent in vital heat are locked in matter and inaccessible for men by means of pure intellect; however, on the level of the animal soul, human beings are able to separate spiritual powers from material powers. To make this comprehensible, Moses ibn Tibbon assumes two distinct substances in the animal soul which provide the transition between the material and the spiritual. This transition in the animal soul is what happens in mirror image in the cosmic sphere: The kind [of sphere] in the middle of all kinds of spheres forms the mediation between the two sides. It is one sphere but is made of two substances and two movements. It engenders the animal powers and pneumas which also mediate between the spiritual powers and the material, corporeal powers.48

So we can summarize that the formative quality of the rational forms within vital heat only become accessible after having passed through the animal soul, or, physiologically speaking, after having passed through the arteries and into the nerves. 47   For Moses ibn Tibbon’s determination of the relationship between imagination and the rational

soul and for the kind of the intelligibles which Moses Ibn Tibbon believed to be transmitted by vital heat into rational soul, see Fraisse, Kommentar, 544-550 and 530-538. 48  Almog, Olam Katan: ‫והמין האמצעי ממיני הגלגלים שהוא במצוע בין שני מיני הקצוות שהוא‬

‫גלגל אחד אבל בשני עצמים ושתי תנועות התחייב ממנו הכחות והרוחות החיונים שהם גם כן‬ ‫( ממוצעים בין הכחות הרוחניים ובין הכחות החמריים הגשמיים‬p. 10).

M o s e s I b n T i b b o n's C o n c e p t o f V i t a l H e a t O t t f r i e d Fra is se

Thus, Moses ibn Tibbon did not object to a notion of intellect which operates with separate forms; he just wanted to slow down the access of the intellect to formative phenomena and their classification as clear-cut intellectual forms. The reason why he addresses those formative phenomena at the very most as an intellectual imagination is found in his idea of microcosm. Because of its structure in mirror image to the macrocosm, the position which was allotted to human intellect was parallel to the lowest cosmic sphere (and not the highest). Thus, in sharp contradiction to Maimonides, Moses ibn Tibbon holds the view that human intellect or human form is not perfect or divine. Hence, he interprets the “In our image” (‫ )כדמותינו‬from Gen. 1:26 as follows: In fact they [the Sages] said ‫ כדמותינו‬because the very image [‫]צלם‬ [of God] which is in human being and which relates him to the separate [intellect], is not in its perfect shape as it is in the separate [intellects], but therewith it [i.e. the human being] [only] likes upon it [a separate intellect].”49

This difference, la différence, between the separate intellects and human intellect not only makes Moses ibn Tibbon’s position, that any claim of a philosophical language to possess the truth is an illusion, clear, but it also makes his hermeneutics a very modern one. Human beings attain intellectual truth only via an asymptotic approach, by means of passing through an infinite sequence of levels of imagination. The localization of the material intellect in the faculty of common sense affords Moses ibn Tibbon the opportunity to lend to Aristotle’s statement that “There is no thinking without mental pictures” (De Anima 431a 16) a much more literal meaning than the late Ibn Rushd was able to. But even more: since the material intellect thus becomes part of the imagination of common sense, Moses ibn Tibbon represents the thinking of the first intelligibles as a kind of imagination. To put it differently: according to Moses ibn Tibbon, thinking and imagination on low and medium levels are basically the same. As he does not see a possible exit from this circle of imagination in the short run, every attempt to separate 49   Moses Ibn Tibbon on Ma‘ase Bereshit: ‫ואמנם אמרו כדמותינו שאותו הצלם אשר באדם אשר‬

‫( נתייחס בו אל הנפרד אינו על השלמות כמו שהוא בנפרדים אבל הוא בו דומה אליו‬MS Oxford 2282/9, IMHM 20974, fol. 87a).

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276

intellectual forms from their material-imaginative substratum, in his eyes, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the material intellect: loosing its sensual substratum in vital heat means loosing the provider of the first intelligibles. According to Moses ibn Tibbon, the poetry of the Song of Songs precisely tells the story of this misunderstanding. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, he explains that up to chapter five this song speaks about the appropriate development of human intellect, but in its final chapters we witness human intellect’s failure to finally enter into communication with the active intellect because of human intellect’s hasty separation from its material substratum or imagination. However, in the long run, Moses ibn Tibbon does not want to exclude the possibility of separating intellect from imagination. In practice, a person above the age of 60, being—to a certain extent—naturally “dried up” and therefore naturally separated from the powers of vital heat, will possess a material intellect in its second quality, which Aristotle described as “separated, impassive and unmixed” with matter (De Anima 430a 18). According to Moses ibn Tibbon, only this intellect will be able to produce apodictic syllogisms.50 The Religious Implications of Moses Ibn Tibbons Re-Interpretation of the Universal Soul

In conclusion, I would like to examine the convergence of the religious and scientific intentions in Moses ibn Tibbon’s decision to lend to the special potentiality of Ibn Rushd’s natural heat the range of his universal soul. With Ibn Rushd’s and Moses ibn Tibbon’s treatment of the universal soul, we witness two degrees in creating a more unified, and at the same time more natural, worldview. Refuting Themistius’ universal soul, Ibn Rushd eliminated emanation as a second principle of generation next to natural heat. He unified the sublunar realm up to the level of animal souls. Moses ibn Tibbon even extends the struggle against emanation into most of the intellectual realm. His interpretation of the special potentiality of natural

50  About the philosophical “story” of the Song of Songs according to Moses ibn Tibbon see Fraisse,

Kommentar, 539-543.

M o s e s I b n T i b b o n's C o n c e p t o f V i t a l H e a t O t t f r i e d Fra is se

heat bases human rationality on the same source of causation as that of the natural world of animals, plants and minerals. But if we place Moses ibn Tibbon’s biophysical worldview in a broader context, we realize that his scientific convictions are identical with his religious convictions or vice versa. In his Commentary on the Song of Songs, he ascribes to God’s “good oils” (‫ ;שמניך טובים‬Song of Songs 1:3) the function of natural heat. According to Moses ibn Tibbon the “good oils” provide the hint that God actualizes everything and gives continuity to our reality by pouring His good on it because the oil is the sustenance of light.51

According to Aristotle, oil contains hot air (pneuma), which enables the spread of vital heat (assisting the sun light) and consequently the cohesion of substances.52 But Ibn Tibbon also adds: He [Solomon] said “Your name is oil poured forth” because reality and life radiate Your name [. . .] and “Your name” he said, in order to indicate that the oils which are necessarily bound up with the name are a separate existence and not physical.53

Thus, cohesion and persistence of reality is transcendentally made possible, but it is in the end a physical process only. Therefore, one has to come to the conclusion that for Moses ibn Tibbon there is not only an overlap between physical science and religion, but exploring the laws of our reality by means of physical science fully coincides with the study of God’s reality. In his explanation of Maimonides’ Sefer Ha-Mada‘, Moses ibn Tibbon says: “It is impossible that His, blessed be He, reality is more than one, so that all of his reality is [our] reality”54— 51   Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on the Song of Songs: ‫ואמרו שמניך טובים רמז בשמן להמצאת‬

‫( השם הנמצאות כלם והעמידו אותם בהשפעת טובו עליהם להיות השמן מחית האור‬cf. Fraisse, Kommentar, 207).

52   See above about the properties of vital heat. In fact, Aristotle claims that the physical and

vital properties of semen and oil are the same (Meteorologica 4.7). Cf. Freudenthal, Substances 164f and 175. 53   Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on the Song of Songs: ‫ואמ’ שמן תורק שמך כלו’ מציאות וחיים‬

‫] ואמ’ שמך להודיע כי השמנים שחייב לשם הוא מציאות נפרד ולא גופני‬...[ ‫נשפעים שמך‬.

54   Moses Ibn Tibbon On Sefer Ha-Mada‘: ‫אי אפשר שתהיה המציאו’ אשר לו ית’ ליותר מאחד‬

‫( בעבור שכל מה שמציאותו זאת המציאות‬MS Hamburg 258/3, IMHM 26350, 22a).

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tertium non datur. Even more: the sublunar physical realm must first be studied, and only then will one understand God in his realm. This is how Moses ibn Tibbon understands Talmud Babli, Massekhet Sukkah 53a: “If you come into my house, I will also come into your house” (‫)אם אתה תבוא אל ביתי אני אבוא אל ביתיך‬.

T he P henomenology

of

Fa i th

R. Soloveitchik’s Analysis in And From There You Shall Seek D o v Schwar t z 1

And From There You Shall Seek is an exhaustive description of various stages of religious consciousness and of the tensions associated with its development. It offers a comprehensive picture of R. Soloveitchik’s views and attitudes in the mid-1940s. My special focus in the current discussion of the first chapters of And From There You Shall Seek will be on the approach to faith. At times R. Soloveitchik’s view of faith plays a key role in his writings but at times it does not, as evident from another contemporary text, Halakhic Man. In And From There You Shall Seek, faith is a constitutive element of the discussion from the start. In the present study, I focus on the first three chapters of And From There You Shall Seek. Faith first appears as a constitutive element of consciousness in the third chapter and is defined on the basis of the first two, which trace the web of associations linking human beings and God from a universal perspective. These chapters are not necessarily restricted to the special stance of Judaism on faith, and offer a religious-phenomenological analysis of the human-divine relationship in general. The first chapter of And From There You Shall Seek, a poetic depiction of the fluctuations in the lovers’ union in Song of Songs, deals with the unfulfilled relationship between God and human beings. The second chapter opens up the discussion from the perspective of the human search for God. The third chapter begins by linking the universal discussion to Halakhah and, in this sense, is a kind of transition. At this point, R. Soloveitchik turns to a discussion of faith. Henceforth, he discusses the same 1  This article was translated by Batya Stein.

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set of associations from the perspective of Judaism, that is, revelation and Halakhah. The discussion below considers faith from a universal perspective. The Anthropological-Conscious Digression

Chapter One of And From There You Shall Seek, as noted, describes the connection between God and human beings. The closest link (the lover’s knock at the beloved’s door) turns into the greatest distance (the beloved does not open and the lover slips away); closeness exposes distance in a pattern that will recur. Through the poetic depiction the reader first becomes acquainted with dialectical religious consciousness, and the discussion below will dwell on the subtleties and nuances of this description. In Chapter Two, entitled “The Yearning Heart,” R. Soloveitchik points out various realms where human beings seek God. R. Soloveitchik approaches the search for God as an expression of self-transcendence, a key term borrowed from phenomenological-religious literature that is essential to the understanding of his philosophical course. A brief survey of the meanings that have been pinned on this term in the literature indicates that Max Scheler defines “self-transcendence” as the ability of individuals to turn themselves and their surrounding world into an object of knowledge.2 Reinhold Niebuhr endorsed Scheler’s approach and defined the term as the capability of consciousness to stand outside itself and observe its limits, its contents, and its modes of development. In his view, transcendence bears on the ability of the self to determine not only its possibilities but also their meaning and purpose.3 “Consciousness,” he writes, “is a capacity for surveying the world and determining action from a governing center. Self-consciousness represents a further degree of transcendence, in which the self makes itself its own object in such a way that the ego is finally 2 

Max Scheler defines man as man in his capability for self-transcendence. See Max Scheler, Man’s Place in Nature, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 46-47. Reinhold Niebuhr and Scheler are quoted in R. Soloveitchik’s writings on the mid-1940s. See David Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus: Martin Buber’s Contribution to Philosophy (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000), 105-125. [In Hebrew]

3  Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. 1 (Louisville,

KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 163.

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always subject and not object.”4 Niebuhr emphasizes self-transcendence as going beyond the limitations of time and history toward eternity.5 Paul Tillich links the definition of faith to “ecstatic” capability, which for him means transcending the human rational dimension, but without shattering it and destroying it.6 According to these thinkers, we can transcend our biological, temporal, and rational existence. Abraham Joshua Heschel calls this “the grand premise of religion.”7 The common denominator of all the various meanings of this term is its perception as supra-rational, that is, as transcending the limitations of reason, but not as anti-rational, in the sense of contradicting reason. R. Soloveitchik is less interested in the nature of transcendence and more in its (transcendent) direction and in its contribution to the exposure of religious consciousness. Rather than on the definition, then, which was a significant concern to phenomenologists of religion, R. Soloveitchik focuses on its final cause. In his view, the aim is to expose traces of the (transcendent) element beyond consciousness, that is, of the divine presence. This aim is reflected in the confrontation with four separate “realms” (reshuyot) and leads to four kinds of action (7-8):8 (1) Nature and its laws (the “cosmic drama”) and, consequently, the examination of the scientific consciousness that exposes the mathematicalphysical order. (2) The paths of the soul and its aptitudes (“the depths of his spiritual existence”—tehomot ha-havaya ha-ruhanit) and, consequently, the exposure of the freedom-commitment dialectic and the discovery of the inner and complex dimensions of the soul and of religious cognition through introspection.

