What Is Talmud?: The Art of Disagreement 9780823238767

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What Is Talmud?

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What Is Talmud? THE ART OF DISAGREEMENT

Sergey Dolgopolski

fordham university press new york 2009

Copyright © 2009 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dolgopol’skii, S. B. (Sergei Borisovich) What is Talmud? : the art of disagreement / Sergey Dolgopolski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8232-2934-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Talmud—Methodology. 2. Talmud—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Talmud—Philosophy. 4. Reasoning. 5. Rhetoric. I. Title. BM503.6.D65 2008 296.1'2506—dc22 2008043310 Printed in the United States of America 11 10 09

54321

First edition

To the blessed memory of my mother z”l, my most important teacher

lòòz ytrwm ymal

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contents

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xi i

Introduction part one: what is talmud? 1.

What Is Talmud?

2.

The Talmud in Heidegger’s Aftermath

14

3.

The Art of (the) Talmud

69

4.

Talmud as Event part two:

5.

THE WAYS OF THE TALMUD

7

117 in its rhetorical dimension

The Ways of the Talmud in Its Rhetorical Dimension: A Performative Analytical Description

179

part three: the art of disagreement 6.

The Art of Disagreement

233

Notes

275

Works Cited

319

Index

327

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preface

It is no secret that prefaces are written after the work is already done. Although the preface is placed at the beginning of the book, I am writing it to highlight my current position in my larger intellectual journey and the role this book plays within it. This book grew out of my interest in the rhetoric of religious discourse, in particular the rhetoric of the Talmud, the main normative text of Jewish tradition originating in late antiquity. Because the Talmudic tradition developed in the same intellectual times and places as did Western philosophical and rhetorical traditions, I began to wonder how their approaches came to differ so much, and why one of them became dominant while the other remained largely unknown. In particular, why does the Talmudic approach to disagreement as a goal in itself seem exotic and esoteric while Western philosophy’s goal of reaching agreement in any discussion, intellectual or political, shapes common parlance? These questions intrigued me, and this book is my way of addressing that unfamiliar side of Western civilization, the side of disagreement as an end rather than as a means. Entering the area of the unfamiliar realm of Talmudic disagreement as a goal of discourse required me to reconsider the familiar boundaries—only recently established in the twentieth century—between studies in philosophy and studies in the Talmud. Doing this required my undertaking a complicated and complex intellectual journey into two hitherto separate ix

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fields—rabbinics or the academic study of the Talmud, and studies in German and Jewish philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—and establishing a mutual connection between them. Having done so in the present work, in my next book I am eager to probe more deeply and widely into late ancient texts in order to develop a mutual hermeneutics of Talmudic, philosophical, and rhetorical traditions of thinking. Let me conclude this preface with a conversation that both subtly exemplifies the question about the connection between the Talmud and philosophy and hints at the future directions of my intellectual journey: A critical historian of twentieth-century philosophy once asked me, “We lived at the epoch of Enlightenment, at the time of Technology, and at the time of Metaphysics. Do, or did we, live at the time of Talmud?” In a sense, this book is a long answer to that short question. Yet, here is my short answer: We do not and we do, and perhaps we already did. We do not, but only because we do live in the time of philosophy, and therefore we still strive for agreement to which philosophy ideally leads. We do, because Talmud as an intellectual project expands even outside of the quarters in which the Talmud as a book is learned, and because it represents a significant other for the philosophy of agreement. We did, or perhaps even will do, because Talmud reveals a radically different sense of past that has nothing to do with hitherto philosophically or scientifically recognized ideas of time. Perhaps it has nothing to do with time either, and it is up to us to live or not to live to that radical past.

acknowledgments

It is with great pleasure that I thank Daniel Boyarin, whose endless intellectual generosity, openness, courage, and inspiration helped me finish this work. I would like to thank Martin Jay, the head of the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley, for his continuing support of my project. I am very thankful to David Bates at the Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, whose suggestions and the sense of intellectual friendship he always cast made an enormously important contribution to bringing this work to completion. I am indebted to Pheng Cheah, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, for very fruitful discussions of Kant’s and post-Heideggerian texts, and for his support in my intellectual endeavor. I am very grateful to Naomi Seidman, the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, for her continuing guest-friendship and existential support, which I felt from the very first day of my arrival at Berkeley. I would like to thank Dina Stein, University of Haifa, for her great heuristic power, which was constantly surfacing in her readings of earlier drafts as well as in our multiple discussions of my work, from the very early stages of its writing. I am grateful to Jonathan Boyarin, Anthoni Lioi, Hindy Najman, Robert Gibbs, Herman Waetjen, and Devora Shoenfeld, who read earlier drafts or intellectually influenced me in different ways on various stages of this work. I am very grateful to Bruce Rosenstock, for his reading of the entire manuscript with the very careful eye of a historian of philosophy; for xi

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Acknowledgments

critical remarks that he offered; and even more for the discussion we had following these remarks. My endless thanks are due to Bud Bynack, who worked gently and thoroughly, for making my prose more English, both in idiom and in pace. I am also very happy to recognize both my intellectual indebtedness and gratitude to my colleagues, friends, and teachers: Edouard Nadtochii, the University of Lausanne; Serguei Zimovetz, former rector of the Moscow Institute for Psychoanalysis; Ishai Rozen-Tzvi, Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and The University of Tel-Aviv; Michael Schulman and Eugenie Rez´abek, the Rostov University; and Dmitry Frolov, the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Moscow University. I am thankful to Igor Koubanov, the University of Freiburg, for his moral-intellectual support of my project. I thank Benjamin Wurfgart, for his reading of an early draft of the second chapter and for very useful suggestions that he gave to me. This work would not be the way it is without the firm support I received from the UC Berkeley Judaic Collection librarian, Paul Hamburg, to whom I remain very grateful. I thank my new colleagues at the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who welcomed me in my new position so nicely and provided the excellent working environment and time needed to revise the manuscript. I thank Mr. Jory Gessaw for proofreading a chapter and sharing with me his opinions about my argument. My extended gratitude goes to Aldene Fredenburg for a very careful copy editing done to the text. Getting this text ready for publication was made partially possible through a very generous grant from the Association of Jewish Studies Cahnman Publication Subvention Grant Award. I also thank Yad Vashem Archive authorities for granting permission to an image from their collection for the front cover design. Last but not least, I cordially thank my dear wife, Lilia Dolgopolskaia, and our daughters, Polina and Elen-Sarrah. Without their patience, daily support, encouragement, and love, this book would not be written. I dearly thank my mother, blessed be her memory, who is my first and most important teacher. I am very grateful to her for all the lessons she gave me and, now posthumously, continues to give through her deeds, echoed in people who knew her. From that, I continue to learn. I dedicate this book to her memory.

What Is Talmud?

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introduction

This book returns Talmud to the Talmud.1 Its subject is Talmud (without the the) as an intellectual project, and it returns that project to “the” Talmud, that is, to the Talmud as either a traditional source or a historical object. It isolates this intellectual project in one of the historical instances of its emergence, immediately preceding and following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. It also maps Talmud as a scholarly art vis-à-vis the major intellectual projects and traditions of the West—philosophy, rhetoric, sophistry and, more specifically, the philosophical arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. It then returns this intellectual art and practice of Talmud back to the tradition to which it belongs, from which it stems, and in which it simultaneously flourished and was subverted for a period of approximately two hundred years, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The book attempts to undo this subversion and thus to free the intellectual project that is Talmud from the hitherto dominant readings of it dictated by its major competitors—philosophy and its tacit ramifications in historiography, or even within the tradition itself. Finally, it returns Talmud as the art of disagreement to the broader context of the philosophy of agreement, which I see as the central anthropological category of the philosophical West. My argument consists of three parts. Part I introduces the question, What is Talmud? (Chapter 1) and its context in philosophy and rhetorical theory (Chapter 2). It then narrows the focus to an analysis of Talmud as an 1

2

Introduction

intellectual project in one specific historical moment of its emergence, the fifteenth-century work of Rabbi Izh.ak Canpanton of Castalia, also known as the Gaon of Castalia (d. 1463), and his followers (Chapter 3). It also examines Canpanton’s concept of the art of Talmud in more remote instances of its emergence, both traditional and academic, through studying an example of the Talmud of late antiquity as seen in Canpanton’s conceptual perspective (Chapter 4). Part II empirically explores the written work of R. I. Canpanton: his “The Ways of (the) Talmud.” It slowly and carefully studies this work of Talmudic methodology, both to compensate for the lack of its existence in English and, more importantly, to show how Canpanton’s book corresponds empirically to the theoretical perspectives established in Part I. Part III takes Canpanton’s intellectual art of Talmud—in particular, one of its central categories, the category of disagreement—back to the contexts of the Western philosophy of agreement. It analyzes the import of both Canpanton’s art of Talmud and the more general intellectual project of Talmud, to which Canpanton serves as an entrance, for a revisitation of the hitherto marginal and/or auxiliary role that the category of disagreement played in Western thought. I can suggest several methods of reading this book. For a merely cursory acquaintance with the intellectual territory it introduces and explores, a reading of the first two chapters, followed by the last chapter, could do. A stronger grasp of my argument requires reading the first, second, third, and last chapters. In order to appreciate Canpanton’s work in full in terms of its importance for such different, yet tacitly connected, fields as philosophy and Talmudic studies, a reader needs to proceed in linear order, while looking at the earlier chapters in the light of the later. At any rate, reading the first chapter will help a reader decide which way he or she prefers to go. At this point, a methodological disclosure is also due. In terms of methodology, or rather a broader intellectual context, recovering and reconstructing an intellectual project of what I call Talmud (without the the) from a specific historical instance of its emergence in fifteenth-century Spain is a task less historical in nature than philological. By philology, I mean both the empirical philological-historical analysis of rabbinic texts in the sense of I. N. Epstein and their critical reading in the sense of Nietzsche. Unlike

Introduction

3

the philology in the first sense, the philology in the second sense involves anthropological considerations raised by Nietzsche as well as by Hermann Cohen and Martin Heidegger. Even if these two traditions of philology have hitherto been disconnected, in this study of the intellectual tradition of Talmud they must work together. In a way, this book is also an answer to the question of why that is so. The book complements already existing philological-historical and cultural approaches to the traditions of the Talmud and philosophy with a rigorous anthropological, ontological, and Talmudic inquiry. Intrinsically interdisciplinary in nature, the book holds appeal for scholars of the Talmud on the one hand and those of philosophy and rhetorical/critical theory on the other. Addressing such disconnected and even mutually remote audiences together makes it speak to a much broader readership. Yet this also defines what the book is not. Not a work in cultural history, it nevertheless appeals to readers interested in the history of ideas, although, due to its methodological orientation, it does not specifically make any cultural-historical claims. While it entertains historical-philosophical contexts, engaged, among other works, in Martin Kavka’s recent Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy,2 the present book is not a historical-philosophical analysis of the intellectual tradition of Talmudic learning; much less is it a direct contribution to the history of philosophy, either Jewish or general. Instead, it takes its subject beyond the limits of either philosophy or its history. The book directs itself to a broader readership of the scholars of Jewish studies, Jewish thought, and philosophy, as well as to readers interested in the theory and history of Talmudic interpretation. It also addresses the broader realms of religious studies and philosophy, both medieval/early-modern philosophy and contemporary Continental philosophy.

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one

What Is Talmud?

My argument arises in the space opened by the seemingly innocent omission of a grammatical article from a complicated question with a long history: “What is Talmud?”—not “What is the Talmud?” The question “What is the Talmud?” of course has received many answers, and I am not going to add to them. Within the diversity of the approaches to the Talmud we will see two distinct, but not mutually exclusive, types: the Talmud as an object and the Talmud as an origin. Instead of following these approaches, however, I will rethink the question itself and attempt to isolate a new layer, a layer in which Talmud is not only a book or a traditional source, but a rationality of a unique kind, explainable only if it is both carefully correlated with and differentiated from other types of rationality known in the history of the West. I will begin by mapping a variety of answers already given to the question “What is the Talmud?” In most of these approaches the question “What is the Talmud?” has not been asked explicitly, since any answer seemed merely 7

8

What Is Talmud?

axiomatic and thus definitive for any given approach. Yet we will soon be interrogating these axiomatic answers by relating them to a new question, one that will prove more serious than a mere call for axioms. I start from the view on the Talmud offered in the work and thought of the Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu (the GRA), also known as the Vilna Gaon1 (1720–1797 c.e.), the intellectual leader of the movement of mithnagdim that formed at the end of the eighteenth century and became very important and influential during at least the two following centuries. However, in what follows, I will map the views on the Talmud typologically, rather than chronologically, and rather than in terms of the specific names associated with the question of the Talmud in its intellectual history. This is not to say that chronology is abandoned, but that the names here are only synecdoches or landmarks for different views of the Talmud, views not found exclusively in the work of any given representative. The Vilna Gaon’s view on the Talmud originates from a project of emending the printed Talmudic texts based mainly on considerations of his own and others’ intellectual experience of Talmudic learning. What this means, however, is that at the end of the project of its emendation, the Talmud emerges as a book on the shelf, rationally emended and now ready for the scholarly enterprise of learning. Approximately a century later this goal was met by the publication by the widow and brothers Romm of the Babylonian Talmud with the GRA’s emendations, followed by the reception of this edition as the Talmud in the world of yeshivas, or modern Jewish religious academies. It became the book on their shelves, the traditional given. Thereafter, the question “What is the Talmud?” was closed by a simple act of opening the book. From then on, the learners of the Talmud would try to take the book further only through an ongoing process of learning. In looking at the Talmud as an emended book on the shelf, no historical distance between the book and its learner was conceivable. In the nineteenth century, the Vilna Gaon’s view on the Talmud won another continuation. Because of the pan-European process of emancipation, including the emancipation of Jews from the ghetto, another view of the Talmud as a book came into being. Inspired by the new concept of culture, coined, at least in the Jewish context, by the philosophy of neo-Kantianism,

What Is Talmud?

9

the Talmud was viewed as a cultural artifact, a historical source, a book that, although belonging to late antiquity, could now be rethought as a “cultural source,” or at least one of the cultural sources, for Kant’s “religion of reason.”2 The book of the Talmud therefore became historically distanced as a source. The Talmud became a source for Jewish culture, as it did for Hermann Cohen in his project of the Sources (Quellen) and in his accounts of the Talmudic ethics in Die Naechste,3 or as in Bialik’s transformation of the Talmud into a source of Jewish folklore. In accord with the principles of cultural emancipation, this source was seen as universally and openly accessible to every human being, Jews and non-Jews, but also had a particularity. Its particularity was important for the universalistic legitimization of the Jewish tradition under the title of a specific culture—Jewish culture. In the cultural project of emancipation, the Talmud thus emerged as a book, an object, but this time less empirical and more historical: a historical and cultural source for the Kantian universalistic religion of reason. However, the neo-Kantian, cultural-historical, universalistic view of the Talmud as a book had not only a philosophical manifestation, but a philological one as well. This time the Talmud emerged not as a cultural source, but rather as a cultural-historical object, belonging only and exclusively to its authentic historical period, late antiquity—a moment in the “inner past” of Western culture. In the works of Leopold Zunz,4 Abraham Geiger,5 and other pioneers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the nineteenth century, the Talmud was, again self-evidently, seen as a book, although not as a real, empirical book, as in the mithnagdic tradition, but rather as a historically relative book that needed a correct historical interpretation. If the Talmud pertained to any philosophy, then it did so to only one: the philosophy of late antiquity, not to that of Kant. Julius Guttman’s project of Jewish philosophy6 and Efraim Elimelech Urbach’s The Sages7 are representative of such an approach. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the classical project of the Wissenschaft des Judentums reached a new stage, marked by the discovery of Talmudic manuscripts as a new object for scholarship. Since the work of Raphael Nathan Nata Rabinovicz,8 research aimed at establishing the “right version” of the Talmud by comparing different manuscripts and early printed editions of it. The discovery of these manuscripts

10

What Is Talmud?

changed the previous way of thinking of the Talmud as either a traditionally given book or a culturally attainable object or source. This discovery caused a transformation of the empirically given book into an ideal book, to be reached through the scientific comparison of Talmudic manuscripts, no longer through a traditional intratextual hermeneutics. This scientific project was to result, if not in a monolithic text, then at least in a scientifically correct description of a variable model of its transmission. Again, unlike the practice of traditional scholars of the Talmud in the era before printing, and unlike the practice of the followers of the Vilna Gaon, this was a turn from what became a merely intratextual hermeneutics of the Talmud to the scientific analysis of it through the texts of the manuscripts, not through their hermeneutical content. Yet despite the differences among the three projects of the Talmud— the traditional (mithnagdic), the cultural-philosophical, and the scientificphilological—the answer to the question “What is the Talmud?” remained self-evident. The Talmud was envisioned as an object, either in the form of a book, ideal or even real, or in the form of the same book taken as a cultural source. All three projects—rational emendation, cultural-philosophical actualization, and philological historicization—envisioned the Talmud as an object of science, tradition, or culturally oriented philosophy. Emphasizing the common feature of all three modern views on the Talmud, I will generically call them the project of objectification. The second overall approach to the Talmud views it as an origin of the practical law, halakha. As such a source, the Talmud would always remain important, but nevertheless would be replaced by a rational codification of the practical law, for example in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a twelfthcentury codex of practical law, or in Joseph Habiba’s Nimuqe Yosef,9 a fifteenth-century recomposition of the Talmud, or Caro’s Shulkhan Arukh,10 a sixteenth-century codex that freed the Talmud from anything not leading directly to what was established as the practical law. However, such a substitution for the Talmud by a rational codification meant leaving the Talmud in the past and thus also making it into an object: if not into a book, then into an origin to be substituted by another object, the rational codex of the law. To highlight the most important feature of this process, it may be called a rationalistic departure from the “original” Talmud. Such a departure

What Is Talmud?

11

already can be found in the period of the Rishonim (lit: “the first,” those who were the intellectual and social leaders of the Jewish rabbinic communities approximately from the years 1000 to 1500 c.e.) or even earlier, in 987 c.e., in the work of Rav Sherira Gaon,11 for whom the Talmud was already clearly so much a product of the past that he felt a need to undertake the reconstruction of the intra-Talmudic order of generations of the scholars—sages and masters—who were its producers. At the same time, the departure from the Talmud for the sake of a rational replacement led to an intellectual compensation. Thus, Rabbenu Chananel (d. 1055 c.e.) envisioned the Talmud as an object, in principle replaceable by a periphrastic, linear, and self-sufficient interpretation of it. In a different way, Rashi (1040–1105 c.e.) offered not a replacement, but rather a commentary in which the Talmud is no longer replaced by any paraphrase, but rather subjected to what Israel Ta-Shma12 called “emphatic commentary,” aimed at making the reading of the Talmud a rationally linear process, without, however, attempting to replace the original with anything else. Through his emphatic commentary Rashi also protects the reader from misleading interpretations and, as a result, the Talmud became rationally accessible for a linear reading. The effect of Rashi’s commentary was that the Talmud was no longer an irrational conglomerate of discussions, but rather a reading, although dispersed in its form, still complying with reason without any substitutions. A culmination of this process can be found in the followers of the school of Rashi, the Masters of the Tosfoth (1110–1328 c.e.), who saw the Talmud as a giant, weblike, but harmonic argument, seemingly dispersed in its form, yet strictly rationally coherent in its content. Again, despite the variety of medieval or early modern rationalistic approaches to the Talmud, without any question it emerged as a traditional given of the past—the origin, which therefore had to undergo a process of rationalization. One result of this process was the substitution of the Talmud by either a rational code or a paraphrase. Alternatively, the rationalizations led to a rationalistic commentary by turning the Talmud into a linear reading or even into a harmonic whole. Despite all the differences between the overall medieval/early modern rationalistic views of the Talmud as an origin and the modern view of it as a book, in both the Talmud invariably emerged as an object—either an origin

12

What Is Talmud?

or a book. There is, however, another way of looking at the Talmud, in which it intrinsically relates to a more fundamental question: “What is Talmud?” This option is represented in R. I. Canpanton’s The Ways of the Talmud,13 a fifteenth-century work that strongly defined Talmudic learning for at least two centuries thereafter, and that indirectly affected other developments in Talmudic learning. Canpanton’s influence was so unquestionably strong that for many centuries, his principles of Talmudic learning were considered so intrinsic to the Talmud itself that Canpanton’s views were no longer related either to his name or to his time. However, in his work the question “What is the Talmud?” became crucial, because the whole of Canpanton’s discourse heavily depended on it. At the very heart of his projects was the idea that to answer the question “What is the Talmud?” is to put Talmud into equal relationships to the philosophical arts of logic, hermeneutics, and rhetoric. In his work, the Talmud is not only, not even mainly, a book or origin/source, but rather an art, techne, paradigmatically represented or discovered in the original Talmud, but equally found in Rashi, in the Masters of the Tosfoth, and in other commentators. As a result, the Talmudic art—“Talmud,” without the “the”—is in no way limited to the Talmud as its origin. As an art or techne, Talmud therefore has to be correlated with other arts, such as logic, hermeneutics, and rhetoric. However, according to Canpanton, it also cannot be reduced to any of them. Talmud thus becomes comparable but not reducible to other classical arts of its rank, such as ars rhetorica or ars logica. The Talmud thus becomes Talmud. It is no longer only a traditional origin or a historical object, but is also a scholarly discipline/art sui generis, strongly interconnected to other disciplines. In Canpanton’s discourse, the Talmud as traditional origin/historical object becomes indiscernible from Talmud without “the,” Talmud as a rational art,14 a type of rationality different in its own kind, thus different from such philosophical arts as logic, rhetoric, or even hermeneutics. However, this indiscernibility is no longer a self-evident answer to the question “What is the Talmud?” Rather, it teaches us how the critical questioning “What is Talmud?” with regard to philosophical arts shows not only the main point of Canpanton’s enterprise, but also opens up a new theoretical look at what, following Canpanton, now may be called Talmud. Canpanton’s turn from

What Is Talmud?

13

the Talmud to Talmud must therefore be related not only to Canpanton’s own version of the relations between Talmud and the philosophical arts, but also to a broader realm of research that, although opened up by Canpanton’s precedent, is not necessarily limited to it. Canpanton teaches us how to seriously and unhurriedly ask the question “What is Talmud?” without making any answer into an axiom. The most important result of Canpanton’s work is the transition he made from a seemingly obvious and almost rhetorical question—“What is the Talmud?”—to a much more fundamental and indeed much more crucial question, “What is Talmud as a scholarly art, or more generally, as a type of rationality?” The most immediate implication of the question “What is Talmud?” is a change in the disciplinary frame of research. Following Canpanton, we should no longer attempt to bridge the gap between the positive philological science of the Talmud and philosophical analysis of it, but rather think through the relationship between Talmud and philosophy anew. If the question of Talmud is addressed, following the precedent of Canpanton’s linkage between (the) Talmud and logic and rhetoric, we programmatically need to situate the question “What is Talmud?” with regard to fundamental questions already asked, for example in Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” and in Heidegger’s “What is Metaphysics?” as well as in Deleuze’s “What is Philosophy?” In particular, the clarification of the relationship between Talmud and philosophy must be more radical than any translation of the Talmud into the language of philosophy can afford, all the more so because the stakes of such a clarification can be equally high, not only for the question “What is Talmud?” but also for the question “What is philosophy?” What follows both exemplifies the question of Talmud and tests it by analyzing the intellectual relationship of Talmud with both philosophy and philosophy’s classical counterparts, rhetoric and, ultimately, sophistics.

two

The Talmud in Heidegger’s Aftermath

Just as philosophers have done their best to draw a borderline where traditional wisdom ends and philosophy begins, the rabbis did their best to build a strong boundary between the Talmud and philosophy. The issue goes back to Socrates and to the origins of the Talmud: the philosopher demarcated himself from the Sophists as carefully as the sages demarcated themselves from their fellow philosophers. Both sides were unanimous in their feeling that proximity to each other was dangerous. Moreover, each group excelled in the effort to maximize the distance between them. Only the crisis of modernity, both in the study of the Talmud and in philosophy, has allowed new light to be shed on this unacknowledged unanimity, almost cooperation, between philosophers and the sages of the Talmud. I refer here not only to the crisis of modernity itself, but also to its reflection in the (mostly Jewish) philosophy of neo-Kantianism, as well as to the antiJewish position of Heidegger in opposition to neo-Kantianism. I also will refer to the thought of Heidegger’s students (Jewish and non-Jewish) who 14

The Talmud in Heidegger’s Aftermath

15

disengaged with Heidegger, remaining, nevertheless, controversially connected to his thinking. The secularization of Christian society and the political emancipation of Eastern European Jews from the ghetto was the context in which the new developments in philosophy and the study of the Talmud occurred. This emancipation was not a single fact of history. Rather, it became an ongoing spiritual, intellectual, and even religious process of liberation that is not over today. The philosophy of neo-Kantianism provided a philosophical vision and intellectual foundation for this emancipation. Neo-Kantianism defended and even made obvious the new, mutually implicated, universalist concepts of culture and of man that made the liberation intellectually viable. By that, I mean that the concept of culture and the concept of a universal human nature that underwrote it contained the power of liberation, regardless of any particular ways in which culture or man might have been defined. Remarkably, these concepts became relevant not only for secularizing Jews, but also for a whole spectrum of new “traditional” Jewish institutions.1 In the many scenarios of liberation, the Talmud always played a role—either negative or positive. The Talmud became an issue in the split between academy and the postliberation versions of the traditional Yeshiva. The academy launched the discipline of Talmudic studies, calling it “a strict science of the Talmud.” As if in response, the Yeshiva developed “the traditional Talmud” through propagation of the Vilna printed edition, which was reprinted worldwide and then treated as the authentic Talmud to learn in any traditional setting. The innovative approach of Talmudic science and the traditionalist approach of the postliberation Yeshiva brought about a sharp distinction between Talmudic studies and Talmudic learning, respectively.2 It did not seem to matter that the tradition emerged after the innovation, not the other way around. At the same time, the split between Talmudic studies and Talmudic learning does not always have a clear sociological equivalent, because sometimes the competing approaches coexist within the same communities. Moreover, however strict the modern split between Talmudic studies and Talmudic learning may be, it retains a common conceptual ground, expressed most clearly in the philosophy of neo-Kantianism. Humanistic and cultural concepts in the Jewish philosophy of neo-Kantianism, for example

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What Is Talmud?

in Hermann Cohen, remained relevant for both sides of the split over the Talmud. Indeed, in academic Talmudic studies, neo-Kantianism is responsible for a concept of culture in which a unified framework is created for the heterogeneous disciplines that study the works of man, such as philology, history, literary analysis, ethnography, and linguistics, under the rubric of cultural studies. Likewise, in the traditional Talmud of the Yeshiva—as we know the traditional Yeshiva today—the neo-Kantian concept of the universal human being underlies the most recent traditional forms of learning and of transforming a student into a “harmonic personality” or a “human being of the Jewish Law”3 (hhklh çya). The split between the Talmud of Talmudic studies and the Talmud of learning is found at the very outset of the academic approach to the Talmud, when the Talmud became an object or entity given to historical, philological, literary, and cultural research4. In an outcome that will be interrogated below, the premise that the Talmud is an entity turns the Talmud into a printed book or manuscript or, in a more sophisticated approach, into an original manuscript, a writing that was lost and that is to be found behind the manuscripts at hand. Within Talmudic studies all the disciplines unanimously portray the traditional approach to the Talmud as anachronistic or ahistorical. Regardless of how exactly one defines culture, this concept always granted researchers and their audiences a way to connect to any tradition in a nontraditional, universalist way. The universal connection via the concept of culture allowed a Jew to connect to his or her own tradition and at the same time to remain universal, being both inside and outside the tradition. The concept of culture allowed a secularizing Jew who was integrated into a larger society either to connect to his or her tradition symbolically through culture or to remain a Jew only because of anti-Semitism (or even ultimately to become anti-Semitic). The concept of culture allowed Jews to shift their self-identification from being Jews to becoming “Jewish.” Moreover, the conceptual framework of “Jewish culture” touched the very concept of “Jew,” as well. Since the rise of cultural anthropology in the nineteenth century, the empirical—sociological, aesthetic, or ethical—correlate of the concept of culture was an image of an ethnic group, the bearer of a culture.

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Thus, Jews, whoever they were in other contexts, now became an ethnic group, a bearer of a particular culture, Jewish culture. In this ethnic-cultural framework, a possibility for a split Jewish identity emerged: From now on, a Jew could say, “I am an ethnic Jew, and I am also culturally Jewish.” However, the conjunction “and” created a possibility of the disjunction “but,” as well, as for example, “I am an ethnic Jew, but, culturally, I am not Jewish, but German, [or Russian, French, American, or even, sometimes, Israeli].” It may mean also, “I am an ethnic Jew, but I dissociate myself from Jewish culture,” or even ultimately “I am anti-Semitic,” as Leo Strauss argued.5 Understood as above, the concept of culture creates a historically new political and intellectual space for Jewish existence. Jews now relate to their tradition under a new angle. They treat it as culture. They thus enter not only into a new historical period of their existence, but also, and more importantly, into a new space, the political and intellectual space of culture. Just as that space proves itself independent of any more particular theoretical definitions of the notion of culture, so also the concept of culture proved to exceed any particular theoretical notion or definition of Kultur. I refer here to Kultur as both a notion and a concept. As a concept, Kultur functions both politically and intellectually, regardless of its specific theoretical or practical content. As a notion, it appears in different avatars in a variety of intratheoretical contexts of either philosophical anthropology (Cohen, Windelband, Cassirer) or of historical anthropology (Herder) or even under the name of Bildung (education). In the latter case, for assimilating Jews, it meant a path for both education and acculturation. However, the notion of culture was not only defined and defended in a great variety of ways, it was also strongly criticized—not only as a theoretical notion, but rather as a concept of power claiming its own political and ontological primacy. This criticism was expressed in 1929 in the famous Davos disputation between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer.6 At this time, breaking up with the philosophy of neo-Kantianism, Heidegger argued that the ontological question should come before entering the premises of culture and before accepting the power of this concept. The finite character of Dasein (sometimes interpreted as human “being-here”) enabled Dasein to gain access to infinite being. The finitude of Dasein is prior to culture and to the commonality of human beings that the concept of culture entails,

18

What Is Talmud?

Heidegger argued. In his view, cultural difference remained metaphysical, stemming from man as general entity, which alone made this difference possible. The consequences of Heidegger’s argument for Talmudic studies are hard to overestimate. It both denounces the cementing concept of Talmudic studies, culture, and heavily doubts the validity of modern Jewish identities, because the latter depend on this concept. Yet the confrontation of the ontological and cultural arguments (for instance, Heideggerian and neo-Kantian) is not the conceptual question to be resolved. The disagreement is so deep, or so true, that the parties cannot even come to any common conceptual language. They remain conceptually deaf to each other. The disagreement we find between Heidegger and his Jewish neoKantian opponents is not one we can conceptualize and resolve, but rather a disagreement between concepts going beyond any specific content these concepts may have. Sometimes Heidegger and Cassirer, who in the Davos disputation represented neo-Kantianism, seem merely unreachable for each other; but sometimes they argue so strongly that the opponent disappears, even in the sense of an opponent.7 And yet, Heidegger’s denunciation of the metaphysical concepts of culture and man reopens the question, precluded in the classical cultural approach of Talmudic studies: What is the Talmud? What is the Talmud ontologically (if I may use the term “ontologically” only heuristically, i.e. without fully subscribing to it)? What is the Talmud beyond its manuscript or any other records, including a “record” written in memory? What is the Talmud beyond its cultural history? In what follows, I will lay out in more detail how it is possible to arrive at these questions, how I understand them, and how I approach exploring if not resolving them.

Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the Talmud: Metaphysics after Heidegger Heidegger’s critique of the concepts of culture and man as metaphysical was, of course, part of an overall critique of Western metaphysics. Since then, that critique has been both carried forward and turned on Heidegger himself by the work of those whom I will label poststructuralist, although

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the label is more a convenience than a description, referring as much to the reception of Continental thought in the United States as to the thought itself. Poststructuralist thought has opened up a distinction between philosophy and metaphysics that has made possible questioning the relationship between philosophy and its “others,” the approaches from which it has always sought to distinguish itself. These critiques have laid open the question of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric, and as a result of the critical deconstruction of that relationship, they allow us to open the question of the relationship between philosophy and what has been known as the wisdom of Sophists or, as I will argue later, the Mishnaic sages. In this way a new understanding of the old relationship between philosophy and the Talmud has become possible. Quite a few words have already been said on the correlations or even similarities between the rhetoric of the Talmud and poststructuralism in terms of their method8; only a few have been said about the dissimilarities between them.9 However, the question of the rhetoric of the Talmud has to go beyond these similarities or differences. What is at stake instead is the way in which the determination of the nature of rhetoric itself places rhetoric, and with it the rhetoric of the Talmud, within the geographic and ethnic imaginary of the West. Not only in Brazil, but also in Europe, Cuba belongs to the East and Japan to the West. Likewise, in what follows, the West and the East are political images going far beyond the scope of physical geography. The political imaginary10 is stronger than geography, and therefore I ask where the rhetoric of the Talmud and poststructuralism are on this fantastic, but nevertheless authoritative, map. Heidegger’s critique of Western metaphysics famously holds the Greeks, especially Socrates and Plato, responsible for the forgetting of being by thinking of beings or entities. Heidegger terms such orientation of thinking toward either objects or subjects, but in any case entities, ontic, as opposed to ontological. The latter looks not at the beings but rather interrogates the being that the beings both disclose and take away from the sight. Unlike many philosophers, Heidegger includes rhetoric in metaphysics, but this is only because for him, both metaphysics and rhetoric should be destructured, as Joan Stambaugh renders the process of Destruktion, or as Derrida would say, deconstructed: to take it apart in order to see how it

20

What Is Talmud?

works—destructured—but ultimately not destroyed. Like any other ontic science, rhetoric “forgets” being, that is, loses it by both taking it for an entity and forgetting this very apprehension. However, in Heidegger’s argument, the forgetting of being is not necessarily connected to rhetoric itself. Rather it is Western metaphysics that forgets being, regardless of whether rhetoric is or is not part of Western metaphysics. Therefore, Heidegger leaves rhetoric out of focus in his argument, and in doing so, Heidegger in a sense derogates rhetoric in the same way metaphysics did. Of course, the locus classicus of the metaphysical derogation of rhetoric is in the Phaedrus and Theaetetus, where Socrates identifies rhetoric as a mimetic art, opposing the “love of wisdom” or “philosophy” to wisdom itself, to “sophistry,” calling Sophists “rhetoricians” and devaluing their art as “rhetoric.” What matters in the nomination and derogation of rhetoric, however, whether as separate from a philosophy grounded in metaphysics or as part of it, is the way in which that act places—and yet fails to displace—rhetoric on the map of the Western imaginary. When Sophists were nominated rhetoricians, they were symbolically pushed outside of philosophy toward the East, to the side inhabited by ethnic tricksters, monsters, and “wise men,” those who called themselves sages and whom citizens—or man in general, according to Socrates—should not trust. Another objection of Socrates was that the ethnic Others of the East were said to value family relationships more than the philosophical bond between a young man and Socrates, his midwife.11 In that symbolic opposition of citizen/men to “wise men”/tricksters/ monsters, “wise men” is a variable that can have different geographical, historical, or literary references. These references can range from “smart” Phoenicians, whom Odysseus had famously disfavored for their tricks; to Odysseus himself, who might even be considered the first practitioner of sophistry as a military tactics; to the “wise men” or sages in the Mishnah, and of course to the Sophists as those who, as Plato has it, intellectually chose non-being as discussed in his dialogue Sophist. Yet the variety and indeed geographical instability of references by no way undermines the symbolic stability of the opposition to which the variable belongs. What is more, the placement of rhetoric in the East does not fully exclude rhetoric from philosophy, from the Western metaphysics initiated

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by Socrates, because it is this very nomination that makes philosophy what it is. Philosophy is not rhetoric. Philosophy as the love of wisdom, as a taste for true wisdom, is conceived as such only in opposition to either an ethnic group of tricksters, who represent themselves as already wise, or, which is symbolically the same, to a group of less decent citizens, who decide to work with non-beings. Paradoxically, rhetoric was and has remained linked to philosophy precisely because philosophy, in a sophism of the highest level, defines itself in terms of rhetoric. Could a philosopher remain so without a sophist to blame? Rhetoric is supposed to be totally apart from the West, totally in the East. For a philosopher, to know where rhetoric is, is to know exactly where not to go. But the East always reappears, not on the horizon of the West, not on the boundary between rhetoric and philosophy, but at their center. It is the Sophist, not the philosopher, who makes possible the assertion of distance between them, and this distance is itself the result of a sophism, rather than of a genuine philosophical argument. Likewise, but in an opposite sense, Jacques Derrida’s critique of Heidegger’s attack on Western metaphysics demonstrated that, in spite of and beyond the scope of Heidegger’s argument, in the very heart of it, Heidegger did not deconstruct the ethnocentrism of Western metaphysics and its orientation toward the West. Despite Heidegger’s romance with the traditions of East Asia, Heidegger still maintained the centricity of the West along the lines of the ethnic and political imaginary. In short, whether rhetoric is included or excluded from the West, the relationship between the two remains nonphilosophical, and because there is only one nonphilosophy, namely, rhetoric, the relationship between the two is rhetorical. Both the imaginary but steady partitioning of philosophy and rhetoric in Socrates or Plato and their conflation as part of Western metaphysics in Heidegger’s critique are a rhetorical part of philosophy, not a philosophical part of it. Philosophy always needs rhetoric as its Orient, its East, the place not to go; hence rhetoric never leaves the horizon of philosophical knowledge. By definition, rhetoric could never be converted to philosophy, nor could rhetoric be a way to cure the forgetting of being that Western metaphysics and philosophy committed. Rhetoric can neither destroy nor deconstruct the philosophical forgetting of being that Heidegger revealed. Nor can it come up with an alternative to Heidegger’s question of being

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What Is Talmud?

or fundamental ontology. This is because for Heidegger, ontology or the question of being is in itself inevitably directed toward the pre-Socratic past and, simultaneously, toward the Orient, the East, whereas this past and the East are constructed by the separation of wisdom from love, a separation carried out by naming wisdom as rhetoric and philosophy as what rhetoric is not. As a constitutive element of the division between philosophy and wisdom, between West and East, rhetoric cannot be expected to accomplish things that philosophy failed to do: Rhetoric can neither deliver an alternative ontology nor approach the question of being in a radical new way. Neither metaphysics nor rhetoric can take us anywhere beyond the forgetting of being, because being yields itself as a rhetorical value. Rhetoric may forget being even more completely than philosophy does; a good rhetorician can avoid naming his subject by a complex net of pronouns, allusions, metaphors, and metonymies. A good rhetorician carries the being of his or her subject without mentioning the subject itself, so that the subject will enter the mind of the audience without even arising there as an explicit entity. Doing even more than a philosopher can, a rhetorician not only takes a being for an entity, but also substitutes for this entity a pseudo-being: always meant, but not often named. In the Jewish tradition, the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is the same as in the Western metaphysical tradition, albeit, again, reversed. The wisdom of the Eastern sages and their rhetoric in the Talmud need philosophy. Philo of Alexandria tried to engage the wisdom of the Torah with Greek philosophy by introducing a new notion into philosophy, “allegorical reading.” His success was so great that many people took him for a Greek philosopher who was interested in the words of Torah, rather than as a Jewish intellectual interested in Greek philosophy. The sages of the Talmud considered the “philosopher” (swpwswlyp) to be their “fellow” (rbj). In spite of the tension always present between swpwswlyp and μkj, a “fellow philosopher” and a “sage,” the sages refused to put a philosopher in the category of complete outsiders. There are many other groups with whom sages more often fought, but from whom they did not fully separate themselves. Some of those groups had a clear philosophical agenda. Examples would be so-called Gnostics, Epicureans, and those, fellow philosophers or not, who

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overused eloquence when it came to glorifying the Holy One, Blessed be He, by enumerating His attributes and perfections.12 The relation between philosophy and rhetoric in the conception of the Talmudic sages also means that the sages themselves—and later bearers of their tradition—did not have any finalized stand with regard to philosophy. They sometimes kept philosophy at a distance and sometimes vibrantly reengaged with it, as in the case of Rambam’s (Maimonides’) engagement with “the Philosopher,” Aristotle, and in the case of Canpanton’s engagement with Aristotelian logic and rhetoric in the fifteenth century in Spain.13 Likewise, the so-called Jewish mysticism of the Cabbala engaged neo-Platonism and other philosophical or hermeneutical trends.14 In the same tradition, Rabbi Ha. yim Soloveichik of Brisk (1853–1918) and, more explicitly, his followers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, engaged neo-Kantian philosophy, in particular its humanistic agenda. Thus, in the Jewish tradition, even if the sage and the philosopher were taken to be two different kinds of people, the sage was not fully detached from philosophy. The relationship between them therefore allows us neither to construct the linear scenario of a broken relationship between wisdom and philosophy nor to accept any simple story of mutual commitment. However, this does not cancel the fact that the imaginary but steady partition between wisdom and philosophy was actively supported not only by philosophers, but also by the rabbis themselves15—at the very least by mainstream rabbinic authorities, who treated philosophy as a part of Christianity and therefore credited the Talmud with being a nonphilosophy.16 Both the wise men and the philosophers imagined themselves each on their own side of the border created by philosophers. Thanks to Derrida’s analysis of Heidegger, we have learned that there can be a nonphilosophical yet metaphysical side to the critique of metaphysics.17 Likewise, there is a nonphilosophical yet metaphysical side of the Talmud. However, this side could not be thought thorough within the partition between rhetoric and philosophy, nor could it be thought through via any synthesis of the two. Just as when Socrates instituted a difference between philosophers and rhetoricians without giving up the sophistic ways of arguing, in effect placing the distinction between philosophy and rhetoric beyond the scope of philosophy, the sages who marginalized the philosophers did

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What Is Talmud?

not credit the philosophers with possessing any specific way of arguing or with any specific method different from what the sages themselves had. At issue is the best way to approach and understand that method. If we are to explore the possibility that the Talmud may be nonphilosophical, yet metaphysical, it is from the point of view of the poststructuralist critique of the effort to separate philosophy and rhetoric, East and West, that we are most likely to make progress. In these terms, to say that the Talmud may be metaphysical without being philosophical is to say that the Talmud may be rhetorical, not philosophical, and yet metaphysical. If this is the case, the rhetoric of the Talmud becomes a core issue in clarifying the relationships between rhetoric and philosophy dominating the Western metaphysical project. It is not simply a matter of applying the conceptual apparatus of poststructuralism, if any, to the Talmud. And from the point of view of the poststructuralist critique, it is not Talmudic studies and the academic disciples of the West that will provide us with the most helpful insights, but the conceptions of the East, of wisdom, and of Talmudic learning. The metaphysical side of the Talmud does not yield itself to looking for statements that are philosophical in content in the midst of Talmudic discussions. Nor has it revealed itself through the discovery of dialectical, rhetorical, and ultimately philosophical forms in Talmudic arguments. In other words, the metaphysical side of the Talmud cannot be found in the Talmud itself, if the latter is comprehended through the eyes of a philosophical discipline. Rather, the metaphysics of the sages can be described only in its relationship with another metaphysics—that of philosophy. The only approach that remains, then, is to assess philosophy from the perspective of the Talmud and to hear what it can say about the metaphysics of the Talmud itself. If philosophy defines itself against wisdom, and the Talmud is a nonphilosophy, this does not mean that the Talmud is merely pre-Socratic wisdom, a sophistry. As opposed to a Sophist, who was professionally disinterested in any truth, a Talmudic sage has the same desire for truth as a philosopher would have. The sage also shares with the philosopher the same ironic reservations about any truth that a student’s mind or opinion can deliver. From the perspective of the Talmud, however, what the philosopher misses, or wrongly dismisses, is the necessity—the authority—of tradition.

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At the very best, the philosopher may appreciate a tradition as parallel to or even a predecessor of his philosophical knowledge, but he would never give up his own authority as one privileged to argue what is and is not true, regardless of any given tradition. The sage, however, never takes the judgment of the truth on himself. Rather, the sage only learns the tradition, because, for him, there is no truth or authority separated from or independent of the tradition. If a philosopher can decide on the tradition, the sage always decides only within the tradition. A philosopher envisions truth through a direct discourse of his own, but the sage’s way to the truth would never bypass the tradition. If a philosopher doubts a tradition, he may simply refuse it. If a Talmudic sage doubts a tradition, “experiences a difficulty” about it, he needs to come up with a new learning that would satisfy his doubt, either in full or in part. Thus, the philosopher may bypass any tradition, while the sage can only think it anew in a more learned way. The sages’ reservations about philosophy were driven by the philosopher’s ability to bypass the tradition, yet these reservations were limited by the sages’ need, not merely to reproduce the tradition, but rather to learn (or teach) it. The distinction between reproducing and learning exists only in a serious metaphysical perspective, a perspective that the pre-Socratic Sophists neither knew nor needed. At the margins of different scenarios of poststructuralism’s disengagement with Heidegger, Talmudic (or more broadly, Jewish) tradition keeps emerging.18 In the case of Derrida, it arrives via Levinas. In the case of Deleuze, it arrives via Spinoza. In the case of Lyotard, it arrives via Freud’s connection to Jewish tradition.19 In all these cases, the Talmud has become involved in poststructuralism’s discussion of metaphysics, although in an undetermined position—neither inside nor outside of the core agenda of poststructuralism’s disengagement with Heidegger. Employing the heuristics of poststructuralism’s questioning of metaphysics, I therefore hope to provide a close reading of a Talmudic treatise as metaphysical without being philosophical—that is to say, as rhetorical, yet ontological. To do this means, first, to trace a rhetorical economy of making sense operating in the Talmud that grounds, exceeds, but doesn’t cancel the logical forms and the economy of language found there.

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What Is Talmud?

Logic, Language, and Ontology in Reading the Talmud One of the early encounters between philosophy and Talmudic learning is found in the work of R. I. Canpanton, a Spanish rabbi and an ArabicAristotelian thinker who approached the Talmud based on the principle of a parallelism between logic and language—the assumption of a logically perfect language, a language without homonymy and synonymy. His work defined dramatically what Talmudic learning became thereafter: both Sephardic and Ashkenazic learning. In the work of Canpanton, the concept of aqwyd20 (“exaction”), though never a theme in the Talmud itself, was to lay the ground for an understanding of both the logical status and rhetorical method of the Talmud.21 aqwyd could be preliminarily introduced as a device for making sense of a phrase or an argument by questioning the significance of the phrasing and wording in it. It also represents a certain kind of rhetorical inference from a given argument, based on appreciating the precise phrasing in which it comes. In Chapter 3, I will offer a detailed analysis of the concept. For now, it is only to note that this concept of post-Talmudic times is indispensably there in the Talmud without being a theme in it, which is a paradox that historical or philological analysis could not resolve; on the one hand, it benefited from the methodological prohibition of anachronism, but on the other, remained restricted by a linear, naturalistic, or uncritical account of time.22 Shaped within the tradition of logical-linguistic Aristotelianism, the concept of aqwyd must have some ontological or other related status; that is to say, it may well be taken to be metaphysical. However, aqwyd cannot be fully identified with any of the Aristotelian concepts, including that of the logical syllogism and the rhetorical enthymeme. The former, mentioned by Canpanton himself, ignores the linguistic aspect of aqwyd on which Canpanton strongly insisted. The latter, interpreted as a shortened syllogism, simply reflects the secondary position that rhetoric held in the Aristotelian system of philosophical disciplines, whereas Canpanton makes aqwyd the fundamental or primary ground of Talmudic learning. As we will see, aqwyd entails a conception of the enthymeme that differs in basic ways from the Western philosophical conception of it as a logical structure, a syllogism with an implicit major premise.

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Here we enter the realm of ontological or rhetorical analysis, marked but not delimited by aqwyd. To find our way in this realm we need to map out where exactly the aqwyd is in regard to more widely known and traditionally more dominant notions of logical and linguistic approaches to meaning, signification, or being. Heidegger’s and post-Heideggerian criticism of these traditional notions gives at least one of the keys to navigating this map. The criticism of ontology found in post-Heideggerian philosophy is of particularly great help here, for it famously undermines the omnipotence of logic, limits the aspirations of language, and doubts the primacy of ontology. Yet it is exactly this criticism of ontology that does not apply to the Talmud, because such an application would make the Talmud an ethnographic utopia for a non-Western nonontology. Instead of elaborating on whether the Talmud is a part of Western ontology or its ethnographic Other, a circular question, I aim at reading a Talmudic treatise in a darkness lighted by the ontological question of aqwyd as suggested by the criticism of ontology in the post-Heideggerian tradition. To do this work means to rethink the very being or work of aqwyd in the Talmud. Assuming, together with Canpanton, that aqwyd is at the heart of the Talmud or Talmudic learning, I ask, “How is it there, in this anachronistic event called Talmud or learning?” and “What are other ontological grounds or concepts, if any, involved in this event of the Talmud or learning?” For these questions, analysis of form becomes indispensable, because form always has been at the very heart of ontological argument. Introduced as a device operating in sugiya, the unit of the Talmudic argument, aqwyd was considered irrelevant to the larger form of the Talmudic treatise because, either in logic or in linguistics, the Talmudic treatises were always seen as chaotic conglomerates of sugiyoth, or arguments; or, at the very least, chains of traditions connected by associations, not by logic. To approach this larger Talmudic form, I need either to take aqwyd beyond the limits of both logic and linguistics or to come up with other concepts going beyond these limits to test them against the Talmudic form. For this second option, I will take as a point of departure Derrida’s concept of temporization and Deleuze’s distinction between the form of expression and the form of content23 offered in their respective anti-Heideggerian arguments. I will use these concepts as

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What Is Talmud?

my heuristic devises, helping to discover a larger ontological or otherwise form of the Talmud, in which aqwyd would be an element of that form. In this context, the form of Talmud involves at least two ontologically crucial elements: time and expression. In a broader realm of ontology, Derrida and Deleuze offered effective ways to access and appreciate them. These thinkers not only entertained an importance of both time and expression for ontology, but also of ontology for both time and expression. Their more general analysis of these notions in connection to ontology helps to discern specifics of the Talmudic form as it stands vis-à-vis either classical ontology or its critical reconsideration in Heidegger or beyond. Derrida will help us to make the first step on this way, a step toward the time-element of Talmudic form. Derrida’s analysis of temporization both grounds and exceeds Heidegger’s ontic-ontological difference—the difference of being from beings or entities, without sight of which the former gets lost behind the thinking of the latter. In his programmatic essay Différance he revises the notion of difference as différance. Derrida starts by giving the latter as if it were a semantic and semiotic analysis, even if for him différance is neither a word nor a concept.24 He notes that the Latin word differe has two seemingly distinct elements of meaning; one renders in English, as the translator proposes, by “defer” and “differ.” Derrida founds the “differ” part in the Greek diapherein, while the “defer” part emerges only in Latin, as “putting off until later,” or temporization. He then announces that temporization or deferral is also temporalization.25 I read this in the sense that deferring as “putting off” must happen not only in time, but also in space, in a time-space from which the second aspect of the Latin differe appears. In my reading of Canpanton with Derrida, I also follow that direction. The second seemingly distinct meaning of différance is more anthropologic than semiotic in appearance. It has to do with differents/differends— either dissimilarity or polemical otherness, respectively. Both are relevant for thinking of the Talmud and require temporization/spacing to become possible. Involved in both otherness and polemos, that spacing is not fully dissimilar in kind from the spacing involved in the meaning of différance as temporization, or putting off in time. Derrida states that the standard word difference loses both the aspects of temporization and polemos/otherness,

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while his neologism différance (with an a) is to undo that loss, and is therefore immediately polysemic, being both difference as temporization—differentiation and differing—and difference as polemos/anthropological otherness. Speaking at once about différance as both anthropological otherness/polemos and temporization, Derrida jointly considers26 difference as temporization (difference/deferral/postponing, as I have just read it) and différance as spacing. An example he gives comes from structural semantics and semiology, and is the “sign” as an effect of difference between signifiers. Another example comes from anthropology. The sign is no self-contained entity, but rather is a result of structural differentiation between signifiers, which also involves a temporal deferral of one of them. Spacing between signifiers provides a place for that structural-semiotic difference to happen. The point of différance is thus to conjoin the spacing of semiotic differences with temporization as a temporalization of a deferral. Since, at this point, Derrida has chosen an example from semiology, his resulting illustration of différance also comes from that field. Derrida compares the work of différance to that of writing, which unlike speaking is all about the spacing between signs and other unpronounceable elements of signification, such as diacritical marks or even the difference between the letters “a” and “e” in différance versus the standard spelling of “difference,” which does not express itself orally. Yet regardless of his view of writing as both an illustration and a case of différance, Derrida’s line of thinking also continues elsewhere in his work, for instance in the Specters of Marx, where we find another, perhaps more anthropological example of différance. He clarifies the difference between specter and spirit as “a différance.”27 For him, specter is not only the bodily, spatial apparition of a spirit; it is also awaiting for a spirit to come, which suggests that spirit has no special place other than the place of the specter, and yet it is different from that specter. It is thus differed and deferred at the same time and in the same space. In short, différance works as both deferral and differentiation at the same time, with temporization as temporalization at the very heart of it: “différer . . . is to temporize, to take recourse, consciously or unconsciously, in the temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment or fulfillment of ‘desire’ or ‘will,’ and equally effects this suspension in a mode that annuls or tempers its own effect.”28

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What Is Talmud?

Importantly for thinking about the Talmud, this means chronological time and temporization can never mutually coincide, a conclusion that in turn leads us to better discern Canpanton’s vision of the Talmud. Chronological thinking treats time as if it were an untimely structure of past, present, and future, or as a line going from one present to another. Temporization is not that way. As both deferral and difference, it exceeds the lines of the chronological as it also escapes the difference between the chronological and the logical. If it still relates to time, then it does so in a radically different sense and direction, not in a sense of time in connection to structure, but only in the sense in which time, as it does in Kant, crosses the boundaries between sensible and intelligible, between understanding and intuition, and thus, in Heidegger’s interpretation thereof in his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,29 becomes an entrance into a more fundamental thinking of being. Yet in Derrida, the thinking of time goes even further as time fully loses any close connection to chronological time in the sense of structure and becomes pure temporization/temporalization, difference as deferral, and deferral as difference, which makes chronological time or any other structure possible, but no longer follows the logic of that structure. As I will sign-post here and argue in greater detail later, Canpanton’s Talmud not only follows but exceeds that line of thinking. At this point, without making any critical implications about Derrida’s move to temporization, I will use his move heuristically as an entrance into the temporal-ontological aspect of Canpanton’s Talmud. I propose that, without even relating to the issue of chronology or any other purely structural thinking of time, Canpanton’s way of making sense in the Talmudic discussion yields another kind of temporization/temporalization, a temporization of rhetorical argumentation. Derrida’s analysis of difference as both temporization and polemos allows us to start looking into Canpanton’s Talmud even closer. Since Canpanton contrasts fçp, or the plain, unveiled meaning an interpreter gives to a phrase, to qwyd (the notion “preliminary” glossed as exaction that he or she must infer from the phrase), the first question to ask is: Is Derrida’s temporization as temporalization sufficient for construing the work of Canpanton’s Talmud? Temporization may work well enough for the fçp as an interpretive device illuminating the otherwise veiled, even if sometimes delusively transparent, significance of a phrase in the Torah

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(the term fçp is translated sometimes as “plain meaning”30). The device helps to isolate the significance of such a phrase. As such, the device works exactly in the way temporization does: it defers/differs one meaning in favor of another. For example, one possible “plain” meaning of Gen. 1:4—“God saw the light was good, and God separated between the light and darkness” (Gen. 1:4)—would be, “God saw the light was good, and it was not nice to both light and darkness to be together in one mix, so God separated their domains, the domain of day for one and the domain of night for the other.”31 Yet temporization does not seem to work equally well for the Talmud, for the Talmud often does not only differ/defer meanings, but also puts the differed/deferred at the very center of the meaning at hand, thus making the center empty, even on the level of experiencing the meaning. This does not simply mean that, for Canpanton, a position attributed to a Rabbi X in the Talmud can only be understood correctly as a response to or refutation of a position attributed to Rabbi Y. That would just mean that the difference between X and Y is the condition of possibility of both; that neither is “primary” or “secondary,” but both are semiotic effects of writing as difference, or the play of signifiers. However, in Canpanton’s Talmud, X and Y emerge not merely as effects of a play of differences. Rather, any phrase, either attributed to Rabbi X or not specifically attributed (i.e., anonymous) is either explicitly unobvious for you, the recipient, in which case it must be refuting/dismissing a position that you, the recipient, would otherwise take for obvious. Alternatively, the phrase is explicitly obvious, in which case you, the recipient, must actively look for a position that the phrase came to dismiss/refute. If you do not see it, you do not get the phrase in question right. The name of a rabbi may or may not be involved, but you as a figure of a student looking at the page of the Talmud are absolutely indispensable for Canpanton. A Derridian account of difference between the refuted phrase/ position and the phrase A as a condition of possibility of the former suggests that neither is primary or secondary, but both are effects of structure, which in turn comes from writing as difference. This could be correct, but hardly can be enough, for in the case of language or semiotic difference, writing as difference limits itself to producing an experiential (or false, if you wish) effect of a referent, the meaning of which is experientially given as if it were immediately there. However, in the case of Canpanton’s Talmud, meaning

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could not even be experienced/contemplated correctly without having the refuted position, plus refutation thereof, as the meaning of the initially contemplated phrase. What it means is that temporization/temporalization or even différance does not fully suffice for grounding the Talmudic devices, which, as Canpanton argued, followed the procedures of aqwyd (exaction) in contrast to the plain or unveiled meaning. In order to get the target phrase of a Mishnah or Torah “exacted,” one has to maintain a certain sense first and then reject it by means of the target phrase. The target phrase of either Mishnah or Torah does not differ from the sense it rejects, nor is the phrase identical with the sense it affirms. In very general terms, in the procedure of aqwyd, which functions here as explication of the rejected, the rejected sense is unavoidable, not only as a means to get to the explication, but also in order to secure the achieved result, because in this kind of explication, the result is lost as soon as the way to it is omitted or forgotten. The Talmudic procedure of such explication, aqwyd, is thus more similar to a rhetorical argument: In order for my own claim to stand, the claim of my opponent should not fully disappear, and if forgotten must be recovered.32 However, in the procedure of explication, the argument/opinion of an opponent itself is rarely a given. Rather it is to be re-collected, returned, or reinferred. The target phrase must be retrieved from the deferral in which it was before the process of explication started, and to which it will return when the teaching/explication is over. Such explication is indeed the process of exaction of the deferred/differed. Exaction of the different goes against the vector of time in which the different would otherwise be deferred. Therefore, unlike Derrida’s model of temporization, in this economy of the Talmudic sense-making through the process of exaction, the procedures of differentiation and deferral could coincide only before and after the process of exaction, not at the time of the process itself. Needless to say, Derrida’s model of temporization as both difference and deferral is still relevant, for it both introduces the dimension of temporality without which aqwyd cannot be properly analyzed, and also helps to show where exactly Derrida’s particular analysis of that temporality as temporization applies and where it opens up a question rather than giving an answer. To address aqwyd in terms of temporality where Derrida’s specific notion of temporality as temporization is more heuristic than descriptive, I am going to use a resource that Deleuze’s

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notion of expression can supply. Even if the notion of temporization elucidates the question of the temporal organization of the operation of aqwyd, the way in which Derrida presented this notion leaves no place for another aspect of aqwyd that only Deleuze’s notion of expression—and, speaking more broadly, the whole of Deleuze’s philosophical view of the fundamental finitude of thinking minds—will help to discern and to interrogate. Deleuze helps to reveal the philosophical standing of Canpanton in a way no other thinker does. His interpretation of Spinoza affords a unique perspective on Canpanton’s operation of aqwyd as a paradigmatic example of a specifically Talmudic form of an argument and, broadly speaking, on the whole of the Gaon of Castalia’s view of the Talmud. Yet let me first, by way of contrast, outline what Canpanton might have looked like if instead of looking at him through the lens of Deleuze, a historian of philosophy decided to compare him, in a seemingly much more straightforward way, to one of Deleuze’s heroes, Spinoza. Such a comparison might seem quite direct, for Spinoza is chronologically much closer to Canpanton than is Deleuze. Be it as it may, the historical-philosophical comparison between Spinoza and Canpanton yields a comparative view of Canpanton and Spinoza that would necessarily involve their common philosophical predecessor, Maimonides. In a triangular comparison, all three thinkers emerge as pioneering philosophical rationalists: a medieval (Maimonides), an early modern (Canpanton), and a modern (Spinoza). Of course, this traditional historical-philosophic model of describing Canpanton versus Spinoza and Maimonides would be entirely philosophical, as the history of philosophy was often a way of introducing a new philosophical perspective. Not foreign to this tradition, I will also use a historical-philosophical mood to prepare to look at Canpanton’s Talmud through the lens of Deleuze. However, unlike a traditional historical-philosophical view, the lens Deleuze constructed will help discern what that historical-philosophical model indicates and, due to its originary philosophical nature, has also no means to put on display. As Deleuze will help me show, through failing to account for the expressionist moment of the philosophy of Spinoza, the historical-philosophical model puts the limits of the traditional philosophical question of who Canpanton might be in intellectual terms. Rather than obediently situating Canpanton inside the horizon line of both philosophy and the history of philosophy, Deleuze helps to isolate Canpanton’s

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What Is Talmud?

standing vis-à-vis both philosophy and its most significant Other, which, unlike the historical-philosophical model would suggest, is not theology, but rather rhetoric.33 A traditional historical-philosophical reading of Spinoza and Canpanton in the context of the history of philosophy and theology in the Middle Ages and early modernity thus serves as a prelude to what Deleuze’s nontraditional historical-philosophical interpretation of Spinoza illuminates in Canpanton’s relationship to both philosophy and rhetoric. Since Canpanton has not yet been assessed in terms of the history of philosophy, I outline Canpanton’s ideas for a historian of philosophy who is starting almost from scratch. I thus build a temporary historical-philosophical model in which Canpanton belongs to the worlds of philosophy and theology. I then proceed to Deleuze, whose view on Spinoza discerns a much more nuanced relationship between Spinoza, Canpanton, philosophy, and rhetoric. As I will show, in a perspective that Deleuze helps to set up, unlike Spinoza, Canpanton engages with both philosophy and rhetoric while identifying himself with none of them. Read within the conventions of the traditional history of philosophy and theology, a comparison of Canpanton to the philosophical theology of Spinoza, in particular to his theory of a divine substance that is approachable and existent through a number of mutually incompatible attributes, provides a wide-open entrance to what would be qualified (or perhaps misqualified) as a philosophical theology of Canpanton. On the stage behind that wide-open entrance, Canpanton is an early modern Talmudic rationalist, even a philosophical theologian, responding to the medieval rationalist philosophy’s and theology’s critique of the Talmud for its de facto nonsystematic form of argumentation. In particular, Canpanton is a sophisticated apologist of the Talmud, responding to Maimonides’ proposal to replace it by a philosophically rationalized code of the Oral Law by claiming that the form of Talmudic argumentation is valid as a fully rational enterprise in its own right. The notion of aqwyd stands at the center of this kind of rationality. That notion also marks out a much broader field of nonphilosophical rationality that Canpanton introduces. Are this notion and this field theological? Maimonides criticized the tradition of the Talmud for doing nonphilosophy, i.e., for being rhetorical or mimetic/mnemonic rather than logical/ systematic in nature. In his Mishneh Torah, a new systematic rational outline

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of the Oral Torah, Maimonides replaced the Talmud as a product of thinking in the register of imagination, to use his own derogatory term, with a systematic rational philosophical outline of what he thought the Talmud had hitherto achieved. The Talmud would therefore become an example of rhetoric that Maimonides superseded through making his new case for philosophy. Instead of mimetic, mnemonic, imaginational, and rhetorical, or, in a word, “Talmudic” elaborations on the Oral Torah, Maimonides comes up with an antirhetorical, i.e. philosophical-systematic, and again theological interpretation of both God and His Law. That of course did not mean Maimonides denied the Talmud as a genealogical source of authority, including his own, but it still meant he rendered the Talmud just as obsolete as rhetoric seemed to him to be obsolete for philosophy. In one sentence, Maimonides offered a philosophical, i.e. both post- and non-Talmudic way of approaching the Divine through a theological interpretation of the Law by means of logical-philosophical thinking. Both Canpanton and Spinoza responded to the challenge Maimonides presented to the Talmud. Spinoza went even further and philosophically dismissed not only Talmud as the Oral Torah, but also the Bible as the Written Torah. Instead, he preferred a purely philosophical thinking of the Divine. As compared to Spinoza, Canpanton went in an almost opposite way: He philosophically revalidated the Talmud as both a source and a paradigmatic example of rational thinking. He proved the Talmud to be an example of thinking that, although not exclusively logical, is still fully rational. Instead of dismissing the Talmudic argumentation as a case of rhetorical imagination, Canpanton shows the Talmud as a manifestation of a rationality that would be no less strict, and no less philosophical, than the rationality Maimonides had promoted. In respect to Maimonides’ philosophical dismissal of the Talmud, Canpanton and Spinoza are as different as a proponent and opponent of the same philosophical position could be. Their responses to Maimonides are indeed almost opposite. An even further denunciation of the Talmudic sources and authorities, in the case of Spinoza, sharply contrasts Canpanton’s radical reaffirmation of the traditional sources in terms of their authority and their rationality. Yet these almost opposite responses are very similar in a much more fundamental respect. They both revolve around and revolt against a theological assumption they seem to have as a shared point of either denial

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or affirmation—a theological assumption of a Divine reason, on which their common predecessor, Maimonides, heavily based his philosophy. Of course, that assumption was part of a broader theological idea of medieval philosophers: the idea of an eternal self-contemplating mind of God, to which only philosophy could help to provide a proper access. The ideal of medieval philosophers was to overcome one’s finite thinking through a union, either mystical or rational, with that divine mind. Both Spinoza and Canpanton decidedly left behind this assumption of an infinite rationality of the Divine. Yet they seemed not to have canceled it, but went ahead of it. Each in his way, they no longer sought to overcome the finitude of thinking; instead, they celebrated it. Spinoza would see God as an infinite substance (his term) given through a number of mutually coexclusive and therefore finite attributes, such as—again in his technical terms—thought (in particular, in the mode of the thinking ego), and extension (in particular, in the mode of space), and other attributes, to which, unlike the first two, humans have no access in any experiential way. Being even more radical than Spinoza, Canpanton also insisted that studying the Talmud is an act of contemplation that only a finite mind, not an alleged infinite mind of God, can afford. A comparison between Spinoza and Canpanton goes even further. Instead of uniting a philosopher with an infinite God, Spinoza celebrated the finitude of human approaches to God via at least two approachable paths of experience that were not simply different, but rather, by their definition, incompatible. His technically precise term for those approaches is attributes versus modi, or the ways in which finite beings can experientially access the divine through its attributes—for instance through thinking, or through extension (through the experience of the surrounding world). Spinoza thus comes up with no less than a new version of philosophical theology. Not unlike Spinoza, Canpanton also stayed away from the eternal selfcontemplating God of the medieval philosophy. Instead, he theologically revalorized the tradition of the Talmud as it became rationally actualized in the minds of the students of the Talmud in a series of the acts of contemplation that has to be as finite in its nature and different in its ways, as different the students of the Talmud can be, and as unique as the positions of the Talmudic masters are.