4 

Ibid., 13-14. See also ibid., 361.

5 

Ibid., vol. 2, 74-75. See also Harold B. Kuhn, “The Problem of Human Self-Transcendence in the Dialectical Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 40 (1947): 47-68.

6 

See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 57; idem, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 6-7.

7  Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar,

Strauss and Giroux, 1955), 33. 8  Henceforth, all page references are to And From There You Shall Seek, trans. Naomi Goldblum

(Jersey City, NJ: Ktav and Toras HoRav Foundation, 2007).

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(3) The rational-subjective and ideal concept of the Deity (“the system of a priori concepts”) and, consequently, the examination of the intellectual activity that exposes the pre-experiential concepts. (4) The conscious experience in realms beyond consciousness (“transcendental ‘experience’”) and, consequently, the examination of the ecstatic, mystical, and spiritual experiences of divine revelation.9 In determining the “realms,” R. Soloveitchik presents separate disciplines and also a process. As shown below, consciousness begins with a scientific approach, then proceeds to the sense of God in the soul and in subjective cognition, and concludes with the evidence of experience. At the unified stage of consciousness, all four realms come together, but at the early stages, the realms are dialectic poles between which we move. Immediately following the description of the various realms, R. Soloveitchik discusses the nature of the “search for God.” On close scrutiny, this discussion emerges as basically negative. R. Soloveitchik seeks to prevent a common mistake,which has characterized centuries of Jewish philosophy: There is no hidden corner of the natural or spiritual world which man’s consciousness, pining for its divine beloved, does not peer into and scrutinize. Human consciousness carefully investigates the buds of transcendence that appear every so often in the spiritual desert.10 This search is not the romantic yearning of fugitives from the monotonous secularism of the everyday. Rather, it is rooted in the general cultural consciousness. Flesh-and-blood man longs to escape from the straits of the limited, bounded, and contingent world and go out into the limitless, independent wide-open spaces.11 This search is an act of self-transcendence, which is truly the essence of man’s cultural ascent. The question of whether the Deity’s connection with the world is transcendent or immanent is irrelevant. Man sometimes attempts to find God within reality, and sometimes beyond it. It all depends on 9  These experiences are widely reported in mystical literature. R. Soloveitchik included biblical

prophetic revelation in religious facticity. These characterizations of consciousness appear in And From There You Shall Seek, 7. 10   In the Hebrew original “be-eretz ziyyah ve-zalmavet“ (a land of deserts and pits), according to

Jeremiah 2:7. 11   In the Hebrew original, this sentence is patterned on Psalms 118:5: “Out of my distress (min

ha-mezar) I called upon the Lord: the Lord answered me with liberation” (merhav yah).

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the viewpoint of the individual who searches. There are many facets to man’s awareness of God, which is replete12 with the absolute and the eternal, yet reverberates within a contingent, temporal creature. It listens for the occasional notes of the old-new song that bursts forth from without as well as from within reality, attesting to a wondrous supermundane being that, in the Kabbalists’ phrase, “fills and surrounds all the worlds.”13 The mystical masters justly taught that the Deity separates itself from the existent, which is imprinted with the stamp of creation and chained by the constraints of objective cosmic necessity, yet at the same time dwells within it as one “who dwells with them in their impurity” (Lev. 16:16). The Shekhinah imbues both object and subject, yet also transcends them. God created the world, and His primordial will exists within it. Malkhut (Kingship) is the name the Kabbalists gave to the Shekhinah hidden within the lawfulness of nature and spirit, but God dwells beyond the limits of reality in infinite eternity.(8)

This passage articulates the essence of R. Soloveitchik’s view on the mutual relations between man and God—he excludes theology from the discussion and makes self-transcendence a matter of consciousness rather than ontology. A far-ranging controversy has surrounded the question of whether God is outside cosmic and worldly reality or rather an inner presence in the world. R. Soloveitchik does not even bother to formulate a dialectical or paradoxical view on this question.14 The nature of the divine

12   In the Hebrew original “assumat,” to denote storing. The use of this term, which appears in the

prayer of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, is unusual in Modern Hebrew. It indicates that God’s consciousness includes the (search) for the absolute and the eternal. 13   See, for instance, Zohar (Raya Mehemna), 3 (Pinhas), 225a. The divine presence in nature (“the

mystery of nature”) is perceived in phenomenological literature as a constitutive element of religious consciousness. See, for example, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 93-94. 14   See, for instance, John McConnachie, The Barthian Theology and the Man of To-day (London:

Harper and Brothers, 1933), 224. Cf. Eliezer Goldman, “Overt and Covert in the Teachings of R. Soloveitchik” (in Hebrew), in Expositions and Inquiries: Jewish Thought in Past and Present, ed. Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), 230. In line with this trend, Aryei Fishman offers a sociological interpretation of the immanent and transcendent trends in R. Soloveitchik’s thought. In Fishman’s view, these trends shape distinct social types, and he relates to The Lonely Man of Faith. See Aryei Fishman, Judaism and Collective Life: Self and Community in the Religious Kibbutz (London: Routledge, 2002).

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essence—“transcendent or immanent”—is of no interest to him, or is even meaningless. In the first chapter of And From There You Shall Seek (“Overt Halakhah and Covert Love”), based on Song of Songs, R. Soloveitchik describes the lovers’ mutual and unfulfilled pursuit. Here, the motives of man who fails to answer God’s knock are open and clearly formulated: “laziness and fear combine to paralyze her [the beloved’s] will and bind her legs”15 (3). Human existence, in its weakness, precludes a response to the lover’s knocking, whereas the lover’s dialectical behavior is never explained. R. Soloveitchik does not address the lover’s motives. The lover’s behavior is beyond the aesthetic and substantive realm of the discussion and, if you wish, is not even interesting. “This sort of game” (4) is significant and useful only from the perspective of the beloved and of the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, from the human side. Metaphysics per se, as a concern with the Supreme Entity, with the Cause of Causes, becomes irrelevant. The sole focus of interest is human religious consciousness and its objects, thereby revealing: (1) The phenomenological method in use throughout And From There You Shall Seek. (2) The distinctive anthropological digression: human consciousness is the heart of the discussion.16 R. Soloveitchik also painstakingly characterized the metaphysical realm concerning an issue that occupied kabbalists for many long years: the divine presence. At the end of the passage, he even explicitly presents the widely accepted compromise formula: there is a divine dimension present in the world and there is such a dimension beyond the world (“fills and surrounds all the worlds”). The balance between these two dimensions has concerned many mystics and thinkers. R. Soloveitchik, however, differs from philosophers and kabbalists in essential ways: they discussed ontological and epistemological questions. Thinkers were interested in

15   In the Hebrew original “asru et raglekha ba-rehatim,” after Song of Songs 7:6. 16   See David Singer and Moshe Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Modern Judaism

2 (1982): 262-263. Sokol deals also with the phenomenological characteristics of And From There You Shall Seek in the context of his theory that every significant work of R. Soloveitchik addresses a different problem. See Moshe Sokol, “Ger ve-Toshav Anokhi”: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Life and Thought of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik” Tradition 29, 1 (1994): 32-47. On the anthropological turn in R. Soloveitchik’s thought, see Pinchas Peli, “Introduction,” in On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of R. Joseph Dov Soloveitchik (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), 11-13.

T h e P h e n o m e n o l o g y o f Fa i t h D o v S c hwa r t z

the divine reality and in the way we perceive its various dimensions.17 By contrast, R. Soloveitchik deals with the search for God as a constitutive element of human existence in general and of religious consciousness in particular.18 In his view, the achievement of the mystics’ compromise— whereby the Holy One, blessed be He, fills and surrounds all the worlds, present and hidden—is not necessarily in the realm of content. Rather, its achievement is the final removal of the problem from the philosophical agenda as an ontological and epistemological problem. Henceforth, what is interesting is the human aspect or, more precisely, the conscious-human situation. R. Soloveitchik did have reservations about formulations of radical immanence (pantheism), as evident in his presentation of Plotinus and Spinoza as “but a single step away from atheism” (koferim be-ikar) (24). And yet, he dismisses longstanding metaphysical discussions of theology. From now on, the concern of the mind is not “God” but “seeking God” (8); at the core is the human creature seeking God in the concrete reality and in the cultural existence, not the rational search per se. R. Soloveitchik thereby adheres to the conceptual approach outlined by Niebuhr and Tillich that influenced the theological discourse in the United States: the starting point of theology is the analysis of the human situation.19 According to R. Soloveitchik, religious consciousness develops various models of the Deity according to its various stages.20 At times, the Deity assumes immanent

17   Some have presented the transcendent as an ontological dimension (“for His part”) and

the immanent as a result of human cognition (“for our part”), whereas others have claimed that, “for His part,” God is present in the world, whereas human cognition, “for our part,” apprehends God as separate. This issue has been discussed in the literature at great length. See, for instance, Yosef Ben-Shlomo, The Mystical Theology of Moses Cordovero (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1965), 87 ff.; Norman Lamm, Torah Lishma: In the Works of R. Hayyim of Volozhin and His Contemporaries (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1989), 81 ff. 18   In this sense, he follows such approaches as that of Rudolf Otto, who viewed holiness as an

a priori component of human existence. See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958). See also Avi Sagi, “R. Soloveitchik: Jewish Thought Faces Modernity” (in Hebrew), in Faith in Changing Times: On the Teachings of Rav J. B. Soloveitchik, ed. Avi Sagi (Jerusalem: WZO, 1997), 464. 19   See, for instance, Alexander J. McKelway, The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich: A Review and

Analysis (New York: Dell, 1964), 45. 20   See Dov Schwartz, The Philosophy of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik (in Hebrew), Vol. 2 (Ramat Gan, Bar

Ilan University Press, 2008).

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form, and at times it is distinctively transcendent. Henceforth, the object of R. Soloveitchik’s study is no longer God but “God,”21 that is, the God or the divine aspect revealed in the observation of consciousness. The study, then, hinges on the explication of the Deity as a constitutive transcendent component of consciousness. The Impotence of Reason

Making the search for God a fundamental component of the anthropological model presents human beings as religious by definition. In presenting religion as a defining or essential characteristic of the human situation, R. Soloveitchik follows Friedrich Schleiermacher and phenomenologists of religion such as Rudolf Otto. According to Schleiermacher, dependence on the absolute, which cannot be defined or described, is a vital component of man: “In the relations of man to this world, there are certain openings into the Infinite.”22 Several Schleiermacher scholars, including Tillich, clarify that dependence on the absolute is not just an emotion, but includes an epistemological and conscious dimension as well.23 On this basis, R. Soloveitchik concludes that the search for God is also reflected in distinctively rational human action.24 In R. Soloveitchik’s view, classic rationalism is represented by neo-Kantianism in general and by radical epistemological idealism in particular (the Marburg school), and he never abandoned this assumption throughout his philosophical pursuit: Science indeed admits that it cannot explain a spatiotemporal phenomenon by a transcendental idea, for it cannot transcend 21   See Steven William Laycock, “God as the Ideal: The All-of-Monads and the All-Consciousness,”

in Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion, ed. Daniel Guerriere (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 250. 22  That is, to the Deity. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers,

trans. John Oman (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 130. See, for example, Benson Saler, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives and Unbounded Categories (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 118. 23   See, for instance, John Macquarrie, Studies in Christian Existentialism: Lectures and Essays

(Montreal: McGill University Press, 1965), 31-32. 24   Michael S. Berger, “U-vikashtem Mi-sham”: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Response to Martin

Buber’s Religious Existentialism,” Modern Judaism 18 (1998): 95.

T h e P h e n o m e n o l o g y o f Fa i t h D o v S c hwa r t z

its own limits and escape the circle of categorical assumptions corresponding to critical scientific experience, which is limited to the domain of finite perception and thought. Science does, however, admit to the presence of an irrational element in any world-view, and does not deny the right of others to investigate it. Were one to ask, “What is the irrationality hovering over the pure scientific conception?” the answer would be that it is the realm of the qualitative and sensory. (9)

To explain these matters, we need to clarify R. Soloveitchik’s sources. Kant explains cognition as a combination of two factors: the senses, meaning the impressions of the qualitative domain, and reason, which organizes the impressions according to a system of categories and forms of sensibility (space and time). Hermann Cohen and his Marburg disciples sought to dispense with the duality of cognition and established it on only one factor. R. Soloveitchik clarified in his dissertation that, according to Hermann Cohen, reason creates, rather than merely organizes, its objects. According to reason, there is no “datum”: reason relies on the pure, synthetic, a priori statements that make up experience, that is, the order and rules of the mathematical natural sciences (“the fact(s) of science”).25 The role of epistemology is to locate the principles of pure thought disclosed through the sciences.26 Cohen, then, uses the various sciences (mechanics, 25  Reinier Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man: Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish

Thought (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1996), 21. On the concept of experience in Kant and Cohen, see Nathan Rotenstreich, Experience and its Systematization: Studies in Kant (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965). The term that Cohen adopted is “das Factum der Wissenschaft,” that is, “the fact of science.” According to Cohen, the objects that thought creates are constituted on their theoretical and mathematical scientific expression rather than on the sensorial-external phenomenon. Ernst Cassirer writes: “[According to Cohen], Kant introduced neither a new metaphysics nor a new psychology; what he offered was something quite different—a new theory of experience. . . . A theory of experience is what in modern terminology we call a general ‘axiomatic’ of experience. Such a doctrine must be built up on independent logical principles. To discover and establish these principles, first and foremost the principles of mathematics and mathematical physics, was the real aim of Kant.” Ernst Cassirer, “Hermann Cohen (1842-1918),” Social Research 10 (1943): 223. 26   Josef Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken und die Seinskonstituierung bei Hermann Cohen (Berlin:

Reuther and Reichard, 1932), 92 (henceforth Das reine Denken). In Cohen’s formulation: “The task of logic is to lead science to awareness of its ways.” Hermann Cohen, System der Philosophie, Bd 1, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, dritte auflage (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1922), 589.

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optics, and so forth) to show that reason proceeds from theories and their subsequent laws to the creation of elementary scientific objects, to the “origin” (Ursprung). These sciences rest on mathematics, which supplies the technique for creating objects in cognition through infinite size, minimized to infinity (the infinitesimal). The principle of origin enables the minimization of quantity to infinity, that is, extra-epistemological elements can be minimized until they disappear, leaving only the pure quality from which cognition creates the scientific object. Thought creates scientific objects from itself and within itself. Cohen argues that the foundations and the products of cognitive thought (Denken der Erkenntnis) stem from the thought of origin. Only as a creation of origin can thought attain clear and absolute methodical regularity, because if reason does succeed in establishing being—all being—at its point of origin, such being could have no other cause than that assumed by reason. All pure cognitions must, in one way or another, be cognitions of origin, and only then are they pure cognitions of independent value.27 In his dissertation, which is devoted entirely to Cohen’s epistemology, R. Soloveitchik reserves a special discussion to the standing of the senses in particular and of the sensorial-qualitative world in general. He poses a question: given that the natural sciences rely on the senses, who can guarantee that the sensorial experience will surrender entirely to the rational-idealistic order? R. Soloveitchik argues that Marburgian idealism did neutralize sensorial experience, but is not entirely free from it. The question about the standing of the senses is an “apori in Cohen’s method.”28 In what way? The issue of real-sensorial experience hinges on the actual adaptation or acceptance of the senses and of the qualities they absorb to the general laws or to order. Some intensive size, some remnant of the senses and the qualities that does not respond to rational lawfulness (categories, forms of sensibility, and so forth) is invariably present. This intensive size, the sensation (Empfindung),29 guarantees the existence of an

27   Ibid., 36. See Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, translated by John

Denton (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 85-86. 28   Das reine Denken, 94. 29   For psychological and physiological interpretations of sensation in Kant’s thought, see, for

instance, Lorne Falkenstein, Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic

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external-qualitative world of objects. How else can we distinguish between the representation and external reality? Perhaps we do not see the objects at all but only remember them? The senses, then, separate the creations of the spirit from the external-objective world. At the same time, however, they are also a hindrance to reason: the senses are a non-rational remnant, which reason fails to analyze and order. Cohen’s well-known answer on the experience issue is: the senses raise the problem, and reason provides the solution.30 The senses turn into a kind of stimulation of reason, and demand, as it were, an explanation and a scientific answer, and reason does indeed provide such an explanation through the autonomous building of science and its objects. We therefore learn that Hermann Cohen’s essential interest was to dispense with sensation, which attests to the existence of an extra-cognitive qualitative world. According to R. Soloveitchik, Cohen failed to do so. In the passage from And From There You Shall Seek cited above, R. Soloveitchik explains this fact as an expression of the “religious” component in man. The “realm of the qualitative and sensory” is “the irrationality hovering over the pure scientific conception” (9). Seeking God, striving for the absolute and the transcendent, precludes the final success of the idealistic epistemological approach that predicates the whole of being on the act of thought. In this critique, R. Soloveitchik’s approach is close to that of Samuel Hugo Bergman. As is also evident from some of his previous writings, R. Soloveitchik was familiar with several of Bergman’s philosophical views, and Bergman’s thought had clearly left an impression on him. Bergman writes: The philosopher-idealist looks down contemptuously from the height of his intellectual constructs at the “given” concreteness represented by sensation, but concreteness exacts its revenge: he remains trapped in the net of his intellectual construct and cannot break through to reality. As long as we are within the realm of discursive, inferred knowledge, we are pushed from one point to another, without rest to our thought . . . We cannot penetrate reality

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 123. 30   Das reine Denken, 199. See Samuel Hugo Bergman, “The Ursprung Principle in Hermann Cohen’s

Philosophy” (in Hebrew), in Thinkers and Believers (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1959), 140.

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through reflection, through proofs. Proof is a tool unable to grasp reality.31

The search for God, then, is expressed in all human ways, including “the pinnacle of the system of pure concepts of the understanding” (7). Let me stress again: R. Soloveitchik does not mean to give marks to Cohen’s neoKantian approach, though he does occasionally criticize it. His intention is to examine what is beyond Cohen’s philosophical structure.32 Soloveitchik seeks to trace the element of “seeking God” as it is reflected in the figure of the philosopher searching for the absolute system underlying the sciences. The philosophical-scientific method, then, is a tool for understanding the thinker’s consciousness, not vice-versa. R. Soloveitchik thus launches on his philosophical course with a professional-technical interpretation of Hermann Cohen’s teachings, and then uses his general philosophical knowledge to shape the cognition of halakhic man. Now we understand that the flow pole of religious consciousness in And From There You Shall Seek is also shaped by epistemological idealism. The anthropological digression is manifest in the inability of idealistic philosophy to provide “true” insights not only about reality (sensation), that is, about the traces of the hidden Deity, but also about the nature of scientific theory. According to R. Soloveitchik, science offers no access to extra-cognitive reality either. He then claims: Modern physics, which has given such great prominence to the symbolic character of scientific constructions, knows that it cannot provide satisfactory explanations for one who aspires to penetrate the innerness and essence of being. In the qualitative reality as we 31   Samuel Hugo Bergman, “Philosophy and Religion” (in Hebrew), in Thinkers and Believers (Tel

Aviv: Dvir, 1959), 14. In this work, Bergman supports dualism: the source of thought is the mind, whereas the source of concrete reality is faith. See also idem, “The Loneliness of the Subject in Critique of Pure Reason” (in Hebrew), in The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1980), 163-167. See also Meir Munitz, Unity of Opposites: A Comparison between Rabbi A. Kook and Prof. S. H. Bergman (in Hebrew) (M.A. Thesis: Bar Ilan University, 2002), 30-34. 32  To critical idealist thinkers, this approach was obviously meaningless. The search for the

structure beyond Cohen’s self-contained philosophical-scientific approach is also an important element in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig. See Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 50.

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experience it, there is no relativity, there is no quantitative reciprocity, nor are there mathematical equations. The world—as perceived by sensuality involving the process of stimulus and feeling, which fills our consciousness, enchants us with its variety of tones and colors, encompasses us completely,33 oppresses us with all the burden of its otherness, and amazes us with its size and its force—remains unexplained by science. (9)

In The Halakhic Mind, R. Soloveitchik presents several differences between physics (which represents the mathematical natural sciences) and the humanities.34 One of these differences is the approach adopted by physicists and philosophers of science such as Henri Poincaré, Pierre Dohm, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Arthur Eddington. This approach is associated with the conventionalist school in the philosophy of science, and views physics as a science of pure mathematical constructs and symbols correlated with the datum. According to this school, scientific theories are empirically balanced so that none is “truer” than the other. “Knowledge of reality entails the construction of some ideal order coordinated with the qualitative cosmic process which retains its anonymity and mystery.”35 Scientists know that there is no one absolute (“true”) access to 33   In the original Hebrew, “koter otanu sehor sehor,” according to TB Shabbat 13a; TB Pesahim 40b;

TB Yevamot 46a, and more. 34  This distinction deepened in the wake of the controversy between the epistemological approach

(Kuno Fischer, Hermann Lutze, and Hermann Cohen) and the historical-anthropological approach (Wilhelm Dilthey, Adolf von Harnack, and Moritz Lazarus), whose echoes resonated widely at the end of the nineteenth century. See Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914, trans. Noah Jonathan Jacobs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 182-191. R. Soloveitchik’s training with Marburg school scholars certainly contributed to his awareness of the distinctions between the natural sciences and the humanities, a standard tenet among neo-Kantians. See, for instance, Ted Benton, Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 105. 35   Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought

(New York: Seth Press, 1986), 32. A concise and representative formulation appears in Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis (New York: Dover, 1952), xxvi. See also Francis J. Collingwood, “Duhem’s Interpretation of Aristotle on Mathematics in Science,” in Nature and Scientific Method, ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 76. In his dissertation, R. Soloveitchik presents Cohen’s idealistic approach, whereby the world of abstractions and ideal constructs of the mathematical natural sciences is the real-objective world since, as science evolves, so does thought (Das reine Denken, 77).

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actual reality and, therefore, they are not interested in “truth” but in the “thriftier” or “more convenient” approach. By contrast, the humanities refrain from duplicating reality by creating parallel ideal constructs. The humanist “is determined to capture the natural sensible reality in its full uniqueness.”36 We now arrive at the same conclusion we had reached concerning Hermann Cohen’s neo-Kantianism, this time from the perspective of the conventionalist philosophy of science: researchers in the mathematical natural sciences “duplicate” reality and deal with quantitative models that parallel the qualitative world. From R. Soloveitchik’s perspective, scientists have not cracked the secret of concrete reality. “But the mind [of scientific man], caught in a metaphysical storm, will not be satisfied by abstract constructions or the matching of sequences.37 . . . The cry bursting from the soul longing for infinity breaks through all modern philosophical thought, rebelling against the formal cognition of creative reason as a response to the soul’s greatest question” (11). When scientists renounce the study of the qualitative world, they implicitly recognize an extra-epistemological, qualitative dimension as a realm inaccessible to the scientific method. They thereby point to the conscious component that is constitutive of the search for God. R. Soloveitchik presents here a critical version of the philosophy of science from the perspective of religious phenomenology. In the phenomenological tradition, the essence that is not scientific and is reached through an eidetic process relying on the objects and qualities of the concrete world precedes the scientific-mathematical essence that is acquired through an ideal process.38 R. Soloveitchik thus turns to the eidetic analysis of religious-Jewish consciousness, postulating the shortcomings of scientific thought and the helplessness of the idealist philosophy relying directly upon it. The power of these realms lies in their emphasis on the need to seek the mystery and the drive behind the qualitative world. In general, And From There You Shall Seek endorses the resolute statement of

36   The Halakhic Mind, 35. 37  That is, the sequence of ideal scientific models and “the sequence of concrete phenomena”

(11). 38   See, for example, the analysis in Emmanuel Lévinas, Théorie de l’intuition dans la

phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris, Vrin, 1963), 173-174.

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Jacques Maritain: “As the superior science, theology judges philosophy in the same sense that philosophy judges the sciences.”39 From Certainty to Certainty Through Reason

The development of scientific and philosophical thought contributed, ex post factum, to the emphasis on the anthropological-conscious component in the search for God. The first contribution is negative, the second positive. Both contributions hinge on the rational proofs of God’s existence in philosophical tradition. R. Soloveitchik formulates the first contribution as follows: Kant’s teaching, despite all the difficulties it has encountered, has not been undetermined. Reason does not photograph the “given”40 but adapts it to its own needs. It sculpts the “given” with the chisel41 of categorical concepts so as to prepare it for scientific understanding. If reason is not accepting or passive; if, on the contrary, it is active, creative and original; if its achievement is not, as realists have believed since the time of Aristotle, to describe the “given” as it is, but to create constructions and ideal symbols—and the fathers of modern physics agree with Kant that this is the case—then, as mentioned above, reason cannot govern an absolute, non-contingent realm, a realm which cannot be symbolized by the free creations of contingent understanding. (14)

R. Soloveitchik had already pointed out the first extra-rational element that Kantians and neo-Kantians had been forced to acknowledge; namely, sensation and the qualitative world. He now adds the other element—the absolute. This realm, which for R. Soloveitchik is extraepistemological, also reflects the shortcomings of science and reason,42 and

39   Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. E. I. Watkin (London: Sheed and Ward,

1959), 94. 40  This turn of phrase, “photographing the given,” apparently originates in the Hebrew writings of

Samuel Hugo Bergman, some of which influenced R. Soloveitchik. 41   See Exodus 32:4 (Rashi ad locum: “A tool used by jewelers, who etch and engrave with it in

gold”). 42   See Dov Schwartz, Religion or Halakhah: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, trans.