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In Spinoza, finitude of a human experience of God results from the incompatibility of finite attributes through which God or Nature can be accessed. Similarly, in Canpanton, contemplation of the Talmud also remains programmatically finite and never becomes superseded by any universal infinite mind, Divine or human. An ascendance to the unified mind of God does not happen because of what the historical-philosophical model might call the “synchronous plenum” of the Talmud. That synchronous plenum would consist of Talmudic refutations of refutations, without final resolution. In this way, a different path of theological “ecstasy” was offered to the students of the Talmud, “one that absorbs the learner in an endless engagement with the Talmud that is no less all-absorbing than any unio mystica offered in Christian tradition.”34 The historical-philosophical model of the relationships I have just outlined puts both Spinoza and Canpanton in contrast to the philosophical tradition that holds the truth to exist in the eternal divine mind, and situates both of the “modern philosophers,” Spinoza and Canpanton, in the justifiable contrast to the “medieval philosopher,” Maimonides. Yet, precisely by making Canpanton a part of the history of philosophy and theology, this picture also positions Canpanton as ultimately not a Talmudist, but rather a philosopher, which, following the perspective of Deleuze, Canpanton is not. In approaching the history of philosophy not from the front door, but from the back, Deleuze opened up a radically new look on Spinoza’s philosophical ontology through an angle unusual for philosophy: the angle of expression. This shed a new light on the alleged philosophy of Canpanton, too. By looking at the historical-philosophical stage from the back, Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza helped us understand why Canpanton’s work does not fully yield itself to being placed within the realm of philosophy or its history. Deleuze reads Spinoza against the grain of the traditional history of philosophy. His nonconventional reading helps to open up a much narrower entrance to Spinoza’s work, to take a look at it, through the back door. That look would discern Canpanton in his distanced and engaged relationship to the tradition of philosophy. Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza from the back door helps us to appreciate Canpanton’s nuanced relationship to philosophy and rhetoric as more fundamentally important than his position within the

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framework of philosophy, theology, and their respective histories. With the optics Deleuze used to read Spinoza, Canpanton emerges as no longer a philosopher, much less a theologian, but rather a Talmudist in his own intellectual right whose work is irreducible to any of the philosophical or antiphilosophical disciplines, including the disciplines of the history of philosophy. What enables this more nuanced reading of Canpanton is Deleuze’s destabilization of the classical historical-philosophical boundaries, both between philosophy and its others and between disciplines within philosophy. This destabilizing effect is of course only one of the more general series of results of Deleuze’s approach to philosophy. Yet, his reading of Spinoza is one of the important places in which he achieves that result. Specifically, at the very heart of Spinoza’s ontology as a theory of either God or Nature, Deleuze isolates a core notion that would otherwise traditionally belong either to a periphery of philosophy or to the overseas of the philosophical land. That notion is expression. Deleuze interprets Spinoza as a philosopher of expression, not as a theologian of divine substance. Contrary to the classical historical-philosophical schemes of philosophical disciplines, which always privileged ontology over all others, in Deleuze, Spinoza puts the notion of expression at the very center of ontology. Spinoza’s philosophical definition of attribute as “what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence”35 implies that the economy of expression informs the relationship between the central ontological categories of essence of the substance and its attributes, “of which each one expresses [italics mine—S.D.] an eternal and infinite essence,” Spinoza writes.36 Deleuze shows that the complicated relationships among substance, its attributes, and its modi best translate in the relationship present in any expression. Any expression involves three different instances: what was being expressed, what gets actually expressed, and the expression in its immediate given. The key point to this triple series is that the first and second “what” are never equal to each other. That, as Deleuze has said, is the reason Spinoza was able to introduce the difference between substance (what was being expressed) and its attributes (what gets expressed) where Spinoza’s rival, Descartes, saw no multiple attributes, but only multiple, but almost mystically connected substances. Deleuze’s new emphasis on the traditionally peripheral notion of expression not only destabilizes Spinoza’s definition of ontology; it also invites a

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new look, not only on the ontology of Spinoza or his philosophy at large, but also on Canpanton and his Talmud as well. Another, perhaps more remote, yet even more significant result of Deleuze’s rereading of Spinoza concerns the historic-philosophical understanding of Canpanton’s Talmud as a synchronous plenum of refutations of refutations. My reading in Deleuze will eventually help reach a point at which I will be able to claim that such a plenum of refutations of refutations is only possible in the temporal mode of presence, as Derrida has analyzed it, while Canpanton’s Talmud happens in the mode of the radical past. However, I can hardly say more here before I further develop a Deleuzian perspective on Canpanton. The role of the triangle of expression in Spinoza’s ontology, as well as Deleuze’s perspective of ontological expressionism at large developed in his other works, can help us better see Canpanton’s operation of aqwyd or exaction at work. What is more, it helps to begin to understand the ontological status of the Talmud more clearly—both Canpanton’s Talmud and the Talmud in a broader sense, in a complex relationship the two Talmuds might have. I will later apply Deleuze’s notion of expression not to Canpanton’s Talmud, but rather to a reading of a Talmudic tractate, chosen at random, from the Babylonian Talmud. This of course will not be an application per se, but rather a test to see how well Deleuze’s notion of expression can access ontological and rhetorical aspects of that Talmud tractate. Since I have already promised to broaden my scope of looking at the Talmud beyond Canpanton’s view of it, let me also broaden my use of Deleuze’s analysis of expression beyond its specific case in Spinoza. In these broader terms, Deleuze discerns between “form of expression” and “form of content.” He further differentiates between “form of content” and what he calls “content” or “matter.” He thereby moves away from a traditional philosophic and literary distinction between form and content. His distinctions created a new room for the “expressed” that parallels the content, but never overlaps it. Such a reading marks out the rhetorical economy of making sense or nonsense in the Talmud, an economy ruling over either the logical/grammatical or other philosophy-bound economies involved there.37 Let me explain the new terms of Deleuze first. Simultaneously inspired by and critical of structuralism’s concepts of “structure” and “matter,” Deleuze replaced the older philosophical and literary

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categories of “content” and “form” with his new terms of analysis.38 Instead of a traditional binary of form versus matter as its content, Deleuze introduced a more subtle relationship between them. Broadening the results of his analysis of Spinoza, he made the point that at the very heart of the classical ontological categories of form and matter (or literary categories of the form and content) there is an element of expression that traditionally belongs less to ontology and more either to hermeneutics of holy texts or to the realm of rhetoric. In his analysis of expression, Deleuze follows the lines of the argument, in which Levinas claimed a distinction between culture as a world of meaning and the “enigma” or “signifiedness” that are traces of the Otherwho-never-is/was/will be-in-presence, because these traces are prior to any culture or meaning. In the same manner, Deleuze conceives of expression as not only something to be expressed, but also as a trace (to use Levinas’s term again) of the Other that, in Deleuze’s terms, “was being expressed,” but never “is expressed.” Already in the context of a triple series of expression in Spinoza, Deleuze prepares a new rhetorical (rather than ontological) place for what Levinas would call the Other: “what was being expressed” versus “what is expressed,” and “expression.” Since he links these series to the respective Spinoza’s terms—attribute, substance, and mode—he makes Spinoza a thinker for whom expression had the strongest status, not only epistemological, but rather fundamentally ontological, in Heidegger’s— rather than in a more traditional—sense of the term. Just as, in Spinoza, divine substance or nature expresses itself through its different attributes in its different essences, so also, in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, what is expressed through an expression is different from what is being expressed in it. Just as, in Spinoza, divine substance always exceeds its expressed essences, so also in Deleuze’s reading, what was being expressed always exceeds what has been expressed in any given expression. Expression is therefore never twofold (a content folded in form), but rather has at least three distinct but not separated folds (what is/was being expressed, the expression, and the expressed). Therefore, even when reading Spinoza, Deleuze does not simply read him, but also takes the thinking of Levinas further. This is of no small importance, for Levinas’s thinking was itself nourished, among other things, by his studying the Talmud with Mr. Shoushani, allegedly one of the contemporary heirs of Canpanton’s methods of studying the Talmud.

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This gives a comparison between Canpanton and Deleuze an additional spin: just as in Spinoza Nature or substance always exceeds any essences revealed in the expressions of Nature, so also in Canpanton the Talmud exceeds both its content interpretations (expressions, in Spinoza’s term) and the results that they demonstrate (essences). In his reading Deleuze takes Spinoza away from the immediate theological-ontological context of his philosophy. This makes Spinoza in particular and Deleuze’s post-Levinasian reading of expression in general more open for juxtaposition to Canpanton’s Talmud. One reason is that Canpanton maintains a much greater distance from theology than Spinoza’s immediate context of theological-ontology of divine essence, or even a Levinasian philosophical translation of the Talmud, can conceptually afford. Thus, reading Spinoza and following Levinas, Deleuze teaches us that expression does not merely form or pack the content for delivery. Going even beyond a specific context of his reading of Spinoza, Deleuze dismisses the classical opposition of content versus form. Instead of that, and even instead of his own earlier triple series of what is expressed, what is/was being expressed, an expression introduced in his analysis of Spinoza, Deleuze develops an even more nuanced and more general quartet. It includes (1) the form of expression as distinct from (2) the form of content; and of (3) the material of expression as distinct from (4) the material that traditional philosophy would have juxtaposed to a no-longer-precise idea of form. Specifically, Deleuze reveals that expression itself bears a form, and that this form is no longer an entity re-presentable per se. It well may be singular, i.e. neither describable in terms of presence nor detachable from the form of the content or the material, in which the content is re-presented. However, one still can question this form in a relevant way. This profile—to question and to approach without guarantee of direct access—signals that the issue is out of reach of logic, or any other ontic science, because the latter always deals with either what is present at hand or with something absent, but potentially present somewhere else.39 What it means is that the question of relationship between Canpanton and philosophy is out of the circle of historic-philosophical/philosophical analysis. I take this removal of the issue from the domain of logic to be crucial for better understanding Canpanton’s relationship to logic and philosophy.

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I assume heuristically that the form of expression has to do with the rhetorical enthymeme, so that logic would not be enough for grasping this form, because logic makes its own impositions on rhetoric. In the logical view claimed to pertain to Plato and Aristotle, but clearly attested not earlier than in Boethius at the end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth centuries, the enthymeme is only a shortened syllogism or a syllogism with an element that is now absent, but potentially present or presentable. This logical approach to rhetoric simply precludes a rhetorical approach: If the enthymeme is rhetorically effective, it is because it is significantly different from the syllogism. Although Aristotle connects the enthymeme with the dialectical syllogism, for him, unlike Plato, the enthymeme has its own effect and conveys its own meaning/effect, which is lost when an enthymeme is transformed into a “normal” syllogism. The enthymeme builds on probability or plausibility, whereas the normal syllogism builds on necessity. A normal syllogism deals with the thoughts that are expected to be exactly true. Because the normal syllogism has to do with the truth of the thoughts, phrasing, however important or helpful it may be, remains a technical issue: The more precise the phrasing, the easier it is for a trained thinker to follow or check the syllogism. In contrast, in the enthymeme, phrasing is crucial for success, and clarity is not a tool, but rather the result of persuasion. The effect of the enthymeme always involves the phrasing in which it appears. The normal syllogism occurs in thought, but the enthymeme occurs only in phrases, in a tongue addressed to an audience. The syllogism remains the same even without any audience at all. The enthymeme involves an audience in active comprehension, whereas the syllogism renders an audience passive. The enthymeme is never fully present, and by the same token is never absent: as the meaning of the term itself signifies, it is “in mind” or “meant”/“felt” as the open or doubtful status of any saying or any tradition in question. Whenever a tradition brings a statement, the statement is always supposed to have an enthymeme. It is therefore the task of a recipient to figure out how to get to this enthymeme, especially if the tradition appears as a statement of an obvious opinion or provides a statement that may be already obvious from other traditions, or if the statement seems not to cohere with other traditions at hand. Moreover, the mind or intention of the “layer-down” of the tradition or of Aristotle’s “lawgiver” is not necessarily

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involved here, because the traditional statement stands as fundamental, as something that one must be in or enter, and also or yet as a “writ” that always exceeds the enthymemes it yields. What such an enthymeme requires is not only “to keep in mind,” but also “to mind,” “to concern,” “to worry,” along with “to accept,” “to reject,” “to repeat.” If logic deals only with presences and absences of sense, then this rhetoric overrules logic without, of course, canceling its agency. Logic is good for a potentially infinite and unaffected reason, whereas concerns and worries belong to the finite beings because these beings do not coincide with each other. Thus the leading rhetorical mode of the account I analyze here is that of “concern with” and “recalling,” in fact, active recalling, because the rabbis insisted that recalling always involved teaching the tradition, rather then merely repeating it. The dynamic between saying, recalling, teaching, and repeating is more rhetorical than it is logical. An instance illuminating the complex relationship between saying, recalling, teaching, and repeating occurs in H . agigah 2b–3a. As the discussion there opens, one notices the incoherence between two traditions at hand, an incoherence that makes a recipient concerned about either one or both of the traditions. The first tradition is found in the official Mishnaic Code, which says, “One who speaks but can’t hear or hears but can’t speak is [still] obligated [to pay a visit to the Temple].” This tradition itself is not a description. It is an answer to a question that was already supposed to be in mind: “There are three major holidays to pay a visit to the Temple, with an exception for persons with both hearing and speaking disabilities. Does this exception apply to one who has either hearing or speaking disability?” The answer is that, taken separately, neither hearing nor speaking disabilities are sufficient to exempt one from paying a visit to the Temple. This answer does not cohere with another tradition of a comparable rank of authority, which, however, was not included in the official Mishnaic Codex (such a “noninclusion” would be called baraitha or “external”). The baraitha says, “One who speaks but can’t hear or hears but can’t speak is exempt [from paying the visit].” The incoherence between the two traditions lying behind these phrases causes perplexity or concern, the nature of which will soon become clearer. The feeling of perplexity prompts recall of an old story, which is so old that

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people are not even sure what great man really taught it. Some people say it was Ravina, while others insist that it was Rava. (It is remarkable how similar their names sound!) Driven by his concerns, one recalls and reports that either Rava or Ravina already resolved the incoherence, because one of them emended the phrase in the Mishnaic Code to say that there is a gap in the Mishnah and here is how the Mishnaic Code phrases it: Everyone is obliged to pay a visit [to the Temple] and to enjoy, except for a deaf who can’t speak or speaks but can’t hear. However, despite on this exemption, he is still obliged to enjoy [the holiday]. Yet, one who neither speaks nor hears or a fool, or is little, is exempt from enjoying as well, because they are exempt from all the commandments instructed in the Torah.40

With such an emendation, the perplexity is almost resolved by means of adding some words to the Mishnah, so that the Mishnah now makes a distinction between the obligation “to visit the temple” and that “to enjoy the holiday.” Hence, the people who can either only hear or only speak are exempt from paying a visit, but not from enjoying the holiday. If one were concerned about the logical contradiction between the Mishnah and the baraitha, one should be already satisfied with such a solution. Yet one is not completely satisfied with a solution achieved through an emendation, and still wishes to place the things on a more solid basis, putting memory to work and recalling another external tradition or baraitha. In terms of its meaning or content, this baraitha leads to the same point and only confirms the result of the emendation. It says, “Everyone is obliged to pay a visit and to enjoy, except for a deaf who speaks but can’t hear or hears but can’t speak. He is exempt from paying the visit, but still is obligated to [3a] enjoy. Yet, the one who can neither hear nor speak or is fool, or is little, is exempt from enjoying as well, because he is exempt from all the commandments instructed in the Torah.” Thus the Mishnaic phrase is finalized. This goal is achieved by making a distinction between “to pay a visit” and “to enjoy a holiday.” But even so, one does not feel fully satisfied or persuaded yet. Yes, it is demonstrated that the Mishnaic phrase could have been correctly emended, as a somewhat unsure tradition (from Rava or Ravina?) suggests and as another external tradition confirms. But to relieve the perplexed feeling completely, one wants to be

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reassured that the Mishnaic Codex also should be emended as recommended by tradition from Rava or Ravina and as supported by the baraitha. Again, this feeling is not a doubt about Rava or Ravina’s emendation. Rather, it is a worry that the tradition deriving from one of their names might be not accurate, and even if it is accurate, how could we change the Mishnaic Code based on an external emendation to the tradition before we are absolutely sure that we have right to do so? Still in perplexity, moved by the desire for reconciliation, one seeks a good reason—that is, a verse and a reasoning that follows from it, on which both the emendation and the supporting baraitha might have relied as they introduced the new obligation to enjoy the holiday. In search of such a reason, one recalls another external tradition or baraitha that explicated the obligation to enjoy from the verses in Deut. 31:11–12, where Moses commands the sons of Israel, “When all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn.” Based on the difference between “hearing” and “learning,” one could argue that it is only “learning” that is considered the reception of speech per se, not the mere reception of either sound or its meaning. This reasoning is based on the assumption that because the words of Moses “that they may hear and that they may learn” are very specific, they exclude something. Such an approach assumes that if Moses were to speak only to convey a meaning, he would not discriminate between “that they may hear” and “that they may learn,” because “to hear” already means “to comprehend” or “to understand” and ultimately “to learn.” His speech, and all the more, the writing that is in fact the only source of it, do not merely convey a meaning. Rather, they signify an exclusion, an exclusion that yet is to be figured out. The baraitha discovers/invents what was excluded: It says, “In order to hear excluded one who speaks but can’t hear, in order to learn excluded one who hears but can’t speak.” Here we reach the point where argument temporarily leaves the mode of recollections initiated by the feelings of perplexity. Rather, one asks—in provisional surprise—“Could the second half-phrase of the baraitha, which says ‘in order to learn,’ really exclude one who hears,

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but cannot speak?” The answer is “No,” because there is a counterexample in which speechless people were able to learn. Ultimately, this provisional feeling of surprise becomes released as the counterexample is reconsidered to prove that there is learning and then there is learning, and it is only for one of them that the speech is really indispensable. Nevertheless, at this point, we are back to the mode of recollection. One recalls a counterexample of two speechless persons, the sons of the daughter of Rabbi Yohanan ben Gudgda (others say they were the sons of the sister of Rabbi Yohanan). “Every time when Rabbi went to the House of Study they were going there, sit in front of him, and swing their heads, and moved their lips. Rabbi asked mercy for them and they acquired speech. It turned out they had learned halacha, the Sifra, the Sifre, and all the six orders.” The example demonstrates that the speechless can learn. Hence, the baraitha could not mean “in order to learn excludes one who . . . can’t speak.” To fit the baraitha and the example together, Mar Zutra suggested one should read the verse in question differently: not “in order to learn,” but rather “in order to teach.” The verbs “to learn” and “to teach” are spelled the same, though pronounced differently. Rav Ashi makes this suggestion certain. As he explicated the verse in question, “you must read [only] ‘in order to teach’ because if it occurs to you ‘in order to learn’—one already can’t learn if one can’t hear, and thus [the exemption from the joy of the holiday] would follow already from in order to hear. So, certainly, it reads ‘in order to teach’ [not just to learn].” Ultimately, the baraitha does not mean. Period. Rather, the baraitha makes the verse signify a different exclusion: The speechless cannot teach, and the verse reads, “that they may hear and that they may learn teach.” One can see that in such an approach, the meaning of the verse does not matter until it connects with the signification of the verse, or rather, the meaning matters only insofar as it forces us to confront the signification.41 Although the verse deals with a command of Moses, he was not an Aristotelian “lawgiver,” and what we want to grasp are not Moses’ intentions or meanings. Rather, all that Moses gave us is the writing, the inscription, letters, not words, and it is up to us to figure out how to read them and to look for what they signify beyond what they mean.

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Mar Zutra and Rav Ashi seem to be the masters of the theory of two levels of learning. On the elementary level, the level of meaning, “to learn” means “to repeat,” and this is not what the ability of speech is for, because for that, hearing is sufficient. On the upper level of signification, “to learn” signifies “to teach” others, and that is where the ability of speech is crucial. The conclusion is that teaching others is not a mere repetition, and the others are not merely recipients for it. The ability of speech would be underused, as it were, if applied to a mere repetition. The question, however, is: Do we deal here with physical hearing and physical speech? We do not seem to, because the speechless in the counterexample above acquired physical speech, but thereby did not become teachers or masters. By their speech they proved to be only what they already had been before, namely, tannaim, repeaters, students of the halakha, the Sifra, the Sifre, and all the six orders of the Mishnah, yet not the masters or teachers of others. Their physical speech, when it became present, just as when it was absent, did not get its proper use, because they did not become teachers. To speak means, therefore, to teach significations, not merely to issue or even transmit articulated sounds, full of meanings. In Deleuze’s terms, in the Talmudic discussion that we have followed, the main form of expression is recollection, but not in the sense that recollection appears there as a theme. In fact, it does not. Like the Talmudic discussion itself, recollection and other modes are both rational and affective at the same time. Like the Talmudic discussion itself, they are anonymous, like the feelings of perplexity, worry, concern, doubt, and so on. Just as speech here is not a physical speech, so also the perplexity, concern, doubt, and so on are not thematic psychological affections, but rather fundamental elements of argument on signification. As forms of expression, they configure the argument without being voiced or expressed there in any way other than in their work of configuring. This anonymity, of which a philologist would think in terms of an “anonymous editor or editors,” does not stem here from any presence (and thus is not psychological), because the affects and affective thinking are never present and are anonymous by their very definition. They therefore belong to either meaning, or form of content. As a form of expression of this Talmudic argument, recollection and other affects connected to it are never present, but only felt. These affects should not be

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taken for psychological phenomena either, but ontologically, as characteristics of thinking itself, which yields itself in this Talmudic discussion not just as memory or recollection, but rather as complete thinking, which, in the more specific terms of the Talmudic discussion above, is teaching, and not merely learning or memorizing. One does not recall for the sake of memorizing. Rather, recollection is an active process of teaching, not merely a passive work of learning. Both the scenario and the message of the Talmudic discussion above is the re-collecting, reassembling of the traditions through the teaching of them, a case of which is the discussion we just followed. Initiated by a feeling of perplexity about what the Mishnah could signify (or express) if it reminds us of a baraitha that is opposite to it both in words and in meaning, one deals with this feeling by furthering one’s recollection in search of a solution. In the Talmudic discussion, one’s concern is much more than just about a logical contradiction between two traditions, their meanings, or contents. Adding a third tradition is not necessarily a pure, logical way to resolve contradictions. Moreover, if one were concerned only about contradictions, one would be satisfied either by an emendation of the Mishnah in the name of Ravina or Rava or by the other baraitha, which equally resolves the logical contradiction, so that keeping both in mind would be excessive. In addition, even if for some reason one wanted to have two redundant solutions for the same contradiction, it does not help to see why one did not stop there and searched further—for a Biblical justification of the solution. In turn, this Biblical justification was still not based on philological analysis of the meaning of the verse, because the significance of the Biblical verse was derived from a reasoning credited to another baraitha, not to a pure logical argumentation. Moreover, the baraitha proceeds not from a direct philological meaning of the Biblical verse; rather, in the baraitha, one questions the significance of the verse, not the verse’s direct meaning. It is only toward the end of argument in the baraitha that there appears a meaning accessible to philology (“to teach” instead of “to learn”). This philologically accessible meaning was only the end point of the argument, not a part of the argumentation itself. As such it resulted not from the content of the argument or its form, but rather from the modality of recollection as its main form of expression. This register of the form of expression, in this case teaching as active recollection,

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closely connects to a realm of functions or, more generally, concepts that Canpanton introduces through the operation of aqwyd or exaction. Canpanton’s concept of aqwyd marks but does not restrict a realm of concepts that are peculiar to Talmudic teaching.42 Such a configuration of making sense through “teaching” goes beyond deferrals in time, and hence beyond Derridian “temporization,” to an arche-orality of teaching that, in the Talmud, is always speech that is more than physical speaking or the meaning it conveys. In order to teach the Talmud, a different position, another sense, that of a disagreeing pair (a teacher or a student) must be deferred, and if deferred must be inferred back. In the process of teaching, the phrase around which the pairs disagree never gets erased, nor is it substituted by any emendation or interpretation. The process of teaching thus cannot take place without undoing any deferrals that may have occurred as differences between the peers of sages, whose orations are learned. Further, in the acts of teaching, finite beings, or rather finite peers of masters, disagree with each other not as singular persons, but rather as eternal eons different one from another due to a phrase they will never erase and never write anew. Their differentiation does not sustain deferral: In order for a disagreement to take place, all the advances toward a resolution should be cleared away. To teach a disagreement means to bring back everything that might have been deferred, because the phrase at stake in the teaching ultimately remains beyond the difference. The act of teaching, not just of repeating, goes beyond the capability of writing, because even if the latter does transform any logical differentiation into temporal deferral, it still never invites the deferred as an instance not different from the point to be taught. In other words, in a disagreement between the peers that is proved to be true, a peer can never defer a position of his other, from which he/ she differs. On the contrary, the differed becomes preferred and, in fact, indispensable. The different or rejected position is not deferred, either, because without it, what is remembered could not be taught, but only repeated. This does not mean canceling the economy of temporization. However, it does mean that temporization is not the only way of connecting the deferral and the different. Teaching or Talmud does defer an opinion, but the deferred is never either different from or identical to the target phrase to which it

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leads. At the same time, without this complicated deferral, the target phrase remains out of reach. Unlike Derrida’s temporization, in the process of the Talmud or teaching, the deferrals and differences do not coincide one with another. As the result, neither the teacher nor the student is in the room—they are not present there in a strict sense. Nor are they absent. Because the differences and deferrals do not coincide, they do not induce any presence/absence. Rather, they invoke eternal and yet individual becomings of disagreeing peers, which, like aeons, are sometimes called by personal names: Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Tarfon, and so on, and sometimes are named impersonally: “the sages” or “our teachers.” The “teaching” thus involves a temporization, yet the elements of the latter—deferral and difference—do not work together as synchronically as they do in Derrida. The register in which temporization of the teaching occurs is not that of meaning, but rather is closer to Deleuze’s notion of the form of expression, or to Levinas’s notion of “signifiedness,” which is the trace of either the finite or infinite Other. Yet teaching escapes a complete categorization in those terms as well. In particular, the configuration of making sense in teaching goes beyond the model of expression, a case of which Deleuze found in the philosophy of Spinoza, toward an even more complicated model of teaching through fundamental disagreement. Deleuze has shown that for Spinoza, the concept of expression had not only linguistic and epistemological dimensions, but also a fundamental ontological status. Only due to the ontological dimension of expression could Spinoza successfully argue against Descartes’ dualistic philosophy of two substances. The ontological dimension of expression, and especially of its form, takes us most closely to what the Talmudic teaching is. Yet still not close enough, for the form of Talmudic expression or teaching as active recollection involves disagreement, an element that neither the theory of temporization nor of expression can account in full. Yet for exploring the realm of aqwyd in particular and Talmudic teaching in general, the heuristic power of both temporization and expression is indispensable. These concepts approximate the realm in question more closely than any other. They therefore require an even more careful look.

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Deleuze argues that, unlike Descartes, who focused primarily on the problem of substance and its attributes, thought and extension, Spinoza pays tribute to modus, a concept that, in its classical definition, had always been considered unimportant and insubstantial. In contrast, Spinoza approaches the modus as (an) expression that is indispensable in our approach to substance, Nature, or God. This approach enriches both ontology and the theory of expression. It takes us from a dualistic theory of words and meanings (meanings are important, words in themselves are not) to a new and more sophisticated theory of three levels of expression that cannot be reduced to the otherwise dominant word-meaning theory. As already said, in the new theory, any modus is an expression, any attribute is what has been successfully expressed through the modus, but substance is what is always being expressed in status nascendi, in becoming, but what never gets fully expressed in any of the expressions. Therefore, the diversity of attributes is a result of the failure of complete expression: the one and only substance has several attributes because the substance fails to express itself fully in any of its modi. The concept of expression both links substance, its essences, and attributes, and keeps the three separate. Without the concept of expression, the three inevitably would collapse into two: either essence and attribute or substance and attribute. Only the concept of expression keeps the triplex of substance, essences, and attributes viable. Yet not any concept of expression can do that. Indeed, if an expression is only dual, that is, if it consists only of the expression itself and the expressed in it, then it is not clear why the substance expressed as an attribute has an essence different from the substance itself. It is only the triple character of expression that makes the expression do what it does: to be not only a linguistic or epistemological feature, but also to serve the ontological function of distinguishing between one substance, its manifold attributes, and their respective essences. In this new approach, words, among other expressions, are modi of their respective attributes and limited expressions of the one and the same substance. It means, however, that a modus or expression is an indispensable element in the orientation toward substance. In particular, it means words cannot be disregarded, even when their meaning seems to have been already grasped in full, a result that makes the very concept of full meaning meaningless.

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Instead of a theology of meaning, Deleuze turns to the logic of becoming, which, in his view, is not a case of the traditional philosophical ontology that Heidegger criticized for forgetting being. The element of becoming is a very close approximation to the Talmudic process of teaching or learning, through active recollection or its ontological status. However, Deleuze’s or Spinoza’s ontology of expressionism does not suffice to serve as a description of the ontology of the Talmud.43 The operations of Talmudic rhetoric cannot be grasped fully through the category of expression. In order to hint at the discrepancy between expressionism and the rhetoric of Talmudic learning, I mention briefly one of the Talmudic rhetorical elements that seems to overrule the strategy of expressionism: the t[d. The term has translations ranging from “knowledge” and “skill” to “intention,” “thinking of,” “set of mind,” and even “emotional disposition” (for instance, meanness or hurt feelings)—a variety of meanings that not only proves a general truth about translations, but also suggests that here we have an intellectual idiom going beyond the scope of any linguistic analysis of it. Expressionism does not suffice to grasp what the t[d is, at the very least because even if expression makes t[d emerge, it is only a true disagreement between the sages that makes t[d really happen. However, disagreement between the parties does not belong to the core element of expressionism.44 To put it another way, for Deleuze, substance, or “being expressed,” while unreachable directly, always goes beyond the grasp of a finite being, who could only feel it but never know it, even partially. In contrast, the Talmudic arguments are ultimately arguments about finites: They always proceed in the disagreements of finite beings, each of whom is finite in his/her own finite way, the finitude of one of them being nothing without the finitude of the other, because they are two only as long as they authentically disagree. There is an additional reason that the model of expression does not suffice to grasp the finite nature of oral disagreement between the sages. This model has to take the modus, without which there is no expression, to be indispensable, whereas, by definition, the modus is not so. The expression, however modal it is, remains fixed in its existence, just as writing is, so that our access to “what is/was being expressed” (substance) and to “the expressed” (attribute, the expression of the substance) always remains contingent on the

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modus (expression of the expression)—that is, contingent on something that in itself is only contingent. Therefore, however heuristic Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza is, and however indispensable it is as a way to begin to understand the ontology of Talmudic learning, this reading may not suffice for grasping the finite character of the process of Talmud. In a similar way, Derrida’s concept of writing is as insufficient as it is indispensable for grasping the orality of Talmudic learning through disagreement. This concerns not only the mechanics of temporization, but also the terms of written versus oral temporization, which Derrida borrowed for the purpose of talking about it. Unlike the orality of language, which, in Derrida, is both exceeded and grounded by writing, the orality of Talmudic teaching or disagreeing does not fully yield itself to writing. It is only in teaching and disagreeing that we can get to the modus, or phrase, that remains the same in its writing, because it remains both different and deferred from the disagreement when finites argue against each other with regard to the phrase. If one never gets to the written unless one temporarily passes through the point of rejection, how could writing suffice to preserve this trajectory of making sense? Temporization through writing cannot reach the finitude of two different—disagreeing—finite positions when neither of them can be deferred without losing the difference between the two.

The Written and the Oral Derrida’s concept of writing remains indispensable, however, because a nonphilosophical, yet metaphysical theory of language was necessary to get metaphysics beyond philosophy. In his critique of structuralism, Derrida overcomes its naïve metaphysical adherence to oral language. Of course, Derrida’s central polemic is targeted not at structuralism, but at Levinas and ultimately at Heidegger, however much he is indebted to them. Therefore Derrida’s attitude toward structuralism may or may not be taken at its face value on the problematic of language in structuralism. Nevertheless, one might say that Derrida used structuralism as a nonphilosophical example of Western metaphysics. He did so in order to find the same metaphysics in the philosophy of Heidegger, even if Heidegger goes much further than

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Platonism. Yet as will become evident, Derrida’s own dependence on structuralism’s positive concept of oral language is much more complex than he himself would claim. His movement toward a nonphilosophical, yet metaphysical theory of language begins to emerge in Derrida’s analysis of Paul de Man’s claims for the nature of language. The principle of a parallelism between logic and language, which as we already have seen was central for Canpanton, was also one of the basic claims of de Man’s attitude toward language, and one of its principal limitations, as those limitations were highlighted by Derrida. De Man explicates the principle of “logos tes ousias”45 from the Categories, which involves both of the meanings of tes: Logos not only describes ousia, but also belongs to it, so that logic and language parallel each other. De Man relies on this parallelism in order to grasp how grammar and rhetoric mutually suspend each other: the suspension is possible only if a grammatical meaning can be established, at least potentially, which is possible only if language can parallel logical meaning. In Allegories of Reading,46 de Man argued that logic could never take over language because language itself is coextensive with rhetoric or metaphor, so that no logic escapes the metaphoric parallel behind it. By means of a strong linkage of language with rhetoric, de Man proved that language is always parallel to logic, not subordinated to it. However, in de Man, the link between language and rhetoric remains, in a sense, itself “linguistic”: For de Man, rhetoric is only a segment of language, grammar being a countersegment. As a result, language remains dominant. It dominates both rhetoric and logic. Moreover, the written language has precedence over the oral language, because rhetoric and grammar meet only in the realm of writing, which remains the correlate of any grammar. In his Différance47 and Of Grammatology,48 Derrida shows the philosophical/metaphysical presumptions that inhere in this approach to the written and the oral, revealing points where the principle of logical-linguistic parallelism borders on the paradox of Plato’s pharmakon, a written word functioning as both a poison and a remedy for those who, like Lyceas, cleave to orators. The characterization of written language (including language memorized by heart) as both a poison and a medicine not only makes Plato a metaphysical thinker, but also shapes Plato’s pejorative attitude toward

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rhetoric. At the same time, treating the written language of Sophists or wise men as poison—as opposed to the truly oral inquiries of Socrates, the philosopher—is indispensable in any formulation of the principle of logicallinguistic parallelism, at least as long as language is understood as a matter of writing, retained either on paper or in memory. Like Saussure, Derrida distanced himself from the traditional grammatical approach to language, which overemphasized the role of the written language. However, Derrida did not endorse structuralism’s theory of language as oral signs, either. In Derrida’s view, structuralism derogated written language only for the sake of a genuine form of language that is its oral form. However, privileging oral language did not take structuralism too much further than Platonism had already gone. Because structuralism shared with Platonism a preference for the oral over the written, in spite of the revolutionary character of structuralism’s theory of the sign, structuralism’s position on oral language remains, for Derrida, very conservative. In this light, even de Man’s break with structuralism did not seem radical enough to Derrida, because de Man’s turn from written language to rhetoric still kept rhetoric under the jurisdiction of language, even if only in language’s oral form. Saussure is a metaphysical thinker, Derrida claimed.49 Saussure revolutionized the theory of language by proving that the signified has nothing in common, either with the material substance of the sign itself or with the material thing it signifies. However, Derrida noted, Saussure still privileged the acoustic material of the signifier over any material in writing, and this inconsistency placed metaphysical presuppositions at the center of his theory of language. Starting from the metaphysical limitations of a nonphilosopher (Saussure), Derrida was able to find nonphilosophical but metaphysical limitations in philosophers, as well, including Heidegger and Levinas, the philosophers who were most important for him. In this way, Derrida was able not only to criticize Saussure for remaining a Western metaphysical thinker, but also to distance himself from Nietzsche, Levinas, and ultimately from Heidegger, who, like Saussure, remained a Western metaphysician. However, in Derrida’s move from an acoustic or oral form of language to writing in its broader ontological significance, the metaphysical position of the oral form of the language remains untouched: Without it, there is nothing to overcome, and thus there is no différance, a word that, if pronounced,

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sounds the same as the standard French différence, thereby exemplifying the irreducibility of the written to the oral. In contrast to de Man, who pitted rhetoric against the grammar of written language, Derrida links rhetoric to language in its oral form, but in either case, rhetoric remains subordinated to language, which is understood metaphysically. In this sense, both oral language and rhetoric remain metaphysical, but not philosophical, for Derrida. This extension of metaphysics beyond philosophy would include the rhetorical devices of the Talmud, as well. Derrida thus helps us toward an understanding of the Talmud as metaphysical, but not philosophical. However, in such a view, Talmudic rhetorical devices or schemata such as ajyn ym ˚dydlw ydydl amlçb, ykh ya, amya ty[b yad (literally translated respectively as “I can accept this solution, but is it really good for you?”; “If [you are arguing] so . . . ”; “For if you will argue . . . [you have a problem]”) and so on would only be technical indicators of logical operations of the Talmudic discourse, sometimes even called “words of code.” Alternatively, they would be basic technical elements putting a Talmudic argument together. Yet the schemata would still belong to the form of the Talmud, as opposed to its content. Although in such a view, the rhetorical schemata of the Talmud remain rhetorical, they do so only as long as rhetoric limits itself to oral language. Is the Talmud nonphilosophical and yet metaphysical, in the same way in which, in Derrida, linguistic is nonphilosophical and yet metaphysical? Is the orality of the Talmud of the same metaphysical status as the orality of language? As metaphysical but not philosophical, the status of the oral and the written in the Talmud is of a particular kind that now must be investigated.

“Oral Writing” and Writing in Memory For a starting point, I take Rambam’s (Maimonides’) definition of the origin of the Mishnah:50 “Since the time of Moses, Our Teacher and up to Our Holy Teacher,51 there was no composition in the oral Torah to be taught to the public. Rather, in every generation, the Chairman of the Court or a Prophet, who was in that generation, wrote to himself a reminder of the

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traditions he had heard from his teachers, and taught it to the public orally” (The Mishneh Torah, Introduction, 12, my translation).52 It seems to be obvious that, since the “new” time of Our Holy Teacher, Rabbi Yehuda, the Prince, in the beginning of the third century, we are talking not only about physical writing, but also about allowing this writing some authority of its own. In other words, it seems to be obvious that despite the originary oral character of the oral Torah, the oral Torah became written down not only technically, but also officially.53 Nevertheless, since the advent of cultural history, this view is not obvious anymore. There emerges an alternative view that says that we still might be talking about the composition as selection and codification of the traditions without delegating any authority whatsoever to their physical/technical writing itself. Does the composition of the oral Torah make any sense at all without its officially being written down? The answer is, “Yes, it does.” Instead of the physical penning of the Mishnah on paper or parchment, the “writing” could mean establishing a group of students supposed to memorize the composition by learning it by heart (in whole or in parts), without allowing the group any official power to make any judgments whatsoever about their memory or on the basis of it.54 (This idea would not be unfamiliar for Socrates, as well). According to the cultural studies approach, Rambam (Maimonides) talked about composition as a selection/codification without delegating to physical inscription any official role at all, launching instead an office of writing in memory, an automatic and nonjudging memorizing.55 In this perspective, the merely technical scribal difference between the parchment of the Torah, on the one hand, and the manuscripts of the Mishnah and the Talmud, on another, tells us much more than before. Indeed, this difference turns out to be an important component of the basic difference in writing between the Mishnah and the Torah. Specifically, if the Mishnah was “written” in the memory of special students who were officially designated to reproduce it without making their own judgment on or from it, such a “writing” should not be based on any mute signs escaping oral reproduction. Indeed, the “written” Mishnah known from the manuscripts does not seem to honor the significance of the mute, unpronounceable elements, which flourished, in contrast, on the parchment of the Torah. In the Mishnah, the forms and proportions of the letters,

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spaces, and tags are not critical, nor is the type of ink, leather, or paper. In the Mishnah, the elements of writing (in the sense of “penning”) that are not reproducible through oral memorizing are not considered as significant as they are in the written Torah. The reason for that is that the oral Torah is officially “written” only in the memory of some specially assigned students, not on the parchment, whereas the written Torah is officially “written on the parchment, in ink, in Syrian letter-script.”56 As a result, the written form of the Mishnah and of the Talmud becomes less obvious and less connected to the form of a manuscript or book, unless we recognize that the Mishnah and the Talmud bear the form of an oral writing, thus making the Mishnah and the Talmud, paradoxically, oral books. Yet if, in treating the question of the form of the Mishnah and the Talmud, we put the image of the book aside, what we are left with so far is writing in oral memory, which has nothing to do with visible lettering whatsoever. But then, what kind of writing is it? The price for discarding the image of the written book could be very high: we may find that we lost the very identity of the Mishnah and Talmud as fixed entities. What kind of memory or writing may one talk about if one does not imply the memory of a book? Moreover, to lay aside the image of the book means also to face another hard question: the memory of what? The question is even more complex, because if we say it is not a book, but rather something else that is remembered, then why did we get rid of the book? Ultimately, the image of the book is as good or bad as any other image of an entity to remember. So, what is there to remember? Is there, at this level, anything remembered other than just memories? In such a situation, it is very easy to get lost: what is a memory that does not even have anything external to be a memory of it? The question is hard indeed. However, could we really limit ourselves to the philological or cultural-historical scope of thinking about this memory-writing problem? Things would be more intelligible if one would be talking here about pure thought, not memory. Were it thought, not memory, the question “Thought of what?” would not be so difficult—at least if one were to think of thought the way Descartes did. For Descartes, thought is causa sui: It does not have any connection to any external or extensive entity. In other words, thought, for Descartes, has nothing to do with extensive objects/entities whatsoever. In Descartes, the object of thought belongs only to thought itself.

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However, for Descartes, this would not be the case with memory: the latter, along with desire and affectation, is “passive” and contaminated with the objects from the realm of extension, as opposed to that of thought. Descartes therefore is not helpful57 for understanding memory unless one would try to think of memory in the way Descartes was thinking of thought. However, at this point, the enterprise would not be Cartesian anymore. Let us get back, for a moment, to the cultural concept of writing in memory. The concept was not self-sufficient by the very definition of its authority: to memorize, but not to judge. It is doubtful that such an automatic self-reproduction of what is written in memory would last long without having memory hopelessly distorted. To avoid distortion, a complementary delegation of the authority of judgment had to have taken place. Maimonides’ “chairman” had to pass his authority down to another group of students. They were to make judgments about and from memories. Those students were not just to make practical decisions. Rather, they were to judge/sharpen/reconstruct the memories. The authority of their judgments depended on the memories supplied by the writing in memory: they had to be in compliance with the memory already preserved (sometimes by arguable emendations of it), and thus their judgments themselves became embedded in memory. For the same reason, it is this power of judgment that was responsible for checking the records of memory against each other as a part of the procedures for checking judgments against what was written in memory. By means of constant renovation of the memory by judgment,58 the latter only clarified and restored the former. Indeed, the questions asked in the Talmud with regard to the Mishnah work to restore the tradition and, in fact, to construct it anew. For instance, the question “who is the tanna of an anonymous statement in the Mishnah” is answered neither by any direct search of “the records of memory” nor by an imaginary travel backward in time, but rather by raising and checking reasonable possibilities for an answer. Rational argument based on the record of memory functioned as the highest act of memory, a situation Descartes would find paradoxical.59 An enterprise of building/reconstructing memory through rational argument would not be Cartesian, because for Descartes, memory and thought do not necessarily involve each other and even, in a sense, exclude each other: For Descartes, thinking must be an active process, whereas memory is passive by definition.

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Unlike the Cartesian concept of memory, Heidegger’s approach to the matters of memory is much more promising for an analysis of memory in the Talmud. The reason for that lies in the connection between memory and forgetting in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Specifically, dismantling the forgetting of being in Western thought simply does not happen without approaching thought as the act of forgetting, which in itself belongs to an element of memory. What it means, however, is that an act of memory (namely, forgetting) becomes a central element of Western thought. If Heidegger claimed that Western metaphysics or Western thought forgot being, it means, among other things, that he treated thought as memory, because it is only in memory that the forgetting of being can occur. However, the forgetting that Heidegger reveals is not an easy thing to remedy. What does it mean, in Heidegger, to dismantle the oblivion of the forgotten being underlying beings? Does it mean simply to recall the forgotten, to recover the lost memory? Heidegger’s answer seems to be: “No, it doesn’t.” Dismantling the oblivion is not the same as recovering the forgotten. For Heidegger, those two things cannot coincide, because any recovery of the memory of being would substitute, for being, a being or entity remembered anew. For Heidegger, any recovery of the lost memory of being would have to mean another case of the oblivion of being. Yet there still remains an ambiguity in Heidegger’s answer, because it does not mean “You should not try.” Without trying or questioning, the dismantling itself would never take place. Despite all these reservations, for the question of memory in the form of the Mishnah and the Talmud, the Heideggerian approach nevertheless seems more fruitful than the Cartesian one. For Heidegger, the dismantling of the oblivion of being is not an operation of memory—it is not memory that performs it—yet the forgetting does not happen without memory, nor does it become the oblivion dismantled without working with thought as with memory. To put it differently: Although it is not memory that discovers the oblivion of being, the discovered oblivion does not occur without memory. Heidegger gives to memory and its correlate, forgetting, a fundamental status comparable and in fact inseparable from thinking of the highest level, that is, inseparable from the question of being. For Heidegger, the question

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of being is a fundamental disposition in itself: It must be asked, but it cannot be answered; the dismantling of the oblivion of being is not the same as the recovery of the memory of being. Such an approach to memory is important for understanding the difficulty we face in asking about writing in memory as the form of the Mishnah and the Talmud: If it was not the book that was written in the memory, and if we discard the image of the book, then what is recalled in memory? However closely memory and thinking are intertwined, by approaching thinking as an act of oblivion, thinking—while creating the memory and thus inducing the forgetting of being—remains, for Heidegger, an act of active logical (and therefore ontic) judgment. If we have been having difficulty finding a way to approach the issue of writing in memory in the Mishnah and the Talmud, it is because such an active and logical style is not sufficient to approach the memory of Talmudic learning, which was not expected to be a memory of anything external to it. Indeed, the judgment that restores the memory still involves an ontic image of a lost memory to restore. Therefore, to accept this model of restoration through judgment would mean to restore the image of the book. However, at this point one could also turn onto a different path. The thinking memory of Talmudic learning is not governed by active logical judgment. The latter acts according to the syllogisms, whereas the operations of Talmudic thinking memory, such as kal-va-h.omer 60 or hava amina, ma-hu de-teima, ps hit.a, kamashmalan, and so on do not even pretend to comply with the form of syllogism. Rather they all are devices involved in the work of remembering, recalling, restoring, and they all direct themselves toward the tradition they address. As such, they are devices of passive thinking, thinking indiscernible from the work of memory. This thinking is not active: It does not originate from a thinking mind itself. Rather, as we have seen in our reading of H . agigah 2b–3a, it comes from the doubts this mind may have about the tradition. Nor can the thinking bypass the tradition that initiated it; the tradition is always needed in order to maintain the consistency of the thinking. Conclusions derived from the tradition could never put the tradition aside, not even when they are formulated “in themselves,” in a universal logical form. This is not to say that the logical syllogism (either correct or corrupted) is not at work. However, the logic of the syllogism is not prevalent with

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regard to memory, because thinking is not relevant with regard to remembering a tradition. Nor, as we have seen, does the mechanical remembering of the tradition prevail over the thoughtful learning of it. Earlier in the present analysis, we saw how the reproductive memorizing of the Mishnah excluded logical judgment. Now, on the upper level of memory, thinking is involved in order to protect the tradition from the corruption that mechanical memorizing could cause. However, the thinking in question works beyond the ways of logical judgment. It is very possible to claim that, not judging and yet thinking, the memory61 of Talmudic learning escapes reduction to Heidegger’s economy of the ontic-ontological difference, despite and due to the persuasive power of Heidegger’s questioning.

What Is Called Thinking in the Talmud: Toward an Ontology In order to explore such a possibility, it is important to clarify my position with regard to the classical comparative methods of Talmudic research. Historical and philological comparative methods per se are appropriate to critics of written sources—Talmudic manuscripts, first printed editions, and so forth. Yet these studies have discovered an essentially oral tradition underlying the written Talmud, which was oral not because the Talmud calls it so, but rather because historical and philological research themselves questioned the primacy of the written form of the Talmud. This meant that the written Talmud alone was no longer a fully adequate subject of investigation and that a new approach was needed. To deal with this conflict between subject and method, one had either to satisfy oneself with the limitations of the methods or to create anew an approach reflecting the relationship of the oral to the written. In this regard, the ultimate resource that philology seemed to have for approaching the orality of the Talmudic tradition was the cultural, literal, or historical contextualization of the Talmud, which respectively resulted in the three dominant approaches in Talmudic studies: the literary-philological, the cultural-historical, and the socioepistemological. The third of these even gave rise to works with titles partially cognate with the present work.62 However, by dismantling the positive foundations of history, language, knowledge, and

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culture, poststructuralism undermined the foundation of these approaches. Through this critical work, poststructuralism opens a new perspective on the Talmud, thus inviting a questioning of the Talmud that would preclude thinking of the Talmud in terms of history, language, or culture. Emmanuel Levinas was the only academic thinker to take a critical stand, not only with regard to the cultural and philological project of Talmudic studies, but also with regard to Heideggerian thinking. In Levinas’s argument, the Talmud played the significant role of the tradition to which Heidegger’s ontology would not apply.63 Although radically different and even incompatible, Heidegger and the Talmud constitute, for Levinas, two ways of asking the question of being, and thus two versions of philosophy. This means, however, that, for Levinas, the Talmud has metaphysical value only as long as one credits the Talmud with the value of philosophy. To prove the Talmud is a locus of non-Heideggerian ontology, Levinas translated the Talmud into the language of philosophy. What this means, however, is that the Talmud, in a sense, disappears in translation.64 As we already saw in the case of Derrida, poststructuralism introduces a slight, but crucial distinction between philosophy and metaphysics, a distinction missing in Levinas’s approach to the Talmud. Therefore, I do not fully ally myself with Levinas. Nevertheless, I am working in the same space inhabited by Levinas, between the Heideggerian tradition and the Talmudic tradition. While Levinas philosophically translates the Talmud into “Greek,” my own approach, once again, is to develop a rhetorical analysis of the Talmud as metaphysical, but not philosophical. However, such an approach is inhibited by the imaginary, yet recurrent distinction between the metaphysical West and esoteric East that pushes Talmudic studies toward the symbolic East. Again, this imaginary has to do with the complex and sometimes paradoxical relationship between philosophy and rhetoric. Striving for wisdom, philosophy never claims to possess it, a slight, but important nuance that Socrates the philosopher made in disengaging himself from the wise men or rhetoricians, because the latter only played on passions and imitated/mimed wisdom without possessing it. Like many kinds of love, the love of wisdom involved a fear: a fear of mimesis. Philosophers hate those who imitate or mime wisdom. This is why philosophers call wise men “rhetoricians,” the artists of mimesis. This fear of mimesis strongly affected the way the mainstream metaphysics, that is,

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philosophy, approached the nature of thought. At least since Descartes, and in accord with Plato’s provisions, Western metaphysics has defined thought normatively in opposition to passion or passivity: Only pure thought was to be active, and any element of passivity was seen as an obstacle to achieving this norm. In its recurrent tension between rhetoric and logic, Western metaphysics retained this tension between passivity and thinking. Passive thinking was always seen as a mistake, an illusion, or as the effect of persuasion, as opposed to strict, active, logical argument. In contrast, rhetoric, along with the operations of language, has traditionally belonged to the realm in which the audience was to remain ultimately passive: Rhetoric was seen as the art of manipulating the passions of an audience. A rhetorician speaks to the passions of the soul and manages thoughts by “contaminating” them with passions. The passions of the soul thus were seen as driven from the outside by words and things, as opposed to what was supposed to happen in pure thinking, which acts by itself. In the long history of the ways in which the border between philosophy and rhetoric, between truth and wisdom, has been policed by both sides, thought was contrasted to the affects or passions on the one hand and to the senses on the other. In turn, affects became subjected to psychology, thought to philosophy, and the problem of thought and words moved under the theory of signs—semiotics. In this distribution, rhetoric, which otherwise held thoughts, words, affects, and senses all together in one theoretical framework, became reduced to eloquence, the art of speech—beautiful, but sometimes void of any thought. The chapters that follow will attempt to undo this distribution, to explore the way in which the Talmud maps rhetoric differently, across the lines drawn in the Western metaphysical tradition. Even within the tradition of Western metaphysics, there is a line of thought that leads in this direction. It was not only in the locus classicus of such thought, the Rhetoric and the Poetics, that Aristotle addressed the distinction between thought and passions, the topic of the emotions and passivity in thinking. The issue of the passivity of thought comes up in his De anima as well. Aristotle talks there about the faculties of soul: external senses, common sense, perceiving, imagination, and thinking. Intellect is, for him, a faculty of the soul “whereby the soul thinks and judges.” Arguing that

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“intellect must be related to what is thinkable, as sense to what is sensible,”65 Aristotle uses this analogy to say that thinking is a process “in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought,” so that thinking is passive. Yet unlike thoughts, senses have bodily organs to sense bodily things. Since intellect has no bodily organs, it “has nothing in common with anything else.” Given this, Aristotle points to a problem: “If thinking is a passive affection . . . how can it come to think at all?”66 Indeed, the senses respond passively to the actions of sensible bodies, and if thinking, like the senses, is only a passive affection, then how can thinking take place at all without an active counterpart analogous to sensible bodies? The polemical meaning of his argument yields itself, if juxtaposed with Aristotle’s charges, against rhetoricians before him who considered thinking a matter of affection alone and thus considered persuasion a matter of emotions alone, a position that Aristotle resisted by offering his concept of the enthymeme featuring intellectual, not merely emotional, modes of passive work on the soul. To solve the problem of how thinking can come to think, Aristotle introduces the concept of nous poetikon, translated sometimes “psycho-logistically” as “active mind” or “active intellect”: Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Intellect is not at one time knowing and at another not. When intellect is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while intellect in this sense is impassible, intellect as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.67

His answer is that without the active intellect, in which actual and potential knowledge coincide, nothing can think. At the same time, active intellect does not include any remembering of its actions, because any remembering is a transition from potential to actual knowledge, a transition making sense only to the passive intellect, not to the active one. In his argument concerning how the active intellect makes the passive intellect think, Aristotle compares the active intellect to light, which makes potential colors into actual colors.68 Affected by this comparison, the Aristotelian tradition often identified passive intellect with potential intellect. The latter was sometimes called “material intellect” (Alexander of Aphrodisias) or

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“predisposition of thinking (preparatio)” (Thomas). Due to this identification of the passive with the potential, the role of the active intellect became similar to the actualization of potential thoughts on the “tablets of mind,” as if divine light were writing on the tablets of the soul, and because the writing was divine, it had nothing to do with the impressions that sensual objects supply. In such an interpretation, active intellect cooperates with sensual objects as both write or draw on the human soul as a whole. When scholars opposed nous poetikon to potential intellect, not only to passive intellect, they thereby made passivity/affectivity belong to senses, not to thinking. Over the centuries, the split between the senses/affects/ emotions and thinking dominated the tradition of Aristotle scholarship. Emotions, senses, and affects were considered modes of passivity, whereas thinking, either potential or actual, was considered an active process. Active thinking belonged to logic. Emotions, affects, senses, and potential thinking belonged to the theory of the soul (rational psychology). In the Aristotelian tradition, it was only Franz Brentano who revolted against this vivisection or disjunction of thinking between the disciplines. He stood against the forceful division of thought and affect into two different faculties of the soul and abandoned the psychological interpretation of Aristotle that had dominated the tradition since Thomas Aquinas. Brentano accomplished this revolt by criticizing the psychological interpretation of active intellect found in Thomas Aquinas’s rational psychology as well as in many other previous lines of interpretation.69 Based on previous scholarship, he argued that the active intellect cannot be outside of the soul, nor can it be either an active or a passive element of the soul’s thinking. However, Thomas’s suggestion that the active intellect bypasses thinking and directly reaches the imagination, senses, and perception did not work for Brentano, either, because intellect could not be said to generate anything sensual. The active intellect cannot be a deity or other substance distinct from humans, nor can it be in the soul, since the active cause of thinking cannot be thinking, because the latter is a kind of affection—passivity, not activity. However, active intellect could not be an active power of the soul, either, at least in the sense of affecting the senses directly. The solution Brentano offered came from a change of disciplinary framework in which the problem of the active intellect was examined. Instead of

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restricting himself to the difficult texts of the De anima and parallel places in other treatises, Brentano restructured the discussion by engaging with Aristotle’s works outside of the discipline of psychology, even if those works did not mention the expression “active intellect.” It was Brentano’s revolt against the fire-wall division between psychology and the Analytics with Metaphysics that allowed him to come up with a new, revolutionary interpretation of Aristotle’s active intellect. In his interpretation, the active intellect is an immobile cause of thinking that itself does not think, but only makes parts of the soul move: a reasonable cause, the cause that makes everything move while remaining unmovable itself. Brentano does not share Thomas’s assumption that the active intellect does not bring to the sensual soul anything intellectual. Rather, Brentano treats thought as a variation of affect, passion, or passivity related to the nous poetikon: The latter is now the unmovable cause of both thinking and the senses, and these two are variations of affectivity. This change enabled Brentano to explain the active intellect as the cause of thinking, rather than as a deity or something distanced from anything that thinking humans may themselves have. Thus, the active intellect became neither an exclusive feature of the soul nor something that thinks. It is not only that the active intellect does not think; it is also not a power of the soul that can move soul’s faculties without moving itself. Nor is it an active power in the soul applied to the passive side of it. Rather, thinking itself is now reconsidered as a passive process moved by the active intellect. In Brentano, the active intellect is the active cause of thinking, whereas thinking itself is passive. Nevertheless, Brentano’s own reading of Aristotle remained deeply indebted to Descartes’ doctrine of the passions of the soul, though Brentano used it only in the sense of a doctrine with which to disagree. To this extent, Brentano remained within Western metaphysics. This is why Brentano’s enlargement of the disciplinary frame did not include Aristotle’s Rhetoric, limiting itself mainly to the Metaphysics and Analytics. As a result, Brentano misses the polemic in which Aristotle blamed previous rhetoricians for overlooking the rational, not just the emotional, component involved in the passivity of thinking, a passivity Aristotle himself grasped not just in the doctrine of active intellect, but also in the concept of the enthymeme. Still,

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Brentano’s polemics against Thomas on the Aristotelian doctrine of the active intellect made a palpable scratch in an otherwise transparent retrospect that Western metaphysics built for itself, from Hegel to the Greeks, as it carefully detoured around rhetoric. What follows takes heart from Brentano’s example and attempts to explore the terrain avoided by that detour. In particular, in traversing the field of rhetoric anew, it likewise attempts to remap the place of rhetoric in the disciplines by widening the frame of reference from the merely psychological to ontological, and from rhetoric as an ontic science of psychological persuasion of human beings to rhetoric as a case of metaphysics without philosophy, albeit not exactly in the sense established in Derrida. Following the perspectives on the Talmud opened through Heidegger’s being, Derrida’s différance, and Deleuze’s expression, we have seen how those perspectives reveal that there exist not only Western philosophy in its classic forms, but the West itself as a metaphysics beyond philosophy or, as it were, a “philosophy incognito.” The discovery of philosophy incognito meant finding metaphysics even in the midst of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics. However, the only place for the Talmud left thereby on the map of Western metaphysics is either that of a marginal case of this very philosophy incognito or that of a utopian, ethnographic Other for it. What these perspectives both induce and preclude is a possibility of metaphysics that would not be philosophical, even in the sense of “philosophy incognito.” Yet, such metaphysics beyond philosophy could not be thought of without rhetoric, and it is the relationship of rhetoric to the Talmud that I hope to both elucidate and test through following readings in the Talmudic texts.