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science thus provides a great service in exposing its limits. The strength of modern philosophy lies precisely in its power to reduce reason to its true size. In R. Soloveitchik’s view, the power of reason is particularly evident in Kant’s refutation of traditional proofs of God’s existence. Bergman and R. Soloveitchik’s outlooks appear to merge in this endeavor.43 Medieval scholastics labored to formulate proofs of God’s existence and ascribed great importance to them. Maimonides, for instance, presented the proofs of God’s existence at the very core of Guide of the Perplexed (2.2.1).44 The Kantian outlook, however, “dares to deny the logical, objective validity of these proofs, which were based on categorial assumptions, such as that of substance or causality” (11). Modern philosophy thereby deliberately excludes any scientific concern with the presence of God. R. Soloveitchik demands praise for this acknowledgement of the limitations inherent in science and reason. Because of these limitations, “the Deity is not subject to the intellect of His creatures, and the experience of God, infinity, and eternity is not confined to the particular extent of the finite, temporal mind” (14). The question then becomes: if the contribution of reason and science lies in the actual determination of their boundaries, do they have any positive value? In other words, do reason and science help to point out the paths needed for knowledge of God? Here we come to the second contribution of scientific and philosophical thought. We come to know the Deity through the experience of certainty or, in R. Soloveitchik’s terms, through an “immediate experience” of God as “the most certain of all certainties, the truest of truths” (12). Experience is not antithetical to reason. Quite the contrary, it is based on thought in general and on proofs of God’s existence in particular.45 The proofs of God’s existence are not perceived as Batya Stein, vol. 1 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007), 3-4. 43  Bergman, “Philosophy and Religion,” 11. 44   See, for example, Harry Austryn Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol.

2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973-1977), 561-582. R. Soloveitchik describes the types of proofs in And From There You Shall Seek, note 3, 157-158. 45  R. Soloveitchik is highly critical of the religious subjectivity that dissociates from the

rational dimension in the long note at the opening of Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983), 139-143. See Schwartz, Religion or Halakhah, ch. 1.

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rigorous discursive moves, but as arguments that reveal the realms and the ways wherein man seeks the Deity. The cosmological proof, for example, paves the way for the experience of the divine presence in the cosmos. The proof from the soul directs the person living through the experience to seek the Deity in the recesses of the soul, and so forth. The proofs of God’s existence are “hints” or “indicators” to paths in the search for God (14). In a way, R. Soloveitchik was influenced by the “theology of crisis” circle (Karl Barth, Emile Brunner, and their group), whose members had more or less renounced all rational proofs of God’s existence and presence, and had fully placed their trust on divine grace and revelation. Some of them, such as Barth, claimed that religion has a “logic” of its own that is not co-extensive with rational logic. Contrary to them, however, R. Soloveitchik does not entirely deny the achievements of reason evident in these proofs. He thereby follows Scheler, who argues that traditional proofs resonate with echoes of dimensions beyond the formal laws of logic, the causality principle, and the facts of experience in an inductive sense. Despite Kant’s refutations, claims Scheler, the proofs attain “their legitimacy and profundity of meaning (tiefen Sinn), insofar as they refer to attributes of God.”46 The importance of science and philosophy, then, is not confined to the actual setting of reason’s limits, but extends to the channeling of the religious experience. Implicitly, his claim is that science also has a restrictive and critical role: religious experience might lead us in directions that are not positive, and science and philosophy are the mechanisms that prevent this decline. R. Soloveitchik ends as follows: God is revealed to man through these very aspirations and yearnings. Why does man know no rest? Why does he seek that which he shall never find? It can only be that God draws man to Him. Man is tired and weary,47 dissatisfied with his life and his achievements; he is confused and lost in the paths of existence and cannot attain what he wants most. . . . In man’s yearning and frustration, God is revealed. The ontological48 consciousness, which is all yearning and upward

46   Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, trans. Bernard Noble (New York: Harper, 1960), 278. 47  According to Deuteronomy 25:18. 48  Obviously, the term ontological does not fit Kant’s transcendental idealism or Cohen’s

epistemological idealism. R. Soloveitchik, however, preferred to use this term.

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striving, becomes identified with the transcendental consciousness. The world is nothing but the glory emanating from the Infinite [EnSof]. Eyes thirsty for the richness of being,49 and hungry for the abundance of the creation, see God; the soul, seized by vision and agitated by beauty, travels through existence, following the footsteps of the lover who is hiding in the crannies50 of the symbolic mind.51 (15)

R. Soloveitchik outlines here the three-stages of the consciousness of revelation, and indeed the process of its evolvement: (1) Greatness. The various proofs of God’s existence represent the pinnacle of human knowledge. Both in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, these proofs were considered the summit of rational scholarship. As such, they bring consciousness to a situation of selfaffirmation. The “theologian” thought he had “found” the Deity through rational action. (2) Abasement. The collapse of these proofs following the endeavor of critical philosophy since Kant’s days leads to the fall, meaning to a sense of failure and frustration.52 The Deity slips away and disappears, and the theologian remains at a low point.53 49   In the Hebrew original “ateret ha-havayah” (Jeremiah 33:6), pointing to the myriad diversity

of reality. 50   In the Hebrew original, “binkik ha-sela.” See Jeremiah 13:4. 51  Referring to scientific cognition. See below. 52   In note 6, R. Soloveitchik alludes briefly to the cultural climate created by existentialist-secular

approaches that are oblivious to the “absolute and the eternal” and remain frustrated by a dead-end dialectic. Given the exclusion of the divine presence from the dialectical structure of the personality and its existence, these oscillations cannot be resolved. Furthermore, this turns into an unintelligible and meaningless plight, and the result is distinctly pessimistic: “Atheists wander along the paths of an absurd existence. They are lost in their absurd, cruel agony and madness” (159). R. Soloveitchik is referring here to Camus (and to some extent to Sartre as well). See, for instance, Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2002), 145-157. Given that The Myth of Sisyphus was published in 1942 and translated into English in 1955, this line and even the entire note may be a later addition. 53  Assertiveness and diffidence are classic characteristics of the religious experience, as noted

by scholars from various fields. See, for example, Greta Hort, Sense and Thought: A Study in Mysticism (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1936), 151-152; R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism—Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 86-88; Erich Neumann, “Mystical Man,” in The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos

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(3) Revelation. At this low point, revelation occurs. Channeling the proofs to the experiential realm leads to the divine presence. Revelation gives meaning to the fluctuations experienced by the believer that were described in the two previous chapters.54 God, then, is revealed when human beings despair of the achievements of science and of philosophy as the supreme and exclusive authority. Precisely at the least expected moment, the moment of crisis, abasement, and despondency that follows the failure to find God through the uniquely human quality of reason, God reveals Himself. This is R. Soloveitchik’s explanation of prophecy in several places: God is revealed at the depths of distress.55 The “symbolic mind,” the ideal mathematical-physical structures created by science according to the conventionalist tradition in the philosophy of science, no longer meet the needs of the quest for God. Man therefore seeks what is beyond the formal-quantitative symbols, and human consciousness becomes a “transcendental consciousness.” The lover hides in the qualitative-concrete world, and also beyond cognition (“the absolute”). To sum up: the way to the religious experience can be described as involving four stages: 1) An initial (naïve, intuitive) certainty of the divine presence56 ↓ 2) Scientific demonstrations (proofs of God’s existence) ↓ 3) The collapse of the demonstrations following Kant and Cohen ↓ 4) An absolute certainty, whose course is determined according to the demonstrations

Yearbooks, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 395-411. 54  The model of revelation as a solution to the conflict between philosophy and theology and as

personal redemption is typical of Tillich’s approach, and R. Soloveitchik may also have been influenced by it. See McKelway, The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich, 94-95. 55   See, for example, And From There You Shall Seek, 35. 56  R. Soloveitchik does not relate explicitly to this stage, but the childish-naïve experience may

plausibly be assumed to precede the stage of discursive scientific inferences.

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Maimonides as a General Homo Religiosus

Maimonides is presented as one who attained experience and certainty based on scientific philosophical knowledge (that is, moved from stage 2 to stage 4). In the second chapter of And From There You Shall Seek, R. Soloveitchik does not relate to Maimonides as a Jewish thinker and a halakhic authority, but as a paragon of the classic “homo religiosus.”57 He cites from the first three laws that open the Mishneh Torah and comments on Maimonides’ formulation: “The basic principle of all basic principles and the pillar of all sciences is to know that there is a First Existent . . .” (12) as follows: This knowledge is not based on logical inference, but is, rather, immediate: the knowledge of reality as divine reality, the awareness of the creation as something separated from the bosom of the Infinite. Even though Maimonides did not desist from presenting indirect demonstrations of the existence of God, and even though he believed that proofs of this sort exhaust our knowledge of the First Existent, the essence of his view is nevertheless that this knowledge is based on the immediate ontological cognition that there is no reality but God. (158, note 4)

Since R. Soloveitchik is interested in Maimonides as the paradigmatic homo religiosus and not necessarily as a thinker, in his analysis of Maimonides’ spiritual development he discusses first the Guide of the Perplexed and then the Mishneh Torah. Let us consider this statement in detail: in the Guide of the Perplexed (2.1), Maimonides deals at length with a series of scientific proofs (“indirect demonstrations”) of God’s existence, relying on the physics and the cosmology of the Peripatetics (Aristotle’s disciples). By contrast, Maimonides’ rulings at the opening of the Mishneh Torah are a result of direct intuitive cognition. The discursive achievement—the proofs of God’s existence—is relegated to the margins of consciousness after exposing the experience of ontological dependence on God. The intuitive certainty of the divine presence now replaces rational inference, and R. Soloveitchik interprets Maimonides’ words ad locum 57  To some extent, this is how Maimonides is presented in Aviezer Ravitzky, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik

on Human Knowledge: Between Maimonides and Neo-Kantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism 6 (1986): 157-188.

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precisely in these terms: “All existing things, whether celestial, terrestrial, or belonging to an intermediate class, exist only though His true existence.” Reality is absolutely dependent on God.58 Maimonides’ appearance in a discussion about the course from experience to certainty presents his intuitive approach as emerging after his discursive way. As it were, when the proofs of the existence of God in the Guide of the Perplexed collapsed, they directed Maimonides to the Mishneh Torah. Implicitly, the opening of the halakhic work is presented as an expression of Maimonides’ (intuitiveexperiential) grown, mature outlook. The Critique of Neo-Kantianism

The long text of note 7 (159-161) returns to the question of the senses and of qualia as an expression of the impotence of science and philosophy. Ostensibly, this is a repetition. Between the lines, however, R. Soloveitchik ties the collapse of the proofs of God’s existence to the inability of neoKantian epistemological idealism (in the teachings of Hermann Cohen) and of the conventionalist approach in the philosophy of science to explain the senses, which attest to a qualitative, extra-epistemological domain.59 He writes: It is true that the senses ask and the mind answers, but the answer is not relevant to the question. The senses demand a solution to the riddle of real, vital, flowing qualia,60 while the mind responds with an ideal, quantitative construction that is dumb to reality and closed off to purposefulness. The senses hint at a world full of motion, change and form, swept along in a mighty, many-colored stream, while pure reason creates abstract, formal objects, bereft of vitality and tumult, 58  R. Soloveitchik refers to the apprehension of God as necessarily existent, of which he says:

“This theory is one of the most wonderful and profound thoughts that our great teacher put at the center of his world” (159, note 4). See, for instance, Alexander Altmann, Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 108-127. 59  As noted, these two views appear interchangeably in R. Soloveitchik’s writings. The distinction

between them, however, is worth noting: conventionalism rejects the concept of truth in reference to the scientific proposition, whereas Hermann Cohen and the Marburg school ascribe truth to science. The two approaches, however, share the view that scientific representations (“symbols”) do not reflect qualitative-concrete reality. 60   In the Hebrew original, “ekhutiyut kolahat.”

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whose existence is rooted not in their essence and independence, but in their mutual interrelations. Mathematical physics regards the sensible world as an eternal enigma. I will now recapitulate my preceding remarks. Instead of explaining the system of qualia from within its own unique self, science creates a new, ideal symbolic system parallel to it. It flees from qualia that flow from one unknown to another, creating a new world fettered in mutual relations and functional dependencies. Even though science then returns to the qualitative and measures its ideal new theories against the standard of sense perception because the free symbols have to conform to the vital qualitative cues, nevertheless there remains the mystery of the variegated sights and sounds that excite everything and smile at everything. The logos does not consort with [this mystery]. It does not penetrate the shell of the nonrational senses, and does not form a unity of cognition with it. (160)

Hermann Cohen, as noted, tried to make sensation superfluous by presenting reason as a creative activity. R. Soloveitchik clarified in his doctoral dissertation that Cohen had failed in this attempt. Sensation plays a dual role in Cohen’s outlook: 1) Question and problem. The senses are a “hint” (Hinweis, Anspielung) to the task imposed on reason.61 The senses are a kind of stimulus, a problem and a demand from reason (Denken) to establish its foundations. Contrary to Cohen, Paul Natorp maintains that the problem raised by sensation determines the direction of the reasoning process, whereas Cohen holds that reason operates independently from the senses.62 The role of sensation is to present a problem to reason, which deals with it by creating the scientific objects from it and within it (“objectification”). In R. Soloveitchik’s formulation, “the senses ask and the mind answers.” 2) Consciousness.63 Cohen presents the creative process of reason in two stages. The first is the “naïve” stage, when reason creates the scientific

61   Das reine Denken, 95-96. R. Soloveitchik argues there that the distinction between a task and

a “hint” of a task is not as clear-cut as Cohen suggests. See Schwartz, Religion or Halakhah, 77-78. 62   Das reine Denken, 50. 63  The term consciousness is adopted here in its denotation in Hermann Cohen’s thesis, that is,

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objects according to moves that are called “judgments.” The second stage is the “critical” stage, where consciousness (Bewußtsein) appears. At the consciousness stage, cognition engages in a penetrating clarification of whether its ideal creations do indeed fit the concrete, extra-conscious world (“sharp critique”). Cohen determined that, at the critical stage “we find the fact (Tatsache), which contradicts the non-subjective character of thought.”64 At the consciousness stage, reason turns to the facts of the concrete world and examines itself.65 Or, in R. Soloveitchik’s formulation in the above passage: “Science then returns to the qualitative. . . the free symbols have to conform to the vital qualitative cues.” R. Soloveitchik uses the term “cue” to link the two systems he considers in his parallel discussion in the second chapter of And From There You Shall Seek. In one, proofs of God’s existence “hint”66 at the suitable paths to the experience of certainty (in the phenomenological terminology adopted by R. Soloveitchik). In the other, sensation “hints” at objective scientific lawfulness (in Cohen’s terminology). The following diagram clarifies the dual use of “hint”: Proofs of the Existence of God (Objective) Hint

Sensation (Subjective) Hint

Experience (Subjective)

Ideal World of Scientific Objects (Objective)

as the critical stage of cognition, as opposed to its usual denotation in the phenomenology of religion, that is, as an emotional, spiritual, and intellectual subjective whole. 64   Das reine Denken, 55. The essential problem that R. Soloveitchik raises is that the very making

of consciousness the critical agent of reason hinders the unity of cognition. 65   Ibid., 56. R. Soloveitchik emphasizes that consciousness is characterized by two types of

relationships: the relationship of consciousness to the “self,” that is, self-consciousness, and the relationship of consciousness to objects in the outside world (Außenwelt). Pure consciousness, according to Cohen, is consciousness of the second type, which emerges through the correspondence between reason and the concrete, extra-conscious world. 66   “A demonstration now means the experience of the creature yearning for the Creator. There

are hints in the world that turn man’s mind toward Heaven. Even Kant admitted this when he defined the three concepts—God, man, and the world—as regulative ideas” (And From There You Shall Seek, 14).

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The link between these two approaches is the model of religious subjectivity based on rational and factual-practical objectivity. A system based on only one element, be it objective or subjective, is bound to fail (as clarified in The Halakhic Mind and in the long note at the opening of Halakhic Man).67 The religious subjective experience must be directed by a rational, objective, and practical element anchored in normative and practical action since, otherwise, it is potentially disastrous. R. Soloveitchik thereby follows a model of conceptual-rational religiosity that is not exhausted by rationalism. Another element is thus present in religion, beyond though not opposed to rationalism. This model of religious consciousness features, for instance, in Otto’s phenomenological-religious approach, and would eventually appear as well in, for example, Robert Olson’s view of existentialist-religious philosophy.68 At the same time, R. Soloveitchik sought to clarify that scientific-idealist thought failed in its attempt to blur the senses (the “subjective-qualitative” order in R. Soloveitchik’s terminology in the note) and dispense with them. The qualitative domain that becomes known through the senses is the source of the great riddle, and in its diverse and richly varied manifestations (sounds, smells, colors, and so forth) we find traces of the divine presence. Ontological Pluralism

R. Soloveitchik claims in The Halakhic Mind that, contrary to the tension that had prevailed between religion and science in the Middle Ages, the

67   In R. Soloveitchik’s early writings, the term objective appears in two contexts, one rational

and the other practical, referring to a context of action. The first context appears usually in R. Soloveitchik’s early writings. The second context, however, which crystallized in The Halakhic Mind, is found in R. Soloveitchik’s writings from other periods as well. R. Soloveitchik is highly critical of a religiosity lacking an objective dimension: in some of the sources, he attacks nonrational religiosity, and in others, religiosity without observance. The first context is the valid one here. 68  On the distinction between a rational and a non-rational Deity and on the preference of

a model that is based on (though not exhausted by) rationalism, see ch. 1 in Otto, The Idea of the Holy; Yosef Ben-Shlomo, “The Rational and the Irrational in Rudolf Otto’s Philosophy of Religion” (in Hebrew), in The Rational and the Irrational, ed. Marcelo Dascal and Adi Parush (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 1975), 78-87. See also Robert G. Olson, An Introduction to Existentialism (New York: Dover, 1962), 98.

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modern homo religiosus is not in competition with the scientific view. The centuries-old confrontation is replaced by epistemological pluralism: for R. Soloveitchik, cognition is not the exclusive purview of scientists. Homo religiosus is a “cognitive type, desiring both to understand and interpret.”69 Homo religiosus, argues R. Soloveitchik, struggles for his right to independent cognition of reality. In And From There You Shall Seek, R. Soloveitchik makes what appears to be a stronger claim, and argues for ontological pluralism. In his view, there are two approaches to existence (“ontological experience”): (1) as scientific experience, which is relative, limited and contingent, producing an ideal-functional correlative that corresponds to unexplained, alien being; (2) as transcendental experience— experience of the absolute infinite within the temporal, bounded and contingent; encounter with the Creator within the creation as its origin and end. The first type of experience is formulated in symbolic mathematical equations, and the second in continuous yearning and wondrous immediate experience, which burst forth from the depths of human experience and sweep the individual to mysterious faraway realms. There is religious facticity just as there is scientific facticity. There is religious reality just as there is scientific reality. (15)

The first approach is identical to a combination of Hermann Cohen’s neo-Kantianism and the conventionalist approach in the philosophy of science, which were discussed at length above. The second reflects the philosophy and phenomenology of religion that extends from Schleiermacher (the sense of “createdness” and, in R. Soloveitchik’s terminology, “encounter with the Creator within the creation”) and up to Otto, Scheler and van der Leeuw (“the numinous moments” such as the sublime and, in R. Soloveitchik’s terminology, “the depths,” “the mystery,” and so forth). These two aspects characterize, respectively, the figures of cognitive man and homo religiosus in Halakhic Man, a work he wrote around 1944-1945, at a time he was beginning to conceptualize And From There 69   The Halakhic Mind, 40. On epistemological pluralism in this work, see Lawrence Kaplan,

“Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Halakhah,” The Jewish Law Annual 7 (1987), 144; Jonathan Sacks, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik’s Early Epistemology: A Review of The Halakhic Mind,” Tradition 23, 3 (1988), 78-81; Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man, 53-54.

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You Shall Seek. Whereas cognitive man is not tolerant of the ontological view of homo religiosus,70 the latter’s characteristic feature is ontological pluralism. Homo religiosus is willing to accept the epistemological-idealist approach, while also acknowledging transcendental existence. R. Soloveitchik’s work shows that the distinction between the two approaches is fundamentally epistemological, so that the sharper formulations by comparison with The Halakhic Mind are only a matter of terminology. “Ontological pluralism” is not a plurality of entities but a plurality of approaches toward the entity, that is, of kinds of cognition. “Ontological experience” is merely ”epistemological experience.” Cognitive man observes reality and his cognition amounts to a system of mathematicalphysical symbols, whereas homo religiosus comes to know the same reality through the mystery, that is, through the experience of the transcendent presence. Both the idealist-epistemological and the conventionalist outlooks on the one hand, and the phenomenological approach to religion on the other, relate to “facts” and to “reality” through symbols and essences. The distinction between cognition and religious consciousness, then, is not ontological. Phenomenology is generally more “tolerant” of the concrete reality it brackets, whereas epistemological idealism largely strives to negate it; ontology, however, does not allow an essential distinction between them.71 Homo religiosus is characterized by both “philosophical” and experiential cognition. We find, then, that cognitive man, the philosopher of science, is not ready to recognize extra-cognitive factors. By contrast, homo religiosus, who relies on idealism as a rationalist approach and acknowledges mathematical-physical symbols, recognizes the existence of an element that transcends cognition. This mysterious and sublime element is perceived in his consciousness as another type of being.72 70  Referring to a neo-Kantian philosopher who endorses epistemological idealism. 71  The term ontological, to which R. Soloveitchik repeatedly resorts in regard to the philosophy of

Kant and his followers is, as noted, problematic. Kant denied the existence of ontology and this, in Kant’s view, is a genuine Copernican revolution. A well-known hermeneutical controversy regarding Kant hinges on whether the three Critiques are a preface to a positive philosophy or exhaust his theory. Clearly, however, being divorced from cognition is meaningless after Kant. 72  This approach is based on Cassirer’s neo-Kantian interpretation. For an extensive discussion,

see Schwartz, Religion or Halakhah, 198-199.

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“Ontological” (actually, epistemological) pluralism, then, reflects a process that leads to the experience. The “scientific experience, which is relative, limited and contingent” (15), reflects the first, rational approach. When homo religiosus despairs of the implications of this outlook (which is propounded by Kant and Cohen as well as Poincaré) for religion and for the quest for God, as in the collapse of the proofs of God’s existence, he seeks other epistemological paths. This epistemological search leads him to the experience of the transcendent, that is, the divine extra-cognitive factor. “The cultural consciousness peers into an opaque disjunctive realm which is not its own, and chases after the reflection of the God who oversees everything from the crannies73 of relative being; falls in love with the appearance of the handsome lover and follows Him” (17). This sentence concludes the second chapter of And From There You Shall Seek, “The Yearning Heart,” and the reader learns that the search for the reality beyond represents the summit of the quest for God. The second approach, then, is the transcendent one. Despite R. Soloveitchik’s declaration about the ontological difference, the actual distinction is between a cognition that denies supra-cognitive elements and one that affirms them. Tension and Process

The third chapter of And From There You Shall Seek, “The Disappointed Heart,” is devoted to the dimension of failure and diffidence in the quest for God. In this chapter, Halakhah appears for the first time as an element that locates itself within the general framework of the religious experience, and even controls it and directs it.74 “Judaism,” writes R. Soloveitchik, “knows well the tensions and hesitations involved in the wearying search for God, as well as the joy and ecstasy of the search” (19). The lesson from the analysis so far is, above all, that the search for God is an ongoing, never-ending process. The quest for God becomes an independent value, an end in itself. The association between individuals and their God is one of process, and R. Soloveitchik 73   In the Hebrew original, “mashgiah min ha-harakim.” See Song of Songs 2:9. 74   For initial remarks on the problematic status of Halakhah in And From There You Shall Seek, see

Kaplan, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Halakhah,” 176-179.

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indicates that this is a process involving tension. The collapse of the proofs of God’s existence and the transition to experience create, as noted, a flow and ebb dynamic. One seeking the Deity oscillates between two systems of polarities: A) Facts and Interpretation Pole 1: A search for the divine presence places man before an “opaque” nature that does not allow reason to penetrate. Pole 2: The individual searching for God offers a vibrant and multifaceted interpretation of the qualitative world. B) Feelings and Situations Pole 1: Searching for God is a wearying process because the dialectic is never-ending,75 as the images from Song of Songs explain so well. Pole 2: The very search for God is a source of joy and pleasure. The experience and the words of the prophets on the one hand, and the prayer rituals on the other, attest to the tension accompanying the quest for God. The prophets called upon us to uncover “the glory of the Creator’s majesty, which hovers over mute creation”76 (19), as an expression of the first kind of tension. As for the prayer rituals, R. Soloveitchik mentions the plea for divine revelation “on the nights preceding the High Holy Days [Selihot]” (20). In the prayer for forgiveness on the days of judgment and mercy, afflicted by suffering and anxiety, the supplicant asks for divine revelation, which is the pinnacle of hopes:

75   In the final chapters of And From There You Shall Seek, R. Soloveitchik attempts to present

a structure of consciousness that resolves the contradictions and ends the dialectic. However, he clearly holds that, even at the later and unified stages of consciousness, differences persist in latent ways. Several years after his writing of And From There You Shall Seek, Erich Fromm pointed to this dialectic as a psychological element in the love of God. See Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper, 1956), 72-80. 76   In the Hebrew original, toladah, meaning nature. (Toladah in this denotation appears mainly in

the writings of R. Abraham Ibn Ezra. See, for instance, the long exegesis on Exodus 23:25). It is interesting that R. Soloveitchik specifically chose the words of King David as an expression of prophecy: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Psalms 19:2); “O Lord, how manifold are thy works!” (Psalms 104:24).