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The Art of (the) Talmud

In Chapter 2, I showed the periphery that philosophy has allowed for both rhetoric and the Talmud on the map of Western metaphysics, on which philosophy itself was always at the center. Given the complex and unstable relationships between philosophy and rhetoric on this map, I have asked where, in the account of those relationships, the Talmud can stand. Here I approach this question by looking at where the Talmud stands with regard to the specific arts of Western philosophy—the arts of grammar, dialectics, logic, and, last but not least, the art of rhetoric. One of the ways to approach this task is to read closely The Ways of the Talmud, by Rabbi Yitzchak Canpanton, “the Gaon of Castalia,” Spain (d. 1463), a book deemed fundamentally important, both for the world of traditional Talmud Torah and for the works of historians of Talmudic learning.1 Canpanton treats the Talmud not only as an object given in history or in tradition, but also as an art of its own—not just as a text, in which the philosophical arts are or are not on display, which we could discuss under 69

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the rubric of “the Talmud,” but as something more, and something more than a text: the “art of Talmud.” For Canpanton, this art is tightly connected to the philosophical arts and yet absolutely irreducible to any combination of them. Although closely interconnected, the Talmud and the art of Talmud differ from each other. However, at the same time, Canpanton discriminates between them on such a fine level that the traditionally and the historically given, the Talmud and the art of Talmud, also become indistinguishable from one another, so that the art of the Talmud also coincides with the Talmud, thus preventing the new art of Talmud from being called new. Canpanton achieves this double effect by simultaneously situating the Talmud with regard to the arts of the classical trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—and discriminating the art of Talmud from these arts. In order to understand this better, we will need to follow these connections and discriminations very closely. In the Talmudic tradition, Canpanton has a fundamental place,2 so much so that many simply ignore it in the pursuit of other issues; both the Talmudic tradition and its history take his book to be self-evident and therefore not important for analysis. But it is exactly this fundamental and self-evident character of his book, as well as his close connection to the various philosophical arts, that make Canpanton particularly eligible, if not indispensable, for addressing the question of the relationship between the Talmud, philosophy, and rhetoric, and indeed between the Talmud and Western metaphysics. In this chapter, I will attempt a double mapping, situating the work of Canpanton with regard to the arts of logic, dialectics, and rhetoric in the Aristotelian philosophical tradition and to the Talmud of the later Talmudic masters, who acted anonymously in the last generations before the Talmud was closed to any further additions. This double mapping is an unavoidable task; it was Canpanton’s connectedness to the philosophical arts that allowed him to come up with his unique attitude toward the Talmud, but it was his attitude toward the Talmud that allowed him to save the Talmud from becoming just another field for applying the philosophical arts—a fate that nevertheless befell the Talmud in the nineteenth century, when the philosophy of neo-Kantianism, both in its philosophical and religious manifestations,

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made the Talmud a place for the application of logical, grammatical, cultural, and historical concepts either shaped by or reflected in this philosophy. The triple relationship between Canpanton’s art of Talmud, the Talmud, and the arts of philosophy is a basic feature of Canpanton’s system of discourse. In fact, this relationship is not only triple, but also circular: Without the arts of philosophy, Canpanton could not have conceived of his art of Talmud, yet without placing the Talmud in the same place where his art of Talmud would stand, Canpanton could not distance himself from the philosophical arts, either. Because it is circular, his discourse has a foundation radically different from any positive historical beginning, becoming, or end. Moreover, if a distinction between the historical beginning of Canpanton’s system and its systematic or discursive ground is not drawn, one is at risk of either reducing Canpanton’s work to the historical components of his system of discourse or writing a history of something for which history itself is already a function, thus merely continuing Canpanton’s discourse without really analyzing it.3 The mapping of Canpanton’s standing with regard to philosophy and the Talmud thus belongs not to a historical but rather to a systematic or discursive inquiry, which in no way derogates historical investigations of Canpanton. These will be, of course, a great value for any systematic or discursive inquiry. Indeed, without the results of historical investigation into the origin, background, and historical influence of Canpanton’s work, no systematic/discursive inquiry into his work would be productive, since, like any analytical component, history reveals a lot about the ground on which the work inevitably stands. Nevertheless, the focus of the present chapter is on the systematic or discursive elements of The Ways of the Talmud (often referred to here simply as The Ways), and therefore Canpanton’s work will be primarily taken “before,” “after,” or simply separately from its established place, either in the chain of the Talmudic tradition or in its history. The systematic/discursive orientation thus defines the order of the presentation. Keeping in mind what the historical investigation of Canpanton’s work has had to say about Canpanton’s relationship to philosophy and to the Talmud, I thus will focus on systematic/discursive analysis of Canpanton’s position with regard to both philosophy and the Talmud.

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Canpanton and Philosophy Research has both historically attested and explained the close connection between the approach of Canpanton and his fellows to the Talmud and the logical-linguistic theory of Aristotelianism. That approach is sometimes called the system of “speculation,” ˜wy[ , a term that well might also be translated as “contemplation.”4 Canpanton’s notion of speculation or contemplation refers to a disposition of a student of the Talmud toward the orations of Talmudic masters of the past, in which the student attunes himself to relationships between the language and the matter of the orations. To speculate on a passage of the Talmud means to supply it with a matter, a topos, a line of the argument, in which the oration could be seen as rhetorically inventive. This can be achieved either by supplying a precise topos for the oration or by speculating on the affinities that surround it. As we will see in greater detail, by means of speculation, the student heuristically attempts to apply a matter that he has projected by engaging with the written text of an oral disagreement in its original language, and then, also heuristically, tries to refute his own projection. Through a series of projections, refutations, and refutations of refutations, the student refines his grasp of the matter of the dispute, so that ideally he reaches the point at which all the possibilities have been contemplated and sorted out, resulting in the most precise and compelling version of what the matter of the given dispute might have been. Here, I propose to take the opposite tack to previous investigations of Talmudic speculation: Instead of dwelling on the connections between Canpanton’s theory of speculation and Aristotelianism, I will focus on the radical differences between Canpanton’s version of Talmudic speculation and the logical-linguistic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy, and to ask what stands between Canpanton’s Talmudic speculation and that tradition, juxtaposed to both Canpanton’s version and other versions of speculation. Such a change of focus, from connecting Canpanton with the Aristotelian tradition to differentiating him from it, also changes one’s approach to the sources. Daniel Boyarin reads the work of Canpanton and his closest students and followers all together, as if they made one intellectual formation connected to the tradition of medieval Aristotelianism as a whole. I will

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focus more specifically on the work of Canpanton himself, without assuming that the unity of the tradition of speculation overrules the diversity within it or within the intellectual traditions of Aristotelianism. This diversity, both in the theory of speculation and in the Aristotelian tradition, has been already attested to by Boyarin himself. He has noted not only the misunderstanding of the system of Talmudic speculation by those who criticized it, but also the existence of different versions of the Aristotelian tradition, Arabic and Latin, with which different representatives of the Talmudic speculation allied themselves. For the purposes of my own argument, however, it is the differences between Canpanton and his followers that are crucial, and therefore when I focus on The Ways, I will be looking at this book vis-à-vis all the elements of the Aristotelian tradition, not only the logical and linguistic, and including not only ontology and rational psychology, but also rhetoric. It will be clear, however, how much I am indebted to Boyarin’s work on Talmudic speculation.5 However different the focus of my analysis, I begin by proceeding step by step in parallel with Boyarin’s argument. Boyarin draws a historical picture of the intellectual sources of Canpanton’s relation to philosophy and to the Talmud, with an emphasis on the specific terminology and concepts that Canpanton, his philosophical predecessors, and his Talmudic followers used. This picture may be summarized as follows: All of the crucial terms of Canpanton’s theory of speculation came, not only literally but also intellectually, “from the technical language of the medieval thinkers, and more specifically from . . . their art of logic,” which was for them closely intertwined with a theory of semantics: The source and ground of the doctrine of speculation of both Canpanton and his followers was “in a synthesis of medieval semantics with the authentic and immanent principles of the Talmud itself.” A general definition of speculation thus is “logical deduction, building a claim upon a claim by means of syllogisms and apodictic proofs.” Because a logical speculation has the authority of truth, it follows that the Talmud should also comply with the scientific and philosophic method of speculation. A peculiarity of the Talmud, however, is that it is an interpretation of the Torah, rather than any philosophy or science. The logic of philosophy and science must therefore have a Talmudic analogue, rather than be merely applied to explanations of the Talmud. Such an analogue is found in the Talmudic system of speculation.

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In Boyarin’s own formulation: The sages of Israel in Spain before the expulsion considered logic the way for attaining truth in all the sciences, including the science of the Torah. In their eyes, any claim or dispute that did not withstand the logical order was deficient. The books of logic and their rules functioned as the basic books for philosophical and scientific speculation. These books also marked the way to right evidence as well as to explaining how to refrain from making mistakes in these subjects. Now, because the science of the Talmud is different from all other sciences both in its language and in its problems—mainly because it deals with exegesis—one feels a need for books of specific rules for this subject that would facilitate speculation on it. Now, one may see that the books on the rules for speculation on the Talmud in sacred studies are analogues for the books of logic for mundane studies.6

This statement, however, may be interrogated. If logic was considered the only way to truth, what was so special about the subject of exegesis or sacred study to demand an analogue for logic instead of using logic directly? A part of the answer comes from Boyarin’s description of Canpanton’s position: The essence of the contribution of our Teacher and Master Y. Canpanton was that he saw what importance the linguistic-semantic philosophy of Aristotle and of his followers had for exegesis; he saw also the true connectedness between this philosophy and the inner ways of the Talmudic exegesis itself. The Genius of Castalia felt that one could explain the [exegetical] measures with which the Talmud approaches the Mishnah with a rational and persuasive explanation derived from the Aristotelian scholastic doctrine of language, thus converting these [Talmudic] rules and measures into the rules of [logical] speculation in the Talmud itself. In other words: Although, sometimes, in some specific Talmudic discussions, one may find some analogue for some specific rule of logic, in most cases, such an analogy is not there. Nevertheless, because it is mostly grounded on presuppository exactions and implications in speech, Talmudic logic can be elegantly analyzed via the linguistic philosophy of the Greek [thinker]. This provides a double legitimization: one for the Talmud, the wisdom of which reveals itself to be not foreign to the other branches of wisdom, and one for the linguistic doctrines themselves as tools and aids to understanding the Talmud.7

This description seems to propose that, although the rules of Aristotelian logic are not directly comparable to the immanent rules of Talmudic

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exegesis, the Aristotelian tradition considered the rules of logic to be deeply interconnected with the laws of language and thus to be in themselves potentially exegetical in nature. This is why the rules of logic can be effectively used to understand the immanent rules of Talmudic exegesis. Moreover, this universal exegetical nature of logic not only legitimizes the Talmud vis-à-vis philosophy or science, but also makes philosophy help us to understand the Talmud itself. In other words, even if logical rules do not directly apply to Talmudic exegesis, one can still use the exegetical nature of logic to understand the immanent rules of Talmudic exegesis. This is why one needs books of logical rules designed specifically for the Talmud, Canpanton’s The Ways among them. Such an approach rests on what logic and Talmudic exegesis do and do not have in common: The modus operandi of Talmudic exegesis does not match that of logic, yet both logic and Talmud are exegetical and deductive in their nature. However, this explanation still does not tell us why, even if logic does not match Talmudic exegesis directly, one needs to seek a Talmudic analogue for logical categories instead of directly applying logical categories to explain the immanent features of Talmudic exegesis. Why does Canpanton refuse to use logic to explain the Talmud, and instead look for a Talmudic analogue of logic and for concepts that are analogous to those of logic, yet do not coincide with them and that are not explicable by logic alone? A clue to the answer may be found in a crucial passage in which Canpanton discloses his understanding of the relationship between logic and the Talmud as he instructs students of the Talmud on what a student should do. First you should read the language [of the written, but originally oral text of the Talmud] aloud in the joy of your mind twice or thrice. Then step back and do your best at speculating on the language. Then hold in your hand your plain understanding of the language and return to speculate again if what you understood [comes] out [in] this language and speech.8 The first is called “the plain” [understanding] and the second is called “exaction from the Mishnah.”9 The masters of the art of logic called “the plain” [the logical] antecedent, and they called the exaction [the logical] consequent.10

To unfold this “extremely difficult passage,” Boyarin asks what it yields in terms of the relationship between the logical terms of the syllogism (antecedent and consequent), on the one hand, and on the other the Talmudic terms “the plain”

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understanding, which Boyarin interprets as “a meaning of the language of the Mishnah,” and “exaction,” which Boyarin interprets as an “implication of this language.” I translate the latter term to retain both the sense of the precision of one’s attitude toward the language of the written text and the sense of demanding the exegetical “extraction” of its consequences. Boyarin’s answer is that, in the Talmud, exaction, qwyd (the Hebrew term that Canpanton himself used), or aqwyd (the Aramaic term, the Talmudic equivalent of the term) holds a place analogous to the place that the syllogism holds in logic: I think that here Our Teacher and Master Rabbi Y. Canpanton gives us the keys for understanding his way in the Talmud. He claims that exaction in the logic of the Talmud takes the place of syllogistic deduction in Aristotelian logic. In other words, the Genius saw where the true center of mass in the Talmudic dialectic was. It was, of course, in the natural language of human beings. Many Talmudic discussions begin by exaction, that is, by citing a fragment from the Mishnah to be explained and establishing the understanding of it coming out of its language; “The phrase affirms so and so. Hence, What has been affirmed—yes; more or less than that—no; and alike.” For Our Teacher and Master Rabbi Y. Canpanton, in Talmudic logic, such a logical argument takes the place of the syllogism, not because exaction is similar to the syllogism in form and in kind of deduction, but rather because exaction is a kind of deduction on which the dialectics of the Talmud is based, just as Aristotelian logic is based on the syllogism.

Based on his awareness that Talmudic logic is mainly a logic of language and of its exegesis, Our Teacher and Master Y. Canpanton considered the semantic part of the Aristotelian corpus the most relevant for the speculation in the Talmud; this is because this [semantic] part, found mostly in the hxylmh rps , Peri-Hermenias, De interpretazione, includes philosophical material on which one can build a theory of textual exegesis. . . . Thereby, he managed to do what no one had done before him, to find the true point of comparison between Talmudic exegesis and classical logic.11 And yet, there still remains a place for the same question: If, for Canpanton, logical methods are universal, why in their specific implementation, that is, in the Talmud, does the syllogism have to yield to something analogous to it, rather than being implemented directly? Can one really be satisfied with the answer that the functional similarity between the syllogism in logic and exaction in the Talmud is Canpanton’s way of compensating for the lack of

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other, more direct similarities? If logic is universal for all sciences, including the “science of the Talmud,” why is any functional substitution for the logical syllogism allowed? And even if it were allowed, could any substitute for philosophical concepts really satisfy one who wants to legitimatize the Talmud vis-à-vis philosophy itself? These general questions come with more specific ones: Is exaction a theoretical concept, a construct analogous to philosophical syllogism, or is it an immanent part of the Talmud? And also, what is the role of the philosophical theory of logical semantics? Is this philosophical theory a version of pure epistemology, or does it have an ontological agenda, as well? If the latter were the case, then what possible ontological agenda (or perhaps its functional analogue) would exaction have? However numerous those questions are, they induce one and the same feeling: that there must be some other element that underwrites both the connection and the difference between the Talmud and logic, between exaction and the syllogism. In order to find this element, one does not even need to go beyond the territory of Aristotelian tradition. This missing element comes, of course, from rhetoric. For Aristotle, rhetoric has its own “rhetorical syllogism,” irreplaceable by dialectical (or logical) syllogisms and also irreducible to them. Aristotle considered dialectics/logic and rhetoric to be two different philosophical arts, each with its own fundamental categories: the dialectical syllogism for logic, and the rhetorical syllogism or enthymeme for rhetoric. Therefore, one can easily depart from the use of the syllogism and yet remain within philosophy. But is this not exactly what, according to Boyarin, Canpanton did in finding “the true point of comparison between Talmudic exegesis and classical logic” in the relationship between the logical syllogism and Talmudic exaction? Would not, therefore, the relation of exaction to the logical syllogism be the same as the relation of the rhetorical syllogism to the logical syllogism? Here we have to slow down and note that without leaving the territory of the Aristotelian tradition, one still needs to adjust one’s view of it. In the Aristotelian tradition, what is at issue is always how one understands the relationship between the arts of logic and rhetoric and also how one sees their connection to the ontological issues in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Is the enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism merely a shortened version of the

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dialectical syllogism (Boethius), or is it a category of its own, irreducible to anything else? In addition, even if dialectics or logic is not seen to dominate rhetoric, would not rhetoric still be considered a secondary parallel to logic? Last, but not least, if one recognizes that the realm of logic ends where the realm of rhetoric begins, and ontology is a permanent counterpart of logic (as Brentano and Heidegger claimed), would ontology become a counterpart not only of logic, but also of rhetoric? Beginning with Brentano, the nineteenth century developed notions of language, epistemology, and psychology that, in conjunction with the Thomist tradition of Aristotelianism, redefined Aristotle as a logical, psychological, and linguistic thinker in the universal and fundamental sense that logic, psychology, and linguistics acquired during that century. The question should therefore be what those dominant notions of language, logic, and psychology have prevented us from understanding in Canpanton’s system of discourse. Of course, this last set of questions does not necessarily belong to historical inquiry. Rather, they can be approached only through a discursive analysis of his system. In view of these questions, in the following analysis of Canpanton, both the history of Canpanton’s theory and indeed the name of Canpanton himself will function as synecdoches or markers of his discourse, rather than as definitions of either its order or its origin. Let us keep the questions above in mind as we continue to read Canpanton’s instruction for a student of the Talmud. It continues with a passage that not only features Canpanton’s position with regard to logic, but that also may help us better grasp Canpanton’s position with regard to rhetoric. It may also give clues for understanding the ontological aspects of Canpanton’s position, if any. Boyarin approaches the passage as a comparison between the concepts of logical speculation and the concepts of the Talmud, a comparison Canpanton used to create a system of Talmudic speculation.12 And after that, [you, the student, should] step back and speculate if there is any invention [çwdj ] in [your] plain understanding of the language or not; you should also see if there is any invention in what [becomes] understood from the element of this language itself, because if there is some invention in the plain, yet there is no invention in the exaction [from the language of the written text], you should not [worry about] attempting to refute [the understanding of the language and of its meaning that you have already achieved]. However, if no

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invention has been found, you should [definitely] refute the orator [who stood] behind such an oration;13 likewise, one used to say [in the Talmud] [mçmq yamw afyçp ˜l (lit.: “But what does it tell us, if it was already plain in itself?”). Yet if there is some invention in an exaction [from the oration], but no invention in the oration itself, one may still say that the oration was for the sake of this exaction.14

This is Canpanton’s account of how a student of the Talmud is supposed to go about approaching any given Talmudic oration, be it a single saying of a sage in the Mishnah, or a saying of a Talmudic master, or an exchange of such sayings. According to Canpanton, the student is to formulate his own understanding of the oration, then compare his understanding with the actual language in it in order to reach a point at which his understanding would precisely match the actual language of the oration. The result of such hard work is called (perhaps ironically) a “plain” understanding of the oration. The term fçp (lit.: “plain”) suggests not just that the language is plain, but also that it has been clarified, or even stripped naked of any extraneous readings. Thus, achieving a plain understanding of a passage in the Talmud does not mean making it simple or easily accessible, but refers to a result arrived at through a complicated process of sorting out of what would be the precise match between its language and its matter.15 Then, when the student already knows the matter of the oration16 and the Talmud’s ruling on the matter, he puts his knowledge to the test for çwdj or invention: Does the oration contain any invention if compared to what the student’s own power of judgment would suggest about the same matter even before the oration itself? If, by his judgment alone, the matter would have the same ruling, then the oration contained no invention and thus, for a good orator, would be not worth making. Of course, the criterion of invention or novelty is itself not new. Classical rhetorical theory—Cicero, for example—always treated invention as the central element of any successful oration, be it a long speech or even a single exclamation.17 In classical rhetorical theory, invention is a skill that a good orator must have in order to make the members of his or her audience feel they have just discovered or rediscovered in their own minds something that, in a certain sense, already was there, but that has now revealed itself (“Of course! How could I have not seen it for myself before?!”) It is the skill of

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invention that is supposed to make any argument persuasive par excellence. This is why invention is a crucial element of any rhetorical persuasion. Canpanton’s account instructs us where to look for such an invention—in the plain approach to the oration, and if it is not there, then in consequences— exactions—derived from the language of it, for instance, those for a matter closely connected to the plain matter or for a ruling closely connected to the plain ruling.18 (The nature of this proximity of themes or of rulings deserves a special analysis, which I would project to analyze under the title of negative analogies and negative affinities, an analysis that I cannot undertake here.) If the student does not find any invention in the plain meaning of the oration, he is to attempt to save the oration from vanity (or rather to save himself from an incorrect approach to the oration) by looking for an invention in the consequences exacted from the oration. Now seems to be a right place to highlight a very important point: It is clear that Canpanton’s instruction involves more than just the plain approach to an oration and exaction, the consequences of its language. It includes a third conceptual element: invention. It is for securing some invention that the search for consequences or exactions is to be undertaken. At stake is no less than the validity of a student’s approach to the oration. Canpanton made his students consider all Talmudic orations valid, so the element of invention was important, not so much with respect to any oration itself, but rather with respect to the student’s understanding of it. Without some invention in it, an oration would not be worth making, but that is not the case with Talmudic orations, and thus the student who cannot find any invention in one has failed. Therefore, Canpanton presumes invention to be not only the crucial element of any oration, but also the last criterion of its interpretation. The term “invention” thus is much more than just a convenient translation for Canpanton’s çwdj (which literally could be also translated as “novelty”).19 Rather, it explains not just the concept of validity in any Talmudic oration, but the correctness of a student’s understanding of it. Classical rhetorical invention (inventione) and Talmudic invention (çwdj), Canpanton’s criterion for speculation, are very similar in their organization. Both the Talmudic oration and the classical rhetorical oration have to help either the audience or the student to invent—to discover or rediscover the

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point of the oration. If his audience accepts the invention, the classical orator has had a success. If a student finds an invention, he has had a success, too: He has understood his sage or his master correctly, or has persuaded himself he did. Even if accepting an invention is not exactly the same as coming up with one, in both cases it is making an invention that brings a success. Assuredly, this similarity between rhetorical invention and Talmudic invention clearly involves a difference in the roles of the student of the Talmud and of an orator’s audience. The student must always be active; the audience can often remain receptive. Yet this difference does not affect the main similarity—the procedure of invention. This difference does not annul the importance of invention in an oration—either rhetorical or Talmudic—as a discovery or rediscovery, without which any oration would not be valid or worth making. The centrality of the role that the rhetorical concept of invention and its parallel, çwdj, play in Talmudic speculation also teaches us something new about the place of logic in that speculation. One can at the very least see that the notion of the validity of Talmudic oration, or rather of the grasp of this oration by the student, does not come from a logical notion of correctness, at least not from this alone. This nonlogical, rhetorical origin of the concept of invention, however, was not grasped by some of Canpanton’s followers. It was missed, for example, by such an important follower of Canpanton as Said Shmuel Ibn Sidilio (d. 1520), the author of the diatribe Kelale Shmuel 20 (The Rules of Shmuel). Shmuel allied himself with Thomas Aquinas’s version of Aristotelian tradition, which not only derogated rhetoric (as other versions of the Aristotelian tradition have done), but also insisted on a rational psychological interpretation of it. I hope to show later what consequences Shmuel’s alliance with Thomism had for his reception of Canpanton. For now, we can note that the fact that some of Canpanton’s followers ignored the concept of invention proves indirectly that this concept originated, not from the logical part of Aristotelian tradition, but rather from the rhetorical counterpart of it. Besides invention, there are two other important elements of the art of rhetoric involved in Canpanton’s instruction for a student of the Talmud: refutation and persuasion. In certain cases, the student either is or is not to attempt a refutation of what he found in his plain approach to an oration.

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It all depends on how persuasive the oration was in terms of the invention found in it. Restricted in its applicability, refutation does not therefore serve a destructive purpose, but instead is a way to refine a speculation further and to make the invention found in the oration even more persuasive. Again, the similarity between the classical rhetorical concept of refutation and Canpanton’s concept of ayçq (which functions as refutation, although it is literally translated as “contradiction,” “difficulty,” or “objection”) does not annul the difference between them. In classical rhetorical theory, refutation is an important tool used to attain the main goal of an oration: persuasion. Refutation for Canpanton works differently. For him, refutation is not a tool for persuasion, but rather the basic element involved in making sense of any oration whatsoever. Canpanton sees this sense as always occurring as an implicit refutation of the oration of another party or as the elimination of doubts an audience might have, a position that classical rhetorical theory could include but does not necessarily share. Thus, unlike the fçp , or making the oration plain, the student searches for an invention not in the immediate matter of the oration, but rather in the doubts, positions, and refutations linked to the oration by rhetorical inference. Unlike logical inference, which is always based on apodictic implications, and unlike dialectical inference, which is always based on a play of probabilities used for the purposes of winning polemics, in which one of the finite parties is destined to fail in front of another, Talmudic rhetorical inferences can be either probable or apodictic, but as we will now see, they always involve an engagement of two finite minds in front of the third, in which neither of the two “wins” and neither fully disappears from the stage of persuasion.

Logic and Rhetoric in Talmudic Speculation: Invention, Refutation, and Radical Temporality The connection between the central rhetorical concepts of invention and refutation and Canpanton’s concepts of çwdj (lit.: “invention”) and ayçq (lit.: “refutation”), which includes, of course, the differences between them, teaches us that however closely his instructions for a student link logical speculation to Talmudic speculation, this linkage becomes possible only with the help of

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the basic rhetorical concepts—invention, refutation, and their raison d’être, persuasion. Let us therefore look more closely at the relationships between logical and rhetorical concepts in Canpanton’s discourse. As Boyarin suggests, in Canpanton’s instructions to a student there are three different layers: the concepts of logical speculation (antecedent and consequent), the concepts of Talmudic speculation (the “plain” and the “exacted” approach to a text’s language), and the actual or “native” Talmudic devices given in the Talmud before Canpanton theoretically connected them to logic. With regard to these instructions, Boyarin writes: We observe here the mystery of how speculation was conceived. In fact, the way of speculation is not new. The device of objection (ayçq , lit: difficulty) afyçp ˜l [mçmq yam [“What did this oration teach us?! It was already plain in itself,” which Canpanton mentions] is native in the Talmud and is itself a citizen of it, therefore no Greek wisdom is needed for it. However, the theoretical explanation that the Gaon of Castalia gave for it on the basis of the concepts of logic made it possible for him to use this device and at the same time to give birth to a system of learning that succeeded in conquering the world of the Talmudic academies for a period of two hundred years thereafter.21

But these three layers of Talmudic speculation—“native” Talmudic devices, logical concepts, and the theorization of the former by the latter—are held together by yet another layer of concepts that we already know: invention and refutation. It is only these latter concepts that allow Canpanton to establish both the disciplinary boundary and the scholarly alliance between the two kinds of speculation, logical and Talmudic. However, unlike the first three layers, the fourth, that of invention and refutation, is much harder to isolate in terms of its disciplinary affiliation. Both the distinctions and the connections between native Talmudic devices, logical speculation, and Talmudic speculation are clearly articulated and explained by Canpanton himself, but he leaves the concepts of the fourth layer totally unexplained, as if these concepts were self-evident. At the same time, they provide a ground for both the distinctions and the connections that characterize the first three layers. What this means is that, in Canpanton’s discourse, unlike the case of native Talmudic and logical concepts, there is no distinction between the native Talmudic terms ayçq and çwdj and refutation or invention as their would-be theorizations. If there were any sense in which

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those terms have been theorized by Canpanton, such a theorization would have to have taken place somewhere beneath the surface of Canpanton’s own discourse. However difficult it is to determine the disciplinary status of the concepts of çwdj and ayçq, the difference between this pair of concepts and their rhetorical counterparts, invention and refutation, can at the very least show a direction in which one may look for a determination. Although invention and refutation are the core concepts of rhetoric, Canpanton does not use them in full compliance with classical rhetorical theory: The Talmudic student must be active in his approach, whereas the audience of a master of rhetoric not only may, but also is encouraged, to remain receptive and reactive. What is more, there is a difference in temporalities. The master of rhetoric always acts in the “here and now,” in the presence (either actual or potential) of his target audience. In contrast, the student of the Talmud deals with orations that have already happened many generations before him, and of course not initially for him. What this means is that the student of the Talmud is not present either actually or potentially in the orations he learns. Instead, his speculation, if proved correct, should eliminate the fallacies of his presence. Moreover, if the speculation is successful, one can no longer say that the student has become absent, either. A successful speculation yields no place for the individual mind of the student—neither for the fallacies that his presence has incurred, nor for his presence as an observer/ voyeur of the past. Instead, his state of mind enters the dimension of pure becoming—becoming a true Talmudic master, someone who is no longer relevant to the historical temporality of either presence, or absence, or of a historical past. The temporality in which the student is involved is that of a radical past that not only has never been present, but that has never claimed to be so. Unlike the historical past, the radical past in which the student immerses himself does not involve any presence whatsoever, not even in a sense of “the past that has never been present.” This past is neither historical nor narrative, since history and narration focus on the past as if it could be a presence distanced from a historian or a narrator, not in principle, but as a result of the unavoidable linearity of time, a distance for which the historian compensates by means of presenting the past.22

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Such an orientation of the Talmudic student toward the radical, nonhistorical past is not applicable to the acts of masters of rhetoric, who always act in the presence of their audience (again, either actual or potential). As a result of the orientation of the Talmudic student toward a past without any historical presence, either real or fictive, the rhetorical notion of refutation acquires, for Canpanton, a strong function it never had in any classical theory of rhetoric. For Canpanton, refutation becomes the primary function and the first determinant of the sense of any oration whatsoever. For Canpanton, if an oration already has taken place, it must have eliminated some doubt or have refuted some other oration, which otherwise would unrestrainedly rule the minds of the public. Thus, although the concepts of çwdj and ayçq, invention and refutation, are very difficult to define in terms of their disciplinary affiliation, these concepts, despite being clearly associated with rhetoric, when linked to their native Talmudic counterparts, leave the realm of rhetoric far behind. At the same time, without this dynamic of an implicit connection to rhetoric that nevertheless escapes classical rhetoric’s disciplinary boundaries, Canpanton could not have connected logical speculation effectively to the Talmud and could not have given birth to a new kind of speculation, Talmudic speculation.

External Judgment and the Enthymeme In the preceding analysis, what clarified the relationship between rhetoric and speculation was the focus on the radical temporality of speculative invention and refutation. It is with this promising orientation toward temporality that I will now approach another, no less crucial, but a bit more exposed concept of Canpanton’s discourse, the concept of ≈wjbm arbs , “external judgment.” Along with invention and refutation, both Canpanton’s dynamic connection to classical rhetoric and his distancing of Talmudic speculation from it are characterized by this important element, without which Canpanton’s concepts of invention and refutation would not be able to function speculatively. Making an external (that is, the student’s own) judgment on the matter of an oration of a sage of the Mishnah or of a Talmudic master is what enables the

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student to arrive at a heuristic refutation of the oration in question, and thus to get closer to discovering the point of invention in it. Like invention and refutation, the concept of external judgment is dynamically connected in Canpanton’s Talmudic speculation to the concepts of rhetoric. In fact, the concept of external judgment is a central feature of Canpanton’s system, and it is also connected to the central category of Aristotle’s rhetoric, the enthymeme. This connection emerges in a passage that both directly follows the instruction for the Talmudic student and continues it. You [the student of the Talmud] should also look very carefully at every oration and every sentence for what you would say [on the matter] based on your own power of judgment or by your reason alone before the sage or the Talmudic master begins [his oration,] because it would be extremely effective for you. Indeed, if you would have a judgment just like his, you would [heuristically] refute him, [as a Talmudic master would say] afyçp ˜ny[wmçal ata yam [lit., “What is this that you are trying to let me know? It has been already plain, even before your oration!”]. In turn, if your own judgment would be against his, you should know it and you should find out what [argumentative] necessity made him say what he said and also find out where there was a weakness or a fallacy in what you yourself would judge [without or before him]. This is called external judgment (≈wjbm arbs ). You should make it when speculating either on the Talmudic masters or on the Mikra [Torah]. Before looking at commentators who dealt with the sages or Talmudic masters,23 or with the Mikra, [always] speculate using all the efforts of your own power first, and be sure to use your own reason to try very hard to understand everything you can by yourself, because this will also give the effect mentioned above.24

If the student’s external judgment coincides with the judgment in the oration of a sage or a master, the student may heuristically refute the oration as not worth having been made. In turn, if his external judgment is in any way opposed to the oration, the student is to find out what made the master judge the way the student himself would not. External judgment thus attunes a student of the Talmud to the correct point that a master of the Talmud—or rather his oration—made his audience reach. Not without good reason, Boyarin sees metatheoretical importance in the concept of external judgment in the extrapolation of the “Babylonian Talmudic system of speculation itself” to approach the works of the post-Talmudic

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commentators of the Babylonian Talmud.25 This extrapolation occurs toward the end of the quotation above, when Canpanton switches the focus from the Talmud to its commentators, still treating external judgment as the main approach, not only to the Talmud, but also to their commentaries. Arguing that the term “external judgment” came to Talmudic speculation, not from pilpul, one of the Ashkenazi (German, French, and Eastern European) academic traditions of learning the Talmud, but rather from the Greek tradition of Aristotelianism via Arabic and then Hebrew commentators on Aristotle, Boyarin shows that the term “external judgment”—arbs ≈wjbm—was effectively connected to ynwxyj μ[f (lit. “external sense or meaning”) and was used widely by the masters of logic as they rendered Greek logical terminology into Hebrew. He shows that the term ≈wjbm appears in the works of Hebrew commentators on Aristotle’s hxylmh rps [De Interpetatione] in the sense of something “not explicitly stated in the language, however understood in it by means of the reason of a listener or reader of it, without any explicit expression for it.”26 Thus, “external is what is understood [. . .] in the reason of the speculator.”27 An example of the Greek parallel term for external judgment, εξωθεν τη προτασει υπακονομενου [interpreted as “said outside the stated,” or as Boyarin has suggested, “supplied to a proposition from the outside”], comes from a grammatical theory of the elements of sentence. A sentence may contain a grammatical element meant by every listener or reader, even if this element was left out of the sentence itself. What is outside or external here is potentially present in the mind of a listener, as opposed to actually present in the language of the written text, Boyarin claims. For the Arabic commentators on Aristotle, he claims, this external or omitted element was grasped by a listener through “understanding by subaudition,” which is no longer a purely grammatical concept, but rather belongs to a theory of exegesis.28 The term “subaudition” is crucial here because the language involved is fundamentally oral and cannot be converted to writing, or can be converted to writing only in a technical sense. This is not because sound always has something in it that the letter cannot retain, but because there are oral differences in reading that signify only as long as they are not committed to writing, or at the very least, as long as they are written down only in a technical sense. That is to say, although the texts involved are written down,

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they signify only through procedures of Talmudic learning such as hearing “the language [of the written, but originally oral text] aloud in the joy of your mind twice or thrice,” not through the mere processes of reading and comprehension. What is important in these written texts does not reveal itself to a reader unless the reader transforms himself from a recipient of an information into a learner—a speculator or contemplator. As a grammatical term for an omitted, but understood, element of a sentence, an exegetical term for understanding by subaudition, and a speculative term with its own independent life in the world of the Talmudic learning, as Boyarin himself has stressed, the concept of external judgment has had an extremely complicated trajectory in the history of ideas. To establish a terminological connection with Aristotelianism may be enough for an argument about the intellectual history of the term. But because I am interested in the nature of this connection to Aristotelianism, including specific concepts that the term “external judgment” entailed, I need to examine conceptually this link to Aristotle in more detail. And considered in terms of the issue of rhetoric in Canpanton’s system of discourse, another conceptual connection between external judgment and Aristotle emerges. Does not what is external as “what is understood . . . in the reason of the speculator” and also “understood by subaudition” represent, respectively, grammatical and exegetical interpretations of the central category of rhetoric, the enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism? And if so, do not these interpretations also reduce the category of the rhetorical enthymeme to these respective grammatical and exegetical conceptions of it?29 If this is the case, my task now is to find out where Canpanton stands with regard to these reductions. Of course, it well may be the fact that, before Brentano’s work in the nineteenth century, the Aristotelian tradition had overlooked the irreducibility of rhetoric to either logic and grammar or exegesis. Yet this does not cancel out the possibility that there was a reason that the system of Canpanton’s discourse was more sensitive to the issues of rhetoric than any other line of the Aristotelian tradition. Such a possibility can be pursued not only historically, but also discursively, and it is this last option that I choose, elaborating on the discursive dimension of the issue of external judgment and the enthymeme, rather than that of the cultural-intellectual history of Canpanton or his book. In other words, to clarify the connection of external

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judgment to the enthymeme, we need not just a history of the term, a version of which we already have in Boyarin’s work, but also a closer inquiry into the connection between the enthymeme and external judgment, which is not a matter of the similarity or difference between the terms, but rather a matter of the intellectual idioms and concepts behind them. Boyarin defines external judgment as the equivalent of the logical concept of the implicit: “it is almost without doubt that the source of the [external judgment] is in the logical-linguistic term par excellence, explained as implicit . . . external is what is understood—according to the very sense [tw[mçm] of the term [implicit]—in the reason of the speculator without being stated [explicitly] in the language of the text.”30 External judgment is implicitly present in the mind of a reader, listener, or speculator, but is nevertheless found outside of the explicit language of the text that one reads, or listens to, and on which one speculates. The term “implicit” itself, im-plicit, suggests correctly that one is dealing here with something folded into language beyond what is present in any given speech act. What is folded into language is external to the utterance, yet potentially available to it, ≈wjbm . This marks a very important spatial element of external judgment, or ≈wjbm arbs. Since such a folding could not be visualized as a wrapping—“wrapping” does not express the in-folding of the implicit—I would suggest another visualization using a term I have already employed: affinity or matching: the affinity of bodies that fit or match geometrically, being both in closest proximity and absolute externality to each other. This relation of matching enables a student of the Talmud to begin speculation by trying to match his own external judgment on the matter to the language of an oration, to a theme and to a ruling explicit in the language of the oration. If or when the student’s external judgment proves itself correct, matching the language of the oration and validating that the language of the oration has an invention, either in itself or in the consequences of the external judgment folded into it, the process of speculation on the Talmudic masters is over, and the student may now go on in the same manner to speculate on the words of the Talmudic commentators. This spatial feature of being folded into language and yet kept outside of the text makes ≈wjbm arbs something more than any logical understanding of what is implicit can entail. Nor can this spatiality be fully grasped

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by hermeneutical or psychological conceptions of a meaning once hidden and then unfolded. Therefore, neither the ontology of a hidden and then revealed meaning nor the logic/ontology of potential meaning, implicated and then actualized or explicated, can sufficiently characterize what ≈wjbm arbs is: the innermost element in a text that yet is always grasped only from outside it—≈wjbm. The best approximation of this concept is of course the enthymeme, which, contrary to the later Latin Aristotelian tradition, cannot be reduced to a logical syllogism, a rational psychological concept of meaning, or a hermeneutical concept of subaudition. Some details of the concept of external judgment or ≈wjbm arbs in the dimension that I call rhetorical are best explicated in terms of Boyarin’s elaboration of external judgment as logical and hermeneutical. As he suggests, the two central logical and hermeneutical concepts in Arabic and Jewish Aristotelianism in the Middle Ages were ˜wçl and ˜yyn[, respectively a linguistic expression and the matter to which it relates. Thus, in Boyarin’s example of Maimonides’ use of the term ˜yyn[ (matter), the term “language” is homonymous because it applies to three different matters—the ability of speech, inner speech, and outer speech. Maimonides characterized outer speech as the “linguistic interpretation/expression of a matter written in the soul,” where what is “written in the soul” seems to render what is meant by “inner speech.” This itself should teach us that the ability of rational speech has to do, first of all, with an ability to read or voice the written, either on parchment or on the tablets of the soul. Even if, for Maimonides, “matter” refers to inner speech, to writing in the soul, the task of logic or rational reasoning is not only to investigate the truth written in the soul, but also to follow its hermeneutic relationship to outer speech. Therefore, a hermeneutic agenda of connecting the inner writing in the soul to the outer linguistic expression of it is a part of what logic should do, Boyarin suggests, while referring to both Maimonides and Canpanton.31 Assuredly, matter and language, ˜wçl and ˜yyn[, are two central concepts, not only for Maimonides, but for Canpanton, too. Matter is what is judged in an external judgment, and its language (the theme and ruling in it) is what external judgment and its matter should match as closely as possible. Yet the question is: Are matter and its language connected, for Canpanton, only in

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the ways of logic and hermeneutics alone? Do we not already know that this connection is not achieved via logical syllogism, but rather via exaction? If exaction takes the place of the logical syllogism for Canpanton, and if hermeneutics, for Maimonides, was a part of logic, should not the procedure of exaction involve some substitute for hermeneutical concepts, as well? I suggest that for Canpanton, the place of the central Aristotelian/Maimonidean hermeneutical concept of meaning is occupied by another concept: external judgment or ≈wjbm arbs . What the student of the Talmud begins with and what he ends up with is not merely the hermeneutical meaning of the language of the text, not merely a link between an outer linguistic expression and the true inner writing in the soul. Rather, it is something parallel to meaning, yet not fully coincident with it. The student begins his speculation with an external judgment that in the beginning may not necessarily match the language of the text, and that in the end must approximate that language as fully as possible, without, however, ceasing to be external to it. I suggest, therefore, that in Canpanton’s Talmudic speculation, external judgment is conceptually not meaning, but still plays the role that meaning plays in the logical hermeneutics of outer speech and inner language. The difference between meaning and matter in Canpanton’s speculation may become more apparent if we consider a distinction that Boyarin highlights in the work of Al Farabi. Al Farabi distinguished between a linguist dealing with language alone, that is, with an outer speech full of meanings, both synonymous and homonymous, and a logician/interpreter dealing primarily with matter and only instrumentally with language and its meanings.32 For him, both synonymy and homonymy are categories of linguistics, not of logic or hermeneutics. The latter two disciplines seek not meanings, but rather matters written in the soul. However, what is written in the soul can be read only by means of an expression in outer speech, which is itself inevitably loaded with both homonymy and synonymy in linguistic meanings and is therefore foreign to the writing in the soul, which in itself is not the outer speech of anyone. Therefore, not only should synonymy be excluded from reading from the soul, but homonymy does not belong to what is written there, either, even if it remains in reading, which is inevitably the act of outer expression.

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For Al Farabi, like other thinkers of the so-called “first rationalism”33 who approached the soul as the tablet of writing, the soul itself cannot speak, nor is the soul a record of any speech. Rather, it is a primary writing that is also nothing less than the revealed truth, and it is the task of the logician to understand or to read it rationally. Since reading the truth inevitably involves an extraneous element, outer speech, the logician has to reach a compromise and ally with the linguist and his categories of meaning, the synonymy and homonymy built into any linguistic expression. Remarkably, this approach to the soul as writing to be read logically was so strong in the tradition of rationalism that it survived the revolutionary transition from the first, medieval rationalism, to the second, modern rationalism, which held the soul to be a blank tablet, a tabula rasa (Locke), a tablet for writing, even if no character was initially engraved in it. At any rate, for Al Farabi, meaning remained an extraneous, but still inevitable element in the reading from the soul, and therefore the hermeneutics or grammatics of meaning should be distinguished from writing, to which meaning was supplied by outer speech. For Al Farabi, writing is what is termed ˜yyn[ (matter), and outer speech is what is termed ˜wçl (linguistic expression, or language).

Rhetoric and Truth: Imagination and Disagreement What intellectually distinguishes Canpanton from both Al Farabi and Maimonides is Canpanton’s radical break with the univocal rationality of infinite, logical reason in favor of the Talmudic rationality of a well-tempered disagreement. In Maimonidean terms, Canpanton does not fully accept the primacy of reason over imagination.34 The concept of truth as writing in the soul was one of the central elements of Maimonides’ philosophy, reflected also in his attitude toward the Talmud. For Maimonides, the Talmud is all about the rhetorical game of the imagination, whereas the truth is the Written Torah itself, which thus should be approached rationally and logically, not rhetorically and imaginatively. The Talmud, for Maimonides, is thus secondary. What is primary is only the Written Torah, along with rational interpretations of it in commandments, the interpretation that the Talmud achieved with the addition of imagination and that therefore, at least for

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rational philosophers, must be purified of this addition, which Maimonides accomplishes in his rational codifications of the Oral Torah. Like Maimonides and Arabic Aristotelians, Canpanton sees meaning as connected to language, not to the matter in the soul. Unlike them, he does not hold imagination to be secondary to reason, nor does he treat the Talmud secondary to the Torah, Oral and Written. He does not consider “imaginative” rhetoric secondary to “rational” logic, either.35 According to Maimonides, the difference between a linguist and a logical interpreter is that the linguist does not deal with the inner writing in the soul. Unlike language, which could be potentially wrong, the writing in the soul is always true, that is, it corresponds to its matter and therefore excludes any synonymy whatsoever. As Boyarin explains it, whatever seems to be synonymic is, in truth, related to different matters. This helps him also to explain why, unlike the commentators on the Talmud, Talmudic speculation totally rejects any possibility of synonyms, insisting that any change in language must be measured against a possible change in matter. Thus, a change in language is not a purely linguistic event, and if it is connected to grammar, then it could be connected only to one kind of grammar, that of the inner writing. Thus, the measurement of a linguistic change or deviation is not based on any linguistic norm, but rather on relationships between matter and language that, for Canpanton, unlike for Maimonides, are controlled by the rhetorical concept of çwdj , or invention, rather than by a pure, logical concept of truth. Unlike Maimonides, for Canpanton, the criteria for truth are not merely found in correlations between language and matter, or in correlations between outer speech and inner writing, but in the presence of an invention in a given text as opposed to the matter supplied to it from the outside. Because the category of logical truth for Canpanton is connected to the rhetorical category of invention, this reduces the question of truth to the question of speculative correctness (invention), rather than to that of logical correctness, or logical truth. If there is an invention, and if the external judgment matches its language, the external judgment is rhetorically correct, irrefutable, and therefore, if you like, true. This rhetorical element of Canpanton’s theory of speculation is already missing in the logical, hermeneutical, and rational psychological approaches to speculation found in the work of Canpanton’s follower, Said Shmuel Ibn

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Sidilio, whom I mentioned earlier. In the introductory part of his book lawmç yllk (The Rules of Shmuel), analyzed and translated by Boyarin in “Moslem, Christian, and Jewish Cultural Interaction in Sephardic Talmudic Interpretation,”36 Said Shmuel Ibn Sidilio “explicitly indicates the theoretical basis of speculative learning”:37 As is known, letters teach on matters in the soul, and if the speculator [wants] to constitute the intention that [was] in his soul, he would better do so by means of letters teaching what was in his soul, and there should be neither any addition nor any lack in them, just like a way in which a drawing in the soul (= matter in the soul) will establish itself in the letters teaching on one matter or in letters teaching on several matters. Letters teach on one matter in the Mishnah in front of us saying “Gold acquires silver.” Was the intention in these letters to let you know that grabbing golden coins can cause silver coins to be acquired? Was that an intention for which one established “Gold acquires silver”? In truth, those letters do not teach you on the intention that [was] in the soul, because there is a difference between “Gold acquires silver” and “grabbing golden coins can cause silver coins to be acquired” drawn in the soul. And because there is a difference, it should occur to us to refute: [the draft drawing]. Was not the teacher exact in his language?! As we assumed, one who establishes his intention should do it in the letters teaching on the intention that [was] in the soul!38

What we see here is Maimonides’ theory of writing (= drawing) in the soul applied to the theory of speculation, Boyarin suggests.39 As he also notes in another place,40 the author of The Rules of Shmuel differs in his terminology from Canpanton and is clearly intellectually connected to Thomist or rational psychological interpretations of Aristotle. Agreeing with Boyarin that there is a clear continuity between Canpanton’s theory of speculation and that of his follower, I would nevertheless not underestimate the differences that are evident between the discourses. Canpanton’s terminology and indeed conceptual apparatus of speculation are essentially different. The difference between Maimonides’ theory of writing in the soul or the Thomist interpretation of it in The Rules of Shmuel and Canpanton’s own theory of speculation can be further illustrated in the following passage from Canpanton, in which, instead of making a merely logical comparison between writing in the soul and outer speech, Canpanton’s student becomes involved in restoring a rhetorical or polemical situation in which more than

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one soul, and indeed more than one reason, are polemically involved with each other. Canpanton writes: A commentator [on the Talmud] could also [take the trouble of] explaining the matter, in order to prevent [a speculator] from being disposed toward another [matter] or to prevent him from making another explanation that would [otherwise] be possible if based on the power of the language [in the text alone]; since according to the plain senses of the speeches one could have mistaken [them] and reflect on some other disposition [toward them]. And [he took trouble of explaining this] in order [that they might] refrain from this and to prevent the speculators from being disposed toward it. [The commentator did so] because in truth, it was either a lie, or a weak explanation, or a stretched one, and he just explains that. And if you would like to focus on the intention of the commentator and find out from which explanation he refrained, or which judgment he excluded, you should do your best in speculating on his explanation and exact it, and invoke what could either overthrow it, or go against it, or subvert it. Thereby you will dispose yourself to what he himself refrained from. Then you will also have to inquire what necessitated his [choice of] this explanation and not of the other one, which was overthrowing it and [also] to say what proves [your] explanation [of it] against another.41

What we have here is not only the heavy use of the logical concepts of the modality of propositions such as “necessary” and “possible,” but also of the logical-hermeneutical concept of “the power [or potentiality] of the language” already emphasized by Boyarin. In addition to that, however, the passage is full of rhetorical elaboration. Propositions do not just explicitly necessitate rulings on their respective themes, or claim that some rulings are possible, or negate the possibility of some other rulings. Rather, propositions work implicitly to restrain one from considering other propositions that are outside the inner semantic fields of the first propositions. And it is this business of implicit restraint that stands in the main focus of Canpanton’s speculation. Logical modalities (i.e., necessary, possible) work here as aids to manage a field that itself does not fully belong to logic—the field of disagreement, which is granted the privilege of being more than simply the product of mistakes. The rhetorical rather than logical use of modalities becomes even clearer if we look at the following passage, in which Canpanton describes the modalities of relationship between language and matter:

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What Is Talmud? Every speech and its language would be either necessary, or sufficient, or abstained [[nmn ]. By “necessary” I mean that the language teaches on a matter by necessity. By “sufficient” I mean that the language teaches on the matter, but not assuredly, since it is still possible that it teaches on some other matter, and this is called homonymic language [πtwçm ˜wçl , lit.: shared language]. By “abstained” I mean that the language has abstained from teaching on the matter. Thus, you should speculate on it as to what kind it [the speech or its language] belongs.42

As Boyarin notes,43 the term “sufficient” does not belong to logical modalities, but rather—interpreted as “homonymy”—to semantics, specifically to the theory of names. The logical mode parallel to the “sufficient” in Talmudic speculation would be “possible,” while the parallel for “abstained” would be “impossible.” For ease of reference, in Table 3-1 I summarize the terminological parallels in hermeneutical, logical, and Canpanton’s own speculative concepts: Table 3-1. Terminological Parallels in Hermeneutical, Logical, and Canpanton’s Own Speculative Concepts The terms of hermeneutics/semantics

The terms of the modalities of propositions

Canpanton’s terms of the relationship of language and matter

True (univocal) interpretation

Necessary

Necessary

Equivocal interpretation

Possible

Sufficient

False interpretation

Impossible

Abstained

As we remember, in Canpanton, the matter in a text can be attained only through an external judgment, which the student should keep refining until it matches the language of the text well. Only then can the external judgment correctly identify the matter of the language. Therefore, although the proposition should match the external judgment, the judgment itself and the matter of it do not directly belong either to the semantic field of the proposition or to the correctness of its logic. Rather, they belong to the situation of disagreement in which this proposition arises. This is why, when applied to the relationship between language and matter, neither logical nor hermeneutical/semantic concepts remain stable: They cannot, because

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they describe a relation that is beyond their reach. As Boyarin has suggested, the parallelism of the relationship between language and matter, on the one hand, and the logical-modal relations of theme and rheme (ruling) in a proposition, on the other, is the key to Canpanton’s approach. I could only add that the logical-semantic parallelism involves not only the similarity of the concepts of logic and hermeneutics, but also a difference that emerges from applying both of the ranks of concepts—logical and semantic—to a relation external to their proper use. For Canpanton, the categories of logical modalities and those of semantics are parallel to each other only because they both are located within a third conceptual territory, speculation, to which, if taken separately, none of them would belong. As foreign to both logic and semantics, the concept of ongoing and welltempered disagreement would appear in those disciplines, either as a mistake to be corrected or as the result of misinterpretation. In contrast to that, for Canpanton, in the Talmudic commentaries, and indeed in the Talmud itself, a disagreement or a position that one is not to agree with plays key roles. Both the followers and adversaries of Canpanton felt the centrality of this role so well that sometimes they even mistreated Talmudic speculation as a process aimed at inventing wrong interpretations and disproving them simply for the sake of doing so.44 Yet even if it is not expected to lead to a final agreement, disagreement in Canpanton’s speculation is in no way self-sufficient. Rather, according to Boyarin, it provides Canpanton with a basis for answering the following question: If, as Canpanton assumed, the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmudic masters were superior in speculation, and thus all their propositions were univocally necessary or both logically and semantically perfect, then why did the commentators of the Talmud not hesitate to distort the perfection of the masters by commentaries, which must inevitably be less perfect than the words of the masters themselves? The answer to this is that a commentary comes into being only where commentator A implicitly disagrees with commentator B, who, given his own set of premises, would be correct, but whose commentary is still unacceptable to commentator A, since A has a different set of premises. As is well known, a difference in premises is beyond the control of either logic or hermeneutics. At the very best, these disciplines can only help to

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isolate the premises, not to control them. Yet it is exactly this correlative difference in premises, or the correlation of different sets of premises, that Canpanton wants to control. It is only the difference in premises between the commentators that helps a student to isolate the matter matching the language of a Talmudic master. For Canpanton, any judgment that is external to the perfect language of a Talmudic master and that also is perfect in both logic and hermeneutics must be a rejection of another judgment, with its respective set of premises. At the same time, without such a rejection, external judgment cannot play its main role—to bring the language of the master to its matter: Now it becomes clear that if the language of the Talmud is of the kind called univoque or necessary, that is, potentially teaches only one thing, there could be no other explanation from which a commentator should refrain, because the language was strict in meaning by necessity. . . . Thus, the commentator would have to restrain his hand. Thus, if despite this, the commentator still proposed an explanation, the language must have been of the kind called homonymous, because it would provide different possibilities of meaning. Therefore, the commentator did so in order to dismiss any meanings that are still possible, yet mistaken, and thus necessitate a true explanation.45

To save the assumption of the logically necessary and hermeneutically univocal character of the Talmud, Boyarin offers a distinction between what is equivocal and what is ambiguous. What can be ambiguous in itself becomes equivocal only if it is connected to different sets of premises with regard to it. Since different commentators may have different sets of premises with regard to the same passage of a Talmudic master (here I am very close to the language of ≈wjbm arbs), a commentator has to offer his commentary as an implicit refutation of another commentary with which he disagrees. It is the task of the student to find this implicit refutation by restoring the premises of both disagreeing commentators and then to justify each of them in terms of their respective logical correctness with regard to their own premises. However, the nature of these variable premises can be easily missed, and indeed was missed by many of Canpanton’s followers and adversaries. If the premises in question are logical, they must have been established either voluntarily or spontaneously before the logical process began. Since logical necessitation would not go as far as to control the premises, the commentators would disagree with each other simply because of a difference in

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premises that logic could not fully control. Therefore, as we have seen, their disagreement itself would not be logical in nature. This does not help us, however, to grasp why each of them, with his own set of premises, would still need to keep the apposition of the other in view. And did not involvement in the implicit rejection of the other’s commentary constitute the only element that justified making any commentary at all? Again, Canpanton saw not only a close connection between the Talmud and logic and hermeneutics, but also a strong difference between them. Therefore, along with the logical concept of premises, we should look for a Talmudic or speculative parallel to it. Here again, Talmudic ≈wjbm arbs and rhetoric’s enthymeme (if not interpreted logically) can be very helpful, since both ≈wjbm arbs and the enthymeme entail an inner element of an oration that is always spatially outside of its immediate language, just as the premises are. Moreover, this spatial, external character of premises cannot be fully grasped by the logical concept of a premise.46 This innermost but always external element of a text, its matter, belongs to an oration, to a rhetorical act, that for both Aristotle and Canpanton is never a mere communication, but always a refutation. In other words, for both Aristotle and Canpanton, refutation is the innermost part of any oration, an intrinsic element of it, the only one that ultimately matters, because it is the only element that makes the oration worth making. It is the core element of both its validity and its matter. Kant’s definition of man—“man is a refuse”—thus also defines the student of Talmudic speculation, although not in any humanistic or moral sense, but rather in a rhetorical one: The student of the Talmud is “a refuse,” in that he eliminates doubt, but doubt, in order to be eliminated, must first be found. He refutes an external judgment that, in order to be refuted and thus be further refined, must first be established. Disagreement is the internal element a student must seek in order to establish his external judgment and to refine it further, an element that, as we have seen, logic would fatally miss altogether. Here we reach another element of the system of speculation, that of refraining (hrymç), which Boyarin connects to the logical concept of the mistake. As he writes: Also the concept of “refraining” (hrymç , lit.: keeping out) has its source in logic. One of the functions of logic is defined in its classical books as “keeping out of wondering in all ways that reason approves.” Yet among the arts of logic, there is one, the art of mistakes, that is defined by Al Gazali as “warning about

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watching out and keeping out [of them].” And also, in the writings of masters of speculation, both of the terms are used. Some say that in his commentary, Rashi [1040–1105, France, Germany] “is watching out” for another commentary, while others say that Rashi “keeps himself out” of another commentary. I would deem it obvious that those usages [in Hebrew] are identical to “watching out and keeping out” [in the language of Al Gazali].47

Not only is refraining from a mistake an important element of any work of commentary, but also the core agenda of a commentator involves disproving another, mistaken commentary, and therefore the commentator needs always to keep the mistake in view. This demand, however, is not purely logical. For a logician, it would be enough to identify a mistake, to eliminate it, and then to forget it, to lose sight of it. However, for a student of the Talmudic commentators (if not of the Talmud itself), the point is to keep the corrected mistake in view. The commentary itself cannot be approached correctly unless we know which “mistaken commentary” the commentator tries to restrain us from entering into. (Here, we are, again, close to the concept of ≈wjbm, “from the outside.”) As Boyarin also stresses, those mistakes should look as if they were not mistakes. He correctly connects such strong mistakes to sophism and especially to the sophisms built on homonymy. It is the work of speculation to sort out connections between the language of a text and its matter that are hermeneutically only equivocal, logically only possible, and speculatively only sufficient (or homonymous), and to keep out of all except the correct ones, that is, except those that stand up well against refutations and that also have a strong invention in them. Of course, the bare result of such sorting out does not make correct connections hermeneutically (linguistically) univocal or logically and speculatively necessary. This is why retaining the correct connections demands keeping the mistaken connections in view. If the mistaken connections qualify logically as possible and speculatively as sufficient, would they still be correctly called “logical mistakes” or even “sophisms”? Do they not have in themselves an element of speculative necessity, the necessity of an intermediary point, unavoidable on one’s way to the correct connection of a text’s language and its matter, of a point that a student should not forget on the way to the end stage of the speculation? This intermediary point remains unavoidable, even if later it will be left

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behind and only “kept in view.” Therefore, to distinguish between (1) connections speculatively sufficient and yet refutable in terms of their invention, and (2) merely logical mistakes or sophisms, I would term the refutable connections not “mistakes,” but rather “failures,” as it says in the Talmud, “One cannot stand on the words of Torah unless one fails in them” (dmw[ μda ˜ya ˜hb lçkn awh ˜k μa ala hrwt yrbdb).48 To clarify the relationship between failures and mistakes further, I would also use Boyarin’s suggestion, that in Talmudic speculation, the concept of “logical mistakes” plays a role that goes far beyond the work of Talmudic commentators, reaching as far as the Talmud itself. As he notes in another place, Canpanton developed a parallelism between speculation on the commentators and speculation on the Talmud itself, with the common denominator of the two. That common denominator is Canpanton’s notion of external judgment and therefore a polemical agenda of disagreement on what is the matter behind the given language. In his own formulation, “In Talmudic speculation, knowledge of mistakes . . . became the epistemological principle.”49 In the words of Canpanton: Whenever you speculate on any thesis or on any matter, just as should you dispose yourself to speculate on the language of this matter as well as you can, so also you should search for the ways of refuting it and raise doubts about this matter first and [then] attune [yourself] (t[dl , lit: to know, to possess, to learn etc.) to the mistakes and refutations one could make, and that would cause you to be disposed [˚dym[hl hbys , italics are mine—S.D.] to a truthful understanding of the matter in question in a healthy [way].50

To clarify this epistemological aspect of mistakes, we need to pay attention to the category of cause in its ontological dimension. What “causes you to be disposed” immediately not only takes us beyond the realm of the epistemological methods and logic of speculation, but places us directly in the realm of ontological causes that lead to a “healthy” understanding of the matter. What makes it hard to traverse the short distance between the epistemology of what “causes you to be disposed to a truthful understanding of the matter” and the ontology of it is a psychological interpretation of disposition, or attunement, that makes one think that Canpanton refers to the psychological cognitive state of the personal mind of the student and to its logical correlative—personal, rational, logical thinking. However, one has to take

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into account that once the student’s speculation succeeds and his external judgment, or as psychologist would say, external opinion, comes to match the language of the text, the personality of the student is no longer relevant to the external judgment established. What really matters is the finitude of the achieved result, which is, though not personal, finite because it represents a refutation of yet another finite judgment or another matter. Indeed, the fundamental orientation of Canpanton’s speculation toward a radical past with no claim of presence becomes possible only because of the finite character of the parties (sages, masters, or students in their roles) involved in a disagreement. The finitude of the parties in disagreement is nothing but another side of the radical past of the disagreement itself. No valid disagreement could occur in infinite and thus completely logical reason. Only finite parties can disagree with each other authentically. Since, however, in the speculation, the disagreement should not be a result of a logical or psychological mistake, the finite parties in disagreement cannot be just single psychological entities or individuals marked by their historical presence. Neither parties in infinite logical reason nor psychological or historical individuals present either “now” or “before”; the finite parties in disagreement cannot simply be approached logically, historically, or psychologically. It is another, more accurate approach to their authenticity in the radical past that Canpanton’s speculation offers as a challenge, to which a student of the Talmud responds through the process of speculation. The disposition to truthful understanding or to its cause is thus not psychological. By the rule of excluded middle, it should be ontological. And yet, I still think it is perfectly correct not to take what “causes you to be disposed to a truthful understanding of the matter” as an ontological cause either. At the very least, it was correct not to do so as long as ontology was seen as traditionally, if not inevitably, a permanent correlative of logic. The finite character of the student’s disposition to a “healthy” understanding of the matter caused by attuning him to mistakes and refutations is defined by the requirement to keep those mistakes and refutations in view: Without mistakes, or rather, without failures, the student would lose his disposition toward understanding the matter in a “healthy way.” In other words, the student in the process of speculation is not merely a psychological character in whose mind a psychological/cognitive process of

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speculation occurs. The student is not a cognitive milieu in which speculation happens, either. Rather, he and his finitude are unavoidable parts of a process that, without this finite participant, would not happen at all, not even in the infinity of eternal logical reason. Infinite logical reason could not speculate “Talmudically,” but only logically. It could not, because it would never take failures seriously; nor could infinite reason distinguish fairly enough between failures and mistakes. Yet all the classical versions of ontology were tightly connected to an assumption of infinite reason. Thus, it is perfectly correct not to make the leap from Canpanton’s speculation to an ontology, at the very least if the ontology is still connected to logic.

Metaphysics and Ontology in The Ways of the Talmud Given this justifiable oscillation over whether or not to view the epistemological causes of speculation ontologically, I need to undertake a clearer account of the relationship between Canpanton’s speculation and ontology. Since the logical and linguistic counterparts of Canpanton’s system of speculation have clear valences for, or even grounds in, the issues of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and, on a broader scale, in issues of ontology, one can legitimately ask whether there is any version of ontology to which Canpanton’s speculation would effectively connect. In other words, what would be the ontological status of Canpanton’s speculation, if any? As I argued above, his speculation is characterized by neither logical syllogisms nor a hermeneutical search for meaning, but rather by the procedures of exaction and those of a student’s external judgments on the orations of Talmudic sages or masters of the past. What is more, that past to which the sages or masters themselves belong is a radical past. Not only has it never been present, but it barely has any strong pretense of re-presenting anything of the past or present in it, unless such representations were an immanent part in the orations themselves. This past without any claim to presence affects not only a student’s attitude toward the Talmudic masters, but even those masters’ attitudes toward their own orations. For a student of the Talmudic masters, the only necessary, and not merely optional, element of the past of the masters’ orations is that the orations have already taken place and

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are therefore to be granted an unquestionable validity—something that, since it happened, did not happen in vain. This validity, however, is what is to be clarified (or reinvented) by the student through the process of speculation. This radical past dominates the process of speculation in yet another way: By the end of the speculation, the physical or psychological presence or absence in the “here and now” of the student’s own time becomes irrelevant to the successful student of the Talmud. If the procedures of speculation, external judgment, and exaction are all executed correctly, the personal presence of a student simply is no longer pertinent to the disagreement between the sages or masters of the past. This student does not enter into any new presence of the historical past, either. Instead of being present, he experiences a disagreement between the sages that now, at the peak of his speculation, underwrites the validity of the sages’ or masters’ orations in their radical past. At the same time, the masters’ personal historical being or not being is also irrelevant for the disagreement undertaken in their names, because their names designate only a disagreement (re)constructed by the student to match their respective orations correctly. The Talmudic masters disagree if, and only if, there is a cause and this cause can be eliminated neither by correcting a mistake, nor by any voluntary act of agreement. The disagreement between parties comes neither from a logical mistake nor from a conflict of interests, but rather is constituted as a relationship between parties emerging as permanently disagreeing eons (or multiple, finite eternities) that refine and define each other due to the process of their disagreement. The disagreement in question is thoroughly impersonal and thus involuntary: Although it is represented by the personal names of the masters, those names no longer belong to any biographical personalities, but rather designate eternal profiles that could always be manned anytime by anyone capable of understanding the disagreement, or “contemplating” it, to use Canpanton’s term. The personal names of the parties in disagreement are no more than synecdoches for the event of disagreement itself. Again, because any oration is always already a refutation, the point of getting the refutation right consists not in agreeing with it, but rather in disagreeing with it intelligently.

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As a result of the impersonal nature of disagreement in the Talmud, a successful speculation dissolves the personal presence of the student, who experiences only the disagreement between the sages of the past. In turn, the sages or masters themselves emerge merely as names for their own positions in the disagreement, which are now invented or reinvented by the student from the outside—“his” outside. In addition, none of the sages are an ultimate source of their own specific positions, either. Once reinvented by the student, the position of a sage can stand only as a refutation of the position of another sage. A result of this dynamic is that, as we have seen, once correctly established in speculation, a disagreement between the sages or masters has no longer any authentic dimension in any order of time exterior to the disagreement itself. Moreover, the inner time of the disagreement is not based on the historical past. A would-be “historical” fact that the disagreement took place is now attested only by the speculative impossibility of eliminating this disagreement by rational means. This impossibility must be conditionally granted at the beginning of the speculation, and is to be absolutely confirmed by the end of it. Although without any authentic relation to the external historical past, the disagreement is nevertheless related to the past in a much more radical sense: The student has always to prove the authenticity of the disagreement between the sages as a fact of the past, and thus as past. In speculation, this authenticity of the disagreement can be doubted only temporarily, but can never be fully rejected without, at the same time, rejecting the disagreement itself. Therefore the disagreement between the sages never loses its complete belonging to a past that never is or was present. The radical past of the orations in disagreement thus links a student not to the linear time of past-present-future, and not even to psychological reverberations of it in terms of an imaginary or symbolic past, which sometimes may function ideologically in the political disagreements of the present. Rather, grasping the radical past of the disagreement via external judgment and exaction, the student approaches orations in the past from the outside until he reaches the point of matching them, a point at which his own outside personality becomes irrelevant, thereby taking the process of speculation to its successful end. Authentic disagreement thus becomes the

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end point that the student has to reach in order to master the oration of the masters or the sages of the past. Since the radical past induced by the operations of exaction and external judgment underwrites Canpanton’s discourse of speculation, and since the issue of time in the post-Heideggerian tradition became one of the main concerns of both ontology and metaphysics, the concepts of external judgment and exaction lead us to some possible metaphysical implications of, or even grounds for, Talmudic speculation, whether or not those implications would still belong to ontology in any of its classical variations. Any such search for the ontological/metaphysical implications of Canpanton’s approach should be done in parallel and in comparison with the already-known ontological implications of the logical, linguistic, and hermeneutical approaches that Canpanton both engaged and distanced himself from at the same time. To begin drawing this comparison and parallel, one may recall that Canpanton mobilized hermeneutical notions of semantics as well as logical notions of the modality of propositions for a task that does not belong to logic or semantics proper. He used these disciplines to measure the relation of a proposition, or, taken rhetorically, an oration, to its matter, a task that remains foreign to both logic and semantics. Semantics can control only signs and their meanings, without, however, deciding on their truthfulness to matters they may involve. Similarly, logic can control only the correctness of conclusions, regardless of any particular matter about which these conclusions are made. The matter of an oration may thus well go beyond both the hermeneutical meaning and the logical correctness of the propositions in the oration itself. Given that the matter in an oration may go beyond the denotations, significations, or manifestations in the propositions of an oration, what would be an authentic matter that the oration involves ontologically? To approach this, we need to recall that the union of logic with semantics in the Aristotelian tradition was based on both ontological and hermeneutical principles, on both logos and ousia,51 or, in Latin, logos and ontos, which are mutually implicated in each other. This remains the key point in any version of ontology. Two theoretical versions of ontology were particularly relevant, both for Canpanton and for the followers of his speculative approach to the Talmud. Based on my discussion of Canpanton and Spinoza in Chapter 2, I will call

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these two versions “logical” and “expressionist” ontologies. The logical version of ontology builds on such concepts as the possible and the actual, the implicit and the explicit. In this version of ontology, the categories of the possible and the implicit are linked to the potential for presence: The possible or the implicit is potentially present, but actually absent. What actual absence means here is nothing but presence in some other place, in potentiality. In such an ontological approach, the category of expression, if at all involved, can play only a secondary role. Reduced to explication, expression remains one of the many other ways of making the potential actual, the absent present, the possible real. Thomas’s tradition of Aristotelianism was the place where this approach flourished. The expressionist approach to ontology not only places the category of expression at the very center of the connection between logos and ousia, but also considers this connection to be definitive of logos and ousia themselves. In this approach, any relationship between the potential and the actual, the implicit and the explicit, occurs through the process of expression, which, as Gilles Deleuze put it,52 has a tripartite organization: what is being potentially expressed (substance), what is actually expressed (one of the manifold attributes of the substance), and, finally, the result of the process of expression, the expression itself (modus). Nothing potential or implicit is present or absent anywhere unless it is involved in the process of expression, in which, however, it never becomes expressed (or explicated) in full. In this expressionist approach, expression is thus no longer a secondary function of being. Instead, the process of expression and its result, the expression itself, underwrite all other traditional ontological characteristics of being, such as substance, attribute, and modus, as well as the less traditional aspects of ontology, such as presence, absence, and time. Spinoza’s philosophy of substance, according to Deleuze, is the locus classicus for the expressionist approach to ontology. Is Canpanton an expressionist in that sense? The hermeneutics of expression is based on the ontological principle that says expression is something without which being can neither be grasped nor be. Depending on how one regards the place of rhetoric with regard to metaphysics, as outlined in this volume in Chapter 2, expression either has been thought to have no connection to the issues of metaphysics, or, more

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recently, in poststructuralism, by an irony of a precise inversion, has been seen as underwriting some systems of ontology and epistemology,53 both traditional and post-Heideggerian.54 The question, therefore, is where Canpanton’s categories of external judgment, exaction, and ultimately of a radical past stand with regard to these two—logical and expressionist—projects of ontology. I propose that Canpanton can neither be fully reduced to either of these classical, mutually exclusive philosophical versions of ontology, nor can he be completely detached from them. What is more, he does not represent any third version of ontology. Since Talmudic speculation does not belong to logic or hermeneutics, but only parallels them, substituting categories of its own such as exaction and external judgment, Canpanton’s metaphysics does not fully comply with the logical version of ontology. In turn, it does not comply with the expressionist (hermeneutical) version of ontology, either: What the expressionist version of ontology lacks is the role played by the radical past in reaching the stage of authentic disagreement between masters. Canpanton’s speculation therefore has a version of metaphysics parallel to, but not identical with, both expressionist and logical versions of philosophical ontology. Even if this parallel version of metaphysics does not become just another version of ontology, Canpanton’s metaphysics still is relevant to the agenda of ontology. In this regard, I propose that what ontology achieved through the question of being is achieved for Canpanton by means of the issue of disagreement between masters in the radical past. The disagreement contemplated in the radical past is no longer an intermediary point on the way to consensus, but rather is the fact of a radical past that, in order to remain so, challenges the student to speculate.

The Inverted Truth I will exemplify Canpanton’s position with regard to logical and expressionist projects of ontology by means of one of the most compelling ontological issues, that of truth. Students of Canpanton polemicized with his adversaries on the nature of speculation: Is speculation the spuriously endless creation

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of interpretations followed by failing all of them, or does speculation still have an inherent logical or hermeneutical taste for truth? Unlike both the followers and the adversaries of speculation, Canpanton himself did not seem to overemphasize the issue of logical or hermeneutical truth. On the occasions when he himself spoke of truth, he approached it rhetorically, rather than logically: “truth is recognizable only through the inversion of it.” The inversion in question leads not only to what is logically opposite or linguistically different; it primarily leads to what the truth rhetorically refutes. Inversion thus means nothing else but what is refuted. So for Canpanton, finding the refuted element in the truth becomes the high road to recognizing a given truth itself. The categories of logical or hermeneutical truth can therefore be neither rejected by Canpanton, nor can they be at the center of his speculation. Approaching the truth by means of an element refuted in it makes truth nothing but a rhetorical oration, which, if taken correctly, matches the external judgment of a speculator, a judgment that mostly fits the language of the oration. Since, however, the refuted element and the process of refutation are always to be there as elements of an external judgment of the student, the only strict demand that Canpanton has for the external judgment is that it should match the language of the original, yet remain outside it, in the dimension of disagreement, not in that of immediate meaning. Thus, truth is not immanent to a proposition or to its language, but rather is a response to what the oration refutes. In Canpanton’s own example, the truth about the proposition “This ring is of true gold,” is not that “this ring is truly gold,” but rather the refutation of the ever-present but always implicit doubt that the ring may have been faked. Without such an implicit doubt, the oration “This ring is of true gold” would refer to a self-evident truth and would not be worth making. What this element of refutation in truth means is that, for Canpanton, even if one may believe that there is only one truth behind each proposition, there is no guarantee of it. More specifically, the connection between external judgment and an oration is not that of the correspondence of logos to ousia that grounded logical, hermeneutical, and epistemological concepts of truth; the connection between logos and ousia in the ontological projects of truth is immanent. The connection between an oration and an external judgment

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with regard to its matter is not immanent, but rather is characterized by an external—but maximized—proximity between the oration and the external judgment on its matter. This proximity could be also termed an “affinity” or “congruence” of the matter and the language of the text, with the matter still and always outside of the language of the text, an outside that is also outside the presence or absence of meaning accessible to both logic and hermeneutics. The matter—and thus the truth—in the oration can thus be fully re-presented neither hermeneutically nor logically, nor will it yield itself to semantics, or theory of signification. This has, of course, a very important ontological aspect that puts Canpanton precisely betwixt and between ontology as a logic of the implicit and explicit and ontology as the hermeneutics of expression. Without that aspect, Canpanton’s standing between the logic of explicating the implicit and the hermeneutics of expression would be impossible. As Boyarin puts it, “Therefore what is said in a text must be explicated as either an addition or as consequent of an external judgment,” whereas the external judgment always remains juxtaposed to the oration’s language, never coincident with it, and thus neither present in it nor absent. The “inverted truth” of Canpanton is thus neither logical in the sense of scholastics, not expressionist in the sense of either Spinoza, Heidegger, or Deleuze. Rather, it is of its own kind. It is Talmudic.

Inside Exteriority Beyond the example of truth, one may also look at another example of Canpanton’s position with regard to the logical and expressionist projects of ontology: the logical and hermeneutic categories of the implicit and its explication, seen in contrast to Canpanton’s own categories of external judgment and exaction. Only the mute logical and ontological assumption of the potential presence of what is implicit, yet indiscernible, either beyond the text or in the mind of its recipient, makes the procedure of logical and hermeneutical explication valid. Again, in order to be logically or hermeneutically explicated, the implicit must be both potentially present in the text and actually absent

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from it. Without this ontological precondition, no procedure of logical or hermeneutical explication would be valid, because there would not be anything to explicate, either logically or hermeneutically. Therefore, the procedure of hermeneutical-logical speculation on the implicit has a very strong topological or spatial feature: The implicit has to match the actual language of the text, yet the former can never coincide with the latter. Unlike this traditional logical or hermeneutical approach to the implicit, which considered the implicit to stand outside of the actual language of a text, Talmudic speculation approaches the implicit not only as standing outside the explicit theme and ruling of the language of the oration, but also as being strongly bounded by the agenda of refuting another oration, without which a Talmudic oration would make no sense, either rhetorical or speculative. This complex speculative and rhetorical nature of the implied refutation seems to have been dramatically underestimated, if not totally missed, in the hermeneutical and logical ontology of potential and actual meaning that some followers of Canpanton, Ibn Sedilio, for example, shared with the Thomist interpreters of Aristotle. For the logical ontology of the potential and the actual, thinking of the potential and the actual as different places or presences could be a useful image, but this image was not as indispensable as it is in the expressionist ontology based on the procedure of expression as explication. Again, unlike both the logical procedure of explication and the hermeneutic procedure of expression, in Talmudic speculation, concepts of potential and actual meanings, explication/expression becomes a topological process of entering the student into the most inside exteriority of the matter of an oration, rather than that of unfolding the so-called implicit logical/hermeneutical meaning in it. This crucial difference between the explication of the rhetorical matter underlying an oration and the actualization of potential meaning underlying a sentence seems to disappear already in the work of Canpanton’s follower Ibn Sidilio, the author of Kelale Shmuel. For Canpanton, the explication of the rhetorical matter underlying an oration is based on moving the student from his initial, outermost outside position with regard to a Talmudic oration to the innermost outside of its language (a theme and a ruling in it).

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Table 3-2. Differences between Sidilio’s and Canpanton’s Approaches to Explication Ibn Sidilio

Canpanton

Explication of the potential meaning of the language (ynwxyj μ[f )

Explication of the matter (≈wjbm

arbs)

is made by actualizing the meaning assumed potentially present or hidden in the language.

is attained by moving the student from external judgment on the matter to internal judgment of it, which is/was/remains outside the explicit theme, ruling, or language of the oration.

A transition from a potential meaning to the actual one can (but does not have to be) imagined in terms of a spatial movement unfolding a hidden space. Also, the explicated meaning can stand on its own, whereas the initial language is left behind.

The spatial component of explication is indispensable. Also, the inner outside of the language never replaces the language itself.

As a result of this movement, the student no longer finds himself outside the matter in the oration itself, but rather in the innermost place, in the innermost outside of an oration, in its matter, or as Boyarin puts it, in the innermost “outside of language.” One can summarize the differences between Sidilio’s and Canpanton’s approaches to explication, as shown in Table 3-2. In both of the above versions, the procedures of explication and expression are those of the exaction of the matter of the text juxtaposed to its language, as opposed to what potentially could be based on the language alone. However, unlike for Ibn Sidilio, for Canpanton, traditional concepts, at once logical, hermeneutical, and ontological, such as the potential and the actual, presence and absence, the implicit and the explicit, and even the hermeneutical-ontological concept of expression, function not as an ultimate ground of Talmudic speculation, but as close counterparts of it, just as in Aristotle rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectics. In Canpanton’s system of speculation, the concepts of logic and hermeneutics themselves are not relevant to Talmudic speculation unless Talmudic speculation is subjugated to such rhetorical categories as disagreement and refutation, which, in their turn, and as a result of such a subjugation, also cease to be the same as they were before in the theory and the art of

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rhetoric. There appears, therefore, a strong and dynamic gap between the categories of ontology and those of rhetoric, a gap that Talmudic speculation does not eliminate in any way. Instead, Talmudic speculation resides in this gap between ontology and rhetoric. This unique place of Canpanton’s speculation in the gap between ontology and rhetoric makes Talmudic speculation an art of its own, the art of (the) Talmud, characterized by such concepts as çwdj (invention), ayçq (refutation), and ≈wjbm arbs (external judgment). Far from being eclectic, these concepts of Talmudic speculation have their correlates in the central elements of rhetorical theory: respectively, invention, refutation, and the enthymeme. However, they cannot be fully and univocally returned to the theory of rhetoric. Not fully rhetorical, they are still not fully logical, nor are they fully grammatical or hermeneutical. What they feature is an art of its own, the art invented by Canpanton and since then unnoticeably self-evident, defining the ground on which consequent traditional and historical perspectives on the Talmud stand. This art could be called, analogically to the arts of philosophy, the art of Talmud.

The Art of Talmud: A Speculation on the Enigmatic Conclusion of The Ways I conclude this chapter by reading the Conclusion of Canpanton’s book in light of his own speculative method of contemplation. He concludes The Ways of the Talmud by an eloquent and profoundly wise justification of the alliance between books of wisdom and of logic for the sake of art of Talmud. This conclusion constitutes a piece of rhetoric different both in form and style from everything before it. If taken according to the rules offered in the work itself, however, it yields a deeper insight on how to read the whole book, an insight that also exemplifies the process of speculation as I have tried to analyze it. The final paragraph of The Ways of the Talmud reads: The wisdom of any man reaches only as far as his books can reach. Therefore, one should sell everything and buy the books instead. For example, one who does not possess the books of the Talmud can never be fluent in it, just like the one who does not possess the books of healing can never be fluent in it; and

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everyone who does not possess the books of logic and wisdom [yrps

˜wygh hmkjw] can never be fluent in them, either. On that, those whose memory should be blessed have said hmkj hbrm μyrps hbrm [interpretable as “the proliferation of books proliferates wisdom”]. In addition, if Rashi, blessed be his memory, explained the phrase “you should acquire a fellow” [from Mishnah, The Ethics of the Fathers, 1:6] as referring to “fellow” indeed, others think the “a fellow” actually refers to “books,” because the book is a good fellow. In contrast, reading from borrowed books makes one subject oneself to the [Biblical] principle ‘dgnm ˚l μyawlt ˚yyj

wyhw’ [Deut. 28:66, interpretable as “and your

life will never be sure”]. Yet, they guide one who possesses books to wisdom and sense [t[d ], because “this is your life and the order of your days.” Let the Blessed God honor us with attaining his wisdom and with our own books. Amen!55

According to one of the central claims of The Ways, no statement is supposed to be self-evident, and therefore every statement that looks obvious actually exists to eliminate some doubt. It is a challenge for a good student to find this doubt, thus giving to the seemingly obvious saying its real weight and true importance as a rhetorical invention: that which exists to eliminate a doubt in the minds of an audience open to such an invention. It seems to be perfectly obvious, and not only for modern readers, that acquiring a book is better than borrowing it. It remains obvious not only in a literal sense, but also in a metaphorical one, in which “to acquire a property” or “to possess it” means “to grasp” (both to take in hand and to understand), as opposed to becoming merely acquainted with something that is not yours. What, however, may be dubious behind the obviousness of this statement is why one should spend time and money, and indeed spend oneself, on books of logic, rather than concentrate on such books of wisdom as the Mishnah and the Talmud. Mentioning together “the books of logic and wisdom” leads to a conclusion that kills two birds with one stone. It both admits that logic and wisdom are not the same and, simultaneously, stresses the need to combine them both, instead of pursuing—or better, instead of “purchasing”—wisdom alone. Indeed, this move paradoxically legitimizes both the need for logic in matters of wisdom and the insufficiency of logic to meet this need.

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This paradox of wisdom and logic constitutes the doubt that the conclusion tries both to raise and to eliminate. Logic itself is helpless where one needs to think, rather than to correct the thinking process, which has already occurred. Therefore, for the books of wisdom, logic may seem to be of no use, because by definition, wisdom already involves thinking, and, as Aristotle suggested, to be wise is already to be good. Because of the assumption that the books of wisdom are themselves wise, and thereby good, no additional intervention of logic would be needed. Given this controversy of wisdom with logic, a question is to be asked: “What is Canpanton’s book? Is it a book of wisdom or of logic?” The answer the conclusion provides is straightforward: Canpanton clearly takes the side of wisdom. If so, why the art of logic does not finally disappear from his horizon remains a concern. An answer to this question is to be found in the fourteenth section, which comes right before the conclusion. In this section, Canpanton breaks with the previous flow of his argument and indeed writes (this time, it seems, originally writes, not produces orally, as it might be the case in all the preceding sections) a simple list of the most common devices or “languages” of the Talmud, accompanied by an extended periphrastic interpretation for each of them. Making such a list seems to be the handiest option for anyone who, like Canpanton, wants to instruct his students on the ways of the Talmud. Indeed, such a list puts one on the road of the Talmud in the most immediate and convenient way: If in reading the Talmud one comes across a device, one merely checks it with the list, learns the periphrastic explanation of it, and acquires or “buys” it forever. This was also the way in which some other didactic treatises on the languages of the Talmud were composed. For instance, Hezekiah David Abulafia’s μlw[ dwsy56 starts with a brief statement that the language of the Talmud is great and beautiful (hpyw hkz ) and immediately proceeds to list the languages of the Talmud and to explain them periphrastically without any set of concepts or terms different from those immediately found in the Talmud itself. What prevents Canpanton from choosing this simple “dictionary” way is possibly his feeling that mere paraphrases of the languages, the devices of the Talmud, would be of little help unless based on a sound set of concepts that make such paraphrases capable of standing by themselves as theoretically

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and independently valid. Canpanton sees a place for resorting to such a set of concepts in the arts of logic and grammar. Yet he cannot merely use the fruits of these arts. This is because, as the conclusion of his work suggests, the art of logic itself is not wisdom, and the art of grammar is even less so, because grammar only mirrors the art of logic in the material of language, an assumption he seems to take from his Aristotelian teachers and ultimately from Aristotle’s Categoriae, Of Categories. It is because of this irreducibility of wisdom to the arts of logic and grammar, or even rhetoric and psychology, that speculation needs “help from heaven,” as Canpanton puts it in the first paragraph of the book. This help from heaven is not merely the piece of religious eloquence, but rather an intrinsic element of a conceptual system that can no longer fully rely on any of the given arts of philosophy. In this situation, Canpanton needs to find or invent the concepts for the didactics of wisdom proper, rather than for the arts of logic and grammar. This is the art of Talmud.

four

Talmud as Event

In Chapter 2, I mapped the dynamic and unstable disposition of both the Talmud and rhetoric with regard to philosophy and, more broadly, to Western metaphysics at large. In Chapter 3, through a reading of Canpanton, I moved from relating the Talmud to metaphysics at large to focusing more specifically on how particular philosophical arts or disciplines such as logic, dialectics, hermeneutics, and rhetoric relate to the Talmud as another, separate scholarly art. I now lay out the possibility and even necessity of extending this view beyond specific definitions of art as either a discipline or techne (instrumental knowledge or skill), and ultimately beyond an instrumentalist perspective on the Talmud that both traditional philosophy and empirical scientific, or philological-historical study, have to offer. In order to make this multidimensional map of relationships between the Talmud and philosophy/Western metaphysics more comprehensive, and also to make it possible to extend Canpanton’s view of the Talmud as an art beyond the philosophical-metaphysical concept of art, I am now approaching 117

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the relationship between the Talmud and philosophy from a different angle: what philosophy and its arts would be from the perspective of Canpantonian masters of the Talmudic art. This change of perspective, from accessing the Talmud vis-à-vis philosophy to accessing philosophy from the perspective of the Talmudic masters, not only retraces the already given outline of the relationships among the scholarly arts, but also introduces a completely new element, so far elided from the dynamic of the relationship between philosophy and Talmud. This new element is sophistic. The title of this chapter includes the term “event.” The concept of event is what, according to Deleuze, features sophistic, dynamic thinking, as opposed to Platonic, static thinking. In his characterization, any event is always about to happen or has just happened. It therefore cannot be observed here and now, but can only be either recalled from the past or anticipated in the future. What is more, the so-called observer of the event is no more stable or static than the event itself. In fact, the observer is the most enigmatic of events. He or she (or should I say “it”?) is the event par excellence, an image accessible only through recollection of “myself” at the moments that I myself could never observe. “I was born in such and such place at such and such time,” yet I myself could not be a witness of my own birth, much less an observer of it. This little example of my (or our) erroneous and inevitable habit of taking recollections for the most reliable evidence or observations illustrates how deeply we are immersed in events, and how strongly we try to pretend that we see rather than recall, witness rather than remember, and are ourselves present, rather than belonging to a past that was never there or coming from a future that can never come in advance. Canpanton’s turn from the Talmud as an object of either tradition or its history to Talmud as a rational art of its own also opens a view on the Talmud as event, which I explore here. Canpanton makes thinking of Talmud in terms of an event possible, and I will pursue that possibility through an extended case study of a Talmudic argument. A transition to Talmud as event means changing perspective, from measuring Talmud by the philosophical arts to measuring philosophy and sophistry from the perspective of Talmudic art. In addition to recovering a missing element of Canpanton’s discourse of the Talmud, the element of sophistic, this change also unlocks hidden barriers in Canpanton’s discourse imposed on it by the concept of art, insofar as the concept was needed to maintain the

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discursive distinction between the Talmud and Talmud as art. The mapping of arts, Talmud among them, misses, or rather forcefully elides—although, of course, not on purpose—a very important nonphilosophical element. This elided element is, as I have already mentioned, sophistic, which has either not been noticed or, even when noticed, has been automatically reduced to its (counter)-philosophical title, the art of rhetoric. Reintroducing sophistry, or undoing its philosophical reduction to rhetoric, is an intrinsic part of shedding light on the ongoing philosophical violence done to the Talmud, either by reducing it to a version of philosophy or, in a mirror image of the same process, by forcefully detaching the Talmud from philosophical thinking of any kind, in exclusive favor of an applied practical knowledge of the Law. I do not refer to a direct comparison between an approach to the Talmud on the one hand and an aversion to philosophy on the other, a comparison that would otherwise be made from a hypothetical third point of view. I do not do this, since such a third point of view may simply be impossible. Rather, I refer to an intellectual disposition that, even before any specific theoretical definition, sets out two camps: the camp of the Talmud and the camp of philosophy. The intellectual position of Sophists is exactly what is missing here. It therefore must be carefully reintroduced, without, however, reducing it to a position that philosophy has traditionally and violently characterized under the title of rhetoric. In preparing to unveil, if not uproot, the philosophical violence done to both sophism and Talmud, we need to begin by suspending the ongoing philological-scientific reduction of the Talmud to a written text. Such a reduction is also sometimes called the positive scientific redaction of the Talmudic text. This theme of the insufficiency of the positive scientific reduction (of which the philological redaction of the Talmudic text is only a case) can be found already in the argument in the Babylonian Talmud, in which one of the Talmudic masters metaphorically and conceptually compares the mechanical textual knowledge of the codes of Tannaitic laws, the Mishnah, to a “basket full of books,”1 a comparison that I will address later in greater detail. The best thing a philologist does to the Talmud is to improve the quality of the basket, that is, to establish a right version, girsa or Gemara, while leaving out—or, what is the same, taking for granted—the status of the Talmudic

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argument, or svarah,2 a move that is possible only by reducing svarah to just another “record”3 in that basket, to be preserved among others. But how could any argument or svarah be preserved without thinking it through as carefully as can be done only if we take it out of the basket? In a sense, this part of my work is both a response to this metaphor and an attempt to clarify it conceptually. The scientific reduction of the Talmud at best may include no more than a record of the argument, not its intellectual part. The philological-scientific research on the Talmud, “the science of the Talmud,” not only defines a hermeneutical standard in the field, but also sends a powerful message to the complementary fields of the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the Talmud. This message includes a hidden precept, which could be called the precept of postponement, that suggests that researchers in other fields should not make any further conclusions, either from or on the Talmud, before the philological project reaches its end, before a scientifically correct version of the written text of the Talmud is established—however long it takes to reach this end and however long the other fields of Talmudic research have to postpone reaching their own ends.4 Although cultural-historical research and research on “Jewish thought” have been carried out in the meantime, this does not cancel the precept itself, which remains as is, regardless of whether fulfilled or not. It is thus only by postponing meaning that the scientific-philological notion of a text, and thus of a correct text, is coined. Unlike other hermeneutical projects, which are often designed to establish and traverse the way from a text to its meaning as quickly as possible, the philological project of the strict science of the Talmud makes the revolutionary proposal to postpone the hermeneutical end—meaning—for the sake of establishing the text first. The revolutionary character of this movement lies in forbidding meaning from superseding the text. The obsessive postponement of other research on the Talmud before concluding the scientific-philological research not only pertains to what the philological project of the Talmud imposed on other research projects, but also complies quietly and often unnoticeably with both the central theoretical concept and the main hermeneutical principle of the philological project itself: the concept of a philological text as opposed to its hermeneutical meaning

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(sometimes including cultural meaning as well), and more specifically, the notion of a correct version of a written text of the Talmud, as opposed to its cultural and historical interpretation. Although part of philological research has always incorporated cultural and historical interpretation, the most pure philological analysis would claim that such an interpretation can be correct only if it results from a philological analysis of the text, not the other way around. A whole area is lost between text and its meaning, cultural or otherwise. This area had been approached in different ways: Heidegger approached it in terms of Being; Levinas used different names for it, including “sense,” “the Other,” and its “trace.” Deleuze entertained it under the rubric of event, and Canpanton treated it via his art of the Talmud. It’s quite possible that many other areas exist, as well. But the empirical philological dissection between texts and their meaning loses them all at once. In an always cultural interplay between a text and its meaning, the philological project of the Talmud suggested postponing hermeneutical interest in meaning, and hence in history and culture, for the sake of establishing a correct written text in the first place. Yet by its very definition, the philological project could never come to an end, not because such an end would potentially mean the end of the power of philology, but rather because the endless postponement of the end is exactly what is dictated by the main hermeneutical principle of the philological approach, the concept of a written text, as opposed to its meaning. The text could never come to an end, because if it did, the text would be left behind in favor of its meaning, which would, again only potentially, mark a tragic end of philology and a potential return to prephilological hermeneutics. The ultimate hermeneutical principle applied in this drama of hermeneutics and philology involves both the opposition and the cultural interplay between the text and its meaning, in which meaning is not merely a function of a text, and a text is not only an embodiment of a preexisting meaning, but rather meaning is a negative definition of what a text is: something that precedes meaning, and is not meaning itself. Is this not one of the reasons philological research always emphasizes the textual or graphical and mechanical element of the transmission of texts, while limiting the use of any interpretations of their meaning or arguments to only a means, never the end? Like

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any hermeneutical project, philological scientific research must lead us to meaning, yet unlike other hermeneutical projects, this end is theoretically postponed, and meaning, if any, becomes a mere instrument for analyzing a text, not the other way around. In any case, the methodological obsession with establishing a text and the postponement of its meaning is therefore not only, and even not mainly, a precept that a philologist imposes on other researchers of the Talmud, but is also a definitive feature of the main concept and hermeneutical principle of philological research itself, ramified in the notion of a text as something that always precedes meaning. If we compare the scientific philological project of the Talmudic text with (the) Talmud the way Canpanton described it, we will see how the philological reduction/redaction of the Talmud not only buries and engraves what Canpanton dynamically described as (the) Talmud into the static monument of the book, it also implies another act. It vivisects Canpanton’s concept of Talmud as an event of speculation that otherwise occurs only between the art and the book, in status nascendi, not in either of the two final points—text and meaning. One result of the vivisection is a two-part structure: the book and the thinking (logos) behind it. Some compensation for this vivisection is a vision of a future in which the parts would be fused anew. This future was to happen in the new, scientific (rather than scholastic) discipline of the Talmud. However, as we have seen, in an artificially direct linkage of the book with the logos behind it, in a detour of the process of Talmudic learning, the scientific-philological vision of the Talmud has the inevitable character of a hermeneutical obsession: Its target, logos, must be deferred until the book is figured out scientifically, even if the textual part of this project is not expected to be completed soon. The process of cutting the dynamic event of the Talmud into two static parts, text (only a book) and logos (only in an unattained future), reached its peak in the nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums and in the consequent twentieth-century project of the science of the Talmud. However, the beginning of that process can be found in the eighteenth century in the Vila Gaon’s project of emending the Talmudic text, which resulted, almost a century later, in the appearance of a standard Vilna edition of the books of the Talmud. Although this was in no way accepted as a scientific standard, it was widely taken and used as a religious standard. As one can therefore

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note, despite the domination in the nineteenth century of a conceptual split between science and religion, which may seem to establish borders between the scientific academy and religious yeshiva, both were rooted in the project of textual emendation. That project laid the ground for the split between the scientific and religious enterprises of the Talmud as a book, so that the split between science and religion, or academy and yeshiva, was only part of a larger framework created by an even more profound hermeneutical split between text and logos, without which no project of emendation would be possible. At the very heart of this split between text and logos lies the philologicalscientific approach to the Talmud as a written text, or even as an oral text imitated in a record. This approach, however, inevitably faced a dilemma: Were the changes in a Mishnah that the Talmud often proposed an emendation of the Tannaitic text, or an interpretation of its meaning?5 This particular theoretical dilemma leads to a more general aporia of the relationship between the Mishnah and the Talmud: Does the Talmud clarify the Mishnah, or rewrite it? This aporia would remain unavoidable unless we pay more serious tribute to the very oral character of the Talmud and approach its oral form, not merely as a correlative to writing, but rather as an oral event, irreducible to any material, bodily counterpart. From the current point of view, the works of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida provide ways to approach the Talmud as an oral event. Deleuze’s development and critique of the ontology of expression, together with Derrida’s critique of phonologocentrism, will provide heuristic resources for exploring further the field of Talmudic orality that Canpanton marked out, but did not fully enter. Without the perspective on metaphysics opened up by Deleuze and Derrida, an inquiry into the metaphysical position of Canpanton’s Talmud could not properly begin. If we follow this new (or merely well-forgotten) direction, that of the event (offered, for instance, in Deleuze’s analysis, in his Logic of Sense, of the stoic and sophistical concept of event),6 and extend this direction to thinking of the Talmud as an oral event, the otherwise unresolvable scientific-philological dilemma of interpretation versus emendation merely disappears, because its terms become irrelevant. In following the direction of Deleuze’s thinking on stoics and Sophists, we can resolve or rather dissolve the dilemma of

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“interpretation or emendation” by identifying and revising the problem to which this pair of concepts (in Deleuze’s terms) is a response. 7 We will have to see if Deleuze’s own concept of “expression,” which I have already introduced in Part I of the present work, has resources sufficient for dealing with the problem of the Talmud, which is now approached, in Deleuze’s terms, as not only a body, a book, but also an event—Talmud, in Canpanton’s terms. A parallel option in dealing with the scientific project of the Talmud, which splits the event of the Talmud in two pieces—the book and the logos behind it—comes from Derrida’s analysis of phonologocentrism,8 which he finds embedded in any Western theory of the sign, of which the scientific approach to the Talmud is unavoidably a part. Following Derrida’s strategy of criticizing the phonologocentrism of Western metaphysics means looking at what resources this may yield for dealing with Talmud as event, rather than with the Talmud as the object of a positive science, the science of the Talmud. What this means, however, is that we will have to decide whether or not Derrida’s postphilosophic concept of phonologocentrism might be an answer to the problem of approaching the Talmud as event, and more specifically, as an oral event, not only and necessarily in a technical linguistic sense, but in a much more fundamental sense, dealing with which becomes a problem that Derrida’s différance or writing is to be tried on. I propose to exploit both Deleuze’s and Derrida’s work for approaching the Talmud as an oral event, and see if their respective positions provide a resource sufficient to embrace the perspective on the Talmud that Canpanton introduced; maybe, at the very least, their approaches—Derrida’s critique of phonologocentrism and Deleuze’s development/critique of the ontology of expression—will provide a heuristic resource for exploring the field of Talmudic orality that Canpanton marked out but, again, did not fully enter. I will designate only the main line of Derrida’s argument on linguistic orality here. Assuredly, one of the main terms in Derrida, “writing,” to which he subsumes linguistic orality, is called writing only because, in getting to différance, Derrida strategically starts by criticizing a metaphysical linguist, Saussure, who, as Derrida argues, praises orality and, not unlike Plato or even Aristotle, derogates writing. Derrida strategically starts from Saussure

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and not from his own actual philosophical teachers, the philosophers or, if you prefer, antiphilosophers, such as Nietzsche, Levinas, and, ultimately, Heidegger. He first shows Saussure to be a metaphysician and then finds the same metaphysics, not only in the philosophers but also in the antiphilosophers, including not only Nietzsche and Levinas, but also Heidegger. Had he not begun from a nonphilosopher, Saussure, Derrida’s différance would probably not be called “writing.” At the same time, however, it was only this strategic beginning from a metaphysical linguist, whom he finds strangely reverberating with such a classic philosopher as Plato (Phaedrus), that allowed Derrida to link Saussure’s linguistic orality to arche, logos, or ideas, the linkage Derrida deconstructs by considering linguistic orality a secondary process, itself rooted in arche-writing, which, in turn, would be beyond the Platonic opposition between what is primary and secondary. As a result, Derrida diagnoses both traditional philosophy and Saussure’s linguistics as phonologocentrism and ultimately introduces a distinction between metaphysics and philosophy, to say that the former can be even there where the latter is not, for instance in linguistics, and even in such antiphilosophers as Nietzsche or even Heidegger. For Derrida, despite the seemingly linguistic nature of his concept of writing, the latter actually dissolves the essence of the linguistic object— language—in favor of a much more complicated and fundamental element, writing or différance.9 In this regard, it could therefore be objected that Canpanton’s metaphysical, yet not philosophical, view on the Talmud is similar to Derrida’s case of Saussure as a nonphilosophical metaphysician, and thus Derrida’s critique of Saussure applies fully to Canpanton. However, this objection can be dismissed for three reasons. First, the inevitable character of Derrida’s beginning from a metaphysical nonphilosopher means that he had, in a certain sense, to take Saussure’s “naive” concept of orality for granted. As I argued earlier, without taking a naive linguistic concept of orality for granted, his main move to différance could not have happened. Second, unlike Saussure, Canpanton is not merely neutral in relation to philosophy. He is clearly distancing himself from philosophy. Third, as I argue later in greater detail, Canpanton offers an attitude toward orality not related to any concept of language, either essentialist

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or even structuralist. In Canpanton, language is less a system of signs of structure than an expression or phrase. For him, the oral has nothing to do with language as system or structure. Rather, it involves a process of disagreement that no linguistics—either a structuralist or systemic concept of language—can control. If we strategically begin from Canpanton, rather than Saussure, the concept of difference as difference, or whatever would consequently come in its place, would be very far from what it replaces, either in Canpanton or in an extension of his approach.10 We thus would not only call différance “writing,” but rather “disagreement”; but also, unlike Derrida, we would not be so strongly preoccupied, either with the issue of presence and its apparent opposite, absence, or with the “destruction” (or in the more widely known term, “deconstruction”) of the opposition of the two through the process of différance.

Rabbinic Authority and Event In order to find out what we should be dealing with instead of différance, I need to reintroduce the issue of rabbinic authority in its relation to rhetoric, philosophy, and sophistry—a task that will take us even closer, both to Deleuze’s concept of event and to Derrida’s concept of différance. In relating to two so radically different perspectives on the Talmud—Canpanton’s hermeneuticalrhetorical approach and the approach of scientific philology11—my argument will proceed simultaneously in two directions: from Canpanton backward in time to what a philologist would call the Talmud “itself,” and forward to the intellectual situation of the Talmud in the nineteenth century and later, a situation in which the relativist image of the “historical Talmud” emerges in the philological-historical approach, in opposition to the equally new traditionalist project of an empirical absolute, the ideal book of the Talmud conceived in the process of the traditional Talmud’s emendation. This double movement, back in tradition and history and forward to the nineteenth-century philological-historical project of the Talmud, also involves the work of Deleuze and Derrida, who isolate, describe, and destructure the philological-historical approach, the approach in which the Talmud emerges as an object existing before or without Canpanton.

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I proceed backward to a Talmudic tractate via a direct follower of Canpanton and a practitioner of his speculation, Rabbi Y. Berab (1474, Toledo–1546, Safed).12 Rabbi Y. Berab’s speculation, as recorded in the Meharere Nemerim (published in 1599),13 is devoted to the arguments of the masters of Tosfoth, the masters of the Talmudic art, who lived two to three generations before him. They, in turn, argue about a record in the Babylonian Talmudic tractate Megillah, folio 7a, which represents an argument that a generation of the Talmudic masters have in their attempt to provide an apology for an early Talmudic (amoraic) authority, the sage14 and Talmudic master Shmuel, who said: “[Touching] the Scroll of Esther does not defile hands.” We will use this text as a case study for juxtaposing Canpanton’s project of Talmudic speculation with what, after Canpanton and in the context of postHeideggerian controversy about the Talmud, which I analyzed in Chapter 2 of the present work, could be called the “ontology” of a Talmudic tractate. Rabbi Y. Berab’s argument takes us directly to the central issue of the whole of the Talmudic tractate Megillah, which is the status of the book of Esther in the canonical books of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. In Megillah, the issue of the book of Esther’s status was wrapped in a series of skillful and very deliberate rhetorical arguments that led, each in its own way, to eliminating every possible doubt about both the official status and importance of the book of Esther. The ultimate subject of Rabbi Y. Berab’s argument, a seemingly technical legalistic question about whether the parchment of Esther is capable of defiling the bare hands touching it, becomes part of a series of questions floating around a larger and much less technical question: where the book of Esther should stand with regard to other writings in the canon. One Talmudic way of dealing with this larger question is to elaborate on whether or not the writing of Esther has/had/should have had an official status, and if it does have such a status, in what sense. Some other elements of the same larger question are: Was the writing of Esther divinely inspired? How exactly is Esther to be written—in which language or languages? Which writing is it permissible to use for the official, public reading of it? These questions build in a series to the larger question on the status of Esther in the canon. However, my interest lies in the metaphysical status of the serial inquiry leading to it. Rabbi Y. Berab’s argument leads us to one element of this series, and later to the nature of the serial inquiry itself in

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the argument developing in Megillah, an argument to which R. Berab’s argument will also serve as an introduction. In following R. Berab’s speculation, I begin from its end point, the Talmudic apology of the sage Shmuel, which appears in the Talmud in the larger framework of an argument searching for a reason the sages used to allow the book of Esther to be officially or canonically written, not merely recorded for a technical reason, however important such a reason might be. In the midst of it, one recalls Shmuel saying that Esther does not defile hands. Here is R. Berab’s target text from the Babylonian Talmud, or at least the node of it.

The Apology for Shmuel [The Babylonian Talmud Megillah, 7a:] Rabbi Yehuda said, Shmuel said Esther does not defile hands. Should we say Shmuel argued Esther was not authorized by the Holy Spirit? Yet, Shmuel said “Esther was authorized by the Holy Spirit!” [Hence, Shmuel must have argued:] “Was authorized for reading, but was not [yet] authorized for writing.”15

In this passage, a speaker, if any, cites Rabbi Yehuda, a late-thirdcentury Talmudic master from Babylon who, in his turn, recalled his teacher Shmuel, a Babylonian master of the Talmud from the early third century. Shmuel taught that, unlike touching a scroll of the Torah, touching a scroll of the book of Esther does not make the hands of the person ritually impure, or, in the concise language of the passage itself, “Esther does not defile hands.” For some, Shmuel’s saying that Esther does not defile hands may sound like an argument to prove that the book of Esther was not authorized by the Holy Spirit, since only such sacred books had the capacity for defiling the hands. Yet the speaker recalls a statement of Shmuel that was an exact opposite of that conclusion: Shmuel said Esther was authorized by the Holy Spirit. To save Shmuel’s statements from inconsistency, or rather, to save Rabbi Yehuda’s tradition from being incorrect, the speaker promotes a fine distinction between authorization to read and authorization to write: The Holy Spirit authorized the official or ritual reading of the book, but not the

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initial writing of it, and, of course, writing that was not authorized by the Holy Spirit cannot defile hands. Later on in this section I will show how the masters of the Tosfoth and, after them, R. Berab, put this passage at the center of their discussion. I gave this piece of Talmudic discussion a technical title, “The Apology for Shmuel.” However, this title is not only technical, but also clarifies the sense or form of the Talmudic argument here. As opposed to the classic apology of Socrates, in which Socrates is the one who provides his own apology for himself, here it is not Shmuel who provides an apology. Instead, the speaker, or, if interpreted historically, an anonymous master or masters of the Talmud, builds an apology for him, or, more precisely, for the record of his words the speaker has at hand. Since the masters do not possess any earlier record, except as a later report of it, the masters exercise their power of rational judgment as they journey backward in memory, which their judgment helps to reinstate; they thus proceed from the records in their hands to a plausibly precise reinvention of the position that an earlier authority, Shmuel, was reported to hold.16 Before proceeding with R. Berab’s reading of the Talmudic argument, let me take a closer look at the argument in its own right, to see if it was purely logical in its nature. A logic-oriented way to account for the argument in the apology for Shmuel would be to say that Shmuel’s saying recalls the other saying reported from Shmuel’s name, which, however, contradicts the first. “Does not defile hands” means “is not sacred,” which contradicts the claim it “was authorized by the Holy Spirit” and therefore is sacred. Driven by this contradiction, they seek reconciliation and finally find it. However, a problem with such an account is that the sayings recalled were not contradictory but rather, at best, only contrary to each other,17 so that the speaker did not really have a contradiction to solve. A more accurate account is therefore to be sought. This more accurate account would also need to relate the fact that the contrary record or, if you will, the recollection thereof, does not appear right away, but only as a result of a question initially addressed to the first record, so that the argument of the apology really begins neither from a contradiction nor from a juxtaposition of contrary recollections/records (I will use

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these terms interchangeably, because here recollection means a record in memory, which in turn may be recorded on paper, as well). Instead, it begins from a hypothetical inference (“Should we say”). This opening inference places the first record in touch with its contrary. What is more, without this initial question the second record would not sound contrary or even seem to be related to the first one, except, of course, for the formal attribution of both to one and the same sage/master of the Talmud, Shmuel. Therefore, what we have is not merely a journey backward into the memory, but also the rational rhetorical18 invention of what this memory yields, namely, that Shmuel held the book of Esther to be divinely authorized for official public reading, yet not necessarily divinely authorized for official writing, so that, in the reinvented Shmuel, reading may be divinely authorized even if one reads from a scroll that was really only a technical act of recording, replaceable even by memorizing by heart, a mere recording that retains nothing of divine or official writing.19 In sum, read in its own right, the Talmudic argument thus goes as follows: It makes an inference from Shmuel’s words first. It then makes Shmuel sound contrary to his other words. Through an act of rhetorical inference, the argument forces Shmuel to sound contrary to his other words; it does not report that Shmuel logically contradicts them. As we see, for the later Talmudic masters, the vivid orality of inference is more important than any record of a (nonexistent) logical contradiction. The later Talmudic masters themselves became an object of post-Talmudic analysis. Was this analysis logical in its nature? The apology of Shmuel became the object of an elaborated discussion by the post-Talmudic masters of the Talmudic art, the masters of the Tosfoth, who approached the apology in juxtaposition with yet another piece from the masters of the Talmud, which in a certain sense is also an apology, a record in another place in the Talmud comparing the book of Esther with both the dawn and a doe. The masters in the post-Talmudic analysis feel obligated to justify these sophisticated comparisons between remote Talmudic passages, developing at the same time an argument accommodating the fact that Esther, the book, and Esther, the person, sometimes become indistinguishable from one another, both conceptually and imaginatively. They juxtapose the argument in the apology for Shmuel with another argument that happens in a completely

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different place in the Talmud. Yet, before following them, let me first read the second Talmudic argument in the way in which I have already read the apology for Shmuel, i.e. in its own right first. I will then follow the postTalmudic masters, the Tosafists, or the masters of the Tosfoth as they attempt at harmonizing these otherwise remotely connected Talmudic discussions and put them together in one intellectual continuum.

Harmonizing Shmuel: Esther as Doe and the Book of Esther as Dawn [The Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 29a (Chapter Memune)] Rav Zerah said: For what was Esther [the person] compared to a doe?—[It was done in order] to tell you that as the doe has a narrow vagina and her husband always loves [her] as if it would be their first time, so also [the king] Achashverosh always loved Esther as if it would be their first time. Rav Asi said [a parable]: Why was Esther [the book] compared to the dawn?—To tell you that as the dawn is the end of night, so also is Esther [the book] the end of all miracles.—But [later] there still was [the miracle of] Chanukah!—[That comparison assumed] the saying “Esther was given for writing.”—This is fine for a party who holds that Esther was given [authorized] for writing, but what can be said for the party who holds Esther was not given for writing?! This party should be linked to Rabbi Benjamin bar Yafet, [as] Rabbi Elazar said Rabbi Benjamin bar Yafet said: Why are the prayers of righteous compared to a doe [of the dawn]—To tell you that as the doe’s horns grow, they multiply [lit.: split] so also is the prayer of that righteous heard when they multiply their efforts in praying.