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A whispered plea bursts forth and rises with the morning star that appears on the eastern horizon: “Present Yourself to us when we seek You, as it is written,” “And from there you shall seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if only you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul” [Deut. 4:29].77 Master of the universe, behold, we search for and seek You with all our being, we long for You, with every beat of our hearts,78 we run after You. (20)

These poetic words are an expression of the second type of tension. The Status of Halakhah: Dynamism and Flow

Henceforth, Halakhah enters the picture, though not yet as the sole factor in the discussion. Its involvement is intended to offer a response to the religious experience in general and, more precisely, to pinpoint the difference between the universal religious experience and the uniqueness of the halakhic religious experience. Halakhah is presented as adapted to, reflecting, and encouraging the conscious tension. R. Soloveitchik writes as follows about the pole of vibrant and dynamic interpretation (first tension) and about the pole of flow and pleasure (second tension): The Halakhah approves of this confrontation between God and man within the world. We are commanded by the Halakhah to utter a benediction over every cosmic phenomenon: over the afterglow of the fiery sunset and the purple of the sunrise trickling along the mountaintops; over the rising moon sprinkling its pale light; over the stars in their courses79 and the comets leaping from clear space…. In short, we utter a benediction over everything man encounters that demonstrates the power of creation. What is a benediction— whether birkat ha-nehenin, a blessing over something we imbibe, or birkat re’iyah, a blessing over something we behold—if not praise and thanksgiving to God for the nature of the world, a nature that changes, in the instant that the benediction is uttered, into a supernatural, miraculous universe, if not the redemption of nature from its muteness, deprivation, and solitude; if not the identification of the cosmic dynamics with the primordial will of the Creator, 77   See Shlomo Goldsmith, ed., Selihot (Poland) (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1965), 11. 78   See Jeremiah 4:19. 79   See Judges 5:20.

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which is hidden and acts from within its hiding place on organic and inorganic matter, on animal, vegetable, and mineral! (20-21)

The feeling of createdness, together with the feeling of the divine presence, make the observation of nature a spiritually uplifting experience. The quest for the dynamic divine presence within existence is encouraged and acknowledged through the benediction.80 Already in Halakhic Man, homo religiosus is described as seeking the miraculous dimension of scientific order, contrary to the Brisk scholar (that is, the ideal halakhic man),81 who does not acknowledge this dimension. The cognition of halakhic man, as noted, parallels cognition according to Cohen’s epistemological idealism: halakhic man confronts a system of Torah laws as the philosopher confronts scientific Newtonian order and regularity. Both seek to trace the pure foundations of halakhic and scientific laws, and both create halakhic and scientific objects in cognition—halakhic man relies on “hillukim“ and the philosopher on rational judgments. Hence, both the Brisk scholar—halakhic man—and the philosopher, endeavor to dispense with the sensorial-qualitative world. The difference intensifies here: the concrete-qualitative world functions as a stimulus for the scholar, raising the problem that leads to the creation of halakhic-ideal models in his cognition, whereas homo religiosus as described here immerses into the real world. He seeks the divine presence in the examination of the miraculous and concealed dimension of creation, not within ideal halakhic (“objective” in Cohen’s terminology) order but, indeed, within concrete reality itself.

80   See also And From There You Shall Seek, 71-72. For the theological meaning of the benediction

in R. Soloveitchik’s writings see, for example, Marvin Fox, “The Unity and Structure of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Thought,” Tradition 24, 2 (1989): 54. 81  Note that R. Soloveitchik uses the term “Halakhah” in two different denotations. In Halakhic

Man, Halakhah refers only to the learning style developed in the Lithuanian yeshivot and particularly in the Brisk dynasty (lomdus). This term reflects the methodological process whereby Torah scholars analyze a range of theoretical halakhic laws (as formulated in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, for example), quantitatively reduce them to infinity (since Halakhah is based on “quantities and measures”) and, from the pure quality that remained, recast them as ideal legal constructs (“hillukim”). By contrast, in And From There You Shall Seek, the term “Halakhah” serves in its common denotation, that is, as the list of concrete commands that constitute Jewish law. I will refer to the former denotation as ideal, and to the latter as concrete.

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Homo religiosus considers that Halakhah directs us to immerse into the concrete world and to seek God’s traces within it. The Status of Halakhah: Opaqueness and Diffidence

As Halakhah encourages and reflects the dynamism and anthropomorphism of creation and the sense of flow, it also records suffering in the process of searching for the elusive Deity and confronting opaque nature. R. Soloveitchik places the harmonious and dialectic views of Halakhah beside one another:82 “The Halakhah knows of the Shekhinah revealed, but also of the Shekhinah removed” (22). And yet, R. Soloveitchik argues that a full clarification of the second pole of tensions (B1, B2) requires a new term, faith. Furthermore, faith distinguishes Judaism from other religions: At a time when theologians believed in man’s ability to find God within creation, Judaism was not sure of this. According to the Jewish view, man cannot be redeemed from his pollution and contamination, or find his happiness and purpose, by coming close to God through creation alone. Another sort of approach is necessary—an approach through an act of faith. Yearning for God through [contemplating created] reality does not turn into faith. There is experience; but faith is lacking, and Judaism stresses that man needs faith. The distance that separates man from his Creator is infinite; the road from the temporal to the eternal and from the tangible to the transcendent winds through limitless expenses, and man with his limited mind cannot reach his destination. There is an unrealized hint, an unfulfilled aspiration. (22-23)

This passage requires us to clarify: what is the need for faith, and what is true faith? A suitable answer to these questions requires us to chart R. Soloveitchik’s critique of scientific rationalism in general, and of rational religiosity, which is exclusively based on the authority of reason, in particular. His critique centers on the pretension to apprehend the Deity from within the world, and is built on two stages:

82   Cf. Gili Ziwan, “Religious Experience According to Rav Soloveitchik” [Hebrew], in Faith in

Changing Times: On the Teachings of Rav J. B. Soloveitchik, ed. Avi Sagi (Jerusalem: WZO, 1996), 227.

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(1) A critique of negative theology. R. Soloveitchik’s fundamental assumption is the impossibility of describing God. Reason and human language are incapable of describing God per se, and can only negate the attributes that characterize reality as we know it: “The theologian in this context cannot comprehend the essence of the absolute and eternal except through the use of negative attributes” (23). The only conclusion of rational inquiry is the negation of attributes, since such an inquiry is based on an abstraction. Rational religiosity amounts to such a negation. The common denominator of Aristotle, Plotinus, Spinoza, and Hermann Cohen is a reversal of direction: instead of searching for the Deity in the personal, dynamic, and vibrant reality, they sought God in ideal abstractions. Abstraction leads to a negation of the attributes and, in fact, to a voiding of the concept of God. The rational theory of the attributes, then, does not help us to comprehend God. (2) A critique of rationalism. Two different rational outlooks (or “cosmic,” as R. Soloveitchik refers to them) are targeted for criticism: the conventionalist approach to the philosophy of science, and positivism. The philosopher of science maintains that the pure mathematical constructs of the scientist sum up the human view about “the secret of creation” (25). The positivist holds that qualia and the observed phenomena explain themselves and do not shape universal and metaphysical laws. Both err in their search for the absolute within the given natural-cosmic reality. In other words: both ignore the transcendent factor, though only its addition will provide a full explanation of cosmic order. “Seeking God only within existence is a daring and risky adventure, which sometimes meets up with threatened failure” (25).83 I now return to the distinction regarding faith that R. Soloveitchik draws between Judaism and other religions (“theologians”) according to his view in the passage cited above. Other religions maintain that we can become aware of the divine presence by apprehending nature and the universe. This approach leads to paradox and to failure. The paradox is rooted in the approach that negates the attributes. Rational religious thought has unequivocally ruled that the

83  R. Soloveitchik assumes that heresy follows from hubris: “Man’s pride and impudence drive him

to deify himself as the solution to the mystery” (25).

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Deity is inapprehensible; theologians in other religions argue that the Deity is apprehensible from within nature, but also that it cannot be apprehended at all. The paradox leads to failure and to the illusion that creation attests to the Creator. By contrast, the fundamental and unquestionable assumption of Judaism is the inability to apprehend God. Given that apprehending God is impossible, and given the dubious effectiveness of observing nature and the universe, Judaism drew two conclusions: (1) What is interesting is not reaching the goal—apprehending God—but the process. Judaism deals with the search for God as an endless process, which does not include apprehending the infinite. (2) The impossibility of relying on cosmological observation in the search for God compels reliance on faith. Without faith, the search for God becomes a meaningless activity. Furthermore: scientific observation assumes its meaning in light of faith. R. Soloveitchik argues passionately that, against the pole of nature’s opaqueness and the suffering accompanying this process, Judaism places faith.84 Faith as a Process

To recapitulate: faith is perceived as a reaction to “religious” distress, that is, to the wavering between the inability to apprehend God on the one hand and the quest for the divine presence on the other, and also as the presentation of the associations between individuals and their God as a process that cannot be fully realized. According to R. Soloveitchik, faith provides the process of seeking God with its motivation since, otherwise, why would we seek the inapprehensible?! Indeed, faith is itself the choice of a way that is a process without an attainable goal. In a way, faith functions as a therapeutic factor, which enables us to cope in healthy, mature, and responsible fashion with permanent tension. 84  On R. Soloveitchik’s view of faith see, for instance, Arieh Strikowski, “The Message of Faith

in His Thought” (in Hebrew), in Jubilee Volume: In Honor of Morenu Hagaon R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. Shaul Israeli, Norman Lamm and Yitzhak Raphael (Jerusalem and New York: Mosad Harav Kook and Yeshiva University, 1984), 89-104; Schubert Spero, “Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik and Belief in God,” Modern Judaism 19 (1999): 1-20.

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R. Soloveitchik clings here to Søren Kierkegaard’s position, stating that faith reflects the dialectical situation. Kierkegaard set up two models: one harmonious, whereby faith resolves the dialectic, and the other disharmonious, whereby faith perpetuates the rupture with God.85 In his initial presentation, R. Soloveitchik tends to view faith in Judaism according to the disharmonious model: faith records the insoluble tension, and shows one how to live with it. Living a life of faith, therefore, implies internalizing the various aspects of the tension: contemplation of the “cosmic drama” (7) grants a sense of the divine presence, but its attainments are questionable. Cohen’s “a priori concepts” provide an adequate explanation of creative cognition, where infinity fulfills an important role (according to R. Soloveitchik, this implies “peering” into the transcendent Deity, although such a view obviously contradicts the spirit of epistemological idealism). Nevertheless, the concrete-qualitative world remains opaque, closed, and impenetrable to cognition.86 Even the “the sense of absolute dependence” that R. Soloveitchik, in the wake of Schleiermacher, views as reflecting religious facticity, shatters in the face of the absolute negation of the attributes. Faith reflects both the recognition of the tension as such and the very choice of a tense life. The believer prefers process to result. Like Buber, R. Soloveitchik too holds that faith does not provide a solution to existential tension,87 but helps people to live with it. Hence R. Soloveitchik’s distinction between Judaism and other religions. Whereas other religions do not need faith because they maintain that the Deity is cosmically apprehensible, Judaism requires faith because it casts doubt on this possibility. Other religions hold that the tension can be resolved (the harmonious model), whereas Judaism knows it has no absolute solution, and faith is therefore necessary. In Kierkegaard’s terminology, other religions do not need faith as salvation from despair, since they maintain that God is indeed revealed in the contemplation of

85   See Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard, Religion and Existence: The Voyage of the Self, trans. Batya Stein

(Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000), 86-88. 86  Heschel also points to the oscillation between exposure and opaqueness in nature, but

discusses it in the context of the possibility of communication between elements separated by an abysmal gap. See Heschel, God in Search of Man, 172-173. 87   See Barzilai, Homo Dialogicus, 263.