This passage builds on the beautiful image of rjçh tlya in Psalm 22. In a play of words the English cannot retain, in the idiom rjçh tlya (lit.: “morning doe,” referring to the morning star, Venus, Astarta, or Esther), the image of the doe becomes an intrinsic part of the dawn. In the same way, in the rabbinic explanations of the comparison of Esther to the dawn, Esther as a person becomes rhetorically almost indiscernible from Esther, the book. This passage explores comparisons of Esther to both parts of this image, to a doe, and to dawn. Esther the person compares to a doe, while Esther the book to dawn. In my explanation below, I will write Esther when it is more

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of a book than of a person, and Esther, if the reference is more for a person than it is for the book. The argument begins as a nameless speaker cites Rav Zera, a Palestinian master of the Talmud from the middle of the fourth century, as he explains a comparison of Esther the person to a doe through an analogy between King Achashverosh’s passion for Esther and a male deer’s passion for a doe. The speaker also cited Rav Asi, a Palestinian master of the Talmud from the third century,20 who explained a comparison of the book of Esther to the dawn through an analogy: as dawn is the end of night, so is the book of Esther the end of the time of miracles. While the speaker in the Talmud has no problem with the first comparison (Esther to a doe) or with the explanation of it, he objects to the explanation of the second comparison (Esther to the dawn), or rather to the correctness of the record thereof, by noting that centuries after the seemingly last miracle in the book of Esther, another miracle, Chanukah, happened and was also recorded in the book of Taanith (Megilat Taanith). In order to save the explanation (or, again, to save the record thereof), the speaker proposes a refined reading of it: The book of Esther was not the last miracle, but rather it was the last miracle submitted to official writing. However, the speaker cannot be fully satisfied with such a solution, since it fits well only one of the two positions the sages had in the issue of authorizing the official writing of the book of Esther. The refined explanation (Esther, both as a book and as a person, was the last miracle submitted to official writing) would not fit with the position of those sages who denied the official status of the writing of the book of Esther. For the latter, another explanation of the Esther-doe comparison would be needed. The speaker finds a source for an alternative explanation in Rabbi Elazar (a Palestinian master of the Talmud from the third and fourth centuries), who compared the horns of the deer, which multiply as the deer grows, to the prayer of the righteous, which multiplies as the righteousness of the person grows. On this basis, Esther the person was compared to a doe for a different reason: because she was righteous and multiplied her prayers. Clearly, the task of the speaker was not to find a sufficient explanation for a problematic comparison, but rather to find explanations that make the

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comparison (or a record of it) valid according to the given variety of mutually exclusive positions of either the sages or the earlier Talmudic masters. Thus for the speaker, refining the explanation was only a tool for validating the initial record of the explanation itself by means of connecting it to one of the two mutually exclusive positions on the matter of the official writing of the book of Esther. Since R. Berab will consider the Talmudic argument that I have just summarized, for the convenience of the future reference to his argument, I will call that Talmudic passage “the dawn-doe comparison.” Following R. Berab, I am now going one step further, to the post-Talmudic medieval analysis of both the apology for Shmuel and dawn-doe comparison that happens in the work of Tosafists or the Masters of Tosfoth. Unlike in the apology for Shmuel, in the dawn-doe comparison, at least one of the parties holds the book of Esther to be divinely authorized for being officially written in the canon. However, unlike their arguments about the apology for Shmuel, the masters of the Tosfoth neither turn to the Talmudic dawn-doe comparison for its own sake nor try to provide any further apology for comparing both the person and the book of Esther to either the dawn or a doe. Contrary to their critical attitude to the apology for Shmuel, and for the sake of making this critical attitude possible, the masters of the Tosfoth use the dawn-doe comparison as something given. They take its line of argument as unquestionably consistent, with no need for any apology, thus earning for themselves a basis from which they shake the apology for Shmuel, almost destroy it, but in the end ultimately enrich and reinforce it, thus journeying even deeper into the memory of it, or if you will, extending the width of their rational invention. Based on the dawn-doe comparison as a given, the post-Talmudic adepts of Talmudic art, the masters of the Tosfoth, temporarily refute the validity of the argument in the apology for Shmuel and finally put things back in their place. Their argument results in a sharp and powerful refutation of the apology for Shmuel, followed by a rearticulation of the record of Shmuel in a new way.21

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The Masters of the Tosfoth Refuting and Rearticulating The Apology for Shmuel The Tosfoth present the following argument: “[Esther] was authorized to read [only], not to write.” Hence, Shmuel must have argued it was permitted to read it by heart. Yet this is refutable, since how could he disagree with an anonymous Mishnah there below, in the second chapter [of the same tractate], which taught: “Reading by heart does not fulfill the obligation to read”! Also, below, Rabbi said it is to be written [officially] and sewed [as Torah is]. Also, R. Yoh.anan said [there as well that] reading it in the midst of the Writings [i.e. from a scroll containing other Writings in it] does not fulfill the obligation of reading. Therefore the phrase of Shmuel “was not authorized for writing” seems to be rearticulated as “was not authorized for writing by the Holy Spirit, while Rabbis authorized it for both reading and writing.” Yet it is still refutable, since in the chapter Memune in the Tractate Yoma (29a) Esther is compared to the dawn: “As dawn is the end of night, so also is Esther the end of miracles.” There the comparison was [also] disputed: “But there still was [a later miracle of] Chanukah!” On that one responded—“[The comparison assumed] saying ‘Esther was given for writing.’” This was also objected: “This would work fine only for a party who said the book of Esther was given for writing, but what can be argued for the party who said Esther was not given for writing?!”—[Given this argument in the Memune (= the “dawndoe comparison”)], there is no room for saying that “was given for writing” may read as though authorized only by the rabbis. Writing can [still] be called “writing,” because if this had been a right reading, the objection would turn back on its place, as it says “But there still was [a miracle of] Chanukah!” since Chanukah was given to writing by rabbis in the Megillat Taanith. Our teacher R. Elkhanan resolved this by saying that the writing of the book of Esther was more important [than that of Megillat Taanith], since the former required sewing and lining up, which was not required for the latter (Tosfoth, Megillah 7b).22

The Tosafists argue based on an inference they make from the apology for Shmuel. We remember that the speaker in the apology for Shmuel concludes that because of saying the book of Esther does not defile hands, Shmuel must have argued that the Holy Spirit authorized only a public reading of the book,

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not an official canonization of its writing, since the official writing would defile any hand that touched it. Focusing on this conclusion, the masters of the Tosfoth open their argument by drawing an introductory inference from the conclusion itself: If official writing of the book was not a requirement, it would be legitimate to read the book of Esther publicly by merely reciting it by heart. However, as the Tosfoth notes, this inference sounds contrary to an explicit, albeit anonymous, statement in the Mishnah, which says having read and recited the book of Esther by heart is not valid. In addition, the inference above sounds contrary to an early master of the Talmud, Rab, Shmuel’s opponent, who said the scroll of Esther needs to be written and sewn the way the scroll of Torah is done. In addition, the inference above sounds contrary to the position of Rabbi Yoh.anan, who explicitly claimed that, as opposed to reading Esther in its own scroll, reading it as a part of other Writings cannot constitute a valid public or official reading of it. In short, the inference sounds contrary to the explicit statements of the sages of the Mishnah and of the Talmudic masters, who were of no less authority than Shmuel, for the sake of whom the inference was intended to have been made. Because the inference made from Shmuel’s statements conflicts with the explicit statements in the Mishnah and those made by the early masters of the Talmud, the masters of the Tosfoth suggested an adjustment: Even though the official writing of the book was not a requirement authorized by the Holy Spirit, the writing of it was still required by the authority of rabbis themselves, so that the book can be officially read from an official writing of it, but not by heart. This adjusted inference, or rather, this refined articulation of the inference already made by the speaker in the Talmud, is the main result the masters of the Tosfoth achieved. The rest of their argument can be seen as a support of this result vis-à-vis a refutation mounted against it. Again, the main result was that the Holy Spirit authorized requiring the public reading of the book, while it was the rabbis who authorized requiring the official writing of it from which the public reading should be made. This result was nothing but a refinement of the inference assumed already to have been made by the speaker in the apology for Shmuel. In addition, for the masters of the Tosfoth, the speaker in the apology for Shmuel must not sound

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contrary to any apologetic argument in the Talmud. For the masters of the Talmud, the Talmud itself assumes only one reader, or rather one listener, for whom the Talmud is also one. Thus, for the masters of the Tosfoth, beyond all the citations and inferences, in the Talmud there should have been only one speaker, who in his/her turn is nothing but a listener to the citations she/ he quotes. The masters of the Tosfoth themselves are such a collective listener to the Talmud and, as a mirror-effect of themselves, seek only one collective intellectual speaker in it. This also is a reason for which the masters of Tosfoth direct their attention to proving both inner coherence and outer cohesion of all Talmudic arguments, one to another. At any rate, for the sake of temporarily refuting and finally reinforcing the result they have just reached, the masters of the Tosfoth cite a Talmudic argument, the dawn-doe comparison. For them, the dawn-doe comparison sounds contrary to the main result they achieved. Specifically, the speaker in the latter argument could not have assumed that the writing of the book of Esther authorized by rabbis was an official writing, otherwise the speaker would not have resolved a problem that she/he claimed had been resolved. Indeed, if, authorized by the rabbis, the writing of the book of Esther had been official, then Esther could not have been the last of the miracles, since the later miracle of Chanukah was also an official writing that was also authorized by the rabbis. The support or reaction against this refutation comes from a master of the Tosfoth, Rav Elkhanan, who said the rabbis must have authorized different degrees of official writing—a higher degree for the book of Esther and a lower degree for the book of Taanith (on Chanukah). Beyond the gloss of their argument, and before continuing a step further with Rabbi Y. Berab, I would like to stress some elements of the form of the Tosafists’ argument, specifically an element of temporality that it involves. Not totally unlike the Talmudic apology for Shmuel itself, the masters of the Tosfoth begin their argument by making an inference from the final formulation of the apology. This done, they cite Tannaitic and early Amoraic statements sounding contrary to the inference. Then they reconcile the matters by rearticulating or refining the final conclusion of the apology. When the conclusion is rearticulated, they immediately refute it by making the dawn-doe

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comparison seem contrary to it. Finally, in the words of their teacher Rabbi Elkhanan, they discover how to reconcile the contraries, thereby giving their teacher a new weight and value. As a result of this elaboration, the apology for Shmuel withstands all refutations. However, it does so only if rearticulated to say that even if the writing of Esther was not inspired by the Holy Spirit, it was nevertheless divine, because it came by the authority of the rabbis, who had a channel to divine authorization through the power of their rhetorical arguments, in a detour from and in addition to the work of the other divine instance, the Holy Spirit. The latter only inspired the official reading of the book of Esther, not the official writing of it. The working of the Holy Spirit becomes therefore only complementary to what the rabbis have done, because how can the reading be divine if the writing from which it is to be done is not? In terms of both temporality and authority, the result of the Tosfoth argument thus belongs not to the masters of the Tosfoth themselves, but rather to the speaker of the Talmud. In turn, the speaker does not appear with his own result, either. He only refines an argument belonging to Shmuel, who in turn is the author of this argument if and only if the speaker succeeds in proving his argument to be recorded correctly, in accord with the other recollections/records that the speaker has. In the result, the Tosfoth only rearticulated a new matter, which, as they proved, already was there in the argument of the Talmudic speaker. However, it is not this result, but rather the way to it, that becomes important when the student of Canpanton, Rabbi Y. Berab, speculates on the refutations the Tosfoth made. He initially refutes them all, one by one, and then exacts from them a new, much richer, and more sophisticated series of refutations. In the next subsection I will intertwine my analysis of Rabbi Berab’s exactions with a step-by-step translation and explanation of his argument.

Rabbi Y. Berab Exacting the Tosfoth’s Refutations of the Apology for Shmuel The argument (rwbyd ) of the Tosfoth in the first chapter of the Megillah from our Teacher Rabbi Berab, let blessing be to his memory.

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The first chapter of the [Babylonian Talmud, tractate] Megillah teaches: Shmuel says “Esther was authorized by the Holy Spirit” [implies only that] it was authorized to be read, but not to be written. Tosfoth wrote that [this inference] “‘Was commanded to be read [only]’ is refutable, since later in our Mishnah one says ‘reading by heart does not yet fulfill the precept of reading etc.’” [However,] we need to exact this [ qydml òkya —meaning “one has to investigate the argument more precisely by refutation followed by a refined reading of it.”] [Specifically,] why did Tosfoth not refute Shmuel [right away] with his own words from the other place: Later on, Shmuel said “Reading [the book of] Esther from among [a scroll with the other books of the] Writings does not yet fulfill the precept of reading.”23 So, how did Tosfoth put the [contrary] words of Shmuel himself aside and cite the [same] words in the name of Rabbi Yoh.anan? [Indeed,] such Tosfoth’s refutation is easy to refute, since Shmuel might have merely disagreed with Rabbi Yoh.anan.—And indeed the great Rav our Teacher Rabbi Y. Berab defended Tosfoth; he brought it in his enactments of the great Rav Cohen [so the manuscript seems to read] part 2, paragraph 214 [saying that] the Tosfoth did so [only] in a way of [preparation for a further] expounding.

The argument opens by citing the apology for Shmuel’s final clause, which, as we remember, said the Holy Spirit authorized only the official reading of Esther, not the official writing of it. Then the exactor, or a virtual Rabbi Berab, on whose behalf the exactor speaks, cites the Tosfoth, who refuted this end result of the apology for Shmuel by arguing that it sounded contrary to the authority of the Mishnah, and who invalidated any official reading of Esther if made without an equally official writing from which to read. Refuting the Tosfoth’s refutation, he asks why the Tosfoth would not refute the end of the apology for Shmuel in a stronger way, namely, by showing the end of the apology for Shmuel to be contrary to the words of Shmuel himself as recorded in another place. In brief, the exactor asks why the Tosfoth have rationally chosen (his assumption is that their choices are always rational) to ignore the contrary words of Shmuel himself and have preferred to refute the end of the apology from the words of the Tannaitic authority with whom Shmuel might have merely disagreed. The only rational motivation the exactor had found was that, as cited above, what seemed to be a merely weak refutation was itself only an introduction to the second, fundamental refutation to follow thereupon. The role of the first refutation was not much to refute, but rather to

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make a primary act of refutation, which only opens a series of refutations without necessarily being a strong member of it. Here, the limited nature and obvious weakness of the primary refutation counts even more than the strength of the content it may or may not have. What it does is put us in a finite disposition, and through leading us away from this limited disposition, takes us where we would not otherwise go; that is, to the next refutation in the series: Second of all, it is to be contemplated why masters of the Tosfoth, blessed be their memory, refute [Shmuel] based on the quote from chapter Memuneh [the dawn-doe comparison]. Quite the opposite; from there, Shmuel can get not a refutation, but rather an [inference in] support! Indeed, [there, in the Gemara on the Mishnah] the Talmudic masters say, “This [Mishnah, “reading by heart does not yet make the precept of reading fulfilled,” etc.] is fine for the party who says, ‘[touching the book of Esther] defiles hands.’” However, what could be said by the others, that is, by Shmuel, for whom it does not defile hands. [The answer is] because not the Torah, but only the rabbis submitted the book of Esther to writing, which therefore is not a writing of status [but rather is merely a secondary record].—And if this is so, what then was the point of Tosfoth in refuting [Shmuel based on the Memuneh]!

The exactor now refutes the other refutation that the master of the Tosfoth had against the apology for Shmuel. As he argues, the dawn-doe comparison could be turned from a basis for refuting the apology for Shmuel into a basis for supporting it: If, as in the apology, Shmuel did not have the Holy Spirit authorize the official writing of Esther, he might have let the rabbis do so, which thus makes a perfect fit to the second party mentioned in the dawn-doe comparison. Together with Shmuel, this party made the rabbis authorize the official writing of the book of Esther, or rather provide a canonical deduction for it. (An example of such a deduction will come into focus in my analysis later on, as we turn the folio in the Talmudic book.) In brief, the exactor asks, if the dawn-doe comparison could provide a basis for supporting the apology for Shmuel, why did the Tosfoth use the former in order to refute the latter? In reinforcing his point that the apology for the dawn-doe comparison can be a basis for support of the apology for Shmuel, the exactor makes his next exaction, which is to prove that the former not only can be a support, but also that it cannot be a refutation:

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Third of all, it is to be exacted what the Tosfoth really said in saying “the writing established by rabbis cannot be of the status of [the official] writing.” Why did not they [themselves] decline such an explanation based on what must be read there? Indeed, how can they proceed explaining so if [in the apology of the dawn-doe comparison] it must read24 “was given to writing by rabbis,” since even for Shmuel, who denies it was given to writing by the authority of Torah, it still was given to writing by rabbis. Otherwise, how could it be said there “but what could be said by others [by Shmuel] who says the book was not given to writing, if there exists neither tanna nor amora who would say so [without a minimalist inference that at least rabbis submitted the book to writing]”?—What follows from that is that the Tosfoth were attempting to refute Shmuel in order to [ultimately] defend him [through] arguing that the other Mishnah [above], which said “reading by heart does not yet fulfill the precept of reading” is [in accord with a position of Shmuel, in which the book of Esther was submitted to writing by rabbis].

As the exactor argues, since there exist no Tannaitic sage and no Talmudic master who say the book of Esther was not given to writing by anyone, not even by the rational rhetorical arguments or deductions of rabbis, the dawndoe comparison could not even mention such a position, unless this position reads “not given to writing by anyone, except for the deductions of rabbis.” On this basis, the exactor asks, how did the masters of the Tosfoth not take this into account? When the masters of the Tosfoth said the writing of the book of Esther lacked the status of official writing, they might only mean “official writing authorized by the Holy Spirit.” On a larger scale, the exactor argues thereby that the refutations of the Tosfoth should not really be taken at their face value as refutations. Weak in content, consisting of easily refutable arguments, they are not the Tosfoth’s true goal, but only a means toward an opposite goal. All the Tosfoth really want is not to refute, but to reconcile. They refute only in order to prepare a reconciliation of the two Talmudic apologies, the dawn-doe argument and the apology for Shmuel, and ultimately to show that Rabbi Yoh.anan’s statement is not contrary to the apology for Shmuel, but rather a perfect fit for it. This is why the primary refutation process was needed, even if weak: Without it, the Tosfoth would not reach their goal of reconciling the two Talmudic arguments. In the very beginning, it was important for the Tosfoth not to disprove the apology for Shmuel logically—with other words of

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Shmuel’s—but rather to go rhetorically to Rabbi Yoh.anan, to provoke the possibility that he and Shmuel disagreed, and, as a result, to eliminate this possibility in full. This concludes the first round of Rabbi Y. Berab’s speculation. It has shown how masters of the Tosfoth established that Shmuel held the Holy Spirit to have authorized the reading of the book of Esther, but not the writing of it, while the latter comes from canonical rhetorical deductions made by the rabbis. However, because the argument in the Tosfoth did not stop here, the exactor, Rabbi Y. Berab, does not find his work complete. He now follows the Tosfoth as they reinforce their own result by offering another refutation of it, followed by another reinforcing defense. The exactor’s goal here is to find out why the Tosfoth felt any need to further reinforce the already fine result of reconciliation they have just achieved. On this [i.e. on having established that Shmuel held the Holy Spirit to authorize reading of the book, but not writing of it, while the status of writing comes from the canonic rhetorical deductions of rabbis], the Tosfoth [kept] arguing: it still [remains] refutable, since how could one say the rabbis were so strict [in their conclusions reached] on the basis of their own authority alone, if the Talmud, in the chapter Memune [the dawn-doe comparison] infers they weren’t so strict: In the chapter, a Talmudic master constructs the refutation “This [i.e. Mishnah, reading by heart does not yet fulfill the precept of (official) reading,” etc.] is fine for the party who says, “[touching Esther] defiles hands,” which infers the book was written by the [same] authority as the Torah was. However, what could be said by the others, that is, by Shmuel, for whom it was not written by the authority of the Torah?—If it occurs to you to say the rabbis approached the status of writing in their own authority with all the restrictions of writing the Torah—as is stated in the Talmud in defense of the Mishnah “reading by heart does not yet fulfill the precept of reading”—then what was the point of refutation there in the Talmud on this Mishnah?—Had it been so, there would merely be no point of refutation, since Esther would [simply] be the last of the miracles submitted to writing in all the strictness of [writing] the book of Torah itself. Hence, the [Talmudic] refutation [in the dawn-doe comparison] must infer that in the case of the writing authorized by the rabbis, there is no difference between Esther and other Writings [with regard of defiling hands]. It is this [possible inference] that made the Tosfoth initiate the process of refutation in saying “But it is still refutable.”

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Seeking for a reason that the Tosfoth kept struggling with the conclusion they have just achieved, the exactor (or should I, given his new task, call him more generally, contemplator or speculator?) discovers how two possible extreme inferences (“Esther and the Torah are equally sacred in terms of their writing” or “Writing Esther is not sacred at all”) may occur in reading the dawn-doe comparison and discerns why the extremes need to be eliminated. One of the extremes is in the equation of the Torah and Esther in terms of the instance authorizing their writing. Another extreme is in denying any authorization for writing Esther, even rabbinic authorization. As for the first extreme, the achieved reconciliation assumed that the conclusions by the authority of rabbinic rational rhetorical deduction (saying that Esther is given to official writing) lead to a practical strictness equal to that in the writing/authority of the Torah itself (both Esther and the Torah can defile hands). This, however, becomes contrary to the fact that in the dawn-doe comparison, the Talmudic masters have any argument whatsoever about Esther’s being the last of the miracles. Since none would thus argue that the writing of the Megillat Taanith (on the events of Chanukah) is as strict as the writing of both the Torah and Esther (in terms of defiling hands), the Taanith would not constitute any point against Esther; and thus, without any possible arguments, Esther is clearly the last of the miracles that was given to fully strict writing. Since, however, the argument was still taking place, we must conclude that either the rabbinic deduction cannot be as strict as the authority of the Torah or, contrary to all facts, the argument in the Talmud could not have happened at all. As for the second extreme, upon having just found the first extreme inference that the Tosfoth were trying to eliminate, the contemplator also finds another possible extreme with which the Tosfoth may have been equally struggling. Instead of eliminating a possible equation of the Torah and Esther in terms of the instance of authorizing the strictness of their writing, they are now working on eliminating another, no less possible extreme, which is a denial of any authorization for writing Esther whatsoever, even of the authorization coming from the instance of rabbinic authority through the rational rhetorical deductions the rabbis made. Here is the language of R. Y. Berab’s record:

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Also, [the masters of the Tosfoth] z”l wrote, “and there is no room for saying [‘was given for writing’ reads ‘even if authorized by rabbis, it would still be in the status of writing’]” while their intention was to escape the refutation that says “given to writing” reads “by rabbis.” And when in the Talmud the masters said “it was fine,” it was before rabbis were strict in writing Esther more than in the rest of writings. In turn, the Talmudic “but what is it for party who said, ‘was not given to writing’” says this in an absolute way, not even by the rabbis. And in spite of the fact that the Gemara [in the dawn-doe comparison] would link this reading to the position of R. Yehoshuah (and not Shmuel), it is to be exacted that R. Yehoshuah thought that it was not authorized for writing, not even by the rabbis, which is not in accord with the Mishnah, which said “one who read by heart did not fulfill the precept of reading” [and thus is not in accord with Shmuel] so that [Shmuel] agreed with him in this, and disagreed in that. Thus wrote the Great Master, Our Teacher Rabbi Y. Berab, z”l, and, as the Tosfoth go on to say, the Master Elchanan provided a defense.

We have just followed Rabbi Y. Berab’s argument up to its last point, the defense that the masters of the Tosfoth made against the above refutations. The whole piece of speculation we have just observed follows a finely harmonic line of argument. The main result of Rabbi Y. Berab’s recuperation of the argument of the Tosfoth is that the Tosfoth are now proved to use refutations and defenses against them, both consistently and in order to reach reconciliation between two Talmudic arguments, the apology for Shmuel and the dawn-doe comparison. Furthermore, they use additional refutations and defenses to sort out the attained reconciliation from possible extreme readings of the Talmudic arguments on which it was based, since these extreme readings may put the attained reconciliation in danger. However, it is not this result that is really important to me. What is more important are the ways in which Rabbi Y. Berab reaches it. Strategically, he begins by wondering why it was so easy to refute the Tosfoth argument against the Talmudic apology for Shmuel. His astonishment leads him to search for a more profound reason for the Tosfoth to begin with a refutation that is so obviously weak. He finds a more consistent reason for the seemingly inconsistent beginning, and then reinforces this reason by following the Tosfoth in what he shows to be the exclusion of two extremes, in the middle of which lies the reason he has found. He thus moves from revealing a motivation of the Tosfoth (to reconcile the positions that sound

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contrary to each other), to illuminating the main point of reconciliation (the writing of Esther, authorized by the authority of rabbinic argumentation, but still quite close to the authorization of writing the Torah), and then to excluding the extremes that might have been contrary to the reason attained (either Esther equals the Torah in terms of its writing or it does not have any official writing at all). More specifically, Rabbi Y. Berab heuristically wonders why the Tosfoth, instead of refuting the apology for Shmuel with the words of Shmuel himself, have chosen a weaker refutation coming from other authorities, with which Shmuel may have disagreed. He then wonders why the Tosfoth proceed in refuting the apology for Shmuel based on the dawn-doe comparison, which could have provided the former with support, not with a refutation. He then sorts out the true nature of the refutation that the Tosfoth construct, as opposed to two possible but ultimately inconsistent ways, since all three might have transpired, given the language of the Tosfoth, but only one, the middle, is right. Finally, he settles the result he received with the position of R. Yehoshua, which in the Talmud may sound as if he were allied with Shmuel; this seems, however, not to comply with Rabbi Berab’s reconstruction. In terms of its content, for Rabbi Y. Berab, the dawn-doe comparison had to do with the status of writing Esther as compared with writing the Torah, as well as writing the other Writings, to which writing the Megillat Taanith (on the events of Chanukah) is also assumed to belong. It is not the logical ranking of these writings that he is trying to clarify, however, either for himself or for his audience. Rather, he sorts out different possibilities of making sense of the Tosfoth refuting the apology for Shmuel through the dawn-doe comparison. Thus, his thinking proves to be intrinsically for the sake of others, for masters of the Tosfoth, for the speaker in the Talmud, for Shmuel, and so on, but not for his own sake. The results of such thinking do not belong to him, either. Importantly, however, this does not happen in the sense that he lends his mind to somebody else and thus symbolically steals somebody else’s name. Rather, he himself openly thinks for the sake of others, thus making his own name irrelevant to the product of his thinking. What is more, his target is not the mind of another, nor has he tried to step into another’s mind. Instead, he remains in his own place of speculator

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or exactor, who does not read thoughts, but instead asks how the rhetorical arguments of others are/were possible. Specifically, as a thinker without any place, not even an imaginary one in the intellectual worlds through which he is thinking, Rabbi Y. Berab thinks for the sake of the Tosfoth that, if the writing of Esther were of the rank of writing the Torah, in the dawn-doe comparison, one would have absolutely no way of asking how Esther could have been the last of the officially recorded miracles if there still would have been a later miracle of Chanukah recorded in the scroll of Taanith. One would have no way to do so, since obviously, Esther would be the last miracle written at the rank of writing the Torah, and not in the rank of an always secondary process of putting acts into a record. In turn, if the writing of Esther had been one rank below the writing of the Torah, and the record in the scroll of Taanith had no status of official writing at all, then, again, the dawn-doe comparison would have no point, because obviously Esther would be the last miracle to be written officially, not merely recorded technically, and thus the miracle of Chanukah would cause no problem, either. It must therefore be assumed that in their refutation of the apology from the dawn-doe comparison, the masters of the Tosfoth have it say that both Esther and the scroll of Taanith must belong to the rank of the writing of Writings, and the dawn-doe comparison may therefore sound contrary to the apology for Shmuel. This made Shmuel say that while the official reading of Esther was established by the Holy Spirit, its official writing came from rabbinic authority and was in the rank of writing all other Writings, the Taanith being among them. Thus, the point Rabbi Y. Berab thereby makes in no way belongs to his own mind. Instead, he only unfolds a complicated picture of relationships between the apology for Shmuel, the dawn-doe comparison, and the Tosfoth, heuristically refuting the former with the help of the latter in order to end up with a refined reading of the Talmudic argument. Rabbi Y. Berab is nowhere in this final picture, nor does he have any personal say in its matter. Neither the masters of the Tosfoth nor even Shmuel as a person can have any say in it, either, since without the ongoing process of refutations and defenses, no one can hold up the result to which they led—the solution offered by Rabbi Elkhanan. Rabbi Y. Berab is not an author, or a narrator, or even an owner of what he exposes. However, without him, the picture would

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probably not have emerged. He only exposes things, although the things he exposes could hardly be there apart from the act of their exposition. What his exposition of the argument of the masters of the Tosfoth specifically indicates is the complexities of the authoritative status of conclusions and decisions attained by rabbinic rhetorical arguments. The rabbis made their rational, rhetorical arguments or deductions from the Torah as writing, as opposed to what they consider direct content-bound precepts recorded in it, and also as opposed to what the rabbis enacted in their own name and authority, without any arguments or deduction. In what follows, I will analyze the organization of this dynamic instance of rabbinical authority in the Talmudic argument, an analysis that also addresses the broader issue of the status of writing the book of Esther, a part of which we already observed in the apology for Shmuel. What we have just seen, the issue of whether or not the writing of the book of Esther was authorized by the Holy Spirit, will now unfold into the broader issue of the authorization of the book of Esther’s official writing and reading, the breadth of which I will again analyze in an example of the rabbinic argument on the other side of the folio from the apology for Shmuel. I will specifically focus on the ways in which the rabbinic procedures of rhetorical deduction work. When analyzing an example from the Talmudic tractate Megillah, which directly continues the issue raised in the apology for Shmuel and, as we have seen, sharpened and exacted both the Tosfoths’ and Rabbi Y. Berab’s speculation on them, I will be looking particularly at what this characteristic trajectory of speculation can tell us about the ways of the rabbinic deductions themselves, and more specifically, at what in these deductions can or cannot be isolated as belonging to a realm marked by the speculative approach. In order to approach this example of rabbinic rhetorical deduction and show the instance of the rabbinic authority in its work, as well as to access Rabbi Y. Berab’s thinking in an even more precise way, I will need to step back and mobilize theoretical resources for approaching the rabbinical rhetorical deduction in question. To this end, I will focus on the rhetorical-philosophical authority or, as I will immediately show, the sophistical authority of the argumentation, which was the only authority enabling both the Tannaitic

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sages (or later teachers/reciters of their wisdom) and their adepts amongst the Talmudic masters to produce this instance of rabbinic authority. To launch such an analysis I will need to prepare an intellectual space in which it can authentically emerge. Thus I temporarily step aside from Rabbi Y. Berab’s exactions and from the apology for Shmuel and other Talmudic rhetorical arguments to which they led. In an effort to figure out how Talmudic rhetorical argument works, I will now look for a new clarification of the relationship between the rabbinic instance and other instances of authority: in philosophers, rhetoricians, and Sophists. As I have already mentioned, this may take us not only backward to the masters of the Talmud, or even Plato, but also forward, to the most advanced theories of criticism in both philosophy and rhetoric.

The Tannaitic Sages, the Talmudic Teachers of Their Wisdom, and the Sophists Philosophy traditionally had two dominant attitudes toward the wisdom of the Sophists: exclusive derogation in the Platonic tradition, and inclusive reduction in the Aristotelian tradition. The sages of the Talmud seemed both to resist directly and comply subversively with one or another of these attitudes. Yet if viewed from the perspective of poststructuralist thought, the Talmudic tradition rereads its own metaphysical core, to which the classical philosophical approaches remain inevitably blind, because they measure the Talmud by philosophy, not the other way around. In establishing philosophy in opposition to the wisdom of the Sophists, Plato makes a double move: He invents rhetoric as a derogatory designation for the Sophists with regard to philosophers and criticizes rhetoric as a merely technical art of manipulating the truth by speechmaking. Unlike Sophists or rhetoricians, or in a later reverberation of the same pattern, unlike “Eastern tricksters,” including the sages of the Talmud, Plato’s philosophers love wisdom too strongly to attempt any manipulative possession of it. Unlike the Platonic tradition, yet not too unlike it, the Aristotelian tradition included the art of rhetoric in philosophy, at the price of reducing it

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either to dialectics, applied to the technical purposes of persuasion, or to logic. Today, contemporary scholarly approaches to the relationship between the Talmud and philosophy, including scientific, religious, and philosophical approaches, have been faithful to the Platonic and/or Aristotelian treatment of the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. In accordance with philosophical (mis)treatment of Sophists as a camp of antiphilosophical rhetoricians, the relationships between the Talmudic sages and philosophers have also been treated in terms of the intellectual or cultural history of the two camps and their respective doctrines: the sages of the Talmud against the philosophers. Accordingly, Talmudic sages were analyzed in terms of their similarity to and dissimilarity from the philosophical, theological, or cosmological doctrines of other camps surrounding them (Urbach’s The Sages being an example).25 Earlier, in the nineteenth century, researchers compared the sages historically with the Stoics and measured the Talmudic tradition of the sages by logic, a stoical art that, in the nineteenth century, flourished anew. Later scholars such as Saul Lieberman26 and David Daube27 both compared and juxtaposed sages with the grammatical and rhetorical schools of Alexandria, this time in terms of their respective hermeneutical principles. Other scholars, such as Jack N. Lightstone,28 analyzed the relationships between Talmudic sages and Greek philosophers in terms of cultural-sociological or even historical-philosophical approaches, while such thinkers as Levinas translated the Talmud into Greek, that is, into the language of philosophy. Yet regardless of any specific focus of research interests, the main conclusion, or, if you prefer, assumption, has been that the sages and philosophers belong to two totally different camps, which nevertheless interacted with one another in terms of either influence or resistance. In contrast, I situate the sages, the wise men of the Talmud, with regard to sophistry, philosophy, rhetoric, and wisdom anew, this time by means of and possibly against poststructuralism, which taught us how both rhetorical theory and, indeed, the phenomenon of rhetoric are important for understanding the relationship between philosophy and wisdom, including the wisdom of the sages. My argument consists in putting the two-camps approach, Talmud vis-à-vis philosophy, to the test through an extensive reading of a record from Talmud Yerushalmi Berakhot, ix, a.

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In fact, the two-camps approach can be found not only in scholarly literature on the Talmud, but also in the Talmud’s own records of maasim (acts), which present the philosopher as a clear outsider, just like noble Roman ladies or emperors attempting either to dispute the sages or to seduce them.29 Unlike the maasim, in which a philosopher is a clear outsider, however, the parable in Berakhot presents a philosopher in parallel with a relative, in fact, as a relative, involved in the complexity of denying relatives or recognizing them. The passage includes two parallel traditions from Rabbi Simeon b. Laqish:30

hdwm awh ryç[ hyh (çy) μa .bwrq wl çy μdw rçb .òwa çyql ˜b ˜w[mç òr ˜ynwtn [òrçy] òypa ala .˜k wnya hòbqh lba .wb rpwk yn[ hyh μaw .wb “yy[yrw yyja ˜[ml” .μ[f hmw .yy[yrw yyja μtwa arwq awh hnwtjth hdyryb hyh μa .bwrq wl çy μdw rçb .çyql ˜b ˜w[mç òrw aja òrw ˜wba .òr’ òçy lkl arwq hòbqh lba .˜l brqtm ˜lp ˜hh .òwa awh swpwswlyp. “wm[l ˜rq μryw ” dòhh .μybwrq Because interpretations of the stories may vary and even conflict with each other, I would rather leave the text in the original, without interpretation, attempting instead a grammatical transcript, which does not even attempt to eliminate any ambiguities of reference an interpreter may find here. R. Simeon b. Laqish says, “One of flesh and blood has a relative. If [he] is rich, [he] recognizes him; and if [he] is poor, [he] denies him. However, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so, but rather even [if the children of Israel] are down in their lowest depth, He calls them ‘My brethren and fellows.’” What’s the reason?—“For the sake of my brethren and fellows [I will say peace be with you]” (Ps. 122:8). R. Abun and R. Aha and R. Simeon b. Laqish: One of flesh and blood has a relative. If [he] is a philosopher [swpwswlyp ], he says, “That one is nearing us” [brqtm connotes “relative”]. However, the Holy One, blessed be He, calls all the sons of Israel “relatives” [μybwrq connotes “nearing”], in which regard it says “He has raised up a horn for his people; [praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him [literally: “relatives”], Praise the Lord” (Ps. 148:14).

What we have here are parallel parables. One is straightforward, both in its narration and in its message. The other is much more difficult. In the first, we have a person of flesh and blood (who may equally be an Israelite or

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not) contrasted with “the Holy One, blessed be He,” in terms of denying or recognizing a poor relative. In the second story, we have the same generic person of flesh and blood who selectively recognizes philosophers and denies nonphilosophers and is thereby contrasted to “the Holy One, blessed be He, Who inclusively recognizes all the sons and daughters of Israel,” even if some of them are not philosophers. In his Greek in Jewish Palestine, Lieberman systematically taught us that whenever the sages of the Talmud use a Greek word, a “Greek cultural” phenomenon is involved.31 The superior social status of a philosopher is nothing new in the Platonic tradition, nor is it inconceivable in the Aristotelian one, therefore it is of no surprise that a philosopher was not only a potential example of an outsider, like Socrates, but also carried a mark of social prestige. Nevertheless, it seems only correct to ask why the second story uses swpwswlyp instead of the no-less-prestigious, but much more “rabbinic” μkj or μkj dymlt (a sage or a student thereof). A careful analysis of this question would take us to the Greek phenomenon of swpwswlyp in its complex relationship to a no-less “Greek” phenomenon of the Sophist, which are to be both correlated and differentiated from its rabbinical counterpart, μkj. But let us get back to the Talmudic record. Regardless of whether swpswlyp in the second parable is a structural analogue to ryç[ in the first one or is a parallel to yn[, swpwswlyp is clearly a term characterizing a part of the community of Israel, and not just a generic term for a certain type of person in any generic society. swpwswlyp may even be a characteristic of a privileged part of the society, which, if a comparison to a Greek society were not being drawn, would probably be referred to as μkj. However fluid the relationship between the μkj and the swpwswlyp may be in this story, at the very least, the story can demonstrate that the meaning of the relations between the sages and philosophers is not only highly complex, but also unstable, even within the story itself. Unlike such clear outsiders, including emperors or noble Roman ladies, the philosopher does not always clearly stand outside, nor is he always obviously an insider. Instead, the philosopher is located betwixt and between—between the “inside” and the “outside,” and even between some of the children of Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He.

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It is not possible through cultural or hermeneutical contextualization to determine finally whether the parable uses swpwswlyp without any positive reference to the children of Israel, or rather, like the yn[ (poor) or ryç[ (rich) in the first parable, swpwswlyp (philosopher) is a term simply applying to any community, including the children of Israel. The fact that neither the philosopher nor the sages/rhetoricians can simply and decidedly distance themselves from each other, but rather are struggling with their mutual proximity, as well as with their mutual estrangement, indicates the high complexity of the issue between them. This complexity could hardly be exhausted through cultural and hermeneutical contextualization. Leaving the passage in hermeneutical suspense, I propose to use this fluidity of sense between the instances of μkj–swpwswlyp and Sophist as an entrance to a question that goes beyond the issue of meaning, and is possible only where meaning cannot be finalized without erasing the record that inscribes it. This specific question is still where the sages, meaning the “wise men,” stand in relation to philosophy, sophistry, wisdom, and rhetoric. However, I now ask this question not sociologically, historically, or culturally, but rather philosophically, hermeneutically, or “metaphysically,” as these terms present themselves in the theories of poststructuralism in its rebellion against the “Western metaphysical,” Platonic imperialism of meaning, which rebellion I have analyzed in Parts II and III of the present work. If, following Socrates, philosophy defines itself as nonwisdom, then the Talmud is nothing other than nonphilosophy. This does not mean, however, that the Talmud is merely a pre-Socratic form of wisdom, sophistry, or simply rhetoric. As opposed to a Sophist or rhetorician, who is professionally disinterested in any truth, a Talmudic sage has the same love for truth as a philosopher. For the same reason, a Talmudic sage shares with a philosopher the same ironic reservations about any truth that the reproductive, but uncritical, memory can deliver. The examples of such an ironic treatment of the truth of the reproductive memory are sometimes playful and sometimes bitter. It is playful when Socrates defeats young Phaedrus, who memorized, interiorized, and now repeats the speech of Lyses by heart, but is unable to defend the speech, or rather himself, against Socrates’ refutations.32 It is, however, a bitter irony when Rab Nachman33 refuses to eulogize a scholar,

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prominent for memorizing and interiorizing all the halakhoth, without, however, being able to defend the things he knows by heart against any reasonable refutation. Socrates playfully calls Phaedrus “poisoned with the pharmacon of a written, memorized speech,” and Rab Nachman bitterly calls such a mnemonically gifted tanna “a basket full of books” not worthy of his eulogy. Other examples are the attack on Pericles in the Protagoras and Menexenus as one who memorizes speeches, but can’t answer questions. If, for a moment, we forget Plato and follow the students of Aristotle, for whom philosophy is not foreign to wisdom, and hence rhetoric is not foreign to philosophy, then being a μkj or rhetorician would not mean being a nonphilosopher. However, in this case, the sages of the Talmud would become mere philosophers, specifically, dialecticians or logicians, without any independent metaphysical value credited either to rhetoric or to the Talmud. As a result, both rhetoric and Talmud would become reduced to mere applications of philosophical arts of either dialectics or logic; hence, in this view, even if either rhetoric or Talmud might have had some metaphysical element, this element, if any, would be the same as that of logic or dialectics. However, in both Platonic and Aristotelian scenarios, the sages are either nonphilosophers/rhetoricians, or “minor philosophers”—merely applied logicians or dialecticians. All of the scenarios above are scenarios of the relation between philosophy and wisdom, not the other way around. All of them are developed by philosophers, who engaged with and disengaged themselves from the wisdom/rhetoric of the Sophists. What is missing in all of these scenarios, however, is the possibility of wise men who themselves may be genuinely interested in philosophers, in spite of all the limitations a philosopher might have in their eyes. From the point of view of such a wise man, what the philosopher overlooks is tradition. At most, the philosopher may appreciate a tradition as a parallel to, or even more as a precursor of, his philosophical knowledge, but the philosopher would never give up his own authority of arguing what is and is not true, regardless of any given tradition. In this, the philosopher is not like a sage, since the sage never takes on himself the judgment of truth. Rather, the sage only learns and teaches the tradition—for him, there is no truth or authority separated or independent

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from the tradition, as there is no tradition immune to examination through logical/dialectical, or rather, rhetorical arguments. As a result, rhetoric as a way of discovering or rediscovering the truth of the tradition has for the sage the same fundamental weight that metaphysics has in the philosophical tradition of Aristotle. For a Talmudic sage, the rhetorical elaboration of the tradition becomes a fundamental operation in his establishing or reestablishing the tradition itself. This elaboration happens in terms of emending the version of Mishnah or of finding in the past a possible Tannaic authority behind it, or of discovering the matter of disagreement between the Tannaitic authorities of the past, or in other modalities of rational rhetorical analysis of the Mishnah. Such an analysis is always directed to a past that is, however, not restored historically, but rationallyrhetorically reinvented. Again, if a philosopher can decide on a tradition, the sage always decides only within it. If a philosopher envisions truth through a direct discourse of his own, the sage’s way to the truth never bypasses the tradition or its past. If a philosopher doubts a tradition, he may simply refuse it. If a Talmudic sage doubts a tradition, its refusal turns into a rhetorical refutation (ayçq), followed by the anticipation of a defense resulting in the discovery of the new traditional past. Facing a refutation, the sage needs to construct a new learning that will now not only defend the tradition against a refutation, but will reinvent the tradition in a new, more learned, more exact way. The sage’s rebellion against philosophy is provoked or driven by the philosopher’s ability to bypass the tradition, yet this rebellion is held in check or restricted by the sage’s need, not merely to teach or reproduce the tradition mechanically, but also to learn the tradition itself and its past-ness inventively; not only to reaffirm a Girsa, or version, but also to invent a svarah, or rational rhetorical argument to support it.34 The distinction between reproducing and teaching on the one hand and learning on the other is reflected in the term tanna, which often indiscernibly has two mutually exclusive meanings: an authority mentioned in the Mishnah, and a “basket full of books” who merely repeats the Mishnah and teaches it without really learning it. Such a distinction between tanna and tanna can stand only on a serious metaphysical ground, a ground that pre-Socratic Sophists neither knew nor needed to explore.

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In this perspective, the sages are not influenced by philosophy, nor do they simply resist or comply with philosophical scenarios of the relationship between wisdom, rhetoric, and philosophy. Rather, they have their own inevitable metaphysical, yet not philosophical position that enables the unique Talmudic approach to learning as not merely a repetition of tradition, but rather, in its highest form, as a process otherwise known in rhetoric as the process of (re)discovery of the past through a rational rhetorical (re) invention of it.35 The crucial features of the metaphysical position of the Talmudic masters include the following: 1. An orientation toward the past, a past reachable only through the process of its rational rhetorical reinvention. 2. Rhetorical refutation followed by a defense as the way of a rational, inventive learning. 3. A rational rhetorical disagreement between finite parties as a factor outweighing any final conclusion or agreement that the learner of the Talmud may reach. 4. An orientation toward the finitude of the mutually disagreeing parties in their eternal past, instead of personalizing them in any historical presence. In order to sum up the features in question, they must be juxtaposed with the philosophical version of metaphysics, which, as poststructuralism teaches us, is oriented toward presence, either toward the historical presence of the Mishnah or toward the biographical presence of the anonymous masters of the Talmud. However, the metaphysical position of the Talmud would not become accessible unless we reverse directions, measuring the Talmud not by philosophy, but rather measuring philosophy and its own metaphysics from the perspective of the Talmud itself, so that we will ask, together with the Yerushalmi, “Who is this one who is nearing us?” A pathway to the metaphysical, yet not philosophical position of the Talmud is found in the work of Rabbi Yizh.ak Canpanton. As we have seen, Canpanton presents the Talmud as an art of what can be called a rationalrhetorical analysis of the tradition’s past, a past that, in metaphysical terms, not only has not necessarily been historically present, but also never inevitably claimed to be relevant to any historical past. As we have already seen,

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in Canpanton’s efforts to relate the Talmud to philosophy, Talmud (without the “the”) should coincide with neither logic nor hermeneutics, nor should it become reduced to a mere application of them. Therefore, as a traditional counterpart of logic and hermeneutics, the art of rhetoric could have been a good philosophical home for Talmud. Yet the philosophical fate of rhetoric not only encouraged linking the art of Talmud to the art of rhetoric, but also did not let this linkage finally happen. Specifically, in Canpanton, a projected alliance between Talmud and rhetoric did not finally work, because he wanted (the) Talmud to have a role more fundamental than the role that rhetoric had in philosophy after Aristotle, where, despite a variety of scenarios of their relationships, rhetoric was at best considered philosophy’s handmaiden. Instead of the philosophical mistreatment of both rhetoric and Talmud, Canpanton offers a different way of answering the question of what (the) Talmud is metaphysically, the way in which philosophy and metaphysics depart from one another. In Canpanton’s discourse, the metaphysical component of (the) Talmud, that is, Talmud as a scholarly art, does not belong to philosophy, but interweaves very tightly with a historical or traditional component, the Talmud as an object of Talmudic contemplation (˜wy[ ), so that the historical object becomes inaccessible without mastering the art of exaction, the art of speculating on and contemplating it. Therefore, a very important message in Canpanton’s treatment of (the) Talmud is that the question of what Talmud is metaphysically is indispensable in his inquiry into what the Talmud is historically or traditionally. The former is, of course, impossible without the latter. This message is also relevant with regard to modern Eurocentric cultural approaches to the Talmud as well, since explicitly or not, each of them has had its own metaphysical position embroiled in their respective approaches to the historical/traditional Talmud. But this kind of analysis is beyond the focus of the present work. Instead, I propose to broaden Canpanton’s discourse on the Talmud, rhetoric, and philosophy further by using “instruments” developed in other research fields in which a similar distancing from philosophical metaphysics happens. For that purpose, I heuristically ally myself with Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza, and more broadly speaking, with Deleuze’s rediscovery of the importance of expressionism in philosophy.

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In reintroducing Spinoza’s notion of expression, Deleuze departs from the traditional philosophical distinction between form and content. Instead, he offers a less philosophical, but even more sophisticated approach. For him, content always has its own nondetachable form, which, unlike the traditional philosophical approach, must be carefully distinguished from yet another, no less important form, the form of expression. The form of expression links less to the content and its form and more to the material of expression, for instance, oral or written, and ultimately to the expression itself. As Deleuze puts it, neither content nor its form can be accessible directly without some procedures of expression involved. Moreover, for him, what becomes expressed is not necessarily equal to what was trying to express itself—a difference overlooked as often as the difference between the form of expression and the form of content. However, in exploring Canpanton’s nonphilosophical, yet metaphysical perspective on (the) Talmud, there may be a need to take an even more radical path. This path reveals itself through what we can now call Canpanton’s rhetorical concepts of Talmud such as refutation, external judgment, exaction, and, of course, through his synthetic analysis of the Talmud as the art of Talmud, the metaphysical implications of which I will attempt both to clarify and to extend. Taking Canpanton’s disengagement with philosophy in his own terms, as well as in Deleuzian terms of expressionism, I approach the form of the Talmudic argument in an attempt to determine whether Deleuzian concepts have recourse sufficient to withstand Canpanton’s program of disengaging the Talmud from philosophy. In these terms, the Talmudic form of the argument, which is a rational recollection of the past totally equaling a defense against a rhetorical refutation of it, is the Talmud’s characteristic form of expression. Following Deleuze, in order to grasp this form properly, I have to distinguish it from the form of content. To prepare this distinction, I will begin from an artificial example in an external field. Let us think for a moment of a screen version of a novel. To be a screen version of a novel and not merely an original film with an independent script, the film should retain not only some of the novel’s content, such as elements of plot, characters, action, and so on, but also some elements of the novel’s form, such as dramatic, tragic, or comic relationships between

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characters. In other words, the screen version of the novel must have in it something that makes it a screen version of the novel, rather than a new, original film with no relationship to any novel whatsoever. What makes the film a screen version of the novel, is not, however, the content of the novel itself, but rather a form that the novel gave to this content. It is thus not the content itself, but the “novelistic” form of content that makes the film a screen version of the novel, rather than a totally new film using the same plot or content. Yet there exists a clear difference between the form of the screen version and of the novel itself: The film is not the novel. This difference is the difference on another level of form, which, Deleuze suggests, is the level of the form of expression, without which no screen version as opposed to an “original” film would be possible. Of course, the difference in the form of expression between the screen version and the novel itself is not a mechanical difference in material media, paper book versus plastic film. This difference would be too general to explain why the film is a screen version of the novel. Therefore, we need a more sophisticated understanding of the form of expression. As one already might have noticed, the form of expression has no place on the axis going from content to the form of it. However intertwined the form of content and the form of expression are, they must be differentiated, even if the difference could hardly be a difference between two entities, either material or imaginable. My question is: does the Talmudic form of expression, its radical pastness, independent of any fixed moment in the linear past, belong to the scope of the metaphysical-philosophical question of being, for which Deleuze’s philosophical project of expressionism was a response? For Deleuze, we can note, expression philosophically assumed being as something that was trying to express itself, but was foreclosed by what became actually expressed in expression. As a result, for Deleuze, what is expressed always takes the place of being. This is why, in striving for being, Deleuze’s expressionism must insist on a past that has never been present. However, in order to encompass the Talmudic form of expression, we would need a more radical departure from the philosophical ontology of being in favor of Talmudic metaphysics, with its radical past-ness, without claims for presence. As an inventive response for a heuristic refutation, radical past-ness takes us even further than expressionism: The Talmudic argument not only introduces a past that

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has never been present, but also makes no claims for that past to be authentic to any historical present. “Reality,” “truth,” and “authority” come not from a presence in the past, but rather from the radical past-ness of the Mishnah itself, as opposed to what we immediately have in our basket full of books. As we can now see, in this perspective, either the Talmudic masters or the sages of the Mishnah may coincide with neither philosophers nor Sophists. The philosophers lack the fundamental adherence to tradition, while the Sophists lack any interest in the truth (or at least this is how the Sophists are portrayed by the philosophers under their derogatory title of rhetoricians). The Talmudic masters’ authority, however, can really come only from the past, and more specifically, not from any historical past, but rather from the radical, everlasting past-ness of the tradition to which they belong and from which they come. It is this characteristic that makes the Talmudic masters intrinsically turn to both philosophy and sophistry/rhetoric without, however, conflating their position with either of them.

Exaction from the Radical Past: Canpanton, Deleuze, and Talmud as Event In both accessing and assessing the feature of the authority of rabbinical arguments, as well as their feature of radical past-ness, I will heuristically use Deleuze’s and Canpanton’s categories, respectively the form of expression, primary refutation, external judgment, and, last but not least, exaction, as I return to the Talmudic discussion of the status of the writing of the book of Esther. Having analyzed the apology for Shmuel, I will now go to an empirical analysis of a larger unit of the Talmudic discussion, with regard to which the apology for Shmuel may be seen as either a part or, at least, as a very good introduction. This time we are going to follow not the masters of the Tosfoth, but rather the flow of the Talmudic argument itself as empirically, unhurriedly, and precisely as may be needed for isolating and testing the categories in Deleuze’s and Canpanton’s work. I will thus begin the analysis of this argument with a brief characterization of the form of expression of what the masters of the Talmud called “our Teaching,” or “our Mishnah,” or “What we, as opposed to others, repeat,

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learn, and teach,” referring to a code of oral law, officiated around 220 c.e. by Rabbi Yehuda the Prince. The code itself was clearly envisioned as oral in form, which, however, does not necessarily mean it was not recorded, although only technically, either on parchment or in the memory of a specially trained student, tanna—but never officially in a sense in which the Torah is written. In other words, unlike the Torah, or Written Law, writing or being officially written was never a part of “our Mishnah’s” form of expression. This official or intrinsic orality of the Mishnah distinguishes it from the Written Torah more than it seems. In their arguing about the Mishnah, the Talmudic masters would hardly build any of their arguments based on purely graphical peculiarities of Mishnah’s records, while they often argue based on the graphical shapes or forms found in the Torah scroll. What is more important is that the Tannaitic expressions do not necessarily follow a subject-predicate sentence structure, which may seem to be a standard in official writing, both in Latin writings and nowadays. Even if a sentence structure appears when translating the Mishnaic periods into modern languages, in the Mishnah, instead of the grammatical written structures of subject and predicate (explicit or even only implicit), one finds a much more inclusive form of expression: a speaker announces a theme (be it a “sentence” or only a title) and recounts one or more theses made by one or more parties on the given theme. These theses may sound incomplete, and thus could not be followed without knowing their theme, which itself is not always indisputable. Thus, the Mishnah often intrinsically not only requires that it be remembered, but also requires a judgment and an argument specifying either the theme in question or the theses thereof, or both. In addition, in its diegesis, Mishnah does not necessarily consist of a record of a speech made by an individual speaker, but rather is a summary of speeches or theses that different speakers have made on its theme in the past. Even its official composer, Rabbi Yehuda the Prince, appears in it as only one of the speakers it mentions, so that in its diegesis, the Mishnah hardly has a voice of one privileged speaker behind it. This irrelevance of the diegetic figure of a predominant speaker or orator makes the Mishnaic form of expression fit less and less to a standard formula of an individual oration made technically orally and then committed to record, a circumstance that takes the oral form of the Mishnah

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even further from the “initially” oral form of an oration that “later” was committed to record. As an example of these features of the Mishnaic form of expression, I cite a Tannaitic formulation that will be useful in yet another way, because I am about to expose an argument of the Talmudic masters on or around this formulation of the Tannaitic sages36:

˜wçl lkb μybtkn μyrpshç ala twzwzmw μylyptl μyrps ˜yb ˜ya πa aylmg ˜b ˜w[mç ˜br tyrwça ala twbtkn ˜nya twzwzmw μylyptw tynwwy ala wbtkyç wrytyh al μyrpsb There is no distinction between the scrolls on the one hand and phylacteries and mezuzahs on the other hand, except that the scrolls can be recorded (μybtkn ) in any language, while phylacteries and mezuzahs are not recorded, but in Assyrian. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel [says that] even in the case of the scrolls, [the sages] made no allowances, except for recording in Greek.37

In terms of its form of expression, what we have here is a regulation of which the formal theme is a distinction in norms of writing—the scrolls on one hand and the phylacteries and mezuzahs on the other. A reference to “scrolls” is assumed to be self-evident, but the Talmudic masters will have at least two versions of what exactly was assumed here as self-evident—either all the books of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, or all of them except for the book of Esther, which can be recorded only in Assyrian, just like the phylacteries and mezuzahs. In the Mishnah, the theme of writing the scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzahs is addressed by two parties. The first, totally anonymous party has a thesis that the scrolls can be “written in any language [˜wçl].” Again, a reference to the “language” is assumed here to be self-evident, but the Talmudic masters will have at least two mutually exclusive versions of it: as a type of written characters or as an idiom38 in recording. In addition, the only examples of language explicitly mentioned by the speakers are Assyrian and Greek, and only the latter is referred to in the Talmud, not merely as a type of characters, but also as an idiom in which an interpretation can be made. A second party has a different thesis. Although cited here as a direct response to the first one, it was not necessarily initially designed for this role. It says that even for “the scrolls, the only exception the sages allowed

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was writing them in Greek.” Again, the reference to the Greek is assumed to be self-evident, but the masters will discuss mutually exclusive possibilities for it—as an idiom of recording or only as a type of characters. It may also be noted that the first party seems to make no explicit reference to the past and thereby identifies his anonymous authority with that of the past, which is only natural for a speaker who does not specify his name. At the same time, the second party is both mentioned by name and refers to other sages who both precede the speaker in time and exceed him in authority. With this preliminary gloss of “our Mishnah” at hand, we are now sufficiently equipped to explore the metaphysical positions involved in the Talmudic discussion of it. The Talmudic argument I chose for the analysis is recorded in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 8b–9a. The argument in the Megillah focuses on two formulations listed in two tractates of the Mishnaic codex. One is the current Mishnah I have just glossed, while the other Tannaitic formulation can be associated with the Mishnah Yaddaim, even if it comes in a different variation of it. I will thus need to explain both the Mishnah in the Yaddaim and the variation of it cited in the Talmudic argument. My purpose here is not to analyze the meaning of the three Tannaitic passages, however, but only to prepare an analysis of the economy of rhetorical exchange in which the Talmudic discussion involves the passages presented here. The Mishnah in the Yaddaim says:39

yrb[w tyrb[ wbtkç μwgrt μydyh ta amfm layndbçw hrz[bç μwgrt ta amfm wnya μlw[l μydyh ta amfm wnya yrb[ btkw μwgrt wbtkç wydb rw[h l[ tyrwç[ wnybtkyç d[ μydyh Targum in Ezra and Daniel defile hands. Targum recorded in Hebrew, or Hebrew recorded in Targum, or [any of them recorded in Hebrew [characters] do not defile hands, unless recorded in Assyrian, on parchment, in ink.

In this formulation, “Targum” seems to be a reference to an idiom of writing found in scrolls of the books of Ezra and Daniel, as opposed to another idiom of writing found elsewhere else in these scrolls. “Hebrew” is also a type of characters that cannot be used in the scrolls. A scroll that contains Targum, i.e. the original idiom of the scrolls of Ezra and Daniel, is sacred—it defiles hands. Yet this is only so if the idiom is recorded as is, not in any other idiom or other character type, such as Hebrew. If the recording

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is different from the idiom it records, the scroll is no longer sacred. Also, any recording in Hebrew characters is not sacred. The only sacred type of characters is Assyrian. Again, the formulation above comes from the Mishnah Yaddaim (4:5), while the Talmud seem to cite all but the first clause of it in a version or a variation of it coming from an external source,40 so we will need to introduce this different formulation as well:

ta amfm wnya tyrb[ btkw arqm wbtkç μwgrtw μwgrt wbtkç arqm wydbw rpsh l[ tyrwça btkb wnbtkyç d[ μydyh Neither Mikra [the official readings, mainly Torah, but, as the Talmud would argue, conceivably also a book of Esther] nor Targum recorded as Mikra, nor [any] record in Hebrew [characters] can defile hands until [it] is recorded in Assyrian [characters] on parchment, and in ink.

In this formulation, we have two idioms of writing—Targum and Mikra—and two types of graphical characters: Assyrian and Hebrew. Originally already a writing, any idiom can be recorded in any of the graphical types. Also, any idiom can be interpreted/recorded in another idiom. Yet either transforming a record of an idiom or recording it as is, but in Hebrew graphics, makes what could have been sacred writing into a profane record not usable for the official act of reading. These three Tannaitic formulations—the Mishnah Megillah, the Mishnah Yaddaim, and an external variant of the latter—leave the meanings of their key terms, “language” (˜wçl ), “writing” (btk ), “to be recorded” (btkhl), “Greek” (tynwwy ), and “Assyrian” (tyrwça) open,41 or, at the very least, unstable. If read closely, the Mishnaic formulations call for philological-hermeneutical arguments in support of any of the controversial possibilities of meaning for “language,” “writing,” and “recording.” These possibilities may range from the partial or full synonymy of the terms with each other to their absolute irreducibility to each other. Similarly, “Greek” and “Assyrian” could be either languages, or writings, or characters, or all three conveniently expressed in a synecdoche of one of them. Although it is not my role here to take any side in this discussion, I will provide at least one possible gloss of the terms in their relation to each other. “Assyrian” tends to refer

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to a graphic version of the holy alphabet, as opposed to the Hebrew graphics and possibly to other versions of it. “Greek” seems to be a reference to both a graphics and an idiom usable for an interpretation of other idioms. “Targum” is an idiom of writing in the books of Ezra and Daniel, as opposed to another other idiom of writing, “Mikra,” found primarily in the books of the Torah, but also in the other canonical books and in the other parts of the books of Ezra and Daniel, as well. Targum is thus an idiom of writing opposed to that of Mikra. The Mishnah resists rewriting the Targum sections of the books of Ezra and Daniel in any other idiom, regardless of the characters thereof. Similarly, it resists replacing the official reading of Mikra by rewriting it in the other idiom, Targum. A more simplistic way of putting this relationship would be to say that Targum is an Aramaic language in a modern linguistic sense, and Mikra is Hebrew, again in the modern sense of the term. However, what this description misses is that in the Tannaitic formulations, “Mikra” and “Targum” do not necessarily refer to partial products of languages in which they are written, but rather indicate complete and finalized pieces of writing, a finite set of phrases that precede any oral tongue or any theoretical “system of signs.” Since any meaning could only emerge from the background of a pre-given linguistic system of signs, and since, in rabbinic perspective, “Mikra” and “Targum” do not initially belong to such a pre-given system of language, the analysis of them should also focus on the economy of rhetorical exchange involved in these passages, instead of proceeding on a philologically attestable meaning found in the Mishnaic “texts,” taken in their “own context.” To make this change of focus from looking at linguistic meaning to the economy of rhetorical exchange, in which the passages are involved, I will concentrate here on their rhetorical form, featuring specifics of the Talmudic argument’s form of expression, the form that, if carefully approached, promises to take us closer to what I can provisionally call a sense of the Talmudic argument, or more precisely, the question of sense in it.42 Accordingly, I will now proceed to outline this sense in terms of what could be called, using an idiom of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the topos or the rhetorical line of the Talmudic argument, which I initially represent here with the convenience of Maurice Simon’s translation. Although the translation

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smooths the text and masks the dynamic and unstable character of its key terms, it allows us to follow the rhetorical line of the argument.43 1. [From this (from the Mishnah—S.D.) we infer] that for requiring [the sheets] to be stitched with sinews and for defiling the hands both [books and tefillin or mezuzoth—S.D.] are of the same footing. 2. “Books may be written in any language.” The following seems to conflict with this: “A Scriptural scroll containing a Hebrew text written in Aramaic, or an Aramaic text written in Hebrew, or [either] in Hebraic script, does not defile the hands, [it does not do so] until it is written in Assyrian script upon a scroll and in ink! 3. [A silent request for a solution.—S.D.] 4. —Raba replied: There is no contradiction: [9a] the one statement [that of the Mishnah] speaks of [books written in] our script, the other [of books written in] their script. 5. Said Abaye to him: How have you explained the other statement [that of the Baraitha]? As referring to “their script”? If so, why should it say, “A Hebrew text written in Aramaic or an Aramaic text written in Hebrew”? The same would apply even to a Hebrew text which is written in Hebrew or an Aramaic text which is written in Aramaic, since it goes on to say, “till it is written in Assyrian on a scroll in ink”! 6. No. [What you must say is] there is no contradiction: the one statement [in the Mishnah] represents the view of the Rabbis, the other that of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel. 7. But if it is the view of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel, what about Greek? 8. —No. What you must say is, there is no contradiction; the one statement [in the Mishnah] refers to scrolls, the other to tefillin and mezuzahs. 9. What is the reason [why] tefillin and mezuzahs must be written in Assyrian?—Because in reference to them it is written, and they shall be, which implies, they shall be as they originally were. 10. What cases are there of Aramaic which can be written in Hebrew? I grant you we find in the Tora yegar shachdutha, but here [in the case of tefillin and mezuzoth] what Aramaic is there? 11. —No. What you must say is there is no contradiction; the one statement [in the Baraitha] refers to the Megillah, the other to the other books [of the Scripture.]

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12. What is the reason in the case of the Megillah?—Because it is written in regard to it, “according to their writing and according to their language.” What case of Aramaic being written in Hebrew is possible here? 13. —R. Pappa said: And the king’s pitgam shall be published. R. Nah.man b. Isaac said: And all the wives shall give yek.ar to their husbands. 14. Rav Ashi said: That statement [in the Baraitha] was made in reference to other books [of the Scripture], and it follows the view of R. Judah, as it has been taught: “Tefillin and mezuzahs are to be written only in Assyrian, but our Rabbis allowed them to be written in Greek also.” They permitted! This would imply that the first Tanna forbade it! What I must say therefore is, “Our Rabbis permitted them to be written only in Greek.” And it goes on to state, “Rabbi Judah said: When our teachers permitted Greek, they permitted it only for a scroll of the Torah.” This was on account of an incident related in connection with King Ptolemy, as it has been taught: “It is related of King Ptolemy that he brought together seventy-two elders and placed them in seventy-two [separate] rooms, without telling them why had brought them together, and he went in to each one of them and said to him, Translate for me the Torah of Moses your master. God then prompted each one of them and they all conceived the same idea and wrote for him, God created in the beginning, I shall make man in image and likeness, And he finished on the six day, and rested on the seventh day, Male and female he created him [but they did not write “created them”], Come let me descend and confound their tongues, and Sarah laughed among her relatives, [. . .].44 I will slightly disturb the convenience of this translation by adjusting it to be a bit closer to the rigor of its original, in which “Hebrew” is exclusively reserved for a type of record, not for a language or idiom; also the original does not refer to a “text,” a would-be conceptual intermediary between such heterogeneous terms as script, idiom, type of record, and writing. What is more, the original treats Mikra, or what-is-officially-and-publicly-read, as the delimited and finite object, not as a part or a product of a larger enterprise called the “Hebrew language.” At the same time, the original treats Targum both as a finite empirical object, distinctive parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra, and as a representation of a potentially infinite idiom, also,

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by synecdoche, called Targum, which could occasionally be found everywhere else, including the Mikra. Accordingly, a rewritten translation would go as follows: From the Mishnah we infer that for requiring the sheets to be stitched with sinews and for defiling the hands both (books and tefillin or mezuzoth—S.D.) are of the same footing. “Books may be written in any idiom (˜wçl ).” The following seems to conflict with this: “The Mikra recorded as a Targum, or a Targum recorded in the Mikra, or [either] a Hebraic record, does not defile the hands, [it does not do so until it is written [wnbtky ] in Assyrian upon a scroll and in ink!—Raba replied: There makes no refutation: [9a] the one statement [that of the Mishnah] speaks of [books recorded in] our script, the other [of books recorded in] their script. Said Abaye to him: How have you explained the other statement [that of the Baraitha]? As referring to their script. If so, why should it say, “The Mikra recorded as a Targum, or a Targum recorded in the Mikra”? The same would apply even to Mikra recorded as a Mikra [albeit in a different script] or to the Targum recorded in a Targum [albeit again in a different script], since it goes on to say, “till it is written in Assyrian [script] on a scroll in ink”! No. [What you must say is] there is no contradiction: the one statement [in the Mishnah] represents the view of the Rabbis, the other that of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel. But if it is the view of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel, what about Greek?—No. What you must say is, there is no refutation; the one statement [in the Mishnah] refers to scrolls, the other to tefillin and mezuzahs. What is the reason [why] tefillin and mezuzahs must be written in Assyrian script?—Because in reference to them it is written, and they shall be, which implies, they shall be as they should [i.e. in Assyrian script and their original idiom and record.] What cases are there of Targum which can be written in Mikra? I grant you we find in the Tora yegar shachdutha, but here [in the case of tefillin and mezuzoth] what Targum is there?—No. What you must say is there is no contradiction; the one statement [in the Baraitha] refers to the Megillah, the other to the other books [of the Scripture]. What is the reason in the case of the Megillah?—Because it is written in regard to it, according to their type of recording and according to their idiom. What case of Targum being written in Mikra is possible here?—R. Pappa said: And the king’s pitgam shall be published. R. Nah.man b. Isaac said: And all the wives shall give yek.ar to their husbands [etc.].

In the original of this translation, the economy of “linguistic” conceptions is more complex than that of an oral language thought of as an Aristotelian

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source or common denominator for different writings.45 More specifically, in this passage, the linguistic economy in action is that of an initially delimited and finite set of writings (Mikra, including the “Targum”—the Aramaic sections of Ezra and Daniel—which are distinct because they are more accessible for a public who speaks Aramaic as the every day language) vis-àvis potentially infinite ways of a secondary process of recording (re-cording) it (targum), in various typographic types thereof. What we have here is not the Aristotelian economy of experiences of thinking (psyche pathematon, lit: passions of thought), symbolized in spoken words, and their consequent recordings, to which economy the translator chooses to follow; rather the economy begins from the finite set of writings, not from either passions of mind, or the spoken words. What in Aristotle’s economy was passions of thinking, in the Talmudic discussion becomes initial writing; the place of Aristotelian “‘spoken words” is taken by a plurality of recordings or idioms, the Aristotelian “recordings” substituted by the graphical types. However, what is primarily interesting in this argument is not its “conceptions of language,” but rather the line of the rhetorical exchange; not conceptions of linguistic idioms, types of records, and writing it relates to, but rather the economy of inferences and refutations shaping the argument itself. The rhetorical exchange of inferences, refutations, and defenses goes here along the following line: Based on an inference from the Mishnah Megillah, the Talmud contrasts this Mishnah to an external Tannaitic formulation that is a version or a variant of the Mishnah from Yaddaim: If books, writing/ production of books, phylacteries, and mezuzahs must be equally strict, and a baraitha requires one to write everything only in Assyrian, the baraitha is contrary to the Mishnah and thus refutes the Mishnah. A refined search for a good defense against the refutation moves the Talmudic argument forward, up until a point at which a reasonable possibility of defense is invented. A most significant part of this invention, granting the book of Esther a status closer to the Torah than to any book of Writings, strictly corresponds to a larger inventive task of the whole Talmudic tractate. This was to argue rhetorically that the status of the book of Esther is closest to that of Torah. However, leaving aside this particular rhetorical agenda of the content of the tractate, let me focus on the series of rhetorical exchanges in the given argument

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in Bavli Megillah, folios 7b–8a, in which, among many other places throughout the tractate, this agenda gets ramified. In terms of the rhetorical form of the content of the argument, the series begins by [1] making an inference from the opening (anonymous) formulation in the Mishnah and continues by [2] contrasting the inference to the ruling in the external Mishnah, which [3] creates a silent threatening to have the opening formulation in the initial Mishnah refuted. [4] Rava offers a defense against this induced refutation by resolving a contrast in a hermeneutical settlement (through separating two different types of record for one and the same idiom). [5] Abaye refutes Rava’s settlement (through showing it does not fit to another part of the opening part of the formulation in the external Mishnah. [6] Abaye offers a defense through another settlement (connecting the beginning of the external Mishnah to the opening of the second part of the initial Mishnah). [7] An anonymous person refutes Abaye for the sake of Rava (through showing that the end of the second part of the initial Mishnah is still in the contrast to the external Mishnah). [8] The same anonymous person offers a defense through yet another settlement (the initial Mishnah is on the books of Torah, Prophets, and Writings versus the external Mishnah, which is on Phylacteries and Mezuzahs). [9] Scriptural support is cited for the second part of the last settlement. [10] Refuting the second part of the last settlement by contrasting it with the theme in the external Mishnah. [11] An anonymous person offers a new version of the previous settlement by providing a substitute for the refuted (second) part of the same settlement (Esther takes the place of phylacteries and mezuzahs, thus we have Torah, Prophets, and Writings versus Esther). [12] Citing “scriptural” support for the substituted part of the settlement. [13] Proving the substitution by citing Talmudic masters to give various examples of how it fits to the formulation of the external Mishnah. [14] Rav Ashi gives another version for the same settlement (the external Mishnah limits writing of all the books, including Esther, to their own idiom and Assyrian characters, with only one exception for recording Torah in Greek) and proves his point by defining the authority behind the formulation in the external Mishnah. Now, in terms of the form of expression or of rhetorical order,46 the series could be represented as follows: 1. Preparing a refutation 2. Making the refutation

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3. Silently threatening to allow the refutation of the opening formulation in the Mishnah refuted 4. A defense against the refutation 5. Refutation of the present version of the defense = preparing to adjust it 6. Offering an adjusted defense 7. Refutation of the adjustment = preparation for another one 8. Offering an adjusted defense instead of the previous one 9. Providing an authoritative support for the possibility of the first part of the settlement in the defense 10. Refuting the second part of the settlement = preparation to adjust the second part 11. Providing a substitution for the refuted second part of the settlement 12. Authorization of the possibility of the substitution 13. Exemplifying the possibility of the new substitution 14. Strengthening the last version of defense Begun from an inference leading to a refutation of the Mishnah from which it was made, the argument continues by a series of more and more refined defenses. This rhetorical line of argument, a primary refutation followed by a series of defenses, describes a trajectory of a very specific mode of thinking—the trajectory of recollection. This thinking and arguing in the form of a recollection features an attempt to recall, literally to re-collect, the Mishnah Megillah vis-à-vis the external Mishnah from the Yaddaim, that is, to advance the status of both from mechanically memorized phrases out of the basket full of books to formulations of law, critically verified and authoritatively approved. Such an advancement from mechanical memory to law converts a mnemonically remembered Mishnaic formula into a fully valid legal formula, withstanding the test of refutation. The heuristic test of refutation reestablishes the Mishnah’s validity and in fact reinvents the Mishnah, this time not as a phrase repeated by an auxiliary tanna, this human basket of books performing in front of the critically thinking Talmudic masters, but rather as a valid and authoritative law having in its past the authority of a “real” tanna behind it. Remarkably, the point of the recollection is not so much to “recall” or find a specific tanna of the past standing behind the Mishnah in the basket, but rather to make sure that in the past, there could have been a tanna behind

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the Mishnah. It is important to note that this procedure implies that the verification/authorization of the Mishnah is attained in the process of a recollection (which also means re-collecting, collecting things anew), a process that crucially coincides here with the rational process begun by a refutation and continued by a constantly refined defense against it. This mostly close connection between rational recollecting and refuting, between the act of memory and the act of rhetoric, has a very strong implication for understanding the temporality involved here. Although the recollection sends us back to the past, this past is not necessarily placed at a specific historical point, but is no more and no less than a possibility to withstand a primary rhetorical refutation. In other words, although the authority of the Mishnah comes from the past, the root of it is not historical, but rhetorical: The primary authority of the Mishnah lies in the past, but is established only on the basis of its proved ability to withstand the process of refutation. Again, the past-ness of the Mishnaic formulation is much more radical and much more authoritative than the past-ness of any specific historical moment per se, even if, as Arye Cohen suggests, such a historical moment can be translated from its presence in the past to a presence in the present. In his “The Task of the Talmud,” while talking about a specific example of a Talmudic argument, Cohen gives a characterization that he would probably apply to other examples, as well. One other important aspect of this conversation penned by the stam, is that it is a case of the stam—the anonymous 6–7th century editorial voice of the Talmud— writing a third century Mishnah. The extension of the dispute between R. Yosi and Sages from the Mishnah follows along the lines of the mystics of person theory of translation that we mentioned above. The Talmud continues the dialogue, putting thoughts in the mouth of the participants, in the implicit assumption that had the participants been living and writing now, this is what they would have said. Thus, the Mishnah is effectively translated—textually and geographically—to the Babylonian setting.47

This undoubtedly accurate picture, however, misses the oral character of Talmudic argument, embedded in the rhetorical form or line of a primary refutation followed by a defense, rather than by a dialogical form of diaresis. The Talmud does not merely technically write, geographically transpose,

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and thus “translate” the Mishnah to Babylon (from where?—Cohen had to say from Israel, almost in a modern geopolitical sense). Rather, the Talmud rhetorically recalls/recollects/records the Mishnah, confirms its authority, its past-ness, its being there, rather than here, in Babylon. In Babylon there are scholars who speak “instead of the Mishnaic parties,” thus making their own presence in Babylon, unattributed, anonymous, unimportant before the great past-ness that their rhetorical verification of the Mishnah successfully reaffirms, without giving to it any finalization in translation. Rather than making a translation, the “unattributed” Talmud accomplishes a perfect escape from any presence, either that of the historical past or that of the geographical present. The unattributed character of the “editorial voice of the Talmud” must therefore be taken more seriously. This voice may be unattributed not only because of the historical loss of the information about the Talmudic scholars in Babylonia, but also because escaping their own presence is a programmatic part of their project of the art of the Talmud. In their “continuing the [Mishnaic] dialogue” there is neither their own presence nor the dialogue’s historical past, but rather their own and Mishnah’s past-ness, which becomes the only source of their authority as the disciples of the Talmud. However, such a metaphysical position, the position of the stam, is of course beyond the scope of either philological or philosophical analyses of the “text.” In the Talmudic argument, the Mishnah survived the process of its refutation. By the same token, it was proved to have its own past. Such a past, however, has not been necessarily historically present, potentially given to anybody in the historical past, but also is not necessarily present there, although this past does not reject the possibility of such a presence. Here, the issue of historical presence in the past is simply not relevant. Instead, we deal with the authority of the past, with its past-ness, rather than with any specific historical past. Even if directed to the past, the Talmudic argument includes no claim or denial of anything having been present at any specific time. Such an almost paradoxical form of the argument, a rational recollection totally equaling a defense against a rhetorical refutation, is the form of expression characteristic for a Talmudic argument. In order to grasp this form properly, I had to distinguish it from the form of content, behind which

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the latter was often lost. Now returning to Deleuze’s concept of expression and an ontological concept rather than a merely textual-hermeneutical one, my question is: “Does this Talmudic form of expression, this radical pastness, independent of any fixed moment in the linear past, belong to the scope of the metaphysical question of being, for which Deleuze’s philosophical project of expressionism was a response?” In order to answer this question, I would note that, in Deleuze, expressionism philosophically assumed being as something that was trying to express itself, but became foreclosed by that which actually became expressed in expression. As a result, in Deleuze, what is expressed always takes the place of being. This is why, in striving for being, Deleuze’s expressionism must insist on the past that has never been present. However, in order to encompass the Talmudic form of expression, we would need a more radical departure from the philosophic ontology in favor of Talmudic metaphysics, of which radical past-ness is only one of the features. As an inventive response for a heuristic refutation, radical-past-ness takes us even further than expressionism: The Talmudic argument not only introduces a past that has never been present, but also makes no claims for this past to have been historically present. Unlike this, Deleuze must assume that before or behind the expression stands being, which attempts to express itself in an expression, fails to do so, and thus, as a precondition of the failure, must always be assumed being retroactively present there in the failure’s past. In Talmudic argument, “reality,” “truth,” or “authority” come not from a presence in the past, but rather from the radical past-ness of the Mishnah itself as opposed to what we initially have present in the basket full of books. It is the hard choice between a basket full of books at hand and a past that is never there that makes the Talmudic masters both admire the rational power of philosophical argument and to refrain from the logical and hermeneutic ramifications of this power that philosophy has to offer. The result of this double attitude is an independent intellectual stance that could be attained only if we put the axiomatic question “What is the Talmud?” in a theoretical relation with a much less axiomatic question, “What is Talmud?” and ask this question, not merely in terms of philosophy or its arts, but primarily in terms of the relationship of Talmud to the metaphysics of

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disagreement. Seen in this way, Talmud is not merely an art, but rather an intellectual event attainable only in the scope of the complicated relationship between philosophy and its others, rhetoric and sophistics. This event can be experienced if and only if it is performed. To achieve the event of Talmud, we need not merely describe what the Talmud is vis-à-vis philosophy and its arts, but to take the stance of Talmud to see what philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistics would be in such a perspective. In performing Talmud, we enter an intellectual event irreducible to any other intellectual positions in relation to which Talmud is no longer a name, but rather a verb, a participle, a song of an event that has always just happened and is always about to come, but never is, was, or will be: a process of rational disagreement occurring between finite intellectual beings, Talmudic masters, who just must have been or are about to emerge, but never were, are, or will be present. Both concluding my argument in this chapter and, at the same time, closing the argument on Canpanton and Derrida that I opened in Chapter 2, I would like to situate Canpanton’s strategy of getting to Talmud (with and without the) with regard to Derrida’s strategy of getting to différance. This will also initiate a broader argument on difference and disagreement that will be discussed in Part III of this book. In making his way from Saussure’s positive scientific notion of linguistic difference between oral signifiers to Heidegger’s ontological difference between being and beings and further to différance as temporization (differing and deferring at the same time, of which classical notion of the subject and even Husserl’s notion of consciousness are only partial functions), Derrida stresses that unlike Heidegger’s ontological difference, différance as temporization is no longer fully intrametaphysical. Derrida makes this claim in allying with Levinas’s formula, “a past that has never been present,” which Levinas used “certainly not in [a] psychoanalytic way, to qualify the trace and enigma of absolute alterity: the Other.”48 This ensures that the Other is not taken as present, not even in the past; the past thus becomes endlessly open, the past to come. By these means Derrida leaves the intrametaphysical approach to orality behind, in favor of what he designates as writing or différance.

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However, if seen through this lens, Canpanton opens up a perspective in which orality entails stakes no less serious than Derrida’s writing as différance. Canpanton marks a turn from the Talmud as an object of either tradition or its history to (the) Talmud as a scholarly art of oral learning, which is thus irreducible to any of the philosophical arts or to philosophy at large. His turn calls us to rethink the traditional intrametaphysical approach to orality as a privileged form of language; however, such a rethinking should not merely continue Derrida’s departure from linguistic orality to archi-writing as différance, but should also allow a turn back to orality, this time not for the deconstructing or destructuring of the presence of the present, but rather for paying tribute to the past-ness of the past as the main modus operandi of the Talmudic art. If read in the light (or should I say in the darkness) of the problematics of différance, Canpanton’s work initiates rethinking the intrametaphysical place of orality. In the context of Canpanton’s project, rethinking the intrametaphysical place of orality comes together with a new appreciation of the past in its modus of past-ness, rather than in a modus of historical presence in the past. Even if, in the process of Talmud, the historical existence of past events is not denied, the process of Talmud does not necessarily or univocally affirm such an existence either. (The) Talmud does not bind itself to the existence of the historical past; instead it aims at celebrating the past-ness of the tradition by means of critical rhetorical reapproval of it. Accordingly, even if Canpanton appeals to the past of the tradition of the Talmudic masters, his process of Talmudic speculation does not necessarily invest such a past with presence, making no naïve straightforward claims of how things really happened or what the Talmudic masters of the past really thought. Canpanton’s process of Talmud reinvents or reapproves the tradition rather than reconstructing it historically. The Talmudic process also does not entail reinvention of the past in the psychoanalytical sense to which Derrida has referred.49 Psychoanalysis works with imaginary past, initial, albeit phantasmatic seduction, trauma, and the like; although these events have never been present, they are nevertheless present in people’s imaginations. Even if, at the end of the psychoanalytical process, the existence of a past trauma or of a past seduction may be denied, it must be recognized at the beginning. Without such recognition of the “historical,” or, if you prefer, biographical existence of the past, the

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process of psychoanalysis could never begin. In the psychoanalytic process, an ultimate rejection of the claim of existence of the past trauma or seduction must be preceded by an initial assumption that, in the past, these events were indeed present. Unlike this, the process of Talmud neither begins with recognition of the existence of the past, not does it end with a denial of it. Rather, a master of Talmud accepts a tradition at hand and, through the process of primary refutation, first rhetorically refutes it and then restores it from the refutation. Thereby appreciation is given not to a historical past, but rather to the ultimate past-ness, the ultimate irrefutability of a tradition at hand. As a result, in the Talmud appreciation of the past-ness of a tradition does not change even if this past-ness can entail several pasts, and even if those pasts are indeed contrary to each other. Furthermore, the Canpantonian art of Talmud is distinct not only from the psychoanalytical model of the past that has never been present, but also from Levinas’s take on the past, which has never been present, either. For Levinas, such a past is a way of attuning to what he calls the enigma of the absolute Other. However, the enigma of the absolute Other becomes possible only in an ongoing hunt for a presence of the Other in the past, a presence that, as Levinas teaches us, infinitely escapes from being present, and thereby attunes us to the enigma of the absolute alterity, which is/ was/will be infinitely missed (along with the missing of the missing) in the classical Greek philosophemes of the totality of the one and the same. In Levinas, the absolute Other is enigmatic exactly because it/he/she escapes the totality, always automatically projected in any traditional philosophical view. Thus the enigma of the Other as a past that has never been present serves for Levinas as a way to introduce the absolute alterity of the Other. In terms of its economy, Levinas’s enigma works in such a way that one invests the past with a character of a presence in the past first, and then withdraws the investment, thus producing the effect of otherness of which enigma is only one of the names. Because of this economy, and also because “other” is a philosophically charged notion, Levinas’s appeal to the absolute Other could only occur from within a language of philosophy, from within its philosophemes, such as one, the same, other, and last but not least, enigma, whereas the Talmud or other Hebraic sources Levinas recruited serve only as a utopian place for an ethical ground of ontology, his alternative to the

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fundamental ontology of Heidegger. Levinas thus strategically departs from philosophy and ideally lands at a space beyond it, which he associates with Talmud and Hebraic sources at large. By contrast, what Canpanton offers us as Talmud does not emerge from within philosophy or its arts; nor is Talmud seen as a transgression of philosophy to its beyond. Instead, the Talmud is an art per se, which must be compared and correlated with the philosophical arts but does not constitute any version of either philosophy or ontology. How exactly does Canpanton succeed in situating (the) Talmud with regard to the philosophical arts without reducing (the) Talmud either to hermeneutics or logic or to their traditional philosophic counterpart, rhetoric? The unique situation of (the) Talmud in Canpanton could only be explained through the reintroduction of an element that philosophy missed in a sense much stronger than that in which philosophy opposed itself to rhetoric. This missing element is sophistics, which is to be carefully distinguished from its philosophic portrayal, rhetoric. Only this differentiation of sophistics from rhetoric, of which differentiation Canpanton’s Talmud is a sign, can give us a clue to undoing the philosophical violence made both to the sophistics and to the Talmud over the centuries in the West. This differentiation of sophistics from rhetoric, orality from the philosophical take on it, or disagreement from an instrumentalism of getting to an agreement, could only happen if we move from the positive knowledge of what the Talmud is to setting this positive knowledge against a less positive, but more fundamental question of Talmud without “the.” Rediscovery of the orality of Talmudic arguments and disagreements as well as the further research into the role of sophistics are ways in which the question of Talmud could be continued so that we would go further—from a positive traditional or historical answer to what is the Talmud to a less positive and more fundamental question of what is Talmud. After both a proof and a closer exposition of the rhetorical aspects of Canpanton’s work in Part III, my next and last step for this book will be to ask the question, what is Talmud as the art of disagreement in the broader context of Western philosophy of agreement? In this analysis both Canpanton’s historically specific art of Talmud and Talmud in a sense of a broader intellectual project will reemerge in their more general intellectual capacity of finite minds both living and thinking toward their past (and thus toward their future). I will name that new capacity the art of disagreement.

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The Ways of the Talmud in Its Rhetorical Dimension: A Performative Analytical Description

Because there is no English translation of Canpanton’s The Ways of the Talmud, I provide here a very detailed analytical exposition of theoretical parts of The Ways. Although I keep very close to the original text, the exposition is neither just an attempt at a translation nor a close paraphrase in another language. My task is to expose what existing research on Canpanton has not yet emphasized enough: the theoretical-rhetorical aspects of his work. I have shown how Canpanton’s art of (the) Talmud in particular and Talmud in the more general sense of an intellectual project challenges the dichotomy of philosophy and rhetoric in the West. Talmud is much closer to rhetoric than to philosophy, yet it does not coincide with rhetoric either. Part of this argument was that Canpanton’s work has a strong rhetorical dimension. I seek to expose that dimension of Canpanton’s work performatively, by rendering all the theoretical parts of his book in their rhetorical senses. If this experimental rhetorical reading and interpretation via the choices made in exposing Canpanton’s work succeeds, that is, if his work yields itself as a 179

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consistent series of affirmations pertaining to rhetorical theory, in addition to providing a text for the reader who cannot read the Hebrew original, the exposition will also prove performatively the argument for the strong rhetorical dimension in Canpanton’s work, and thus give support to what I have analyzed as the rhetoric of Talmud in The Ways of the Talmud. I preface that exposition with an explanation of the main theoretical notions of Canpanton in their respective contexts, and with an outline of the composition of The Ways. For that end, I didactically outline the composition of Canpanton’s tractate and the main concepts and notions of his theoretical world.

Composition and the Main Notions in Canpanton’s Work In this section, I introduce Canpanton’s terms, concepts, and notions in their immediate theoretical contexts and in the ways they interact one with another as Canpanton describes the art of the Talmud. I also explore the composition of his book. Canpanton’s central notion of contemplation ( ˜wy[ ) designates the approach of a student or practitioner of the art of the Talmud toward a page of the Talmud that he or she learns. Contemplation, also translatable as speculation, refers to the disposition of a student of the Talmud toward the orations (speeches, phrases, and statements) of Talmudic masters of the past recorded on that page. His or her disposition to the page of the Talmud means that the student attunes to relationships between language ( ˜wçl, the actual wording on the page) and matter ( ˜yyn[, issue) in these orations. In other words, by means of contemplation, the student heuristically applies a matter he projected for a given language to this very language, and then, also heuristically, tries to refute his own projection. Refuting a given result of a contemplation helps to refine the contemplation further. Through a series of projections of the results back to the page, refutations, and refutations of refutations, the student refines his/her grasp of the matter of the language, so that he/she ideally reaches the point at which all the possibilities have been already contemplated and sorted out, resulting in the most precise and compelling version of what the matter of the given language might have been. The correct

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projection of the matter of a given phrase or oration successfully explains how every element or modus in the language of the phrase works for what Canpanton assumes to be the main purpose of any valid oration—the refutation of another oration. Canpanton calls the result of this multi-step process of speculation “the oration made plain” (rmamh lç wfwçp ). To reach this point is ultimately to answer one of two questions—either what the oration might have refuted, or what inner doubt of its addressee it might have eliminated. However, even after this, the process of speculation would not be over unless, in the language of a given oration, the student isolated not only a refutation, but also an invention. Invention ( çwdj ) means for him a point that looks new as compared to what a given oration came to refute, or to an opinion that the audience would otherwise have before the oration is presented to it. Therefore, to contemplate an oration means not only to see what it refutes, but also to find what it invents. In many cases, seeing what is refuted would also immediately frame the point of invention, as well. However, when this is not the case, that is, if fçp or making an oration plain yields only a doubt or an oscillation in opinion that the oration eliminated, but does not frame the position this oration refuted, Canpanton needs to find in the oration another resource for invention, which he finds in inferences made from the oration and in their agenda of refuting orations of others. He terms both the procedure of such an inference and its result as “exaction” ( qwyd ). The mechanism of exaction is indeed the most difficult part of Canpanton’s discourse, so that in this brief overview, it could only be defined in terms of its place in the whole of Canpanton’s discourse, but not in terms of the mechanism of exaction itself, which has to do with affinities of mutually co-exclusive possibilities of themes and matters in an oration. In terms of its place in Canpanton’s system of concepts, exaction appears in contrast and in supplement to fçp or to making an oration plain in its matter. Canpanton needed this supplement as an ultimate resource for invention; it thus plays a central role in his system, a role comparable to the role of the dialectical syllogism in dialectics and the rhetorical syllogism, or enthymeme, in rhetoric. A result of a speculation does not have to be true, but it has to be correct. In the process of speculation, the student is to follow two main criteria of correctness: (1) fullness of correlation between modi of a language and

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the matter projected for it; and (2) there being behind the oration a strong agenda of refutation and a substantial point of invention. I will now characterize in greater detail the main concepts on which the notion of speculation depends, such as making an oration plain, language, matter, and others. Making an oration plain means neither making it simple nor easily accessible, but rather refers to a result achieved through a complicated process of sorting out what would be the precise match between a language and a matter,1 a match that does not occur without contemplating a situation of disagreement in which the oration in question might have occurred. Without finding a disagreement behind an oration, the oration, for Canpanton, does not yet reveal its full sense. In turn, disagreement means that there are at least two parties involved. Yet, more than often, in the Talmud only one party speaks in an oration, and the contemplator must find, reconstruct, or even construct the opinion of the other party. Further, the term “matter” designates a stake or a point on which the parties might have disagreed. The term language features a lingua in which a disagreement that might have happened between the sages/masters of the Talmud is now explicitly given for a student, both as a fact of radical past and as a challenge for contemplating. In addition, the term “matter” reverberates with Aristotle’s intellectual idiom of topos. Interpreted sometimes as “the line of an argument” or “common place,” yet never defined by Aristotle himself, topos features one or another “common” way of an argument, which also means “a way of disagreement.” Since every specific way of disagreement would not only include a form of an argument, but would also in a certain way delimit a point or a “matter” on which the parties might have disagreed, topos features not only one or another way/form of argument in disagreement, but also predefines a variable, a point on which the parties may have disagreed. Thus topos characterizes not only how one argues to persuade the other, but also predelimits a variable on which the parties might have disagreed. In this last aspect, the Aristotelian idiom topos reverberates with Canpanton’s idiom of matter ( ˜yyn[ ). The typical form of Talmudic disagreement may partially predefine the matter ( ˜yyn[) that may stand at the center of this or that disagreement.

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The connection between the Aristotelian intellectual idiom of topos and Canpanton’s notion of matter ( ˜yyn[) could be presented in yet another way. As we remember, the student of the Talmud attunes to the relation between language and matter, which occurs in searching for inventions in the orations of each of the disagreeing parties vis-à-vis their respective matters. It is as the result of this connectedness of language-matter relations to the process of invention that Canpanton’s notion of matter becomes an intellectual kin of the Aristotelian intellectual idiom of topos. Specifically, matter not only makes a point of disagreement between the parties, but also constitutes one or another way of invention, without which no disagreement can be more than just a result of a mistake, either logical or mnemonic. This complicated relation between matter, language, and invention is ramified in Canpanton’s approach for causality of the process of speculation, both for single orations and for larger units of Talmudic discussion in speculation. His sophisticated theory of causality in any given Talmudic oration serves one purpose: It allows searching for inventions even where the more straightforward ways of invention do not easily work. In Canpanton, in order to contemplate an oration, one needs to find four causes coparticipating in it. For that purpose one should try answering four questions: (1) who speaks and to whom; (2) which doubt an oration was to eliminate or which other oration it was to refute; (3) to which verse and/or rhetorical enthymeme the oration complied; and (4) to which end the oration was directed, either to refute another speech on the same matter, or to provide a support against such a refutation (or else, either to include a theme in a ruling [ twbrl], or, alternatively, to exempt a theme from it [f[ml ]). I hypothesize that the four causes enumerated above correspond to four Aristotelian causes or “coparticipants” involved in the poesis or “making” of every single thing: respectively, causa materialis, causa finalis, causa efficiens, and causa formalis.2 Upon having found the causes of an oration, one has to see if the causes can collectively make a sufficient cause for all of the parts of the oration—both for the themes in it and for their respective rulings. In addition, if, in a certain oration, a change in theme occurred, one also has to see if the causes would be sufficient for this change as well.3

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In Canpanton, for the exception of the fourth, the end-cause, the contemplation of the causes focuses on an oration “in itself” [rmamh μx[], i.e. in its material, formal and efficient causes—themes, rulings and topoi. When this process is done, one should further contemplate where the oration would stand with regard to its end cause, which could be done along one of the two scales: (1) does an invention appear in refuting an oration of another party, or, alternatively, does it emerge as a support against a refutation, which has come from another party earlier? and (2) did an oration make a supplementary oblique theme excluded from a ruling stated in the oration or, alternatively, did the oration or its part make a supplementary oblique theme included in the ruling? The second scale in approaching the end cause was needed for Canpanton to save a possibility for a plain4 and yet indirect invention where other, more direct possibilities for invention would not work: i.e., when a specific language of an oration yields no invention, either thematic (in its direct theme) or regulative (in the direct ruling). Although the supplementary oblique thematic elements—either included in oration indirectly or, equally indirectly, excluded from a ruling in the oration—clearly go beyond the essence of the oration, they nevertheless belong to the rank of a plain relationship between a language and a matter in the oration, rather than to the rank of exaction one made from it, if no invention was found in the rank of the plain. Of course, the causes of an oration can be reached through the art of logic, although logic is here of a limited help, because it supplies tools while we deal with ends.5 In other words, applicability of logic is limited because the attunement to subversive affinities through the process of exaction is in itself not a procedure of logic. To find causes of an oration one has to look for an invention the oration may have brought in; one also has to locate this invention, either in the themes and rulings in the oration itself, or in the differentiated affinities/ exactions surrounding its themes and its matter. If an invention is located in the affinities in matters, coming out of the theme, the connection between the invention and the oration still can be thought of in logical terms of antecedent and consequent. Yet, even in this case, the transition to the “consequent” in affinities is not a logical operation, but rather a logical result achieved through procedures of rhetorical inference. A move of exaction

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from language and matter to affinities of matter is in itself neither purely logical nor rationally psychological, nor is it fully grammatical. Positing oneself to analyze the causes of an oration does not mean merely getting a language and a matter in an oration fit one to another; rather it also involves making a rhetorical inference from this oration, the inference to be based on an assumption that the oration is a response to doubts arising with regard to its matter. What emerges as the result of speculation is therefore not the “meaning” of the oration, but rather a rhetorical significance or function that the oration had. Again, an inference made through exaction is rhetorical, rather than logical, because it has to do not with language versus meaning, but rather with oration versus their matters. It is because of this irreducibility of any of these human arts to the human arts of logic and grammar, or even rhetoric and psychology, that contemplation needs some “help from heaven” (Canpanton). Mentioned in the first paragraph of the tractate, the “help from heaven” now reveals itself not as a mere piece of religious eloquence, but rather as an intrinsic element of a conceptual system, which can no longer fully rely on any of the given arts of philosophy. Again, finding an invention is the main goal of the procedures of exaction. A procedure of exaction isolates the causes of an oration while aiming at finding and locating an invention, either in the language of the oration in its themes and rulings or in the thematic/topical differentiated affinities around it. The measure in which any oration is either inventive or not is the matter (topos) that speculation supplies to it. It is vis-à-vis the supplied matter or topos that one decides whether the oration was inventive or not. To contemplate an invention means to supply the oration with a matter, a topos, a line of the argument, in which the oration could be rhetorically inventive. This can be achieved either through supplying a topos for the oration itself or through contemplating a differentiated affinity around it, which can provide a key for finding an invention. Given the distinction between plain contemplation of an oration vis-à-vis its matter on the one hand, and making an exaction/finding an invention through making inferences from the oration on the other, Canpanton is now moving from a single oration and its causes to a larger exchange of orations, such as a Talmudic discussion (sugiyah) or potentially even a whole tractate

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of the Talmud. Analysis of larger units of Talmudic exchanges produces an even more complicated result, which he calls an “expounding” (çwrd ), a series of orations-refutations and supports against them, in which the Talmudic masters expound an oration of another master/sage given at the start of their exchange. Again, in his characterization of the rules of such an exchange or expounding, Canpanton is faithful to the Aristotelian tradition of Rhetoric: Refutations must be “of necessity,” while supporting orations can be “of probability” only. What is more, the functions of refuting and supporting are considered primary in any oration, to such an extent that it is not even granted that the disagreeing parties coherently stick to the judgments/opinions they once allied themselves with. Canpanton instructs that, in speculation, a student always has to watch for any changes in the judgments the parties allied themselves with in the earlier stages of the expounding. In other words, disagreements and refutation are rooted in any oration so deeply that they even overrule the coherence of individual judgments/opinions of the parties involved in an exchange. Therefore, it becomes less surprising how easy it is to overlook Canpanton’s point and to take the whole process of oratorical exchange for so-called “mere rhetoric” or “empty eloquence.” Upon having established the rules of exchange and after having defined which causes one is to be looking for, Canpanton instructs on how and where to look for invention and for respective doubt, which were to be causes of an oration. This looking for invention was also to answer how and why a proposed invention resolved a respective doubt in that way, rather than in another one. Further in his tractate, on having described the causes of an oration as well as its rhetorical functions of refutation, invention, and elimination of doubt, Canpanton asks an “epistemological” question—how the rhetorical consequences/inferences of an oration can become known. Part of the answer is that for him, writing, and indeed any oration, functions not as a neutral container/conveyer of meaning, but rather as an active and indispensable element of itself: instead of showing a meaning, writing is expected to orient one against another oration/judgment that one would otherwise hold with regard to the matter in question.

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Such an approach also reinforces Canpanton’s attitude to oration as always already a refutation, which, in turn, is impossible without an assumption of an ongoing disagreement; this disagreement is not an intermediary point to a consensus, but rather becomes an end in itself. In such an “epistemology” of oration, disagreement always comes before oration, not the other way around. Upon having asked about the causes of an oration and having established that disagreement comes before the oration, not other way around, Canpanton now moves to the question of the causes of the disagreement itself. Again, following a tradition of Aristotle, Canpanton looks for both an efficient cause for disagreement and an end-cause. He relates those two causes respectively to two lingua used in the later Talmudic masters: “cause” ( abys) for what in Aristotle would be efficient cause and “end”/ “consequence”/“effect” (atwqpn) for what would be end-cause. Canpanton’s approach to the causes of disagreement ultimately builds on the thesis that the Talmudic masters disagree if and only if there is a cause, and that this cause can be eliminated neither by correction of a mistake nor by any voluntary act of agreement. The disagreement between parties comes not from a logical mistake, nor originates from a conflict of interests, but rather is constituted as a relationship between parties, emerging as permanently disagreeing eons (or multiple finite eternities) that refine and define each other in the midst and due to the process of their disagreement. The disagreement in question is thoroughly impersonal and thus involuntary: Although it is represented by the personal names of Masters, those names no longer belong to any biographical personalities, but rather designate eternal profiles, which could always be manned anytime by anyone capable of getting the disagreement. Personal names of the parties in disagreeing are no more than synecdoches for the event of disagreement itself. Again, because any oration is always already a refutation, the point of getting the refutation right consists not in agreeing with it, but rather in disagreeing with it intelligently. Furthermore, the disagreement between the parties is inevitably oral, and cannot be converted to writing, albeit technically. The orality of disagreement does not convert to writing, not for the linguistic reason that sound always has something in it that the letter cannot retain, but for a reason

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though, close to linguistics, is already irrelevant to it. There are oral differences in reading that only signify as long as they are not committed to writing, or at the very least, as long as they are written down only technically. That is to say, although written down, the differences between the parties in disagreement signify only through the procedures of learning, not through a mere process of reading and comprehension. A true disagreement and a respective invention do not reveal themselves to a reader, unless the reader transforms into a learner or contemplator who is eager for invention and committed to both following the disagreement and revealing the doubts and refutations it involved. Since getting right the causes of disagreement between the masters has to do with being precise about the orations of the masters and, thereby, with limiting the power of each of these masters, Canpanton proceeds to a closer analysis of the disposition of a student that leads the student to an exaction— qwyd. He associates his own term and concept of qwyd with aqwyd, a term of the later anonymous Talmudic masters, who themselves gave the term a specific and indeed narrower significance. In contrast—which I can see as a contrast, while the projected readers of Canpanton were meant to see it as a direct continuity with the Talmud itself—Canpanton gives the concept of exaction a central significance, thus making it pertain to the entirety of the Talmud, and indeed, to the very specificity of it. I hypothesize that he derives this central significance of the concept as a parallel to the concept of enthymeme in Aristotle, where enthymeme featured the very specificity of the art of rhetoric, as opposed to that of dialectics. Upon having outlined the causes of an oration and of disagreement in which any oration is always initially involved, and upon having described exaction as the main key to the causes, Canpanton moves to instruct on how to get a true picture of an oration or an expounding that comes out of the aforementioned causes. Upon having followed the way from causes to the mental picture they caused, Canpanton outlines the norms for a wise contemplative inquiry, which he opposes to asking a mere clarification question. At this point, he also discusses the so-called “second refutation,” an element found in a series of complicated expounding, given that they are made wisely.

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Continuing with the issue of complicated series of expounding, Canpanton addresses the issue of a sequence of speech, claiming that on the level of sequence of speech a student is supposed to look for an end-cause of any specific wise sequence, as opposed to all other possible sequences. Then Canpanton moves to define the rules of the form (formal causality) in the orations of the Talmudic masters. One of the indispensable formal elements in their orations is that any of their orations always involves a disagreement, which disagreement in itself goes much further than one can reach by a logical denial per se. Canpanton further proceeds to teaching on the causes of orations found in post-Talmudic masters who took upon themselves a role of either clarifying or explaining the Talmud, which itself resulted in a whole set of new explanatory compositions. Specifically, Canpanton characterizes specific features of the explanatory compositions of such post-Talmudic masters as Rashi and Nachmanides. Upon having described the causes of orations of both Talmudic and postTalmudic masters, Canpanton develops a purely theoretical discourse on the disagreement, this time without any immediate connection with any of the Talmudic masters. He focuses specifically on the rules of support against refutation, general rules of Talmudic supporting and refuting, and the rule of isolating the middle term, which stands at the head of a given disagreement and is to be distinguished from the logical middle term, which only functions as a mediation, not as the point of disagreeing. Finally, after having introduced his main concept of exaction as well as his teaching on the causes of Talmudic orations, their exchange, sequence, and, last but not least, the causes of disagreement, Canpanton connects his conceptual description of the Talmud with the actual lingua of the Talmudic masters. For that purpose, he switches from a form of tractate to that of glossary. Then, he concludes his composition by a both eloquent and profoundly wise justification of the alliance of books of wisdom and logic for the sake of the art of (the) Talmud. I now proceed with an analytical, section-by-section description of Canpanton’s book.

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Analytical Description of Section One In this section, Canpanton deals with the general principles of speculation and invention. 1. Repetitive speculation leads to invention.6 Repetitive efforts are the only way to succeed in one’s attempts, but one also cannot rely on them alone, but rather should ask for mercy from the heaven as well (21–22).7 2. The overall rule of speculation is that one should do one’s best in making the language as precise as possible [bfyh ˜wçlh qdqdtç].8 One should see whether there is any excess of language or any duplication of matter [˜yn[ ] or any invention in this matter or what is said [rmam]. One should do one’s best to expound, investigate, and question every single change in language or change in ruling [˜yd ] or matter that may occur between theme and a rheme—[or what is said about the theme]. One should relate all the language [of the text] to a matter, so that every single word in every part of it should teach on a new thing that had not been understood from anything before. And one should consider this “new” thing and grasp it reasonably in its root and in itself and in the affinities surrounding it on its borders in the matter so that you would know what is the theme [açwnh ] and what is the judgment on it (22). 3. Before beginning any of your speculations, dispose yourself to think that every single orator [μyrbdmhm dja lk ], both one who inquires and one who responds, are [people] of intelligence and that all their words are wise, reasonable, and careful [t[db ]. None of them is lazy [in their thinking] or stubborn [and vainly unpersuadable]. So in speculation you always should contemplate their words in a way that brings them up to this standard (22). 4. a. Before beginning your speculation on the words of explanation [μyçrpmh yrbd ] [of Scripture and/or Gemara], you should see which language of the Scripture one is talking about and explaining. Then you should see what the orator adds and what the language of the Gemara is. Also you should know what the direction [of Talmud] is: whether it emends the language [of the text] or explains the matter, or whether it provides a support against some refutation, or rather raises a doubt, or tries to restrain you from making some other explanation. You also

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should see if there is any discrepancy between this version and our own one. So when you have determined the direction of its words and the explanation it gives, you should scrutinize it to see what would be the opposite and what would be a parallel. Thereby you should know what one avoids and what one rejects. b. And the most correct way in the Talmud is that you should speculate on all that you can, and [only] then should you go over the explanations of others and look [at them]. Also see if what you understood agrees with someone else’s explanation or not. And when you have determined the direction [of an explanation], you should investigate what it rejects or refrains from, and also what makes someone explain it in this way. Indeed, how could you know what someone has rejected without having determined the direction of their words and the explanation they want to establish? So you are to speculate on and make a précis of [the language] in the Gemara or Scripture in itself and then [speculate on] the explanation itself, and do your best to make a précis of it, and then to contemplate the approach [someone has taken] and then go back and settle everything back onto the language of the Gemara. So also in any oration of the [masters of the] Tosfoth or inventions in halakha, once you have determined someone’s direction—either doubting or refuting— you are to return to speculating on the words of Rashi, z”l. There you are to see if he was sensitive to this [doubt/refutation] and refrained from it or if both [Rashi and Tosfoth] go in one and the same way, or if they diverge [μypljwm]. In general, with everything [authoritative] that you hear, you are to speculate and to determine where the things agree, whether they are of the same approach, or in what they diverge (23–24). 5. In the beginning of your speculation [in the Gemara] you are to go over all the arguments [there] and determine their direction and to follow them in general. Then, you should return again to the language to see if what you have in your [faculty of] understanding agrees with it. After that, you are to speculate on the root of this thing and on its sense [wm[f]9 and investigate all of its details and causes. . . . And if you had any doubt about what you speculated on, or any resistance [ qjwd] or any refutation [occurred to you], it should not make the speculation easy in your eyes,

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and you should not move on in it until you have resolved the problem, and you should not even rely on your own reason alone. Rather, you should ask your fellow [speculator in the text] and investigate with him: Is what you had in your reason right, or is there an undermining objection [akryp] against it? [Ask your fellow that], because humans tend to miss obligations with regard to themselves (24–25). 6. In everything you hear as said or spoken authoritatively you should keep investigating what its effect is—either an effect of a ruling or rulings [themselves] we can derive from it—and what the general [rule] is that emerges from the things said. And you should make an account of these. . . . Therefore, for every matter or expounding derived [çwrd], you are to investigate its roots and branches and to nominate for them signs and general rules so that you will remember them and they will serve and come up in your mind [bl ] forever, just like the signs appearing in the Talmud for the things you authoritatively hear. And you should give them numbers [so as to remember them better]. Also if there will be different explanations [10 μyplwjm μyçwrp] or variants [twasrg], you are to investigate every single explanation to see its roots and its interchanges, and you should hold the ground of each of them in your hand so that they will not disappear [wçwmy ] from your mouth. Also you are to ask for parables [μylçm] and comparisons [μynwymyd] for every single thing so that it [will] settle in your understanding and will not be forgotten.11 And this will mend [ly[wy] the damage of forgetting and its failures. It will also add force and power to your speculation. An hour for speculation in the coldness of your spirit is better than a whole day [of speculation] in a mind preoccupied with something else. Therefore, you should choose an hour when your understanding is free from any businesses of the world and let your thought not wander and turn to other things. And you should not say I will repeat it when I am free, but rather push all things aside for the sake of learning the Torah. And when you grasp the thing in your reason, step back and search if there is any undermining objection against it, or any doubt. . . . and thereby all that you learned will remain in your understanding forever (25–26).12 7. First you should read the language [of the written, but originally oral text] aloud in the joy of your mind twice or thrice. Then step back

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and do your best at speculating on the language. Then hold in your hand your plain understanding of the language and return to speculate again if what you understood [comes] out [in] this language and speech. The first is called “the plain” [understanding; fçp, lit.: “plain” or “manifest”] and the second is called “exaction from the Mishnah” [qwyd ˜ytyntmd, lit: “making a précis of the Mishnaic phrase”]. The masters of the art of logic called “the plain” [the logical] antecedent, and they called the exaction [the logical] consequent.13 Then, return to speculating to see if what you understood from the language has any invention in it [vis-à-vis the matter, çwdyj, lit.: “novelty”]. Also, see if there is any invention that results from your making a précis of the language itself. [You should do both] because if the language plainly bears some invention, you should not try refuting it, even if no invention resulted from the [making a précis of the] language itself. However, if invention is found in neither the plain [content] of language nor in the précis of it, you should try refuting the orator, as one in the Talmud would refute: afyçp ˜l [mçm aq yam [“What did this oration teach us?! It was already plain in itself”]. Yet if an invention is not there in the oration itself, but only in the précis of it, someone may immediately respond that the oration was for the sake of the latter [and therefore you should not even try refuting it].14—In speculating on the Scripture or the Talmud, try to understand it on your own first, and only then go to the explanations of the Scripture, or of the Mishnah, or of the Talmud.—Keep inquiring into the reason for each ruling that a master of the Mishnah says. Know what his judgment on the matter was; or what their judgments on the matter were, if there was a disagreement between the masters.—Inquire where in the Torah the root and the branch of a ruling are and from which commandment these rulings grow and where they are originate: Do they come from the Torah, or rather from our Rabbis?

Analytical Description of Section Two The first section of The Ways was devoted to the general principles of speculation. In the second, Canpanton opens a discussion on the specific ways to do it.

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The ways of speculation are: 1. To find out who is speaking and with whom. 2. To find out what doubt makes the orator speak. 3. To find out what the cause (the verse) that makes him speak this way and not another way. Is this a cause sufficient to all parts in both the theme and the ruling in his oration? Without understanding the cause of the oration correctly, you will get the ruling in the oration wrong. In Canpanton’s usage, Talmudic words sometimes become fixed terms, including the term “sentence” [˜yd, fpçm ]. Terminologically, a “sentence,” for Canpanton, is only one kind of rheme said on a theme, while a ruling (˜yd) is another kind of rheme. In grammatical theory, the sentence is often a primary and fundamental unit of any speech or writing and represents “a single finalized thought.” For Canpanton, however, the theme and rheme and their relationship are themselves prior to and fundamental elements of the sentence. The sentence, for him, is one of the two kinds of rheme, a ruling being the other. Both of the kinds relate independently to a theme.15 1. If there are different sentences given to similar themes, why is this? Why does one theme appear with its own ruling separately and another theme appear with its own ruling separately? What is the cause that makes similar themes appear differently in different sentences? Were the themes completely similar, or only in part? If in part, it is this partial difference that may have caused difference between sentences. Yet if the themes are completely similar, you may try refuting the sentence, and what supports it will either undermine some weak assumption of the refutation or will necessitate the rulings. 2. You are to see if the oration is general or specific. Is there a certain theme that was not mentioned, but nevertheless included in the ruling, or is the theme exempt from it? 3. In every oration or speech, try to understand the oration itself first [μx[ rmamh, a term that seems to be very similar to fçp. See page 26 of the Lange edition of The Ways of the Talmud]. Then try to understand what is understandable from any general [premises or affinities] that the oration carries with it. Then you are to see if the plain oration fits the affinities

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surrounding it in general (llk). [In a Latinized paraphrase, I would say you are to see if explication/explanation of the explicitly stated fits the implications that the oration carries with it. The terms Canpanton used are rmamh μx[ and rmamh wtwa llkm ˜bwmh. The former he also has referred to earlier in Section two by the term fçp (lit.: “plain”), while referring to the latter by the term qwyd (lit.: “deduction” or making a précis). He also linked the former to the logical “antecedent,” while connecting the latter with the logical consequent. Table 5-1 shows the relationship between the parallel terms of the masters of the Talmud, the terms of the masters of logic, and Canpanton’s own terms. Table 5-1. Parallel terms in Talmudic masters, masters of logic, and Canpanton Canpanton’s interpretation of the terms of the Talmudic Masters

Canpanton’s own terms

hmdqh

llk

versus

versus

rmamh μxa or wfwçpk

The terms of the Talmudic Masters

Logical terms

çwrpb rmtya versus

llkb rmtya

hdlwt

çwrp

versus

rmamh llkm ˜bwmh or qwyd

1. You also have to see what the [rhetorical] end [tylkt] of any oration in the Torah or in the Talmud is. Was it a. Either to support a fellow [disputer] or to refute him? b. Either to exempt some theme or to include it? c. Or is it to explain some legalistic ramification? This is because any oration without a certain end would be an action in vain.16

Analytical Description of Section Three In Section Three, Canpanton provides tips on how to find a way into an oration or a qwyd, or into an antecedent or a condition. qwyd, or as I have translated it, “exaction,” which is what is understood from an oration, as opposed to the

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oration itself as it is vis-à-vis its matter, that is, in fçp , its “plain” manifestation. The term and the concept of fçp here in no way refers to the “meaning” of an oration. Rather, it is a way of speculating about it: The oration is contemplated as it “plainly” is vis-à-vis its matter (topos). This plain speculation is similar to rmamh μx[ (lit.: “the bone of the oration”), which is a characteristic of a mode of speculation, rather than a characteristic of either being or meaning. The same applies to the qwyd in an even more obvious way: qwyd is not a meaning, and it cannot be thought of otherwise than as a mode of speculation. Nor can qwyd be assumed “to exist” prior to the process of speculation in which it, unlike meaning, is not merely conveyed, but rather becomes invented. 1. Ask what an invention is in an oration, in its qwyd [exaction], or in its antecedent or in its conclusion [and, respectively, what the doubt was behind the invention]. 2. Ask what necessitated that oration, ruling, and so on to invent [things] in a certain way, rather than in another one. 3. Contemplate the matter of the invention: Was the invention located in the oration itself [wfçpb], or in what was understood from it [˜bwm wnmm], that is, in its exaction [ qwyd]?

Analytical Description of Section Four In Section Four, Canpanton deals with the rules of argumentative exchange, the so-called “give-and-take” that constitutes the process of expounding: In this process, the parties make the initial saying yield answers to questions they pose in regard to it. The section also covers such elements of exchange as refuting an oration and supporting one’s own position against such a refutation. In addition, the section relates to the rules of speculation that a student is to exercise while examining the process of give-and-take in expounding. This section constitutes a move from what might be called “ex-plain-ing” and “making a précis” to expounding. Formerly, Canpanton dealt only with “ex-plain-ing” an oration—correlating its language and its matter, including the polemical situation and the respective doubts involved and the exaction

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made in this process. Now, given that orations are made plain, or balanced in terms of their language and matter, he moves to contemplating the processes of exchange between orators that occur in expounding (as opposed to ex-plain-ing). 1. Refutation must be strong and it has to sound necessary. In contrast, support against it may be weak and concern probability only. A refuter must prove that his oration is unavoidable, while a supporter may respond with even a weak judgment, since he is only declining [to accept a refutation], not proving anything.17 2. You should always expound and research if the refuter or the supporter still maintains a judgment he had in the beginning or middle of the give-and-take. ala [lit: “however” or “rather”] is the only mark of a full change of judgment, which is otherwise either only improved or embellished. 3. See if the refutation may in some way go against the refuter himself or not. 4. There are three18 alternative aspects of give-and-take in expounding a. One undermines the very antecedent19 [hmdqh] on which his fellow [disputer] builds evidence for expounding or for making a judgment. If there are two antecedents,20 one may temporarily agree with one and undermine the other, then go back and undermine the first one, as well. b. One should agree with an antecedent of his fellow [disputer] only because this antecedent is either unavoidable or has been conventional between the two. Even having agreed with an antecedent, one is to try to resist consequences drawn out [hnmm dylwhl, lit.: “to deliver from it”] from the antecedent.21 Everyone who debates with his opponent is not to agree with any assumed antecedents unless they are fully unavoidable. In addition, if one had to agree with an antecedent, he should try resisting the consequent that his opponent draws from it [hnmm dylwhl, lit.: “delivered from it”]. 5. You should always speculate on every single explanation (fçp ) of a language [of the text] or on the plain (fçp ) of it [offered to you] to see if the explanation or the plain were correct and if they fit well with either the language or with the matter,22 or with both.

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a. The fit of fçp to a language [of a text] means that the words of the language give a full proof of evidence for the [proposed] explanation without any tension whatsoever. b. The fit of fçp to a matter means that, according to the matter that was in the current theme or ruling, the [proposed] explanation fits, as it should, without any tension whatsoever. 6. A counterargument in debate would work in one of the two ways: a. One would claim his fellow [disputer] said the [exact] inverse of the truth. b. One would claim his fellow’s oration was excessive or redundant [in terms of invention]. In any case, one would have to prove that his claims are unavoidable. 7. One can place or locate the topos [atmqwa] of an oration [of a Mishnaic phrase or of a baraitha] in two ways: a. One can do this by [using] “aqwd ” (“only”), claiming that the oration relates “only” and specifically to one matter, or b. One can do this by [using] “wlypa” (“even”), saying that it is needless to say that the oration includes not only the rest of the matters, but “even” that matter or theme,23 as well. 8. In any inquiry or response, there could be two ways of speaking: a. Either in accord with one’s own approach or judgment b. Or from within the judgment or approach of one’s opponent. [So you should carefully discern these ways.]

Analytical Description of Section Five In this section, Canpanton deals with the ways of knowing the rulings and their derivations. The ways to know the rulings and derivations are three: 1. An opinion or conclusion according to the rules of expounding. 2. The writing itself. 3. A hint in the writing: • from context

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• from a consequence of the writing • or from an excess in the language or the lettering. As for number 2 above, writing does the following. It: • attunes us to a reverse of an external, unnecessary opinion.24 • withdraws a theme of an external necessary opinion from comparison to similar themes. • if excessive, attunes us to another matter: a. to only one specific additional matter (if, against the external opinion, there is only a little invention in the theme, if at all). b. to all similar matters by ad major (if, against the external opinion, an important invention is there in the ruling) as long as the theme and the ruling of the writing cohere in sense of the similar matters above. As for number 1 above, opinion moves us from one theme to another, called a “consequence” [atwqpn] or “end.” a. from a “heavy” theme to another “heavy” theme, or from a “light” theme to another “light” theme [wnyxm hm ]. b. from a “heavy” ruling in a light theme to a “heavy” ruling in a “heavy” theme, or from a “light” ruling in a “heavy” theme to “light” ruling in a “light” theme [rmwjl lqm]. c. through adjunct themes in the writing [çyqm]. Unlike (c), (a) and (b) are easily breakable, and (a) is easier to break than (b).

Analytical Description of Section Six In this section, Canpanton deals with kinds of (Aristotelian) causes for disagreement between the masters. If, in the Talmud, you see two masters of the Mishnah or of the Talmud disagreeing one with another on something, there can be two causes for their disagreement. The first is called the “[efficient] cause,” and the second is [called] the effect [atwqpn] or end [tylkt]. You need to look for them in order to find [them].