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nature. Finally, whereas other religions claim that apprehending the divine presence is a goal, Judaism maintains that this is an infinite process. Faith, then, is the key to the Jewish position. R. Soloveitchik addresses the indirect connection between original sin and faith (26-27). Kierkegaard argues that faith is the antithesis of original sin.88 By contrast, R. Soloveitchik claims between the lines that original sin is what causes the need for faith. “If not for sin, man would be able to reveal the Creator in the creation without any disappointment” (26). R. Soloveitchik uses kabbalistic symbols (emanation, infinity, splendor, and so forth) in order to present the Shekhinah’s removal from the world after Adam’s sin (26). These symbols concretize the hidden divine presence and a life of searching for God as an ongoing, ceaseless process. The sin caused the tension, and faith helps to give meaning to this tension and even to live with it. R. Soloveitchik then draws the inevitable conclusion: in the messianic era, faith no longer has a role.89 In the future, the divine presence will be revealed. Until then, however, we need faith to contend with the suffering attendant on the search for the hidden God and with the knocking on nature’s locked doors. Except for this discussion on the definition and status of faith that opens And From There You Shall Seek, the book makes no further mention of faith’s universal aspect. Henceforth, R. Soloveitchik resorts several times to the expressions “revelational faith” (emunah giluyit) and “revelational faith experience” as resulting from heteronomous and arbitrary divine revelation and as a source of Halakhah. These expressions are antithetical to the “natural-ontological experience,” which is a product of human initiative.90 The experience of faith in And From There You Shall Seek expresses the dialectic situations of the religious consciousness. It is completely individual, although Halakhah has a sociological dimension. The experience of faith is painted in phenomenological colours. This depiction

88  Louis K. Dupre, Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence (New York: Sheed

and Ward, 1963), 130-132. 89   See Dov Schwartz, Faith at the Crossroads: A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism, trans.

Batya Stein (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 193-210. 90   See, for instance, And From There You Shall Seek, 42.

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of the experience of faith changed in R. Soloveitchik’s philosophizing in the mid-1950s, but that development is out of the scope of this study.

I nter ac t ions be t ween K ar a i te and R abbani te T hought in S pa in and B y z ant ium Jame s T. R obinson

Daniel Lasker. From Judah Hadassi to Elijah Bashyatchi: Studies in Late Medieval Karaite Philosophy. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008.

This new volume, the fourth in Brill’s “Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy,” is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of Karaite scholarship. It focuses on the understudied Hebrew-writing Karaites of Byzantium. As the subtitle suggests, it consists of sixteen “Studies,” including thirteen chapters previously published over a twenty-year period (1984-2004). It is, however, far more than a collection of occasional essays relating to a single theme, a contribution that would be important in its own right. The articles are re-presented here in narrative form, arranged topically and chronologically, framed by a new introduction and new conclusion, and together they develop a very clear and coherent argument: that Karaite philosophy, theology, and law, grounded initially in Mu‘tazilite Kalām, became largely Aristotelian under the influence of Maimonides in the later Middle Ages. Late medieval Karaite thought, in other words, was “decisively” Maimonidean. The present review, far too brief to do justice to the very broad range of subjects discussed, will introduce the parts and chapters of the book and its main themes. Part I: Background The first three chapters of Lasker’s book provide general background and set up a contrast with later developments. The author provides a brief history of Karaite philosophy and theology in general—from the so-

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called “golden age” in Jerusalem (tenth-eleventh centuries) to the fifteenth century, singling out and introducing the major figures and outlining some of the major themes (especially during the early centuries). To achieve this introductory goal, chapters 1 and 3—two of the new chapters written for this volume—are encyclopedic in character. Chapter 2 is more analytical, arguing that Karaism, despite the many individual Karaites who voiced opposition to the study of “foreign sciences,” was generally open to and positively inclined towards philosophy, theology, philosophical theology, science, and rationalism, five terms that Lasker uses interchangeably throughout the volume. Part II: Major Thinkers In Part II Lasker gives detailed introductions to the philosophical and theological ideas of the four main thinkers in his survey: Judah Hadassi (fl. 1149), Aaron b. Joseph “The Elder” (fl. 1290s), Aaron b. Elijah “The Younger” (d. 1369), and Elijah Bashyatchi (d. 1490). The four are presented chronologically, which helps to support the “central motif ” (p. 69) of the book: the shift from a strongly Kalamic orientation in Karaism, preoccupied with “unity and justice,” to an Aristotelian one influenced primarily by Maimonides. Beginning with Aaron b. Joseph, the Karaite thinkers discuss a full range of theological problems—creation vs. eternity, the existence of God and divine attributes, prophecy and providence, evil and theodicy, dogmatic principles and reasons for the commandments, immortality, resurrection, and messianic redemption—from a decidedly philosophical perspective, generally abandoning the “classical” positions of early Karaism for the Aristotelianized ones developed by Maimonides and other Rabbanite figures from Spain and southern France. Part III: Contacts with Rabbanite Thinkers Part III moves backward to twelfth-century Andalusia. In three very interesting, well-researched and illuminating chapters, Lasker shows the importance of Karaism in the development of Rabbanite thought in Islamic Spain. This is true, he argues, for the work of a host of thinkers: Moses ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Ezra, Joseph ibn Saddiq, Judah b. Barzilai alBargeloni, and especially Judah Halevi and Maimonides, who are discussed at length in separate chapters. The author shows how both Halevi and Maimonides were very aware of, knowledgeable about, even attracted to

Interac tions between Karaite and Rabbanite Thought in Spain and Byzantium J a m e s T. R o b i nso n

aspects of Karaism even as they rejected them and developed their own ideas in opposition to them. He then highlights the reciprocal effect they had on later developments in Byzantium. The fourth and final chapter in this section reconsiders an old question: possible Karaite influence on the Jewish-Christian debate in Christian Europe, especially through the work of Petrus Alfonsi in the twelfth century and the polemics of Nicolas Donin during the 1240 Disputation of Paris. Part IV: Topics In the discussion of specific topics, the subject of Part IV, Lasker is at his best. Each of the four chapters in this section presents a clear, simple, straightforward history of a theological problem: compensation for animal suffering; the prophecy of Abraham; the status of Jerusalem; and final reward. The first two, in particular, illustrate perfectly the development Lasker argues throughout the book: from early Karaite principles of belief based on Mu‘tazilite Kalām, to Aristotelianized Rabbanite ideas developed by Maimonides and others (sometimes directly in contrast to Karaism), to the later Byzantine modification of early Kalamic positions in light of Maimonides (and others). The dialectical relationship between the Karaite and Rabbanite thinkers is brought out most clearly in this section. Part V: Into the Modern Period The final section consists of a single chapter, written originally for this book, which recounts the afterlife of the ideas and developments detailed in previous sections, from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth, from Byzantium to Eastern Europe. Four thinkers are singled out for brief discussion: Isaac b. Abraham of Troki (d. 1594), Zerah b. Nathan of Troki (d. 1655), Mordecai b. Nisan of Kukizov (d. early eighteenth century), and Simhah Isaac Lutzki (d. 1760). The work of these figures, Lasker argues, marks the end of the creative period in the history of Karaism. To sum up From Judah Hadassi to Elijah Bashyatchi is a model work in the history of Jewish philosophy and the history of ideas. This clear and thorough introduction to late medieval Byzantine Karaite thought in relation to both the “golden age” of Karaism in Jerusalem and the flowering of Rabbanite Judaism in Spain (especially with Maimonides) should provide a solid

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foundation for all future investigations. It will hopefully do more as well: stimulate research into areas the author only alludes to, including lesserknown figures in Byzantium (to help fill out the picture); contemporary Karaite thinkers in Egypt, Syria, and the Land of Israel; and contemporary Rabbanite literature in Byzantium. Only in light of these contexts can Judah Hadassi, Aaron b. Joseph, Aaron b. Elijah, and Elijah Bashyatchi fully take their proper place in the history of Jewish philosophy.

‘A nt i M a imonidean M a imonideanism ’? Some Remarks on a New Publication Yos se f Sc hw ar t z

James T. Robinson ed., The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought [Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 9], Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009.

Since Maimonides’ 800th anniversary, in 2004, brought about a new stream of monographs and collected volumes on Maimonides and his heritage1 it is not an easy task to suggest a new approach to studying Maimonides. At the same time, and as Colette Sirat has vehemently argued on more than one occasion,2 it is doubtful whether the figure of Maimonides can provide us with some real inspiration for “new approaches to the history of Jewish thought,” or is mainly an obstacle to the study of this tradition. The methodology chosen in this volume in order to deal with this difficulty is defined by the term “Maimonideanism,” i.e. a conscious widening of scope and perspective to include not only Maimonides’ thought in itself 1  Among others, see G. K. Hasselhoff and O. Fraisse eds., Moses Maimonides (1138-1204):

His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts [Ex Oriente Lux: Rezeptionen und Exegesen als Traditionskritik, vol. 4] (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004); Georges Tamer ed., The Trials of Maimonides: Jewish, Arabic and Ancient Culture of Knowledge [Studia Judaica: Forschungen zur Wissenschaft des Judenthums 20] (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2005); Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and his Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); A. Elqayam, D. Schwartz eds., Maimonides and Mysticism [DAAT 64-66] (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2009); Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World: A Portrait of Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009). 2 

See Colette Sirat, “Should we stop teaching Maimonides?,” in Paradigms in Jewish Philosophy, ed. Raphael Jospe (London: Associated University Presses, 1997), 112-128.

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and not only the different paths of his (mostly well-enough documented) Rezeptionsgeschichte but also and foremost the ways in which the symbolic capital connected with his name has been co-opted and annexed to different traditions throughout the ages. This was the aim of the organizers of a conference that was held in Paris in July 2007 under the same title. The present volume represents some of the fruits of this conference, though in a somewhat incomplete form as I shall note. Indeed, it is within that pluralistic approach that the editor of the volume, James Robinson, in his preface (p. ix) differentiates between “first-order” and “second-order Maimonideanism” and declares as its main goal the achievement of a new “historical topography of Jewish thought” (p. xii). Before evaluating to what extent this honorable goal was truly achieved, I would like to dedicate the first part of this review to a brief account of the different studies included in the book. A full account of these studies is naturally beyond the scope of this review. Frank Griffel’s paper (“The Project of Enlightenment in IslamicArabic Tradition,” pp. 1-20) is dedicated to the development of a certain paradigm in Islamic theology and philosophy. His assumption is that “pedagogical pessimism” was a commonplace of medieval thought, based on an almost ontological differentiation between the cognitive capacities of different social groups, and hence between their potential grades of perfection. “Medieval philosophical literature written in Arabic, Latin and Hebrew does not discuss the possibility of educating the vast majority of their communities in such a way that they understand, for instance, that God is incorporeal. . . .” (p. 12). In this generalized form, Griffel’s claim is quite problematic, especially when one considers the complex situation in Latin-European environments, both Christian and Jewish. In the following, however, I would like to concentrate only on Arabic culture as the author’s main concern. Griffel defines Maimonides, too, as one such pedagogical pessimist, hence rejecting a whole tradition that makes him into a role model for Aufklärung im Mittelater: “Yet how can these authors be connected to the Enlightenment if many of them, certainly Maimonides and the Latin Averroists of the thirteenth century, were pedagogical pessimists?” (p. 14). The “Latin Averroists of the thirteenth century,” to the extent that such a phenomenon exists at all, are surely not the group that

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can represent any search for a medieval Christian pedagogical approach.3 But is this definition true for Maimonides? As I have argued elsewhere,4 Maimonides’ Aufklärung might be approached from different angles, and some inner differences might be pointed out here within the falsafa intellectual tradition. In a way, Maimonides’ differentiation between the different social groups, extremely defined as it is, might be less “ontological” than that of Averroes, in that it seems to be historically conditioned and relativized. There are various reasons to assume that the propheticmessianic vision, in which all humanity shall be enlightened, is not only an abstract utopia of Maimonides but also a concrete postulate of his political program, one that has direct consequences for his juridical and political thought. Howard Kreisel dedicates a long discussion to Maimonides’ philosophical or scientific oriented esotericism (“From Esotericism to Science,” pp. 21-56). More than an encounter with the central phenomenon of esotericism, a phenomenon to which some highly important studies were dedicated in the last decade,5 his article mainly concentrates on the status of the science of metaphysics qua ma`aseh merkavah, in relation to astronomical and psychological realms, divided between pre-Maimonidean Jewish thought, Maimonides himself, and the reception of Maimonides by different Provencal Jewish philosophers, from Samuel Ibn Tibbon onwards. It is in this discussion of later European-Jewish traditions that the lack of any true attempt to analyze the hermeneutic-political aspects of esotericism is most clearly felt. It seems that Kreisel’s discussion could only profit if he would take seriously some of the ideas offered by Moshe Halbertal in his monograph.