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As for the [efficient] cause, you need to know what is the efficient cause of the disagreement between the masters. You also need to know what judgment each of them made. The cause lies sometimes in a judgment, a verse, or in an external ruling. That is to say, the cause of their disagreement is either a judgment on which they disagree or an external ruling on which they disagree in some other place and hence disagree in the current place, as well. As for the effect or end, you need to look for them in the fruits of their disagreement. Even if you already know the efficient cause of the disagreement between the masters, we still need to know the productive power [tl[wth ] and the fruit or effect [atwqpn ] that follows from the rulings they made. That is to say, what ruling stands between the judgments of the masters and what follows from it. When you inquire on an [efficient] cause of disagreement, you need to credit each of the masters with a judgment, not with a ruling, whereas, in the answer [on the effect of their judgment] what you are to arrive at is a ruling, not a judgment. If a master of the Mishnah, while giving a series of sentences, changes themes, this is only because the first theme is not relevant to the [new] sentence. Otherwise, if he could find a way to rule on the sentence using the first theme, the theme would change.

Analytical Description of Section Seven In this section, he deals with the rules of building an argument for an exaction based on the principle of a middle theme. If you make a qwyd [here: “conclusion”]25 from a Mishnah, baraitha, or any other oration, you should not jump from one extreme to another, because if there is a middle between the two, you should take the middle. For example, if one says to you “Reuben is not wise,” you should not make a qwyd [here: “you should not make this oration include”] that he is a fool, because it is still possible that he is in the middle. Yet if there is no middle between the extremes, then go to the extremes. For example, if you are told “Now is not day,” you make a qwyd [here: “you include in the oration”] that “now” is night. [Therefore] if you see an oration of Mishnah or baraitha that takes an extreme [of a theme] and gives a ruling to it and then jumps to another extreme and gives

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it a different ruling, while leaving the middle [theme] without a word, you will be able to attempt refuting such a Mishnah. To do so you may say “It is refutable26 in itself” [ayçq apwg ah] . . . because upon making a qwyd from the beginning of the oration the ruling for the middle [theme] would look opposite of the ruling for the same middle [theme] made from a qwyd from the end of the same oration. The reason [μ[fh] [ for such a refutation] is that if a middle and an extreme theme had the same ruling, a master would be making an oration only on the middle theme, leaving the extreme theme to be ruled out along the line of an “all the more” argument.

Here, Canpanton offers a refutation based on an observation that the oration has an intrinsic inconsistency: It includes opposite rulings on the middle theme, while there seems to be no wise way to justify mentioning either one or the other of the two extremes, instead of mentioning only an extreme and the middle, leaving the other extreme to be ruled on by an “all the more” judgment. A support against such a refutation is that it is only the beginning of the oration that includes the middle [theme], while the end part of the oration is a mere addition [absn ydk apys aqwd açyr lit: “the beginning is precise, while the end is merely added”]. You may make this qwyd [here: an argument of inclusion] from the middle [theme] only if the rulings are opposed to one another through [a merely grammatical contrast of] affirmation and negation or permitting and forbidding, and only if there is no disagreement [between the masters] involved.

Analytical Description of Section Eight In this section, Canpanton deals with one’s attunement to truth by refuting what has been expounded or refuting a matter. 1. Raising doubts about either matter or language will cause your attunement to the truth of the matter: a. Without raising doubts, you will be simply seduced. b. Do not clarify anything [by resorting to] indirect connections, nor should you clarify what is hidden using hidden [connections], and

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you should not clarify what is revealed by means of the revealed, either. c. Clarify what is hidden only by what is revealed. d. Doubt only the thing to be clarified, and try refuting it from other sayings that you provisionally accept with no doubt. 2. See if there are any irregularities, and if there are, then ask why they are there. a. If no irregularities are known to you, look through the Talmud to find what is the normal use of the judgment in question.

Analytical Description of Section Nine In this section, Canpanton deals with problematic inquiries. 1. A wise man would inquire into problems only, not into simple questions. 2. If the sides of the problem are explicit in themselves, the wise would not explicate them. 3. Either the wise or a master of the Talmud would explicate the sides of a problem only if they are hidden. 4. Hence, if the sides of a problem are explicit, you should look for doubts that may have made the wise explicate them. In his usage here, the term “hidden” means “not obvious” or “not seen.” In turn, what is “not seen” is “carrying a doubt within itself.” Consequently, “speculation” here means “checking what is and what is not seen.” Therefore, speculation is not mere insight, nor is it merely making things obvious, but rather it is a way of inquiring into why things are not obvious for this or that sage who made this or that oration. Speculation here is not a goal, nor is it granted by Canpanton in advance as something possible to accomplish. Rather, he offers it as an attempt to give what is not obvious the full weight it may deserve, not simply to dissolve it. In this, Canpanton is not a thinker of the Enlightenment. He does not understand the problem of speculation as Kant and Fichte would understand the problem of “intellectual contemplation.” What Canpanton offers for speculation are primarily written words, all other possible objects of speculation being only

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in the range of modifications of written words, including all objects of visual perception, which common sense does not consider nonverbal. Further, in this section, Canpanton discusses the language of the “second refutation,” which occurs as soon as some support against a first refutation has been provided. 1. The Talmudic language “if so” is a refutation in response, or a “second refutation.” a. Using this language conveys: If someone accepts your refutation, I will respond to you so and so, and if someone does not accept your refutation, then there is no need even to respond to you. b. Hence, a student should determine how the response was born from the words of a primary refutation. 2. Yet generally, the language “if so” applies as a second refutation arising from a response to an earlier refutation. 3. The “second refutation” is effective only against the proponent, not against the refuter himself. Otherwise, the proponent could decline it from the very outset. 4. Building the second refutation, the opponent should not share with the proponent any premises from which this refutation would stem. Otherwise, the refutation would pertain to the opponent himself, and the proponent may reject it from the very outset without any further argument. 5. Yet if the opponent still shares his premises with the proponent, the only purpose of his second refutation would be either to make the proponent reverse himself in responding to the first refutation or to leave him without any good choice at all. 6. Any premises behind the “second refutation” must be avoidable. Otherwise, if they were unavoidable, the refutation would apply to the opponent, as well. a. Neither exempla nor the data of the senses make good premises for the second refutation, because they are easy to verify or falsify. As we see, unlike the first refutation, the second refutation may be merely ironic. Its premises do not have to represent any positive position of the proponent himself.

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Analytical Description of Section Ten In this section, Canpanton proves that the sequence of speech in the Talmud is always more than just a technical matter of having to follow a sequence, rather than saying everything simultaneously. Nor is it a matter of mnemonic associations only. 1. In any sequence of speech, the student should look for the connectedness of matters and for the order that the speaker follows. a. Several themes with the same rheme, or several rhemes with the same theme or even the same speaker, can suffice to make the connection. When, in this section, Canpanton cites examples, there occurs a change in terminology: instead of terms of “theme,” “rheme,” and “speaker” or “orator,” Canpanton uses terms that are closer to the vocabulary of the Talmud. In his examples, instead of using the terms “speech” and “themes,” for instance, Canpanton speaks of “expounding” and “issues” [˜wdn , çwrd ]. b. In any sequence of speech, the student should look to what end the speaker was speaking and how exactly that place is connected with the speaker’s expounding. c. When the sequence of sayings has taken us outside of the field of what is being expounded, the student should follow all the steps back to know or to see what brought us here and according to which order.

Analytical Description of Section Eleven In this section, Canpanton deals with the normative ways of speech in the Talmud. 1. The masters of the Mishnah use standard speech to go from a general ruling to a particular one, even if the former is of no invention. 2. Both the [Holy] Writings and the masters of the Mishnah use lapidary speech:

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a. In connecting themes or matters to the same sentence, or in using the same language, the core sentence or the language would go first, and the themes and matters would emerge in the second place. b. Sometimes the order of sentences and their themes would go all the way around: All the themes come first and the core sentence for all of them would go afterward. c. Sometimes the same sentence may appear both in the beginning and at the end of the list of the themes. d. Sometimes, when speaking on two themes, a master of the Mishnah would use the same language for both of them, even if the language is not absolutely proper for the second one. e. When speaking a ruling out of its proper place, “by the way” only, a master of the Mishnah would not be meticulous in explaining or bringing out all the details and stylistic nuances of the ruling. f. On having had to mention a theme from an aside, a master of the Mishnah would also add another theme that is of a lesser invention. Yet this would not justify him if the master had been able to relate his basic matter without mentioning another theme at all. g. In every theme, you should speculate to know the number of factors that make the theme be ruled kosher or pasul [properly conditioned or unusable]. h. If a denial is made of a theme, saying that the theme is not this, you should inquire “If not this, then what?” “The denial does not inform us on the quality of the thing denied.”27 Given a denial and the denied quality, you should find out how many negative affinities could have been affirmed through this denial. For example, by denying that now is daytime, you automatically affirm that now is night, yet by denying that the water is hot, you do not automatically affirm that it is cold. So that the student has to find what thing is affirmed by a denial. As we see, Canpanton considers denial imperfect. For him, any denial is only an invitation to ask, “If not this, then what?” In other words, for Canpanton, any denial is always a mode of affirmation, not of negation. Therefore, the denial is not a logical operation of negation, but rather a rhetorical

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argument, an enthymeme to be explained as an indirect affirmation, not as a mere negation. Yet denial is not merely another way of affirmation. Rather it is a specific affirmation of what is involved in a disagreement. • Sometimes, two masters of the Mishnah or two masters of the Talmud will disagree, and one of them attempts to hit [çyjkm] a ruling or an argument [arbs] of the other, even if this ruling or argument has been made obvious [wjykwm] based on what is written in a verse or said in a Mishnah. In addition, based on a phrase either in the Mishnah or in the writing, one of the masters may deny an explanation the other has provided. In both cases above, you should ask on what the other master’s expounding is based. “And it [the procedure above] will recur until the Talmud says that this master does not have or does not rely on this expounding. The general principle is that either the phrase, or the ruling, or the judgment of one of the masters is considered excessive until the Talmud tells you as above. • There are two ways of deriving or learning [twtwplyh], the derivations that are made either from the sense in language or from the excess of the language. And if the language is excessive against the sense, it shows that the language is to be expounded on: If the language does not matter here, it should matter somewhere else. i. In several places in the Talmud, we find a refuter having two or three refutations against his opponent, yet he applies only the strongest one, whichever is of the greatest necessity. Also, the refuter may have several refutations based either on the matter28 or on the language, and he applies only the refutations that are based on the matter, or only those based on the language. Yet sometimes, we will find a master bringing up all his refutations in a row, be they from the Mishnah or a baraitha. j. In the Talmud, we even can find two masters disagreeing on something as one of them forbids it and the other permits it, because there emerges a phrase from the Mishnah or a baraitha that helps one of them and not the other. Even in such a case, the other may

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not give up his judgment. He may relate the problematic phrase to another matter,29 and if this is not possible, and if the problematic phrase is only a baraitha or a saying of a Talmudic master (but is not from the Mishnah) you may assume that he does not know or does not recognize the phrase.

Analytical Description of Section Twelve In this section, he deals with the nature of explanations and determines when one needs them. An explanation or a clarification occurs if 1. A beginner could not contemplate [the topic] in either a book or a language (of a passage) and understand it, because the book or the language (of the passage) is hermetic and sealed, and either an external introduction is needed or the book or language (of a passage) is foreign. If this is the case, you do not need to investigate in depth beyond the explanation itself, because it was intended only to explain or to disclose things hidden, hermetic, and sealed. a. Because it was only disclosing the hidden, you cannot exclaim heuristically, “But this has been clear in itself!” What reason is there to spend even a word on [explaining] things that have been clear by themselves! b. But you can ask why this explanation is right and not another. 2. One explains the matter in order to withdraw it from a mistaken mental predisposition [t[d ] or from another explanation possible due to the power of language. In this case, if you really want to get a command of the predisposition of the one who explained it, or, alternatively, if you want to know what the explanation was that he tried to avoid, or else what judgment he wanted to exclude, you are to speculate on his explanation very well, and to read it with precision [qdqdl], looking for a negative affinity contiguous to it or for an inversion of it. In this way, you will know from what he tried to protect himself. Having done this, you should ask: Which [factor] necessitated this explanation versus

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its inversion? Thereby you will give a reason for the explanation in question. 3. Sometimes someone will try to protect himself preemptively from an attack or from a response that may rise against a particular matter unless the matter itself is clarified and explained. In order to find out what might have constituted a refutation, you should speculate on his words as instructed above. While contemplating the validity of the refutation, you should see if the refutation emerged due to the language [of the phrase explained] or if it was based on the matter itself. Respectively, you should see if the explanation can support the phrase well enough or if the refutation still remains valid. 4. Sometimes, someone who explains wants merely to perfect the language or to make it cohere to the matter in a better way. In this case, the matter itself is clear, and one could neither mistake it nor think of it differently, whereas the language itself has not been perfected and thus is capable of making another kind of sense. If this is the case, the explanation does nothing but perfect the language to fit it to the matter. 5. As for any words of explanation or composition with regard to every passage, you should always try to supply a reason that this particular language has been used and to what end [wtnwwk ]: to explain or to prevent another explanation, or to provide support against some (inner) discomfort or against a refutation. a. Make sure to make the language [of a passage] cohere to the matter, so that no excessive word remains. For example, if only three words would suffice to reach his end, why has someone used as many as four? b. The same applies to [the use] of language in the Mishnah and the Gemara: you should make the [use of] language precise,30 with no excess. And if you still seem to spy any excess in the language [as against the matter], you should return to your speculation. This is because the sages did not extend their words without need, because their words were not empty, and the beauty of the sages was to speak laconically to include many matters in few words and to make their words small in number and great in quality, without any excess, even of one single letter.31

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6. In contemplating any explanation or composition, you should first try to learn the habits of the person who has made the explanation. Then you should see if the person followed his habit in the explanation or composition in question. a. You should always determine the kind of a language or speech [that is used]. Any [use of] language either undoubtedly shows its respective matter or leaves some place for a doubt: Are there any other matters shown in it [which is called “language shared by matters,” ˜wçl πtwçm—synonymous language], or does it avoid showing its matter at all? The three kinds of language are respectively: “necessary language,” “dubious language,” and “hidden language.”32 b. Anything said in a [particular use of] language would be either in [a tone of] agreement, or in [a tone of] surprise or doubt, that is, [it would appear] as a question. Anything said in agreement is in itself either an affirmation or a denial, either “yes,” or “no.” Anything said in surprise, if it is an affirmation, becomes a denial, and vice versa. Anything said in doubt equally includes two sides, because any doubt is a possibility, and any possibility is something possible in either one way or another.33 c. There is also a fourth kind [of language], which is an appeal or request [hnjt or hçqb]. Yet the books of Torah and Wisdom,34 do not use it, so we do not need to know a sentence of it. d. Rashi’s z”l custom and habit is not to emit a single phrase without a need. When speaking on the language of the Gemara, he either explains a hermetic [use of] language or tries to avoid another—mistaken—explanation, he either attacks or refutes, or speaks because of a strong (inner) uncomfort, or he improves the language (as already mentioned above, in speaking of the ways of explanation). e. He also used to start an explanation of a Mishnaic phrase, or of Gemara, or of a baraitha with the final agreement [that the Gemara will reach] already in view. He also used to raise explicit doubts about the sayings in question and to announce that the Gemara will either defeat or explain them.

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f. If, when saying something or refuting something based on what is said, someone necessarily holds premises that will be annulled later on, Rahi, z”l will announce it thus: “If it occurs to you thinking so and so. . . .” In this case, you should contemplate what the need is for those premises now. You should see if it is possible to employ other premises for the same saying while still applying it to a refutation. Specifically, you should see whether or not those other, hypothetical premises could be annulled later on in the Gemara. If they could not, Rashi would not have used the language “If it occurs to you thinking so and so. . . .” g. He also used to explain the matter first, and then improve the language, fitting it in accord with the matter. h. As for the Inventions of Nachmanid z”l [lòòz ˜òòbmrh yçwdyj], you should contemplate them with great precision. You should try to fit every single use of language by him tightly to its respective matter, so that no excess will remain, not even a letter, because all of his words are said with consideration, account, and knowledge. You should see where his speech starts from, and what language in the Mishnaic phrase or in the phrase of the Gemara serves as the basis for his speech. You should see if it is possible to start from another place. That will let you have an idea of his [authentic] end. You should also follow the organization of the speech: how all the parts of it are interconnected from the bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom. What is the end [hnwwk ] of the speech, and what is the judgment [arbs ] or the explanation that the speech tries to establish? and what is the explanation or the judgment that the speech tries to displace? i. Generally, you should see in your mind’s eye [lkçh ˜y[b tawrl ]35 what explanation Nachmanides tries to avoid, because why should someone explain things that are already plain, except to exclude some other explanation? j. Also, if Nachmanides, z”l used language such as “and if one would refute it, the refutation can be dismantled as follows,” you should look for what pressed him to introduce the refutation and the support against

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l.

m.

n.

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it, since it is certain that he tries to reinforce the right explanation against some [inner] uncomforting or a refutation. When Nachmanides uses the language “It seems right to infer” [[mçm] or “If it seems right to say” [amla], you should know that this inference by precision [qwyd] or consequent [˚çmh ] is not of necessity, because it is possible to disprove it. Therefore he only says “seems right.” Yet, [ultimately] the judgment [which at first only seemed right], is right indeed. If Nachmanides uses the language “alternatively” [ymn ya, lit: “or also”], this is because of some [inner] uncomforting in a preceding support. If he says explicitly, “This is a general principle” [llk], this is to exclude the possibility of taking the matter as partial, or specific, or minor, not general. He also does various characteristic reinforcements [μydwm[l μyww, lit.: hooks on the pillars], such as “and if one would refute it, the refutation can be dismantled as follows” or “and it is objected” [˚yrpw]. • These words are his habit when, in his explanation, either a refutation or the support against it remains somewhat uncomforting, although this uncomforting [factor] was not there in the explanation that his explanation displaced. If this is the situation, Nachmanides will try to resolve it and fit his [more problematic] explanation to another matter, for which his explanation would not be refutable. Therefore, in places such as that, you are to start out with the language “let us assume” [amlçb] and to say, “Let us assume that, in the other explanation it was agreeable that . . . yet [in Nachmanides’ explanation, it is refutable].” • However, if Nachmanides says “henceforth” [wnyyhw], saying, as it were, “Henceforth, one refutes. . .,” the case is the opposite, since he starts by establishing his own explanation and then dismantles the other explanation. In turn, when either the language “and one should refute it” [˜nyçqaw ] or “one should dismantle it” [˜nykrpw] emerges, the case is also the opposite, but in the other

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sense: Now the refutation or the dismantling are to help directly his own words. • Therefore, you should look very carefully at the language he uses and at the [rhetorical] moves he employs, because they are a great rule in his [work].

Analytical Description of Section Thirteen In this section, Canpanton recounts the kinds of support against refutations, as well as the rules of supporting and refuting, and also the rule of the middle theme.36 1. You should always look at every single support someone provides against a refutation and see if this support comes from an inner uncomforting or if this support is coextensive [ jwwrm ] [with the plain (appearance) of the supported saying or of its respective matter or topos]. a. If the support causes either a saying or its matter (topos) to depart from their plain [appearance], such a support has come from an inner uncomforting. For example, the support has come from the uncomforting if in its plain [appearance] the saying was general, but whoever provided the support made it particular, relating to a very specific matter only. In addition, if, when supporting a saying, someone explained it outside of its plain [appearance], this support has come from the (inner) uncomforting. b. You should always look for a support of a lesser uncomforting (or of no uncomforting at all), and when you have found one, you should ask why the provider of the support became so uncomfortable with himself. c. On having an [innerly] uncomforting support, the Talmud often cites one support after another, applying the language, “Or, if you prefer . . .” or “Alternatively . . .” one by one. 2. You should also see if the support was only a sort of a convenient defense, that is, it was comfortable for the current purpose, but not capable of standing on its own, instead of something that everyone would have no alternative but to accept.

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3. You should know that someone who refutes would never do so out of voluntarily espoused premises, but rather out of unavoidable ones. While refuting, someone will never allow any avoidable assumption [hjnh, the Hebrew term] or topos [atmqwa, the Aramaic term].37 All the more, someone who refutes will never allow himself to refute [merely] because of his inner uncomforting. 4. In contrast, the provider of support is allowed to argue by means of anything probable,38 even by means of voluntary or avoidable assumptions or by means of a support provided as the result of an inner uncomforting. This is because the provider of support declines to supply proofs, and it is the one who refutes who must not only establish proof but also must make them unavoidable. • Always, the last support provided is the result of a stronger inner uncomforting than any other before, and it should not occur to you to attune yourself to it. 5. If disagreeing parties relate to extreme themes,39 that is, if one party gives a ruling for a top extreme theme, and another party gives an opposite ruling for the bottom extreme theme, while both of the parties leave the middle theme aside and do not explain its sentence [its theme plus its rheme], you should speculate on what the sentence in the middle would be. This is because between any disagreeing parties, you are to say that the sentence of each party referred not to its respective extreme theme, but to the middle theme. This will let you know that in one party, the middle theme has a permissive ruling, and in the other party, the middle theme has a forbidding ruling. However, you may not expect that the disagreement be on the top and the bottom themes themselves. Otherwise, each party would have mentioned either the maximum (and the point currently mentioned would come a forteriori) or the minimum (and the middle point would come a forteriori). Therefore, it is certain that the extremes that the parties picked constitute [only] a frame for the thing [on which they really disagree] and that the [disagreement in] rulings is not about the [explicitly] announced [themes], but rather about the middle [theme]. For example [given two disagreeing parties], the party who says, the possessor of one hundred zuz is poor, does not say that the possessor of two

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hundred zuz is poor, as well. Similarly, the party who says the possessor of two hundred [zuz] is wealthy does not say that the possessor of one hundred [zuz] is wealthy, as well. Otherwise, the latter party [instead of mentioning two hundred] should have simply said that one hundred [is already wealth] and a forteriori [one would know that] two hundred [zuz] is wealth as well. However the real matter on which the parties disagree on is the [middle] amount of one hundred and fifty [zuz], because the ruling on this amount would be opposite if ruled based on [the ruling] on two hundred [zuz], or on the ruling on one hundred [zuz]. As we see, for Canpanton, the middle term in question here is not a logical middle, because logic can only reach a middle that results from a coherent logical argument in which disagreement is only a result of an unnoticed mistake to be eliminated. In contrast, the rhetorical middle term, Canpanton points out, is a matter that inevitably stands between disagreeing parties. Although some versions of logic exclude the middle term, while others use it as a mediator to reach coherence, the rhetorical middle term, if taken correctly, always features a disagreement. The rhetorical middle term constitutes the point where disagreement, instead of being a matter of logical mistake, becomes a true disagreement in which no logical mistake is involved, and no single mind can follow both of the parties simultaneously, with no interruption. Instead, to follow a true disagreement, one has to learn how to switch one’s position, thus thinking from different points of view, no single one of which can prevail over any other.

Analytical Description of Section Fourteen Unlike all other sections, this section of Canpanton’s work has its own title, which is “The Uses of Languages, Customary in the Talmud.” The section pays special attention to the languages of the Talmud pertaining to disagreement between the parties involved in it. As having its own title, this section may thus be formally considered an appendix. On a larger scale, however, it well may be the practical end or telos of the whole of Canpanton’s theoretical argument.

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ah yntyl atya μa [lit: “if he should come [here], he should be teaching it here”], explained as “Because a master of the Mishnah came down to make a list, if your words were true and this distinction would apply to the thing, why did not he list it among others?” This should be responded to with “ryyçw ant ” or “ryyç yam ryyç yahd [he is a master and he decided not to mention it].” The explanation of the phrase ah yntyl atya μa is “it is not the way of the master to leave one thing out of the list.”

• The difference between arbtsm ymn ykh and yntqd ymn aqyd is that one uses the former language when supplying evidence from some other place—a phrase in the Mishnah or in baraitha or in another saying, whereupon one proves his judgment to be unavoidable. As for the language yntqd ymn aqyd , one would use it when the evidence comes not fully from an external language or matter, but rather from the language [of the phrase] itself or from the matter itself. In contrast, arbtsm ymn ykh would not be in use if the “other place” were already involved in the disagreement. • The difference between yntq ykhw arsjm yrwsj and [rma ]q [yk ]h is that the former phrase is used when a saying misses some matter in full, both potentially and actually. However, rmaq ykj is used when the saying misses the matter actually, but, if pressed, the language may have it potentially.40 • The language [that the Mishnah] used either to draw in (a theme) [twbrl , to embrace/include a theme into a ruling] or to involve (a theme in a sentence) [lwlkl , to deduce/include a theme into a sentence] are lkh or llkh hz . In the Talmud, one asks of such language yam yywtyal [What does it bring in?]. • The language used to exempt some themes is hz or μyrbd tion, a list.

wla, or an enumera-

• The language used to add clarity is dxyk or hmwd rbdh hml . Because such language introduces some parable or comparison, you have to speculate on how the parable or the comparison makes things more clear or revealed for you, because this is what such language is supposed to do. •

˚kypl or ˚klyh [mark] extended clarifications, indeed impositions derived from the aforementioned speeches or matters, and these are implications or generalizations

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[atwqpnh wtylkth ] that are, respectively, rulings and their ramifications [yrp , lit: “fruit”]. So you are to speculate on how it imposes itself from there [i.e., either from the speech or from the matter]. • The language μyrwma μyrbd hmb , lba , and whym [introduce] exemptions. It exempts things [indeed themes] from an aforementioned ruling. The language yp l[ πa and bg l[ πa is close to that.

wlypa is always followed by the hz wlypa ala hz ay[bm al ˜ydh hzb hyhy.

• The language

• The language yp l[ πa and bg l[ π[ either draws in [twbrl ] or embraces [lwlkl ] a thing [indeed, a theme] in the ruling or in the matter. That is to say that even if there was a place for a doubt about the relevance [to a theme or a language] of a ruling or a matter, the ruling still applies. • Among those who argue in the Talmud, the language mostly used includes:

ybytm whnymrw hl πyqtm ajyn ˚dydl ala ydydl amlçb41 ajyn ym ˚dydlw ˚l amya μlw[l amyt ykw yam yah amlçb trma ya ykh ya yam ala ˚ym[flw ˚çpn hm yadw ala rmyml ˚l tya yam ala amya ty[b yaw rmwaw yam ykh amyt al yad ayçq apwg ah

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ayçq ytka abw hnym tabç μwqmm tntwnh ayh abrda afyçp lòòmq yam hnç yam. These languages are explained as follows: • The [language] ydydl amlçb applies as, when refuting a fellow, the refuter shows he/she will also make a refutation to follow. The fellow responds, “ajyn ym ˚dydlw” [“But you yourself could not withstand against your own refutation, could you?”]. That is to say, instead of defending him/herself against the upcoming refutation, the fellow tries acting before it. It is similar to amyt ykw or rmat ta [“Should you say . . .” or “if you say, it will . . .”]. • The [language] ajyn ym ˚dydlw applies as, when refuting a fellow, the refuter used the refutation usable against him/herself. The fellow answers “But you yourself cannot withstand against your own refutation, can you?” • The [language] ˚ym[fylw is close to the matter42 above, except that, in the matter above, the refutation itself was brought in from some other place. • The [language] ˚l amya μlw[l applies when, on having faced a refutation, the fellow gets back to his initial judgment, which has been just refuted, and supports that saying so that one would not refute it. • The [language] yam yah marks a “rhetorical surprise,” “How did one happen to compare such a different matters!?” Especially, how so, if one used the comparison to build the a forteriori argument? • The [language] amlçb trma ya is that applied by [a refuter] when he has a refutation, related to only one side of a saying, but he shows no refutation against the other side. • The ˚çpn hmw is the language applied [by a refuter] when he has some refutation for each side [of the saying].

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• The [language] ykh

ya is not to be explained, since it has been already explained

before. • The [language] ala applies when, faced with a strong refutation against his/her judgment, one gives the latter up. • The [language] yadw

ala applies when one holds and supports one’s judgment,

making it incontestably unavoidable for him/herself. • The [language] rmyml

˚l tya yam ala applies when the opponent tries mak-

ing his position [t[d ] unavoidable through refuting his fellow from some other saying, which could not be explained in any other way. Upon bringing evidence from it, he rhetorically asks his fellow what he could say with regard to that saying or that matter. • The [language]

yam ala

is close to the matter above. Alternatively, it applies

when, having faced a refutation against his/her explanation of a saying or a phrase from the Mishnah, or of some matter, the supporter would say to the refuter, “yam ala ,” and introduce a more precise version of his own explanation. • The [language]

ykh amyt al yad applies when the thing is not unavoidable in

itself, and one tries to make it unavoidable through [denying] either its inversion or anything which stands against it. This is according to the principle that truth can be recognized only through an inversion of it. This is similar to negative analogy [πwlyjh çqyh ]. • The [language]

amya ty[b yaw applies when the first response for a refutation

had some weak point in it and the supporter provides another response as well. In this case you should not ask why the supporter runs the first response at all: it may well be good on some other side. Also, when one says “ymn

ya,” the preced-

ing reasoning [μ[f ] had a weak point in it. It well may be either that the second reasoning brings something the first did not have or that two are better than any of them taken separately. • The [language] ayçq apwg ah applies when the saying itself makes one refute the beginning based on the end or vice versa.

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• The [language] ayçq ytka applies when the support against a refutation has not been not sufficient and the refuter says that his refutation is still standing. • The [language]

hbw hnym

applies when one brings a saying to help [in either

refuting or supporting] and this very saying goes against him/her. It is explained

abrda and arbtsm akpya, or tntwnh ayh, are all of the same intention [hnwwk], if there is

as a rhetorical question: “From this you argue?” The languages any difference between them at all. • The [language]

tpswhç ˜kç lk

applies when, facing a response, the refuter

picks the same thing used in response and adds another refutation or a doubt against the thing, which was in question at the start. • The [language]

ymn ykh walb applies when, either in words or in the matter, a

speaker repeats the master of the Mishnah, and this is not unavoidable, i.e., is not made just. Then, a fellow will respond to the speaker, “ymn

ykh walb.” So you

have to contemplate if the master of the Mishnah spoke in the mode of necessity or only in the mode of possibility. • The [language] hl tjkçm ykyh applies when a thing has been hard to depict or its reality was so strange that it almost seems to be not-real. [A refuter] will say to his fellow, “How did you find it at all?” • The [language] ymd ykyh applies when a saying or a Mishnaic phrase is hermetic [hmwts ] so that it is not clear on which title [rawt ] and on which matter it speaks, and the [refuter] is to build a refutation against it, for every [possible] title. In this case, the refuter will say, “Whichever it would relate, say you to this or to that. . . .” • The [language] rmwl axmt μa applies when a speaker has based his oration on a condition or an antecedent that was unclear. Then [the refuter] will ask if you find that the antecedent was such and such, what you would say on the consequent [hnmm π[tsm πn[ , lit., “the branch going out of it”]. [The languages] close to it are ˚mx[ [gh , or jnwh wla , or hdwnw jynn μa πa , that is to say, “Even if I accept your antecedent, still it does not take one to the point you want to reach [˚nwxr

hnmm dylyty al lit., ‘still, it would not make it deliver your point of will’].”

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• The [languages] arbtsm ymn ykh or yntqd ymn aqyd apply when, based on some additional place phrase or on an aspect of the place in question, an orator makes his fellow unavoidably accept his oration. This happens if a refutation has proved [an earlier] evidence weak, yet the source of it [wmx[ rbd ] did not remain of no use. In an attempt to provide an additional support to it, he brings extra evidence from another place. • The [language] ayçq μwqm lkm applies when one provided a support against a part of the refutation, or against one of the refuter’s antecedents, the refuter gets back to his response and argues, “Regardless of whether you accept my point or not, my refutation still stands.” • The language afyçp would be used [rmay ˜wçlh hz , lit.: this language would be said]43 [to build into a refutation] when the oration [rbdh ] is clear; none disagrees with it; and it itself is almost the first what comes into mind [˜wçar lkçwm awhç f[mkw, lit.: almost of the first reason]44 because there is no slightest invention in it.45 Yet, if there can be found any disagreement on it between either the masters of the Mishnah or the masters of the Talmud, one cannot build it into a refutation. • The [languages] hnyma ˚t[d aqls or amytd whm apply to what one occurs to think in the beginning of the thinking process or contemplation; and one calls46 it “external judgment” [≈wjbm arbs , lit.: a judgment (on the matter) made from the outside (of the topos, in which disagreement takes place)]. • The [language] ˜l [mçm aqw applies to the true judgment47 and to the depth of the ramifications of the law [hklh lç hqmw[ ], either in the orations of Torah, or in the Mishnah, or in Talmud.

[Usages of disagreement on the level of sentence are as follows:] • When a master of the Mishnah gives a sentence48 [fpçm ] for two themes, and the sentence subjects [bwyjl ] one of them to a ruling while exempting [rwfpl ] the other, the two themes must have been of the same title [rawt ] and of the same kind [˜pwa ], since if not, they should have been divided and taught separately. • If there were a master who put himself out of some premises [standing behind a judgment], you may not refute the [explanation of the] judgment through the

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afyçp, even if the judgment seems to fit well to the general principle of selfobviousness [namely, that the judgment was the first to seem of reason]. Otherwise, you will be told that it [the judgment] was stated to withdraw oneself from the [judgment] of the aforementioned master of either Mishnah or Gemara, which disagrees with it.

Analytical Description of Section Fifteen In this section, Canpanton provides the whole of his tractate with an eloquent, and yet serious, conclusion, which is preceded by an account of rules of how a student may or may not build a refutation on his own, as well as general rules of making a refutation in the Talmud. • You should neither marshal evidence [for a practical legal decision] from the judgment of a refuter nor should you put too much of weight on the premises that he explained or on which he made his judgment. In addition, you should not marshal evidence from premises made and then left behind in the process of making a refutation. This is because, in most cases, neither the actual ramifications of a law [hklhh ] nor even agreement [hnqsmh , lit.: “result”] would accord with them. Therefore, if you will either refute or marshal evidence [for a legal decision], you are to do so from what is undisputed [hnqsmh ] or from what is left [untouched] between the disputants, or from what is given by the end of their orations. This is because in many instances in the process of give-and-take, they will change their judgments and [rhetorically] accept unjust premises from each other, yet, towards the end, this will not still be so, since they accepted the premises for only temporary needs. For this, the [specific language] rbs yam πwsblw rbs yam arqy[m and alike would apply. • Catching and defeating [hrytshw hsypth ] has four aspects [in fact only three, but the last one consists of two]: (1) One’s oration is of no invention, in which case the language afyçp lòòmq yam applies. (2) Orations are repetitive or redundant, in which case the language anmyz adj hnynt [applies]. (3) Orations are false and they lie. (3a) Parts of an oration are contrary to each other, in which case the language ayçq apwgh or apwsa açyr ayçq applies. (3b) Some other oration is contrary to the oration in question, in which case the language aynthw or ahw ynwlp òr rma and so on apply.

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Conclusion of The Ways The wisdom of any man reaches only as far as his books can reach. Therefore, one should sell everything and buy the books instead. For example, one who does not possess the books of the Talmud can never be fluent in it, just as the one who does not possess the books of healing can never be fluent in it; and everyone who does not possess the books of logic and wisdom [hmkjw ˜wygh yrps] can never be fluent in them, either. On that, those whose memory should be blessed have said hmkj hbrm μyrps hbrm , interpretable as “the proliferation of books proliferates wisdom”]. In addition, if Rashi, blessed be his memory, explained the phrase “you should acquire a fellow” [Mishnah “Teachings of the Fathers,” Chapter One] as referring to “fellow” indeed, others think the “a fellow” actually refers to “books,” because the book is a good fellow. In contrast, reading from borrowed books makes one subject oneself to the [Biblical] principle “dgnm ˚l μyawlt ˚yyj wyhw ” [Deut. 28:66, interpretable as “and your life will never be sure”]. Yet, they guide one who possesses books to wisdom and sense [t[d ], because “this is your life and the order of your days.” Let the Blessed God honor us with attaining his wisdom and with our own books. Amen!49

Canpanton’s conclusion justifies the value of both the books of wisdom and the books of logic. Obliquely, it grants Canpanton’s own book the virtue of a successful combination of wisdom and logic in a monolithic art of Talmudic learning. The latter is neither possible without both wisdom and logic nor is it reducible to either of them, representing instead an art in itself, which is, here, either a branch or even a root of a third art, that of rhetoric. If the above analytical exposition of Canpanton’s work is correct, then what we have in it is not primarily a treatise on either the logic or linguistics of the Talmud. Nor is its position primarily logico-linguistic. Rather, Canpanton’s book primarily belongs to the art of rhetoric, even if this art does not appear here in the garments one is used to in the “Western” outfit of the discipline. In this case, the Talmud, for Canpanton, is not only a book or a tradition, but an art of its own, a specific art of rhetoric that can also be called the art of learning, or the art of Talmud.

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Appendix to Part Two: Canpanton’s Notion of Exaction (qwyd/aqwyd) Versus the Talmudic Device of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd As argued, Canpanton reestablishes the Talmud as not only a book but also as an art, irreducible not only to the philosophical arts of logic, dialectics, and hermeneutics, but also to their philosophical counterpart, the art of rhetoric. It thus becomes very important to clarify the relationship of Canpanton’s own terms and concepts to the lingua of the Talmudic masters. Below, I attempt such a clarification through a case study of the key concept of Canpanton’s book, qwyd or aqwyd, exaction vis-à-vis the Talmudic term of aqwyd as a part of the Talmudic figure of speech ˜ytyntmd aqwyd. In his Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Michael Sokoloff suggests translating the term as “implication/deduction from the Mishnah,” taking the Ketuboth 17b as his example.50 In Talmudic usage, the term seems to refer to a mode of inference from a phrasing in the Mishnah according to a principle of inversion. ˜ytyntmd aqwyd as the figure of inference from a phrase by inversion appears in several places in the Talmud. In order to reconstruct a closer contextual reference of the figure ˜ytyntmd aqwyd in the Talmud, I will start from Sokoloff’s example from the Ketuboth 17b. I will then go to another place in the Talmud where the same figure appears. Starting from Sokoloff’s own example seems to be justifiable because his example refers to a situation in which the term ˜ytyntmd aqwyd seems to be applied only to one of the two parts of an inference, and not to another part of it, thus showing a clear distinction between what would be and what would not be referred to as ˜ytyntmd aqwyd. We will need to begin, however, not from the Ketuboth, but rather from a “background” argument of Rava in Baba Metzia 39ab, which will play in Ketuboth a decisive role. There, the Talmudic master Rav Huna proposes a rule and gives an explanation of it from which Rava makes an inference, one part of which will be called ˜ytyntmd aqwyd, while the other will not. [Rava makes an inference from the words of Rav Huna.] Rav Huna taught [rma , lit: said, ordered]: [A Mishnaic sentence which says,] “No child should be assigned to guard the property of a captive person. Neither a relative nor a relative of the relative should be assigned to guard the property of a child, either”

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[is to be elaborated as follows:] No child should be assigned to guard the property of a captive person stands because child may [easily] lose the property. A relative of the relative referred to a [brother of the child’s] brother from the mother’s side. [No Relative . . . should be assigned to guard property of a child] stands since given that [this child, when grown up] might not [know how to] protest it, [the relative may] hold the property, [claiming it be his own heritage]. (hqzj ) does not to apply to the property of a child, even if the child has grown up [before the end of guardian’s holding of the property, and the child he has not claimed the property yet], Rava inferred.51

Rava’s inference will play a decisive role in the Talmud Ketuboth, where at stake will be no less than correctness of a report of the Mishnaic formulation, which says Rabi Yehoshuah agreed, if a person said to his fellow, “This field had earlier belonged to your father, and I had bought it from him,” the person should be trusted [by his words alone], because he himself both doubted his possession and reapproved it (lit: the mouth which make it forbidden [to hold], had also made it permitted [to retain]), unless the fellow has some witnesses that the field did belong to his father and the person still says he bought it from him, in which case the person should not be trusted [by his words alone].52

The Talmudic discussion of this report of the Mishnah heuristically attempts to doubt the precision of the report, resulted in an ultimate— and, of course, expected—reaffirmation of the validity of the report. This effect of heuristic doubt and final reaffirmation is reached by consecutively offering and rejecting alternative formulations for the same Mishnah. For our purposes, we will focus, however, only on the first in the series of these. • Well, one could also have reported it [differently], Rabi Yehoshuah agreed, if a person said to his fellow, “This field had earlier belonged to your father self, and I had bought it from him you,” the person should be trusted [by his words alone] [etc.].” • [This formulation would not be good enough] because [the reporter] would also need to change the ending part of the Mishnah, [which, as will be immediately shown, would not make any sense. As it were]:

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. . . unless the fellow has witnesses that the field did belong to his father himself [sic!] and the person still says he bought it from him, in which case the person should not be trusted [by words alone]. What can such a formulation refer to? If the [three] years [decreed] by the law of presumptive right of possession are already over, why should the person not be trusted? However, if the years are not over yet, the person is clearly not to be trusted anyway [and no Mishnah was needed to determine that].

• Well, if you approach it this way [lit: “if so”], [the first formulation], which referred to “his father,” did not make any sense, either! [All the same refutation:] If the [three] years [decreed] by the law of prescriptive right are already over, why should the person not be trusted? If the years [of the prescriptive law] are not over yet, the person is clearly not to be trusted anyway [and no Mishnah was needed to determine it]. • Still, it is agreeable that the [formulation,] which referred to “his father,” [rather than to “himself”] had a strong point in it [for which the Mishnah would be really needed]. It mattered for a situation in which two of the three years [after the transaction] were gone when the father was still alive and only the third year passed while the son lived [independently, without his father]. The Mishnah, thus, [resolves such a matter] as Rav Huna [reported in Baba Metzia 39ab, see above], “The presumptive right of possession (hqzj) does not apply to the property of a child, even when the child has grown up [before the end of guardian’s holding of the property and did not claim his property yet].” • Hmm, did you mean Rav Huna really taught on this matter, even if it was already taught [before him] in our [and his own respective] Mishnah itself?! • Well, if you prefer, Rav Huna only taught the exaction form our Mishnah [˜ytyntmd aqwyd], or, if you prefer, he taught it because [of the additional point, that of] “[. . .] even when the child has grown up [before the end of guardian’s hold of the property, and he has not claimed the property yet].”53 As we can see, the concluding part of this exchange refers to the first part of the teaching of Rav Huna, or more precisely, of Rava’s inference from it— “The presumptive right of holding (hqzj) does not to apply to the property of a child”—as ˜ytyntmd aqwyd , which is, as the polemical stage direction of

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the discussion suggests, the mostly precise reading of the point for which the debated formulation in the Mishnah really mattered. This “precise formulation” is, however, clearly opposed to another part of Rav Huna’s/Rava’s teaching—“even if the child has grown up”—which is treated not as a precise reading of the matter in the Mishnah, but rather as an addition not taught in the Mishnah directly, and thus to be posed as an invention Rav finds in Rav Huna’s words, which otherwise would be a mere explanation of their respective Mishnah. The possibilities are that

˜ytyntmd aqwyd refers to one of two things. It

may point at one of the two ways of looking at both of the parts of Rava’s inference made in the name of Rav Huna,

˜ytyntmd aqwyd as opposed to

looking at both of the parts as an “inventive addition” to the Mishnah. Alternatively, it refers only to the first part of the inference, which is here the only

˜ytyntmd aqwyd, while the second part is the only “inventive addition” to it. At any rate ˜ytyntmd aqwyd, a precise outline of the Mishnah, is here opposed to an inventive addition to the sentence of the same Mishnah. Thinking of this usage of ˜ytyntmd

aqwyd as compared with Canpanton’s

concept of exaction (qwyd), one can note both the discrepancy and the continuity between them. Canpanton’s concept of

qwyd should apply either to

both of the parts of Rav Huna’s/Rava’s teaching or, at the very least, to the second part of it, the one that is not immediately connected to the “plain” matter of it. Therefore, in our case, the Talmudic serve as a direct projection of Canpanton’s

˜ytyntmd aqwyd cannot

qwyd, and therefore, vice versa,

˜ytyntmd aqwyd, at least in this case, cannot be treated as a direct source for Canpanton’s concept of qwyd .54 To verify this conclusion, I will now go to another, albeit different appearance of

˜ytyntm aqwyd in the Talmudic discussion, in Shabbath 92b. Again, the

Talmudic masters heuristically refute the following formulation in the Mishnah: If [on the Sabbath, when carrying the things from one domain to another may be forbidden], a person sets out to carry something in front of him, but de facto ends up by carrying it from behind, the person is excused. If [he sets out] from behind, but ends up de facto carrying it in front of him, the person is punishable.55

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The anonymous Talmudic masters heuristically attempt to refute the report of this Mishnaic formulation, as their heuristic refutation will prepare a stage for Rabbi Elazar to appear. [The heuristic refutation:] • The first theme, “he set out to carry something in front of him, but de facto ends up carrying it from behind,” “excused” in the ruling because his thought did not come into action. But in the second theme, “[he sets out] from behind, but ends up de facto carrying it in front of him,” his thought did not come into action either, did it? However, the ruling for the second theme was “punishable.” What made this difference, then? [Rabbi Elazar’s defense of the Mishnah] Rabbi Elazar [somewhat hermetically] responded: • [Come on!] The first and the second formulations do not belong to one and the same source.56 Without doubting the validity of Rabbi Elazar’s response, Rava prepares for him an even better stage on which to appear. He defeats the first refutation and offers a better one, made with a help of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd. [Defeating the first refutation], Rava said, • Was it really a refutation of the Mishnah? Maybe the first theme, “he set out to carry something in front of him, but de facto ends up carrying it from behind,” was ruled to be “excused” because he thought of making a full observance but ended up making a partial one. Respectively, the second theme, “[he set out] from behind, but ends up de facto carrying it in front of him,” was ruled to be “punishable” because he thought of only a partial observance, no matter that he ended up by full observance.57 Having defeated the first refutation, Raba comes up with a better one: [Raba continued] • However, what makes a real refutation is a ˜ytyntmtd aqwyd as follows: The first statement “If a person sets out to carry something in front of him, but de facto ends up carrying it from behind, the person is excused” would imply that if a person set out to carry something in front of himself, and he also de facto does so, the person should not be excused. However, the

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second statement, “If [he sets out] from behind, but ends up de facto carrying it in front of him, the person is punishable,” would imply that if the person sets out to carry in front and also de facto does so, the person should not be punishable. This is why Rabbi Elazar responded, “Come on! The first and the second formulations do not belong to one and the same source.”58 These would-be implications of the first and the second statements in the Mishnah for one and the same hypothetical theme, which is setting out to carry it in front and actually doing so, have rulings as mutually co-exclusive as “should not be excused” and “should not be punishable.” It is this mutual exclusiveness of implications from the two parts of the Mishnah that makes the Mishnah’s own coherence be heuristically refutable and Rabbi Elazar’s sophisticated solution welcome. In Rava’s argument, the procedure of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd is that of inversion of a ruling based on inversion of theme. The two themes, “setting out to carry it in front and ending up by carrying it behind” and “setting out to carry it behind and ending up by carrying it in front” become inverted, colliding in one and the same [implicit] theme: setting out to carry it behind and ending up by doing so. The two mutually exclusive rulings in the original statements also become inverted, yet the inversion does not make them compatible with each other. As a result, two statements lead to two mutually exclusive implications, which prove the explicit statements themselves to be incoherent with each other. Unlike our first example from Ketuboth 17b, in which ˜ytyntmd aqwyd meant taking the plain matter of the Mishnah as precisely as possible, in Shabbath 92b, ˜ytyntmd aqwyd works as an inference made by the inversion of a theme in conjunction with an inversion of its respective ruling. Again, unlike Canpanton’s concept of qwyd , which, linked to the very essence of invention, had a fundamental theoretical importance for the whole system of Talmudic speculation, an importance comparable only to the importance of syllogism in logic, the ˜ytyntmd aqwyd in Shabbath 92 appears as only a mode of refutation, which, again, unlike Canpanton’s concept, is not always immediately connected with the task of invention. This discrepancy in function does not, however, annul the technical similarity of inversion of themes and rulings used in the ˜ytyntmd aqwyd in Shabbath 92b with Canpanton’s technique of invention in the register of exaction, which

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technique he applies if the invention has not been isolated in the register of the plain matter of disagreement between the orators. If we will now compare the two examples of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd from Ketuboth and Shabbath with Canpanton’s own concept of exaction (qwyd/aqwyd), we will be able to observe the comparison shown in Table 5-2. Table 5-2. A Comparative Table of the Notions of ˜ytyntmd in the Talmud, and aqwyd in Canpanton

aqwyd

˜ytyntmd aqwyd

˜ytyntmd aqwyd

qwyd/aqwyd

in Ketuboth 17b

in Shabbath 92b

in Canpanton

Is clearly disconnected from the task of invention and is limited to the plain matter of the Mishnah only.

Is effectively connected to the task of the heuristic refutation of the Mishnah.

Is effectively and primarily connected to the task of invention.

Does not involve the technique of rhetorical inversion of themes and rulings.

Involves rhetorical technique of inversion of themes and rulings.

Uses the technique of the rhetorical inversion of themes and rulings.

This comparison shows that while Canpanton’s concept of exaction contains elements found separately in two different examples of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd, none of the Talmudic examples could sustain the unique combination of those elements as they appear in Canpanton’s notion of exaction or qwyd / aqwyd. Therefore, Canpanton’s notion of exaction cannot be directly linked to any of the empirically given rhetorical devices of the Talmudic discussion, much less so because, despite his clear inclination to link his own theoretical statements on the Talmud to the actual phraseology in it, in the summarizing, fourteenth chapter of The Ways, Canpanton did not link the theoretical concept of qwyd/aqwyd with any of the devices empirically given in the rhetorical phraseology of the Talmud, but rather used the concept to provide a theoretical interpretation of the whole rank of such empirical Talmudic devices. To support his concept of qwyd, Canpanton needs to operate a complicated conceptual apparatus, which includes the concepts on language and matter (topos), theme and ruling, and, last but not least, invention, a concept pertaining to the art of rhetoric, rather than directly to the art of either dialectics or logic. The concept stands in the center of a complicated theoretical framework, which in fact cannot be reduced to any known version of rhetoric either, but rather represents a scholarly art of its own, the art of the Talmud.

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six

The Art of Disagreement

This chapter returns Canpanton’s Talmud of disagreement back to the broader context of the Western philosophy of agreement. The book has so far isolated Talmud (without the) as an intellectual project and mapped it in its relation to other major intellectual projects of the West—philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry. It has shown how these four are all mutually connected and mutually irreducible. It has further returned Talmud as an intellectual project back to one of the historical instances of its emergence, to the fifteenth-century work of Rabbi Izh.ak Canpanton, wherein the intellectual art of Talmud proved, in all aspects, both comparable and irreducible to the particular philosophical arts of logic, hermeneutics, semantics, and rhetoric. I have more specifically made the case that, in Canpanton’s Talmud, disagreement formed a central category of what in the philosophical parallels of Talmud is called logic, semantics, hermeneutics, and rhetoric. The role disagreement played both in the historical Talmud and in Talmud as an intellectual project poses the more general question of Talmud’s interrelationship with 233

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philosophy and sophistry, a question that I am preparing to ask again, now in terms of what proved to be the central category of Canpanton’s Talmud— disagreement. To contribute to answering this question, I therefore conclude by situating the category of Talmudic disagreement vis-à-vis a broader philosophical notion of (dis)agreement. “How do we learn?” That deceitfully simple question will serve as an introduction to what precisely is at stake in thinking of Talmudic disagreement, in the context of Western philosophy of agreement. In asking it, I refer both to the famous opening of Plato’s Meno and to the Yiddish word lernen (learn), reserved specifically for studying the Talmud. In the Meno, after singing ironical praise to Gorgias, who taught young people how to answer questions about anything without even knowing in advance what the thing truly is, Socrates admits that, unlike Gorgias, he has no nerve for talking about any features of anything without knowing what the thing truly is. The unfolding dialogue is precisely a critique of Meno, a young student of Gorgias, for talking about virtue before even knowing what it really is. In this context, Socrates asks a difficult, but still merely philosophical question: “How could I know of something new, if I did not already have a preliminary knowledge thereof?” However, if read in comparison with Canpanton’s strategy of learning/ studying the Talmud through the process of contemplation, Socrates sounds in a slightly, but perhaps not critically different, overtone: he asks, “How do I start to learn anything without presupposing either total ignorance or full knowledge?” An answer Plato promotes would be that all learning is a recovery of the forgotten past, or of the world of forms that souls had already visited in the past and now recall/restore through the process of dialogue. To a degree, Plato acknowledges that disagreement is an element of dialogue, and could even provide a starting point from which the recovery of the past must begin. He also appreciates the role of the past as the only direction in which the recovery of the forgotten might happen. Yet, disagreements remain important only at this starting stage, and are always limited to the world of doxa—opinion and argument; it never can make it to the world of forms. Similarly, the past is only a path to that world, not a part of it. Both doxa and disagreement can provide only a starting point on the way of a

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dialogue to discovering/recalling what the things truly are. Similarly, the direction of the dialogue—a recollection of the past—is only a transit-way to the ultimate destination, the world of forms, with no disagreement in it. By the same token, neither time nor past is a genuine part of the world of forms. Plato thus at best sees both time (specifically, the past) and disagreement as simply stepping-stones to the timeless being of forms. Like other dialogues, the Meno invites us to go from the world of doxa to that of forms or ideas. The doxa include multiple opinions, beliefs, and arguments, of which disagreement is an intrinsic part, and which deal with a mix of what really is (being) and what is not (non-being). In contrast, the world of true forms, ideas, or true knowledge is the world of true being. In the final destination, no disagreement takes place, for the world of forms allows only what is, not what is not. And yet, the only road to the world of forms goes through the use of a dialogue in order recall the past of the soul or the time when the soul dwelled in the world of true being. What it means, however, is that recollection/reconstruction of the past is an important strategic element, not only in Canpanton, but also in Plato. Yet, an important difference between the two has to do with the role disagreement plays in that strategy. Even a quick comparison shows that in Plato, remembering/recollection should eliminate disagreements, while in Canpanton, remembering/recollection works for a disagreement, not against it. That, of course, would be a very general, even generic, and admittedly imprecise way of comparing of Plato’s form of dialogue to Canpanton’s form of Talmud. I use it as a first approximation only. It invites a much more precise look at the roles disagreement, recollection, past, and thus time play in Talmud, either in comparison to dialogue or to the philosophical subscription to the ideal of an achieved agreement. A simple question of how we learn thus leads to another question: what the tradition of philosophy has to say about the importance of disagreement. Answering that question through a seemingly straightforward comparison between Plato’s dialogues and Canpanton’s Talmud becomes intriguingly more complex if we take a closer look at Plato’s approach to disagreement versus Canpanton’s approach to recollection. A decisive step in deciphering this complexity has to do with a more nuanced and less negative understanding of the role of disagreements that the tradition of philosophy has developed in

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connection to the philosophy of Plato. As we will immediately see, even if, in the world of forms, philosophy allows no disagreements, in the world of doxa it still takes them more seriously than it might seem, so that disagreement even becomes a specific theme in the tradition of philosophy. I will thus start with an analysis of a more refined and thus more positive philosophical view on the role of disagreement. A political philosopher of disagreement, Jacques Rancière, carefully differentiates disagreements from mutual misunderstandings: Disagreement occurs wherever contention over what speaking means constitutes the very rationality of the speech situation. The interlocutors both understand and do not understand the same thing by the same words. There are all sorts of reasons why X both does and does not understand Y: while clearly understanding what Y is saying, X cannot see the object Y is taking about; or else, X understands and, bound to understand, sees and attempts to make visible another object using the same name, another reason within the same argument. Thus, in the Republic, “political philosophy” comes into existence in the long protocol of disagreement over an argument in which everyone agrees: that justice consists in giving each his due. It would no doubt be convenient if, to say just what he understands by justice, the philosopher had entirely different words at his disposal from those of the poet, the merchant, the orator, or the politician. Divine wisdom apparently did not provide these, and the lover of strict and appropriate languages can furnish them only at the cost of not being understood at all. Where philosophy runs up against poetry, politics, and the wisdom of honest merchants, it has to borrow the others’ words in order to say that it is saying something else entirely. It is in this that disagreement lies and not mere misunderstanding, which can be resolved by a simple explanation of what the other’s sentence is saying—unbeknownst to this other.1

Even with his radical and innovative philosophical appreciation of disagreement as an unfortunate, yet unavoidable linguistic and/or intellectual disconnect between philosophers and all others, Rancière leaves the traditional dismissive philosophical attitude toward disagreement untouched. Regardless of how powerfully he defines what disagreement is and how it is different from mutual misunderstandings, he still treats disagreement as something that is ideally to be avoided and expresses regret that this cannot be done. He demonstrates his preference to dismiss disagreements even as

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he ironically realizes that such dismissal can hardly work, at least not before a reader arrives at the end of the dialogue, where an agreement is reached. In his appreciation of disagreement, Rancière is in many ways a radical exception that, as extreme as he is, only proves the rule of philosophy’s dismissive attitude toward disagreement. Philosophers have always hoped to reach agreement. This hope dominated philosophical and, by extension, cultural, intellectual, social, sexual, psychological, and other traditions of the West. In these traditions, disagreement is tolerable only as an intermediary step on the people’s way to an agreement. Admittedly, in many of these traditions in modern times, disagreement has won more recognition. It has signified pluralism and “openness” to appreciate a different opinion, position, standing, sexual orientation, color, and so on. It has even included such seemingly welcoming and playful forms of tolerance as boutique multiculturalism or a collector’s approach to diversity. However, in their scarier, but perhaps also more intellectually honest, practice, philosophers have sought to eradicate disagreement as a place of mistake, error, deviation, or, in religious terms, heresy. Faithful to the philosophical tradition of old, modern nation-states also have operated both nationally and internationally on the often tragic, but nevertheless optimistic assumption of the attainability of agreement. The assumption of attainability has meant that an agreement, however rare and hard to reach it may be, must ultimately be attained, while disagreements, however widely they tended to occur, must be made ultimately to disappear. Despite the factual prevalence of political and other kinds of disagreement over the ideal of agreement, the attainability of agreement has retained an important, in fact indispensable, place of hope, without which any disagreement would look not only nonsensical, but also fatal. Even though disagreements have predominated, they most often have seemed solvable in the future, thus not permanent, and in that sense, false, for from that point of view, false things vanish, and only true things can remain. Contrary to the view of disagreements as always false, Canpanton promoted a notion of disagreement as not false, but rather true. His art of Talmud exemplified an approach in which, unlike false disagreements, true disagreements should be preserved and even developed further. For him,

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disagreements call for appreciation and even cultivation as they are, not for the sake of an agreement to which they might lead. Not surprisingly, for Canpanton, quite unlike for Rancière, true disagreements are very hard to achieve. What is more, they are even harder to maintain, for the ghost of agreement constantly haunts and dissipates them. That ghost even rises up when people tolerate disagreements only under a pretense that they have agreed to disagree. Some even reduce Talmudic disagreement to this last kind. In contrast to the philosophy of agreement, Canpanton’s art of Talmud provided a bright and powerful example of an escape from the ghost of agreement. It thereby also provided a no less bright, albeit indirect, indication of the ghost’s point of origin, hidden in the hope for a linear future, without which, as Hermann Cohen has suggested, there could hardly be any past. In Cohen’s claim, the relationship between past and future is strictly linear, even if reversed. The future both contains and discloses the character of time as such, while the past is only a secondary effect of it. Rooted in an anticipated future, the past is therefore always secondary to the future to come. The past never comes first; it only comes second, after the future already has arrived.2 An anticipated future is as fundamental for Cohen as is the anticipation of agreement for the philosophical tradition that he continues. It is also just as anthropologically charged: His idea of anticipation assumes an idea of a human being who hopes for a future, just as the idea of agreement assumes the idea of a human being who hopes for agreement. By contrast, Canpanton’s treatment of the past is neither linear-historical nor bound to an agreement, and is therefore much less strongly connected to any anticipation of the future. Instead, what Canpanton makes a student of Talmud anticipate is the past. In treating the past, Canpanton’s Talmud takes a much less linear road. Disagreement, for him, is to be retrieved from the past, for the past is the main direction of Canpanton’s Talmudist’s attunement to the world. As if in juxtaposition to Cohen, Canpanton’s practice of Talmud suggests that the notions of past and future and, in fact, the notion of a human who is always immersed in time, would look different if disagreement were appreciated more than as a mere intermediary for a future agreement.