3  The literature here is much too extant even to begin with. For a general view I would suggest

Alain de Libera, Penser au Moyen Age (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1991). 4 

Yossef Schwartz, ‘To Thee is silence praise’: Meister Eckhart’s Reading in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed (Tel Aviv: Am Oved 2002), 329-333; idem., “Friedrich Niewöhners mittelalterliche Aufklärer,” in Kritische Religionsphilosophie. Eine Gedenkschrift für Friedrich Niewöhner, ed. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann and Georg Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 25-34

5 

See Dov Schwartz, Contradiction and Concealment in Medieval Jewish Thought (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002); Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation:‎ Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications, translated by Jackie Feldman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

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Jonathan Dauber strives in his paper “Competing Approaches to Maimonides in Early Kabbalah” (pp. 57-88) to provide a new key for the analysis of the complicated reception of Maimonides in early Kabbalah, avoiding the sharp dichotomies suggested by Moshe Idel and following the more complicated approach of Elliot Wolfson (p. 58f). This he tries to achieve mainly through his notion of “non-Maimonidean Maimonidean” as a category he attributes to some of the earliest figures of Spanish Kabbalah, foremost to R. Asher ben David and to R. Azriel of Gerona, as well as to a figure such as R. Meir ben Simeon of Narbonne, who is normally considered part of the Maimonidean party. Dauber rightly points out that the political rivalry between what seems to be two closed groups disputing the legacy of Maimonides is far from representing a homogenous attitude within each of the parties. Pro- and anti-philosophic approaches merge with pro- and anti-Kabbalistic approaches in different ratios, and Maimonides’ ideas are integrated in different ways by all of them, including within some points related to “the very creation of the discourse that came to be called Kabbalah.” Tamas Visi’s very important contribution (“Ibn Ezra, a Maimonidean Authority,” pp. 89-131) demonstrates the way the supercommentaries on Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentaries, as a central intellectual phenomenon of late medieval Jewish thought, were well motivated by the need to provide an alternative Sephardic systematic interpretation of the Bible to stand against the Ashkenazi authoritative reception of Rashi. Though rather different from Maimonides in his basic scientific approach, Ibn Ezra serves as an alternative Sephardic authority who provides a full and systematic commentary on scripture that is both scientifically oriented and hermeneutically close to the Maimonidean paradigm. To this rather convincing historical and theoretical analysis I would like to add here two further comments: first, the turn to Bible exegesis on the part of the Maimonideans is far from being only a reactive move against their opponents but has its clear roots in the hermeneutic praxis of Maimonides himself and in the systematic framework provided by him. In that sense, part of the attraction of Ibn Ezra for the Maimonideans might be rooted in the fact that he seems to restrict himself less in translating his hermeneutic program into a full biblical commentary, doing precisely that which Maimonides himself hesitated to do. Another striking example of this hermeneutic heritage can be found in Salomon ha-Levi’s, alias Pablo de Santa Maria’s, severe attack on Nicholas de Lyra’s

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Postilla.6 Here the new Christian is writing an influential Bible commentary not in order to argue against his former Jewish companions but in order to defeat a different Christian alternative of Hebraist Bible interpretation, one that according to his own claim in the prologue is wrongly based on the inferior commentary of Rashi instead of on the superior Spanish tradition of Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides. An appendix to Visi’s article (pp. 118-131) provides the reader with a survey of the early supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra. Roberto Gatti’s short discussion of Gersonides (“Between Maimonideanism and Averroism,” pp. 133-148) relies heavily on modern paradigms from the realm of philosophy of science, mostly Kuhn and Lakatos, in order to portray Gersonides’ exact stand toward “the Maimonidean research program” (p. 136). Gatti points out the fact that Jewish thinkers such as Gersonides, Albalag, and Moses of Narbonne were actually moving freely between two different “paradigms,” i.e. Maimonideanism and Averroism. I’m not sure that Kuhn’s concept of “essential tension” is so helpful in order to understand “Gersonisdes’ movement back and forth between Maimonides and Averroes” (p. 142). The tension described in Gersonides’ approach is a well established element of Hebraic-European Maimonideanism throughout the thirteenth century, a direct consequence of the massive project of Averroes’ Hebrew translations that creates for the Hebrew philosopher an intimate space of different syntheses between Averroes and Maimonides. For a long period this “tension” seems to play a rather positive role for Jewish philosophers as an element of stability, not of unrest. Maud Kozodoy’s article “No Perpetual Enemies” (pp. 149-170) moves us toward early modern discourse, concentrating on Jewish Maimonideanism in the beginning of the fifteenth century while trying to read together two different complex polemical structures: that of the inner Jewish debate and that of the changing Jewish-Christian polemic and mutual influence in an age that gave birth both to “Hebrew scholasticism” and to new forms of Christian Hebraism, one in which the role of Jewish apostates with their own Maimonidean agenda becomes more significant.

6 

Biblia Sacra cum glossis interlineari et ordinaria Nicolai Lyrani Postilla, ac Moralitatibus, Burgensis Additionibus & Thoringi Replicis, I, Venetiis 1588, p. 6b.

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As in many other chapters, here as well the diverse attitudes out of which the figure of Maimonides might be co-opted is revealed. Abraham Melamed’s “Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles” (pp. 171190) is dedicated to the most widely spread form of popularization of the content of Maimonides’ elitist philosophy. The way Melamed introduces the basic esoteric strategy of Maimonides himself in this context (p. 172) is somewhat odd, assuming that Maimonides consciously broke a traditional prohibition on the transmission of esoteric philosophic knowledge. The scandalous move of Maimonides was obviously not his revealing rabbinic secrets, but his insistence on implementing the esoteric rabbinic method on classic topics of philosophic discourse, i.e. metaphysics, physics, and ethics. However, the great popularity of sacred poetry (piyyutim) based on Maimonides’ doctrines, and the way they systematically manipulate the original doctrines into a more consensual popular teaching, is certainly a major mechanism shaping the “cultures of Maimonideanism.” Mor Altshuler’s description of R. Joseph Karo’s concept of prophecy and its Maimonidean background (pp. 191-210) illuminates again the degree to which Maimonidean philosophic, hermeneutic and halakhic speculations become part of Jewish intellectual habitus, to the extent that they were found over and over again in the most unexpected contexts, here in the highly messianic, visionary, and Kabbalistic atmosphere of sixteenthcentury Safed. Yaacob Dweck’s analysis of Leon Modena’s anti Kabbalist polemic (“Maimonideanism in Leon Modena’s Ari nohem, pp. 211—244) illuminates the opposite phenomenon, as Maimonides becomes a source of inspiration for a radical attack on Kabbalah. In order to understand Modena’s unique attitude, Dweck follows both the Kabbalists’ negation (pp. 215—225) as well as the Kabbalists’ appropriation (pp. 226—232) of Maimonides before he turns to the analysis of Modena’s own usage and interpretation of Maimonides. The great role reserved for Maimonides in modern Jewish enlightenment is rather poorly addressed in this volume, mostly in Abraham Socher’s short analysis of Salomon Maimon (“The Spectre of Maimonidean Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century”).7 Socher’s laconic description 7 

From the great bibliography dedicated to different aspects of this topic see Christoph Schulte, Die jüdische Aufklärung (München: Beck Verlag, 2002); Resianne Fontainne, Andrea Schatz, Irene Zwiep eds., Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened

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is then again answered by a deeper analysis of the negative role played by the figure of Maimonides from the side of the conservative orthodox intellectuals in their turn against the ideals of Jewish Haskalah (Micha Gottlieb, “Counter-Enlightenment in a Jewish Key,” pp. 259-287). The real fact that emerges from both chapters relates to the great symbolic force attached to the figure of Maimonides in Jewish traditions of the last 800 years, one that drives all parties back to his ideas. The last five chapters of this volume are occupied with different manifestations of Maimonideanism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Görge Hasselhof (“Manuel Joel,” pp. 289-307) and George Kohler (“Maimonides and Ethical Monotheism,” pp. 309-334) both concentrate on late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century German-Jewish thought. Hasselhof provides the reader with a very precise description of Joel’s scholarship, but this description remains in great need of social and intellectual contextualization in order to gain meaning, both in relation to more general trends within the Wissenschaft des Judenthums and in relation to Catholic and Protestant scholarship of the time. Some of this larger framework is given by Kohler, who follows this path to Hermann Cohen and some of his later disciples. Hanoch Ben-Pazi (“Eros within the Limits of Mere Reason,” pp. 335352) and Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft (“How to Read Maimonides after Heidegger,” pp. 353-383), both concentrate on central philosophic systems of the twentieth century. Ben-Pazi’s intriguing discussion evokes the notion of Eros between Cohen and Rosenzweig, trying to relate it, one must say in a rather laconic manner, to an element of intellectual eroticism in Maimonides. Wurgaft describes the efforts of two important Jewish philosophers flourishing in the second half of the twentieth century, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas, to confront the challenge of Heideggerian philosophy. The role played by Maimonides in this encounter seems to be more convincing in relation to Strauss than in the case of Levinas, who chooses a rather different symbolic tradition in his Talmudic project.

Jewish Discourse (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007); Yossef Schwartz, “Causa Materialis: Solomon Maimon, Moses ben Maimon and the Possibility of Philosophical Transmision,” in Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatism and Empirical Skepticism, ed. G. Freudental (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 125-143.

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Finally, Dov Schwartz turns to religious-Zionist thought in order to define the dual and ambivalent role reserved there for the writings of Maimonides (“Maimonides in Religious-Zionist Philosophy,” pp. 385-408). His thorough review concentrates on the different solutions provided by these thinkers to the tension between different writings of Maimonides, different symbolic personae related to his figure, and different ideal Jewish models of particular versus universal. As I hope is clear enough from my brief description of the rich content of this volume, the reader can find here a great number of important discussions and enlightening perspectives. In the last part of this review I would like to try and follow some of the general methodological and ideological assumptions underlying this volume, as reflected in its structure. Like many other contemporary publications, this volume’s origination was in a conference. The nature of such conferences necessarily creates a moment of arbitrariness, and too often the editors do not make enough effort to improve the immediate scope by enlarging the preliminary results into a full thematic discussion. I am afraid this volume is no exception. Concretely speaking, the acute question to be asked is what are the overall cultural identities inside which the “cultures of Maimonideanism” are being examined? A first glance into the above described chapters seems to provide a simple answer: an isolated Jewish arena is here excavated, as much as Jewish cultural phenomena can be examined in isolation from their larger cultural background, a question to which I shall return immediately. But is this a fair representation of Jewish cultures of Maimonideanism? Well, a positive answer to this question would then only be possible if one put aside the Jewish environment in which Maimonides himself lived and thought, i.e. Arab-Jewish culture. Not one single chapter is dedicated to any aspect of North-African, Egyptian, Syrian, Babylonian, or Yemenite medieval and/ or modern Maimonidean tradition, not to mention non-Jewish Moslem encounters with Maimonides. In spite of some short remarks by the editor in his introduction, this volume must be defined as one dedicated solely to European-Jewish culture. Here the contextual doubt must be raised again: is it really possible to understand Jewish European intellectual and cultural history without taking into account eastern Judaism on the one hand and Christian culture on the other? I truly believe that the answer

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must be negative, and that the volume discussed here can’t claim from the beginning, in spite of the editor’s assertion, any general encounter with its subject matter. As is very well known, Christian European culture does more than provide us with some kind of general cultural environment, relevant to the understanding of any particular Jewish phenomenon. In the case of Maimonides, it develops its own forms of Maimonideanism. In thirteenthcentury theology, philosophy and medicine,8 in early modern Christian Kabbala, in seventeenth-century philosophy and science, etc. Essential portions of Rosenzweig’s philosophy cannot be understood without knowing the parts of Hegel’s philosophy of history polemicized by Rosenzweig, and Hegel himself, like Leibniz and Kant before him, bases an important part of his analysis on ideas directly taken from Maimonides. Muhammad al-Tabrizi and Ibn Arabi, the whole Yemenite tradition from Maimonides’ lifetime to the mid twentieth century, Abraham Abulafia and Meister Eckhart, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel; these are only a few of the names that could have made an alternative rich and inspiring volume. Naturally, no single volume can truly take on such a scope, and yet I believe that such a presumptuous volume should have striven to provide the reader with at least some hint of the full possible range of the true historic phenomenon. To sum up: Is it possible to create an isolated topography of Jewish thought while ignoring its immediate surroundings? The present volume proves that such work can be done and published, but at the same time clearly demonstrates its limitations. No doubt Jewish intellectual history shall be newly written, and the figure of Maimonides would make an excellent starting point. Colette Sirat’s longing for an emancipated historiography of Jewish thought has received in this volume a truly genuine methodological answer, based on the emancipation of Jewish intellectual history from the great shadow of Maimonides through its symbolic manifestations as “Maimonideanism.” A true implementation of such a method is still awaited. 8 

For the reception of Maimonides in Latin scholasticism see Görge K. Hasselhoff, Dicit Rabbi Moyses. Studien zum Bild von Moses Maimonides im lateinischen Westen vom 13 bis zum 15 Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Köenighausen & Neumann, 2004).

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