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Canpanton’s treatment of both disagreement and temporality enables us to think anew of a connection between the notions of agreement and disagreement. I aim to delineate some key steps in explaining a provisional juxtaposition between Cohen and Canpanton. I specifically expose it through the lens of the notion of a human being, one of the central concepts of neo-Kantianism, as compared with the notion of a student of the Talmudic speculation, to whom Canpanton addresses his book and who is presumably, but, as I will show, not necessarily also a human being. To begin with, the concept of true disagreement was at the center of Canpanton’s conceptions of meaning, invention, and syllogism, as those conceptions formed the projections of his art of Talmud to, respectively, semantics, rhetoric, and logic. These, in turn, implied a notion of a student of Talmud, a notion that is both conceptually close to and distant from that of a human being in the philosophical tradition. I will carefully attend to that notion. Let me briefly summarize these concepts and projections as they were analyzed in the previous chapters. First, in Canpanton’s Talmudic theory of meaning, to which the discipline of semantics would be the closest parallel philosophical projection, to contemplate the exact meaning of a phrase meant to contemplate what this phrase came to refute or disagree with, not merely what the phrase referred to, indicated, or signified. Second, in addition to his theory of meaning, disagreement also shaped Canpanton’s theory of Talmudic invention (hiddush), in which an invention was intrinsically a refutation of a position of another master of the Talmud. Finally, disagreement shaped Canpanton’s theory of the Talmudic syllogism or exaction as an irreducible parallel to both logical and rhetorical syllogisms. As Canpanton defined the notion of exaction, it involved contemplating a rhetorical invention as it emerged from a refutation, and thus always from a true disagreement. I have already discussed these aspects of Canpanton’s view of Talmud in the context of his specific theory of the art of Talmud in its relation to grammar, rhetoric, semantics, and hermeneutics. I will now relate his Talmud to the discipline of philosophic anthropology. In this way, I return Canpanton’s discussion of disagreement in the art of Talmud to a broader context of the philosophy of agreement. As it will soon become clear, such a return requires that I look at Canpanton’s Talmudic approach to disagreement simultaneously

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in anthropological and hermeneutical perspectives, that is, in the perspective of the philosophical-anthropological question, “What is a human being?” connected to the hermeneutical question, “What is interpretation?” My argument will thus situate the art and indeed the discipline of Talmud in these two perspectives, hermeneutical and anthropological, but also, in the same move, will put these disciplines in the perspective of Talmud. Following Canpanton’s path, I delineate the hermeneutical and anthropological foundations of the concept of disagreement in terms of what both political philosophy and philosophical anthropology, for which Rancière would be one example, would consider the human condition of disagreement, now construed as a path of interpretation. I will ultimately argue that approaching the foundations and conditions of disagreement has to do with revisiting the connection of the disciplines and traditions of the hermeneutics of agreement and the anthropology of the human being in a new, Talmudic perspective of disagreement.

Hermeneutics and Anthropology in Canpanton What, then, is the connection between philosophy (either classical or recent) and Canpanton’s art of Talmud? What light can such connection shed on the philosophical and more specifically anthropological project of a hermeneutics of agreement? What can the philosophical tradition of agreement illuminate in Canpanton’s art of Talmud? Last, but not least, what can Canpanton’s project of Talmud illuminate in the philosophy of agreement? To address these questions, a broader reading of Canpanton’s Talmud of disagreement as both a hermeneutical and an exegetical enterprise is due. Toward that end, I connect intellectual perspectives that have seldom been related to each other in the study of exegesis. Inspired by Aristotle’s Of Interpretation, where, as I will argue, the theory of the human being (anthropology) and the theory of interpretation (hermeneutics) are intrinsically connected to each other, I heuristically submit that just as classical philosophical hermeneutics had an intrinsic anthropological element, so also Talmudic exegesis should have a no-less-strong anthropological counterpart.

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Even if that counterpart would not exactly be a version of anthropology, it might still be similar to anthropology as a discipline (either philosophic or cultural) in its disciplinary function as the foundation of a hermeneutics. To explore the relationships between hermeneutics, anthropology, and Talmud, I therefore focus on the fundamental question: What might serve as an anthropological (or perhaps only pseudoanthropological) counterpart of Canpanton’s Talmud? My claim is that, when dealing with a disagreement that Canpanton’s Talmudist is eliciting from the past, he is both at his closest and most distant from what both supporters and rivals of Cohen’s philosophical anthropology would conceptualize as a human being, a concept implying attunement to the future and the attainability of agreement—a place that only the future provides. Through the following series of comparative readings, I argue that, in regard to the relationship of Talmud, anthropology, hermeneutics, and ontology, or the theory of being (human or not, but finite), the mind of the Talmudist foregrounds neither the spirit of an agreement nor spirit itself in a broader philosophical sense. The mind is therefore much less spiritual, anthropological, individual, or future-oriented than the philosophic tradition makes it appear. The Talmudist’s orientation toward both disagreement and the past reveals a radically different perspective—one that might perhaps still be called “anthropological,” but only because of the lack of a better term. Yet by no means should this perspective be seen as spiritual. My claim can, however, hardly be made, much less understood, as a bare statement. Instead, it requires support and explanation that can come only at an intersection of multiple perspectives on Canpanton’s position, as seen from different places in the philosophical field. I therefore support and explain this claim by a series of six comparative readings in Plato, Aristotle, Bergson, and, following Derrida, Heidegger. The result is a perspective that can perhaps still be called “anthropological,” if anthropology could give up its notion of the human being as haunted and animated by the desire to have others agree. Collectively, these readings will give us a picture of Canpanton’s Talmudist and his Talmud, broadly construed vis-à-vis the dominant tradition of the philosophy of agreement.

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A look back at the beginning of the philosophy of agreement in antiquity will help to explain the intrinsic connectedness of hermeneutics and anthropology. It will also say more about why we need to look for an anthropological aspect of Talmud. The story necessarily also includes a third discipline, that of ontology, broadly construed as a theory of being. The connections linking ontology, anthropology, and hermeneutics are nothing new, and Heidegger, in Being and Time3 and in his polemics with Cohen’s student and follower Ernst Cassirer,4 was far from the first to make them. They already had emerged at the outset of the tradition of hermeneutics as a classical philosophical and later exegetical discipline. Already, then, hermeneutics had not only a very strong anthropological component, but also connected itself to the discipline of ontology. Today, after Heidegger, that connection between ontology and anthropology via hermeneutics continues in new and even more promising ways. I will proceed gradually, first looking at the beginnings of that connection, then continuing through its recent transformation and its ramifications as I map Canpanton’s Talmud in relation to each of these steps. At the heart of the connection between hermeneutics and anthropology stands Plato’s and Aristotle’s subscription to the attainability of agreement, which has not been displaced even in the philosophy of today. After looking at Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies of agreement, an example of Deleuze’s reading of the early modernist philosopher of intuition Henri Bergson (1859–1941) will show how that subscription to the attainability of agreement continued in modernist thought, despite its critical break with the classical philosophy of the West. I will then look at how Canpanton’s Aristotelianism productively deviated from that mainstream, producing a counterperspective on disagreement. I thus begin with Plato’s form of philosophical dialogue. Explicitly aimed at an agreement between interlocutors, Plato’s form of dialogue intrinsically and not only thematically placed at issue being and non-being, a domain ever since traditionally ascribed to ontology. In Plato, dialogism and ontology are tightly connected. Using the literary form of the dialogue rather than the oration was imperative for Plato, because he

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was dismissing Sophists, who, in his view, failed to discriminate between the forms of an always one-directional oration or speech and of a seemingly two-directional dialogue. Plato’s choice of being as opposed to non-being, again motivated by his polemics against Sophists, worked as an anthropological device that set up the human being or citizen as an animal different from any other animals in its ability to speak, especially in the privileged form of speech, which was of course dialogue, not the oration. For him, dialogue was the place where humans disclosed being through sorting out what really is from what is not, that is, being from non-being.5 This particular association of dialogue with the sorting out of being and non-being in Plato is specific for the human as citizen, for citizens, unlike animals, centaurs, and barbarians, are to differentiate the things that are from the things that are not. Thus, an ability to sort things out is intrinsic to any current theme in a dialogue. Third, an equally intrinsic, but hitherto much less noticed, anthropological aspect of the Platonic notion of dialogue is his delineation of the notion of the human being through his approach to agreement. Citizens, as “civilized,” speaking humans, unlike animals, centaurs, and barbarians, are capable of coming to an agreement with another citizen through the privileged form of dialogue. In many of his dialogues, an agreement between interlocutors in a dialogue is thus the ultimate purpose, regardless of the subject matter of the dialogue. Heidegger’s reading of the Sophist shows that the form of a dialogue means much more than simply an interaction between the characters. The form of a dialogue speaks more than its content expresses. With the very passive role of one of the interlocutors and the active role of the other, the Sophist can easily convert into the form of a straightforward oration. Hence, the form of the dialogues does not simply privilege a human or a citizen as somebody who can be in a dialogue and in agreement, as opposed to an animal, a centaur, a member of an ethnic group, or a barbarian who cannot. Rather, dialogue as a form attests to infinite being from a standpoint that is not necessarily human, but is surely finite in its thinking. Such a standpoint is represented in the figure of the philosopher as opposed to the Sophist. It is the philosopher who can sort out being from non-being and who can produce agreement among citizens. Heidegger’s reading of Plato in his Plato’s Sophist thus helped to establish that Plato’s dismissive attitude toward disagreement

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was far from a stand-alone feature of the dialogical form.6 The figure of a philosopher, rather than that of a Sophist, much less of a human being/ citizen, thus became the central agent in producing the underlying form of any dialogical act. The above observation has already hinted at a strong connection among three things: Plato’s dialogues of agreement, his ontology, and his anthropological claims. The connection between ontology and anthropology becomes even more visible in the explanation of the art of interpretation or hermeneutics in Plato’s student, friend, and rival, Aristotle. Before turning to Aristotle, however, I need to sharpen an already established contrast between Plato’s philosophy of agreement and Canpanton’s Talmud of disagreement. With its radically different assessment of disagreement as a goal, not as a means, the tradition of the masters of Talmud represented a different line of thinking both about time (a theme perhaps less important for Plato, who turned his attention to being, which he considered timeless) and about being and non-being. Closer to sophistry than to philosophy, and interested less in either being or non-being, Canpanton’s Talmudist, or rather, a master of Talmud, orients himself or herself to the past-ness of an event of thought. Unlike Plato, he or she delegates this event not to the master(s) of a dialogue here at hand, but rather to an exchange that takes place in the radical past, which involves no intrinsic claim of its historical existence. The Talmudic art of disagreement was therefore no longer associated with a Platonic discrimination of being from non-being or of what really is from what is not. Instead, it attuned itself to what might (or even, from a given temporal and finite point of view, must) have been in the rhetorical probability/necessity of an explanation, rather than in the philosophical/historical necessity of its past existence. Thus, Talmudic disinterestedness in the matters of being and non-being stands in sharp contrast to the Platonic ontological anthropology of human beings or citizens brought into agreement under the aegis of the philosopher. However, beyond the intellectual world of Canpanton’s book, the sharp contrast between Talmudism and Platonism perhaps nowhere existed in its pure form. When historically confronted with the dominant Platonic or post-Platonic ways of thinking about dialogues, this line of Talmudist thinking through disagreement became either directly suppressed or indirectly

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subverted. It was thereby transformed into what is now a more familiar way of thinking of everything, including the Talmud, as just another object for thought, either historical or traditional. One might still say that the putatively “older,” non-Platonic or anti-Platonic pattern of Talmud did persist in at least some more traditional Jewish quarters, for example in the Lithuanian Orthodox approach to the Talmud. Such an approach expresses itself, among other places, in the yeshiva project of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1817–93) or in the writings of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik (1853–1918), specifically in his commentary on Maimonides, as well as in the works of their students and followers today. Without taking a stand in the discussion about the discursive exchanges between these Talmudic thinkers and the philosophy of neo-Kantianism, I would only make one quick note. The idea of an “older” anti-Platonism or a-Platonism of traditional Talmud study might itself be a remote result of the conceptual differences between Canpanton and other Aristotelians, which then translated itself into a vision of a historically original or “old” anti-Platonism. Paradoxically, it means that to become more noticeable, such a transformation or subversion of the Talmud into more conventional Platonic patterns of agreement needs therefore to be not only attended to, but also undone. The theoretical possibility of such attention (and undoing) arises only from twentieth-century phenomenological and postphenomenological ways of thinking of the construction of meaning informed, in the case of Edmund Husserl, by an even more remote version of secularized Talmudism. Therefore, let me introduce the phenomenological movement as it pertains to the context of the present discussion. The phenomenological approach arose as an alternative at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the debate between logic and psychology as to which of these disciplines would be best suited to provide a scientifically correct analysis of meaning. In the context of these polemics, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) made a nearly “Talmudic” effort to preserve the disagreement between the disciplines of logic and psychology by taking it to a new level of theorizing, a level that he would later take even further to establish a new intellectual project, now known as phenomenology. In one of its earlier instances, in Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1900–1901), he exemplified such an approach through an effort to discover and claim

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the fundamental role of a-representational aspects in the production or construction of the meaning of any given expression. For him, an expression has meaning not only, and not primarily, because it refers to something that can exist, but rather because, as an expression, it always already has been invested with meaning, even before we intuitively (mentally or perceptually) know what exactly it means or to which existing thing it refers. Thus, for Husserl, unlike for Plato, a reference to being as opposed to non-being is no longer a necessary condition of having meaning. An expression can mean even before we intuitively know what its meaning would be in terms of the “real” or “existing” world. Any expression always already has been endowed with meaning. Without such a previous investment of meaning, no object can become part of an expression. Therefore, the construction of meaning, or in more dynamic terms, the economy of meaning, according to Husserl, involves the meaning that humans or other finite beings invest in any expression, followed by a representational fulfillment of that meaning, which would be only a return on that fundamental investment—perhaps a substantial return or perhaps not. One crucial consequence of that claim is that an expression can have meaning even if the investment has not been paid back.7 This constitutes a major departure from Plato’s critique of nonbeing. For Plato, to be and to make sense (or to have meaning) was the same, since he associated non-being with nonsense. Yet for Husserl, any given expression can be “meaningless” or can refer to what is not only if it is already invested with some potential sense; otherwise it would not be an expression, and the question of its reference or meaning would not even be asked, and thus no dialogue about it would be possible. Through such an argument, Husserl discovered that meaning involves at least two heterogeneous moments: an investment of meaning in an expression, and a fulfillment or “payback” of this investment in an intuition, a return that is already accomplished (or maybe not). Husserl thereby revealed an intrinsic heterogeneity in the nature of meaning. Following this discovery, Husserl famously drew a decisive (and indeed almost “Talmudic”) distinction between the referentiality of meaning and the existence or nonexistence of its referent. He emphasized the former as a complex matter, rather than a simple correspondence. Meaning to him was a combination of an investment of meaning in any given expression

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and its fulfillment in an intuition. These two elements are mutually related as strongly as they are unrelated to the existence or nonexistence of the referent. Like Canpanton, Husserl appreciated the fact that an investment of meaning comes before we can contemplate its precise content. Unlike Canpanton, he sought the meaning of a given expression in its intuitive or representational fulfillment, not in its rhetorical significance—that is, not in what the expression can refute or dismiss. Yet despite that difference, Husserl opens up a radically new way of thinking, not just about Plato, but about Canpanton. Husserl’s discovery of a complicated, rather than simple, multiply vectored, rather than univocal, and heterogeneous, rather than monolithic, nature of meaning enabled such thinkers as Heidegger to reappropriate Plato’s ontology and anthropology on new grounds in which the Platonic dichotomy of being and non-being now stood apart from the question of the possibility of meaning. After Husserl, to have meaning and to exist were no longer the same, not only for latter-day Sophists, but also for philosophers. However, his discovery retained the premises of the philosophy of agreement. This fact became even clearer in Heidegger’s continuation of Husserl’s work. Heidegger asked, if meaning no longer had to have a correlate in existence, did it still have any ontological foundation? Unlike Husserl, he contemplated such a foundation. He famously focused on a being, undecidably human or not, but decidedly finite, which he thought of as the condition of possibility for Husserl’s heterogeneous meaning. Since the investment of meaning in any given expression is always already given, it represents a credit without a creditor, so to speak. It means the foundation for which Heidegger was looking was neither human nor even humanlike (or anthropomorphic). Yet as Heidegger saw it, there should still have been something responsible for this credit, this investment. Heidegger thus was looking for the ontological foundations of the investment in meaning that any expression receives even before its positive meaning is contemplated or fulfilled in intuition. For him, these ontological foundations could no longer be anthropological, much less humanistic. Yet, the premises of both Husserl’s phenomenology of meaning and Heidegger’s ontology of meaning were still inscribed in the borders of the philosophy of agreement. No longer a psychological interpersonal issue or a humanistic social goal, the desire for agreement expressed itself either in

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the always anticipated final return on the investment in meaning, through its fulfillment in intuition, or in the investment, fatally remaining devoid of returns, which, however, still allowed for the anticipation of returns in the future. Hence, meaning always was seen to involve a future fulfillment and thus, in any expression, meaning was seen as possible only on the basis of the promised attainability of a future agreement about it. Heidegger was not the only one to explore the ontological implications of Husserl’s work. In parallel with Heidegger’s continuation of Husserl’s phenomenology, Husserl’s new heterogenic structuring of meaning enabled other thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben to rebel against Heidegger’s ahumanist prospects for the ontology of meaning, to come up with an alternative designed to resist what Agamben called an anthropologic machine,8 an alternative in which he destructures the allegedly obvious notion of the human being. In his programmatic statement he says: “In our culture, man has always been thought of as the articulation and conjunction of a body and a soul, of a living thing and a logos, of a natural (or animal) element and a supernatural or social or divine element. We must learn instead to think of man as what results from the incongruity of these two elements, and investigate not the metaphysical mystery of conjunction, bur rather the practical and political mystery of separation. What is man, if he is always the place—and at the same time, the result—of ceaseless divisions and caesurae?”9 Departing from an anthropology that takes the existence of humans for granted and then asks what the human being is, Agamben explores the machine that creates the premise from which anthropology starts and discovers the workings of that machine, not only in anthropology, but also in its main rival, the ontology of Heidegger.10 Agamben’s problematization of the notion of the human being (“man”) helps to highlight even more strongly how Plato sets up a machine that, through speaking, dialogue, and agreement, produces a human being or a citizen, and ultimately a philosopher, rather than an animal, centaur, or barbarian, who perhaps might be able to speak, but who can hardly enter into a dialogue or agree. Once we have achieved this perspective, it becomes possible to look more closely at the Talmudic art of disagreement in terms of its anti-anthropological or rather a-anthropological grounds. To take advantage of this position,

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I once again need to proceed more slowly, returning to ancient philosophical tradition in order to look at the beginnings of the connections between anthropology, ontology, and hermeneutics. I thus return to the classical hermeneutical project of Aristotle. reading two: anthropology and hermeneutics in aristotle

An anthropological component of hermeneutics is openly at work in Aristotle’s classical De Interpretatione, where he introduced what would become the default outline of the realm of hermeneutics. Anthropology was an intrinsic component of Aristotle’s vision of hermeneutics and, as far as Canpanton is an Aristotelian thinker, it should be so for him, as well. In fact, Canpanton’s Talmudical way of reading can help us better discern the anthropological component of Aristotle’s hermeneutics. The famous and much commented-on fragment from the introduction to De Interpretatione reads: “Let us, first of all, define noun and verb (rhema), then explain what is meant by denial (apophasis), affirmation (kataphasis), proposition (apophansis), and logos.” While this opening paragraph is clearly a didactic contract with the reader, it does not announce the true task that Aristotle undertakes and fulfills in this work. What that task was specifically is of course open for deliberation, but at the very least, in terms of its polemical agenda, this work of the Stagirite targets “importunate sophists,”11 the only polemical figures explicitly mentioned. Sophists, as Aristotle saw them, believed in the domination of thoughts by words and, consequently, they did not see any need for making speeches obey any structure or rule of thinking beyond the structure and rules of speech. For example, the Sophists, as Aristotle constructs them, failed to discriminate carefully enough between contrariety and contradiction, a distinction that holds only if speech remains secondary to thought, not the other way around.12 Aristotle wanted to place their skillful use of speeches under philosophic control, enforced by imposing the order of thoughts on the order of speeches. He makes such an effort immediately, in the next paragraph. However, contrary to what might be expected, the control of thought over speech comes not from the realm of pure linguistics or logic, but rather from anthropology:

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Words spoken are symbols of affections or impressions of the soul [te psyche pathemathon symbola]; written words are the signs [symbola] of words spoken. As writing [rammata], so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs, are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects [pragmanta] of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies. With these points however I dealt in my treatise concerning the soul; they belong to a different inquiry from that which we now have in hand.13

Although this statement might sound like a commonplace about the universality of “mental affections” in humans, it calls for attention precisely because it sounds so obvious. If read Talmudically, in the style of Canpanton, and giving serious reverence to Aristotle, this phrase is to be read not only and not primarily as a direct statement, but rather also as an indirect indication of what it seeks to dismiss and what that dismissal would accomplish. It dismisses the alleged sophistic understanding of the speech as the ultimate dictator of thought. If, in reality, as Aristotle proclaims, spoken words do not dictate thoughts, but rather only indicate them; if, further, spoken words are only secondary symbols of the passions/impressions that the soul receives as it thinks, the sophistic power of speech or discourse is no longer ultimate. Aristotle makes sure to secure that point even before entering in any polemics, direct or indirect, with the Sophists. He prepares for his polemics with them (and, of course, for his victory over them) by appealing to an anthropological picture of humans in their diversity and in their commonality. Regardless of whom he includes or excludes from the category of “men,” he both limits and overarches the diversity of human beings by the commonality of their mental affections. By the same move, however, he also honors that diversity, or, more precisely, the diversity of those who speak, by noting that no one can avoid speaking in one or another particular language. Therefore, although thought dominates any language, it cannot occur without at least one. Hence, in Aristotle’s anthropology, secondary symbolization or speech is unavoidable for all men. Therefore, unlike Plato, he grants speech a more respectable place. He gives a considerable importance and honor to what Plato did not give any honor, and he does so by means of an anthropological claim.

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In this way, Aristotle’s anthropology supports his more tolerant attitude toward rhetoric. For Aristotle, men by necessity reach their mental affections only via their speech; therefore, the Stagirite allows an important, even if only secondary, place for people’s diversity, and hence also a respectable, even if only secondary, place for the rhetorical procedures of persuasion, an allowance that Plato would hardly approve, and one the Sophists would hardly find sufficient. What is more, for Aristotle’s anthropology, speeches and procedures of persuasion address not only other citizens, but also the human being (or citizen) himself or herself. Since the symbolization of mental affections through speech is as inevitable as it is secondary, speech keeps playing its central role, regardless of whether or not you deal with another man or with yourself. Thus, in this seemingly simple and obvious but, in fact, complex and polemically charged way, the anthropological picture that Aristotle draws provides the foundation for his project of hermeneutics. In that project, unlike Plato, Aristotle takes speech seriously, while unlike the Sophists, he does not let speech overrule the process of thought that underlies it. His anthropological claim of the universality of mental affections for all humans remained crucial for making Aristotle’s hermeneutical argument work. Affections, which Plato’s philosophy strongly deprivileged, regain their rights in Aristotle’s theory of hermeneutics. For Aristotle, again unlike Plato, and again like the Sophists, mental affections are based not on a spurious abyss of diversity and disagreements, but on the solid ground of a common future that only the principle of the attainability of agreement can provide. If mental affections are the same for all, then there is a future in which men can attain agreement; and if therefore rhetorical persuasion is important, or even necessary, then philosophy, very much unlike Plato’s vision of it, has to provide a valid and important place for the task of rhetorical persuasion. If read in that way, that is, Talmudically, or as Canpanton suggested, in terms of the polemical agendas and rhetorical inventions made in response to those agendas, this paragraph and, in its light, the entire of Aristotle’s book takes us even further than what C. W. A. Whitaker proposed in his restructuring of Aristotelian heritage. Following Brentano’s example of restructuring the classical disciplinary affiliations of Aristotle’s works, Whitaker, departing from

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the classically established scholarly scheme, connects De Interpretatione not only and not mainly to logic and linguistics, via works such as Prior Analytics and Categories, but also and even more so to works on dialectics and, by extension, to works on metaphysics.14 To take his argument further, to where he could have gone but did not go, he even makes it possible to connect De Interpretatione to Aristotle’s Rhetoric. When read Talmudically, De Interpretatione connects not only to Aristotle’s anthropology, as was already explained, but also to De Anima, and hence, following Brentano’s interpretation discussed earlier in the present volume, directly to his theory of active intellect as an overarching agency, which is itself not human but is responsible for the mental affections of all humans. His connection of hermeneutics to metaphysics and specifically to the doctrine of active intellect substantiates Aristotle’s claim of the crucial anthropological unity of humankind (whoever is or is not included in it). As a result, for Aristotle, once again unlike for Plato, persuasion does not destroy an otherwise philosophically pure humanity, nor does it poison those who trust it. Rather, it re-creates and regains what humans’ connection to active intellect gives to all humans. Persuasion does not destroy human society, but rather helps to ramify the unity that society already has in the mental affections every human being shares, but also often might have lost in the diversity of spoken dialects and systems of writing. What is even more, due to the common ground of all mental affections, rhetorical persuasion becomes a very important way to lead those affections’ practitioners back to what is attainable and what they potentially already possess—to agreement in their basic thinking, which is also the basic passion of their souls. Finally, an even stronger, but perhaps less noticeable connection of hermeneutics to anthropology appears via the practice of persuasion. In Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, hermeneutics grounds the possibility of persuasion; for the same reason it also distinguishes a correct philosophical use of persuasion from what the philosopher holds to be merely sophistical manipulations of peoples’ minds. Anthropology plays a decisive role in that distinction— the distinction, ultimately, between a Sophist and a philosopher, between a philosophically justified persuasion and the alleged “tricksterism” of sophisms.

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Aristotle carefully sorts out sophistical persuasion from philosophically correct rhetorical argument by proving a difference between what he considers sophistry and what he introduces as the philosophical project of hermeneutics. The difference is that hermeneutics provides a ground for persuasion based on the universal anthropology of active intellect, whereas Sophists as they are portrayed in Aristotle or in philosophical tradition at large do not need such a ground. For them, persuasion is a matter of a technical skill or an art requiring no metaphysical (read “ontological”) ground for a success. In sum, in its classical form, philosophical hermeneutics built on an anthropological claim of attainability of agreement between people in the future, even (and especially) in the field of mental affections—a realm that modern projects of pure logic or pure psychology could hardly reach. The intrinsic affectivity and thus passivity of thinking, however, are also characteristic of Canpanton. Despite the very active heuristic role that external judgment (≈wjbm arbs ) plays in Canpanton’s technology of contemplation, as described in Chapter 3 of this book, contemplation is ultimately moved by the past and is therefore passive in nature. The centrality of the attainability of agreement in the future was thus intrinsic for the philosophical project of hermeneutics, no less than the anthropology of agreement was crucial for the very possibility of hermeneutics as a philosophical project. For Aristotle, the human being became, in that sense, a rhetorical argument, a phrase, long as life, that each human pronounces both uniquely and automatically. Humans inevitably make such a rhetorical argument in an accord with how mental affections result respectively in either true or false arguments. The notion of mental affection for Aristotle thus not only demonstrates an anthropological ground of hermeneutics, it also, and more importantly, creates a place from which an agreement stems and thereby becomes attainable in the future. What for Aristotle is either an oration or a dialogue of the soul with itself, for Canpanton is a contemplation, except that the contemplation does not involve a soul persuading itself, but rather a soul that ultimately dissolves in the body of disagreement, as the disagreement emerges in the process of contemplation.

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Sometimes the new helps us better to discern the old. Despite their radical break with classical philosophy, the thinkers of the last century continued the tradition of the hermeneutics of agreement, albeit in remarkably new ways. Emancipated from both the then current versions of either traditional or mathematical logic and from either empirical or theoretical psychology, they made the anthropological foundation of the hermeneutics of agreement even more visible. This visibility makes for a striking comparison between the philosophy of agreement and Talmud’s understanding of disagreement. As the following example shows, far from being the sole prerogative of the classic philosophy, the attainability of agreement and the disfavor of disagreement remain at play even in the postphilosophical revisitations of philosophy in the last century. Since in the previous chapters I already engaged with the thinking of Gilles Deleuze, I will now take as an example and inspiration a case in his work. I will draw on his interpretation of the philosophy of an influential thinker of the last century: Henri Bergson (1859–1941). Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson in his Bergsonism demonstrates a new facet of the classical link between anthropology and the hermeneutics of agreement.15 However, the ideal of an attained agreement no longer emerges in the realm of the psychology of interpersonal relations, much less in the realm of logic. Rather, it now resides in Bergson’s innovative concept of intuition. Bergson’s renowned notion of dynamic thinking in terms of “duration” versus static thinking in terms of “more” and “less” was, for Deleuze, only a case of a fundamental and more inclusive notion of intuition. Both thinking in terms of duration and thinking in terms of “more” and “less” are just different modi of intuition. Bergson envisioned intuition as a methodological foundation leading to the invention of any given problem. More specifically, all discovered solutions result from their respective problems. In turn, every problem is the result of an invention. Finally, inventions emerge from originary intuitions, to which they are witnesses. Since both psychology and formal logic focus primarily on the search for discoveries or solutions, not on problems, Bergson’s notion of intuition exceeds the usual scope of both psychology and logic. Intuition thus becomes a domain that is neither

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psychological nor logical in nature. According to Deleuze, Bergson provided a science-like or “scientifically strict” method of judging invented problems in terms of their truth to their own originary intuitions. Such judging, by the very definition of the distinction between problems and solutions, on the one hand, and inventions and discoveries, on the other, exceeds the scope of both scientific psychology and formal logic. How Bergson moved away from contemporaneous conceptions of psychology and logic can best be illuminated by comparing it to a similar movement in the thought of Edmund Husserl. In his earlier works, Husserl wanted to determine whether a scientifically strict analysis of meaning would belong to an impersonal realm of logic, to the person-oriented realm of psychology, or to a third discipline, phenomenology, a “strict philosophical science” that, unlike the two other strict sciences, totally refrained from the claims of existence. While intuition and meaning are quite different points d’appuis, the search for a strict “scientific” method in philosophy by the two thinkers and even their more specific theoretical movements are quite comparable. Just as, in the case of Husserl, the idea that the concept of meaning exceeds its hitherto alleged domains of psychology or logic led to the discovery (or should I have said “the invention”?) of the phenomenological method in Logical Investigations,16 so, for Bergson, the tension between logic and psychology was resolved in his notion of intuition. In that notion, logic and psychology finally encountered each other, not in competition, but rather at a respectful distance and in a fruitful cooperation. Liberated from either psychology or logic, but still committed to endeavors of finite minds, in contrast to the presumably infinite mind of God, Bergson’s notion of intuition was therefore anthropological in nature. More than other interpretations, Deleuze’s approach to Bergson helps to uncover that anthropological dimension of Bergsonism. Let me therefore follow Deleuze’s reading to highlight that anthropological thread. As Deleuze puts it, “Intuition is the method of Bergsonism.”17 Bergson’s turn to intuition as a method was already an indication of an anthropologic dimension in play. To take only one illustration, Deleuze appealed to Bergson’s famous, even if indirect, critique of Plato’s analysis of the problem of non-being (meon). As it transpires in Plato’s Sophist, the problem includes

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the following aspects: “Does non-being exist along with being?”; “Is human speech capable of telling of what is completely not there?”; and hence, “Is a completely false speech, or a speech speaking about what is not, at all possible?” Bergson’s position renders this problem a false one in all its aspects. He juxtaposes it with the intuitive (neither personally psychological nor impersonally logical) position of the problem’s inventor. In Deleuze’s analysis, various scenarios of nontruth that happen between the problem and the intuition can collectively render the problem false, even if these scenarios are quite incompatible and even contradictory to each other. However different, all such scenarios would consistently involve a confrontation between logical and psychological registers always found in the intuition of “more” and “less” that stands behind the thereby false problem of non-being. It will suffice here to mention only one of the ways in which the problem of non-being turns out false. It does so because it expresses a political, personal, or, in a word, psychological will to access being as “more” and hence to oppose it to non-being as “less,” while the intuition behind the notion of non-being implies just the opposite, implying, in logical terms, being to be “less” and non-being to be “more”: “In the idea of non-being there is in fact the idea of being, plus a logical operation of generalized negation, plus the particular psychological motive for that operation (such as when a being does not correspond to our expectations and we grasp it purely as the lack, the absence of what interests us.)”18 Even if intuition were the place where the logical and psychological registers of thinking met and either confronted or complied with each other, that place nevertheless would be neither logical nor psychological. As the quote suggests, the psychological will to consider non-being as “lesser” than being is in dissonance with this nonpsychological intuition, in which non-being is “more,” and not “less.” The problematic character of the intuition of “more” and “less” appears in the difference between the psychological and logical registers of its use: Unlike those moved by the psychological will behind judging non-being as “less,” Bergson sees non-being as intuitively “more,” for it includes not only being, but also the logical operation of its denial, and, at least de facto, a psychological motive, a sense of dissatisfaction with being, an ultimate factor making such denial occur. In a word, contaminated by a

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psychological motive, the problem of non-being emerges from an originary, confusing intuition of “more” and “less,” on which confusion it continuously bears. What matters for Bergson here is his proposal to dismiss the static intuition of “more” and “less” itself as false to any problem it can create and to replace it with the dynamic intuition of “duration.” However, I am now more interested in his prelude, in Bergson’s new notion of intuition that Deleuze has isolated, than in his fugue, this specific new intuition of duration. I will therefore stay focused on the intuition of “more” and “less.” A distorting disconnect between the intuition of “more” and “less” and the invention of the problem of non-being consists not merely of how the “more” and the “less” are distributed between being and non-being or between psychological will and logical operations. This disconnect is not merely in the question: Is being or non-being “more” in comparison with one another? Rather, a fatal mismatch between the intuition and the problem occurs under any distribution of “more” and “less” in logical and psychological registers. With any such distribution, the problem remains fatally false to the intuition from which it stemmed. The fatality of such an outcome not only disqualifies the problem as false, but also dismisses the intuition of “more” and “less” as not strict. That, however, leads to a result much more important than the specific disqualification of thinking in terms of “more” and “less.” This more important result is that intuition functions neither at the level of psychology nor at the level of logic, but rather in a third register governed by a finite thinking that is neither purely psychological nor purely logical, but is a thinking in which logic and psychology face each other without erasing their mutual borders. This thinking is intuition. The intuition is as finite and as unique in its organization as, for example, a mistake. Intuition, in case it is false to its respective problem, leads to an unsolvable confusion or to the unavoidable mismatch of the logical and psychological registers, a position that one should not correct, but abandon. Bergson not only dismissed an intuition of “more” and “less,” but elevated intuition into a finite thinking that is neither logical nor psychological in its scope. This example shows not only and not primarily that the intuition of “more” and “less” is not correct. What mattered for Bergson most was the fact that the psychological drive (to non-being as “less”) is not true to the

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intuition intuited by the inventor to the problem of non-being. Plato (or rather, a virtual Sophist he both created and criticized in the Sophist) turns out not worthy of the intuition that he performed. This example illustrates something more important than just an incorrect way of thinking. It points out that the distinction between the registers of psychological will and intuition stands not only for a false problem, but for a true problem, as well. If the conditions of truth are to be commensurate with the conditions of falsity, then whether the problem was invented in a relationship of truth with the intuition behind it or not, a finite intuitive thinking driven by some rhetorical operators such as “more” and “less” is the place where either the truth or falsity of the invention of the problem occurs. Not fully unlike Aristotle’s concept of thought as affection, which, while controlling all speeches, is inaccessible without using a speech, Bergson’s concept of intuition as a method also controls the truth of a problem’s invention. The problem could not fully come about without both logical and psychological aspects centered in intuition. This third aspect refers to a finite mind, an inventor, generically, but as I will show, also problematically called a human in the potentially misleading contrast with the purely infinite or divine. As we saw in Aristotle’s approach to hermeneutics, this example attests to an anthropological and not merely psychological/logical dimension. Despite all his appreciation of the true invention of a problem, and with all his understanding that truth and falsity are criteria applying to problems, not merely to solutions, Bergson invented (or should I have now said “discovered”?) a new, privileged place of truth—intuition. He thereby, again not unlike Aristotle, remained a proponent of an anthropological (although by no means psychological or logical) center that leads to truth as a finite, yet impersonal agreement between the problem and an intuition behind it. Therefore, Bergson’s anthropology of a problem’s invention was deeply rooted in an anthropology of agreement, because an agreement between logic and psychology within intuition remained at the center of Bergson’s approach to truth. No longer a psychological factor, anthropology continuously controlled his anti(psycho) logical rendering of intuition. As a result, any disagreement would relate, to him, to either a psychological will, a political inclination, or to a logical contrariety, but not to the anthropological realm of intuition. Simplistically

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put, Bergson therefore, again not totally unlike Aristotle, subscribed to the premises of agreement between all people, if not in psychology/logic, then in intuition, just as Aristotle’s active intellect and mental affections did. Moreover, without the attainability of agreement, Bergson’s protocol of truth is hardly possible. He makes intuition the uniting factor in the sorting out of the true from the false, as well as in distinguishing the strictly intuitional from the merely psychological. He sees psychologically minded humans who, because of their initial psychological condition, always tended to disagree, a striving for agreement, not only on the level of the psychology/ politics of solutions, but also and even more so on the level of the strict method of intuitions and problems. In fact, in taking truth into the realm of problems and intuitions, Bergson pushed the traditional philosophical subscription to the attainability of agreement even further. He extended it not only to the attainability of an agreement in finding (preexistent) solutions for already given problems, true or false, but also to the invention of new problems. Inventions thus are supposed to happen on an anthropological level, featured by an agreement to be achieved. Yet despite its continued alliance with the philosophy of agreement, Bergson’s turn from true solutions to true problems proves very promising. His distinction between the merely psychological condition of a problem’s inventor and intuition as a method proper for the uncancelable and unavoidable conditions of a finite thinking beyond either logic or psychology might have a potential much greater than what Bergson employed for his own task. It might have a heuristic effect even beyond what Deleuze has made of it in his rethinking of philosophy as the production or invention of “problems,” which in his later work he also called concepts.19 Bergson’s turn from solutions to problems might be even much more heuristic than that. His distinction between the psychological and anthropological notions of intuition, if employed on the road to disagreement that Canpanton has highlighted, can do significantly more than it has already done. I will return to this heuristics of Bergsonism later. For now, let me take Bergson’s difference between psychology, logic, and intuition as a method appreciated “as is,” with all its subscriptions to the attainability of agreement in Bergson’s anthropological vision of it.

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The example of Bergsonism illustrates that an anthropological component of hermeneutics and its linkage to the attainability of agreement is present both in classical philosophy, in Aristotle’s outline of hermeneutics, and in Bergson’s (and, of course, Deleuze’s) postclasssical dismissal of solutions in favor of problems. The question therefore is: If philosophy, both classical and recently revisited, remains on the path of the anthropology of agreement, then how is that intellectual path different from the path that Canpanton blazed in his work? reading four: from a hermeneutics of intellect to the exegesis of scripture

As the example of Bergson has just shown, the relation between Canpanton’s Talmud of disagreement and the philosophy of agreement occurs far beyond the realm of psychology in either the modern or the classical Aristotelian sense. It therefore places the question of Canpanton’s Talmud as an exegetical enterprise in a new disciplinary framework. If the question of the relationship between Canpanton’s Talmud and the philosophy of agreement has to do with exegesis, a task of connecting and a differentiating between the philosophical hermeneutics/anthropology of agreement and the exegesis of Scripture becomes critical. Both Aristotle and Bergson remained within the framework of the philosophical hermeneutics of agreement. By contrast, both the Midrashic and allegorical versions of the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures did not intrinsically lead to an overarching agreement between various exegetical readings. Canpanton’s art of Talmud was not agreementbound, either. Once the warrant of exegesis had been identified as coming from Scripture, or, as in the art of Talmud, from the radical past-ness of a Talmudic discussion, any other warrant, such as active intellect or agreement in intuition, would become extrinsic. Scripture may or may not connect to active intellect or any other nonpsychological realm, of which intuition was a marker. Different scenarios of that connection or the lack thereof result in different exegetical stratagems and their respective exegetical forms, such as allegorical reading, Tannaitic Midrash, Amoraic Petichta, and, last but not least, Talmud. Therefore, none of these exegetical forms has an intrinsic subscription to the attainability of agreement, and if any of them promote

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any agreement, then such an agreement remains completely extrinsic to the form of the argument in which it appears. Moreover, one specific form of exegesis, Talmud, even thematically seeks not to attain agreement, but rather to support disagreement as an intrinsic part of its program. The main anthropological consequence of such a turn from the hermeneutics of active intellect to the exegesis of Scripture had to do with the notion of time. Of course, different forms of exegesis reveal different forms of temporality, forms of temporality with which exegetes dealt either theoretically, for instance in the case of Augustine, or in their intellectual practice, as in the case of the masters of Talmud amoraim and savoraim, or according to Chanoch Albek, David Halivni, and others, stammaim.20 The exegetical form of Talmud presents a unique intellectual possibility in which it is no longer agreement, but rather disagreement that is no longer attainable in the future, but rather actually attained and reattained in the past from which the tradition emerged. As open as it can be in its content, that past remains firm and unshakable in terms of its past-ness. Instead of being a given in the plurality of human opinions, disagreement thus became the intellectual goal of Talmudic analysis of that past. The attainability of disagreement therefore can be rooted only in a different anthropological perspective on time. In this perspective, time requires an active and continuous work of contemplation in disagreement, because the fulfillment of its portent comes from the formal past-ness of its past, not from any specific content that past might convey. reading five: ontology and anthropology reconnect in hermeneutics

To appreciate the import of what Canpanton’s Talmud of disagreement exemplifies in its intellectual notion of time, it is best viewed through the lens constructed by contemporary post-Heideggerian ontological thinking centered on the dilemma between ontology and anthropology, between neoKantianism and post-Heideggerianism, and between a fundamental subscription to the notion of the human and a fundamental subscription to the notion of being. As I have already observed, notions on agreement and disagreement not only inform the theory of the human being, or anthropology,

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they operate no less strongly in anthropology’s counterpart or, sometimes, also rival, ontology. Canpanton’s thinking opens up a new perspective on the much debated relationship between anthropology and ontology, or, in less technical terms, between the theory of the human being and the theory of (or in the more recent and also even more ambitious view of Heidegger, the “question” of) being. The linkage that Canpanton’s view of Talmud creates between the two disciplines, ontology and anthropology, is best explained in terms of a third discipline, hermeneutics. Again, to read Canpanton in this context means to appreciate achievements in hermeneutics, anthropology, and ontology made centuries after him. A tight and direct relationship between ontology and hermeneutics (and, by way of Heidegger’s polemics with Cohen’s student, Cassirer,21 with a version of anthropology) has been established in what Heidegger called hermeneutics of Dasein,22 or the interpretative horizon of a being—either human or at the very least finite, in terms of its experiences. Unlike other beings, Dasein is open to its finitude as it constantly commits a complex, but fundamental process of interpretation. It is that process that makes the interpreter (again, variably human or not, but invariably finite) open to the being of things and thus ready to speak and interpret things on being’s behest. The hermeneutics of Dasein designates a leading motive of both Heidegger’s and the post-Heideggerian interrogation of the finitude of human beings as something much more important than their being human. This has a tremendous import for rethinking the notion of the human and thus for reevaluating Canpanton’s notion of the Talmudist. Admittedly, Heidegger’s hermeneutics of Dasein opened up a perspective that other versions of both anthropology and ontology did not have. It defamiliarized the hitherto self-evident notion of the human being and thus enabled interrogating this notion in the light of the ontological question of being. Yet even the Heideggerian reading of ontology would not be enough for following Canpanton in the direction to disagreement. In order to walk along Canpanton’s way to disagreement, the disciplines of anthropology and hermeneutics need to reconnect not through ontology, but rather on a different basis. That basis now becomes clearer, thanks to achievements in the field of both ontology and anthropology in the last century, either after Heidegger and even more so in the areas into which he did not venture.

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Yet even these new ways of thinking still have to do with configuring the relationship between ontology and hermeneutics. To find an alternative to ontology as the link between anthropology and hermeneutics, we need to interrogate that connection further. reading six: a heuristics of contemporary anthropology

Chaim Dimitrovski, a twentieth-century critical scholar of the Talmud, once claimed that the medieval commentators and interrogators of the Talmud, the masters of Tosafoth or Tosafists, were already doing a text-critical work similar to what Talmudic scholars endeavored in the twentieth century. The Tosafists were surely no less smart than modern researchers of the Talmud, yet the latter benefited from sources and tools the former did not have, Dimitrovski claimed.23 Since the Tosafists made no claim that they were doing text criticism, the tradition above persuasively teaches how a relatively new, text-critical research could help to put the works of previous generations of scholars in a new, sharper light. This lesson applies to the classical ontology, anthropology, and hermeneutics, as well. In judging the relationship between hermeneutics and anthropology, modern thinkers can hardly have been smarter than Aristotle, the Talmudic sages, or the other philosophers, sages, or Sophists of the past, yet modern thinkers have access to a more refined understanding of anthropology, thus helping to understand ancient thinkers in a new way. I speak here from the (disad)vantage point of both the experiences and theories of the last century since the technological and (anti)humanitarian landmark of World War II. That war and its continuing aftermath have practically/ethically and theoretically/conceptually redefined the borders and the limitations of the notion of the human being as related to others—human, animal, and divine. In its new, but in a sense also neo-Platonic, thinking, prewar and postwar anthropology was no longer only, and not even primarily, about the human body image or bodily schemes, anatomical, sexual, erotic, ritualistic, or other, including the bodies’ social behaviors, rituals, and beliefs. Instead, anthropology involved what I will call, borrowing a language from mathematics, a dimension that had neither direct nor indirect geometrical representation, either graphic-linguistic or in an image-like schematic.

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In the last century, anthropology envisioned a new way of speaking about the a-representational dimension of the human being in its aspect of being human. Focusing on decisive components of the body different from the body’s geometrical, medical, or ritual schemes or shapes, that new anthropological dimension kept emerging under different names. Husserl (I am now talking about his later work) discussed it as kinesthetic body or Leib (flesh), as opposed to geometrical body or Koerps (corpus).24 Heidegger dealt with it in his concept of ontologically oriented Dasein, or a finite being there—human, nonhuman, or superhuman—as opposed to ontic beings or entities (either subjects or objects). It further emerged as an organless body as opposed to body-with-organs in the work of Deleuze,25 and as a living body, as opposed to a bodily scheme, in the work of Merleau-Ponty.26 All these notions, as various as they are, have at least one feature in common: they address humans in ways very remote from the human being conceived of in terms of the bodily schemes—medical, ritualistic, sexual, and so on—in which other anthropologists have been accustomed to think of being human. What is even more important, however, the new anthropological dimension of body goes far beyond the scope of the classical exegetical opposition of body and spirit, too. Not only notions of the body, but also those of spirit receive a radical reconsideration. The classical opposition between body and spirit no longer looks strong, because the notion of spirit has come to belong to the extended realm of bodily schemes. This change has had an important implication for our understanding of the Cartesian opposition between body (extension) and mind, as well. Thus, in the Cartesian tradition and beyond, mind emerges as a kind of spirit, but the mind-body opposition now can be seen to hide a much more complex relationship than the simple notion of opposition affords. Mind and/or spirit versus body are no longer in strong opposition, but they are not reducible to one or the other, either. From now on, the body has escaped from the terms of the opposition between body and spirit. This discovery of a nonrepresentational element of body means a lot for the tradition of exegesis. Unlike an exegesis of Scripture based on a spiritbound understanding of Aristotle’s active intellect as God—for example, in Thomism, as analyzed in Chapter 2—the new anthropology leads no longer from one’s body to one’s spirit, much less to a psychologically/logically

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understood mind. Rather, in the new theoretical light, spirit (and mind) remain just another case of a spatial schema, or of an image, or, as Heidegger could have said even about spirit, a thematic and ontic “entity.” The new “destination” to which human bodies have escaped from their schematic bodies or bodily images is no longer spiritual or mental, in a Cartesian, logical, or the historically later psychological sense. However, most importantly, it is not spatial in a geometrical sense, either. That, of course, by no way means that the new anthropology denies or destroys the traditional opposition between body and spirit. What it really means is that it dramatically restricts the body-spirit opposition’s power and import, because the opposition between body and spirit (or, again, in one case of it, between body and mind) remains in the realm of spatial schemes from which, in view of the new anthropology, the body inevitably escapes. This new anthropological perspective has at least one crucial implication concerning the role of mind in performing Canpanton’s art of Talmud. The mind of the Talmudist is no longer to be looked at as if it is spirit. Disagreement, the core element of Talmudic art, no longer happens in spirit, nor does it require the control of one overarching mind, that of an allegedly solitary Talmudist. Despite Canpanton’s promotion of a single student-artist of the Talmud sitting alone in contemplation in front of a printed edition of a tractate, Talmudic disagreement is by no means located in the single mind of that Talmudist. Rather, it emerges as the Talmudist overcomes the limitations of his or her single-mindedness. In other words, disagreement is not a spectacle produced by a single scriptwriter, either for an individual viewer or for a mass audience. Instead, disagreement emerges from the past of the Talmud as the Talmudist makes it alive in a way that is as unique in its correctness as the mistakes and corrections that he or she had to make contemplation are unique. That is, the Talmudist advances through these mistakes, with a result as unique as the mistakes themselves. A result of contemplation, the disagreement exceeds the limits of the Talmudist’s own individuality and opens the Talmudist to the other—which, however, is experienced as the other, rather than embraced in any overarching spirit of understanding. Even if such a disagreement comes from the past, the Talmudist does not retrieve it from the storage of history, either imaginary or proven. Instead,

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the Talmudist commits a unique act of creation, of which he or she nevertheless is by no means the author. The creation arises through the series of mistakes, followed by their dismissals achieved through the contemplation of a Talmudic record at hand. By the same token, what by the end of the contemplation emerges from the past-ness of the Talmudic tradition had nothing to do with any spirit, including perhaps the most important of all the spirits, the spirit of agreement that informs the other, more conventional lines of hermeneutics. In contrast to Canpanton, other Aristotelians followed better-known lines of thought, both in regard to exegesis and in regard to the philosophical hermeneutics that also became the hermeneutics of texts. In constantly hunting for agreement, traditional Aristotelian hermeneutics subscribed to the idea of a finite mind. More specifically, but perhaps also more disadvantageously, it subscribed to spirit as the essence of such a mind. Complicit with the ideal of the attainability of agreement, the philosophical tradition of agreement took the spirit of mind (or for some thinkers—not excluding even Spinoza—of the whole thinking substance) as the ultimate resort from which the agreement was to emerge and in which even the Holy Name was to recognize other humans and/or itself. The contrast between the philosophy of agreement and Canpanton’s Talmud of disagreement leads therefore to a more refined question about the hermeneutics of disagreement: Is the place of the a-representational foundation of the human body exclusively either human or—even more importantly—spiritual/mental? In the light, or rather in the darkness, of this question, Canpanton’s project of disagreement delineates a new perspective. In this perspective, to disagree no longer involves any overarching notion, any spirit—not even a spirit of an agreement, not even of an agreement to disagree. Rather, his art of Talmud works in the temporality or radical past-ness in which true disagreement and truly finite thinking bodies are open to becoming. Neo-Kantian and even phenomenological humanism built on the putatively universal cross-cultural notion of a human being quietly but surely motivated by spirit, indeed, by the ghost of agreement. Paradoxically enough, a similar conservatism has characterized the post-Heideggerian tradition, as well. Although it destructured that notion of the human being, this tradition still left spirit, and indeed the ghost of agreement, at work.

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However, it is no longer necessary to choose between the neo-Kantian humanism of Cohen and his students, tacit or explicit, and post-Heideggerian ahumanism. For those who prefer elaborating on choices, instead of taking them at their face value, Canpanton’s Talmudic dismissal of the ghost of agreement and his fundamental appreciation of disagreement, which comes from the past as a valid and valuable form of both an ethical and intellectual practice of thinking, becomes an indispensable path to explore.

The Past to Come: Spirit and the Time of Agreement Finding a way betwixt and between the seemingly unavoidable alternatives of the anthropological or ontological versions of hermeneutics and their political and/or intellectual ramifications requires looking at the things from a different perspective. With Canpanton’s example of thinking about the past, a decisive third point arises from a broader analysis of temporality. Reread after Cohen’s, Husserl’s, and Heidegger’s discoveries in the field of temporality, Canpanton’s art of Talmud opens a fresh new point of view on the anthropological dimension of time in its aspect of the past. The past is no longer only the content of what has historically been, but is also and even more importantly a form, an intellectual attunement, and a hermeneutical attitude that a thinker practices in his or her approach to the things. Separated from any content that the past might have conveyed, the intellectual form of the past—which Canpanton’s practice of Talmud exemplifies— unlocks a very important anthropological turn in thinking of both human beings and their finite others. The two planes of the human body that phenomenological tradition (including Heidegger) has introduced relate very closely to the two different planes of temporality. The first plane of the body features a purely representational aspect of what human being is: a bodily scheme thereof, something available in representation—visual, acoustic, tactile, or other— also accessible in linear, chronological time. The second plane of the body is one that no representational setting or chronological measurement of time can embrace. That plane yields no positive description, entails no entity to represent, no linear time to measure. However, even if taken in its entirety,

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it can only seem to be full and closed, while in fact it remains open to what is different from it, that is, to the ontic. These correlate directly with two different planes of temporality—time in which the body is represented as an image or schema versus time in which the body functions before any of its schematic representation. The difference between these two planes, as well, pertains to the distinction that Heidegger draws between the ontic, or the plane of entities and their chronologies, and the ontological: addressing no entity, and therefore never isolated in any positive way or in any linear/ chronological time, but rather accessible only by way of interrogation, the ontological plane of both the body and time only shows that the ontic plane of bodily experience and its respective linear time are never exhaustive in their nature. The students of Heidegger went even further. However advanced, Heidegger’s differentiation between the ontic and ontological planes proved to them not to be fully comprehensive. Thus, for Derrida in Of Spirit, Heidegger suggests that the “ontological” plane still entails a specific ontic being, either bodily or, most importantly spiritual.27 While the ontic deals strictly with what exists or can be represented, the ontological still indicates something. The place where ontic and ontological both meet and differentiate one from another is Dasein. As Derrida argues, Dasein has both ontic and ontological aspects. Dasein is what or the one who asks the question of being. What Dasein is, is defined by its default activity, which consists of asking the question of being. This activity involves three elements: what is interrogated, or being; the matter of interrogation, or the meaning of being; and the interrogator, or Dasein. Derrida shows how Heidegger both avoids giving the interrogator or Dasein any further definition of either thing, for instance, object, or not-thing, i.e. of spirit; and, in other texts, celebrates naming the authentic interrogator as spirit. Thus, as Derrida argues, in Heidegger’s first programmatic work, Sein und Zeit, spirit, Geist, cannot be a name for the interrogator, nor can it facilitate an authentic interrogation of being, for spirit is ontic, and thus too anthropological, just as subject, ego, and reason are. Yet in later texts, Heidegger unreservedly calls the right interrogator of being in the name of spirit. Derrida explains this oscillation of Heidegger’s not as a terminological frivolity, but rather as a reflection of how the concept of Dasein sets itself up

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in the first place. He argues that the set-up of Dasein must involve spirit, even if Dasein would later need to dismiss it. Derrida explains such a set-up of allowing the spirit followed by dismissal of it through a comparison between Dasein as the most important feature of a human as opposed to a stone, which features no Dasein at all. A stone is neither indifferent to being, nor involved in the question of being. Otherwise, one would have to think about the stone anthropomorphically. Stone thus cannot be indifferent to being. However, Dasein can. When Dasein is, it acts like a spirit. When it is not, it acts the way it should: it interrogates being. A possibility of acting like a spirit is exactly what allows Dasein to act like it is not a spirit, something that stone can’t do. In ten words, spirit is what Dasein both can and should not be. Thereby Derrida shows that even Heidegger’s second option, the one that Dasein should prefer in its interrogation of being, involves something of spirit. More specifically, Heidegger both introduces and analyses the right option, which Dasien should take, in the name of Gemüt. The term literally means “feeling” in the sense of mind, soul, or heart. As Derrida notes, the term has no French translation that would avoid a connotation of spirit. Through that example, he introduces his larger argument: that the dismissed option, that of spirit, returns back even after Dasein decides not to take it. Dasein still entertains an ontic element, that of spirit, not only as something to dismiss, but also, and much more importantly, as something that returns despite the dismissal. The question therefore is: Is there anything else left, after this spiritual residue of ontic is removed? What is Dasein in the aspect in which it is clean of or irrelevant to any representation, regardless of whether or not such cleanliness can be practically achieved? To render into English Heidegger’s term das Dasein in such a purely a-representational aspect, I need to make normative English reach to where it would otherwise hardly go. The noun das Dasein historically functioned in German to nationalize the foreign (Latin) word existentia (existence) by giving it a personal connotation—not only of “what,” but also of “who,” including even “me”—that the noun das Dasein had already suggested in some of its earlier usages or contexts. Heidegger was appropriating this fusion of a quite personal “who” and even “me” with the quite impersonal Latin existentia

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when, in contrast with more impersonal philosophical usages of this noun in Hegel, he drafted the word to serve his philosophical purposes. That gesture stretched the resources of the language both linguistically and conceptually, using an expression in Hochdeutsch to render a Hochphilozophie that many have alleged to border on poetry. To denote the “something” that the purely ontological can be said to indicate—to represent the a-representational—I need to stretch the resources of English in a similar way. Accordingly, we might call the neutral, a-representational, nonspiritual, and yet finite aspect of Dasein “a be,” human or not, in the same way that the nouns a go, or a read, or a walk can refer to an action without referring to any person, human or not. A be yields no further definition except of its/his/her being there beyond the reach of representation, in which it/he/she nevertheless always is intrinsically involved. A be is the surplus of any representation or spirit, a surplus to which (or to whom?) the representation always turns. One of the controversial questions that the interpreters of Heidegger have asked is whether the ontological plane belongs to the domain of anthropology or adheres in the fundamental-ontological dimension, the dimension in which the anthropological human being is only secondary and, in fact, ontic. The ultimate possibility of different answers is rooted in the combination of indefinite (and therefore infinite) and definite (and therefore finite) features in a be. Despite its indefinite nature, a be has a definitely finite character. It even has specificity, either as a body or a spirit, even if such a body or spirit does not yield itself to any representation. As Derrida noticed, Heidegger’s unwillingness to place spirit in either the ontic or the ontological plane explains why his interpreters have not been able to decide if Dasein is intrinsically human or not. Just as, according to Derrida, Heidegger was undecided and elusive about the nature of spirit,28 his interpreters have found themselves in no-win polemics over whether or not Dasein in the aspect of a be fully belongs to the anthropology of human being. In the context of those polemics, Canpanton’s art of Talmud opens a third way of thinking about the human or nonhuman nature of a be. When read in the framework of post-Heideggerian ontology or the anthropology of time, Canpanton introduces a new dimension, a dimension of disagreement that is programmatically oriented toward the past in terms of thinking, but not necessarily toward history (either fictive or not) in terms of its content,

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its subjects, or its objects. In the dimension that Canpanton introduced, the question of the finitude of a nonrepresentational body (or even of spirit) takes a radically new turn—toward the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the nature of meaning in Talmudic thinking, which no longer requires any overarching notion of either the human or of being. How, then, does Heideggerian Dasein in its aspect of a be connect to Canpanton’s approach to disagreement? A return to the differences between Canpanton’s Talmud and the Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian hermeneutics of active intellect can help either to provide an answer or, at the very least, to lead to a better understanding of that question in all its importance. One obvious difference between the philosophical hermeneutics of Aristotle and the hermeneutics of Talmud has already been mentioned—it is in the practice of exegesis. While also a hermeneutical enterprise, exegesis is different from Aristotle’s hermeneutics in that hermeneutics in the philosophical tradition has held no special reverence for writing, because it equated writing with the merely technical process of recording oral speech, either in visible symbols on the parchment or stone, or, by extension, in invisible symbols in the memory of an orator. Writing in philosophical hermeneutics thus was simply the recording of oral signs, a symbol of a symbol. By contrast, exegesis has revered writing as holy and thus has distinguished it from the merely technical process (and result) of recording. Even if it has not fully distinguished the process of writing from that of recording, exegesis still grants to what would otherwise pass for merely a technical recording of a much higher hierarchical and/or hieratic status. Canpanton’s project of Talmud shares with the exegetical tradition at large that particular elevation of a mere recording to something higher than a mere record. Canpanton’s Talmud also serves as an example of an intersection between the exegetical tradition and that of Aristotelianism. At the point of their intersection, the classical philosophical hermeneutics of active intellect closely intertwined with this new project or exegesis. Concentrated no longer on independent dialectical reasoning or rhetorical persuasion, hermeneutical practice now directed itself primarily to the Holy Writings and thus became an exegetical enterprise. What kind of anthropology does such a difference in conceptions of writing and recording entail? What does the transformation of interpretation into exegesis mean, both

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for classical hermeneutics and for the interpretation of Scripture that it transforms? Answering these questions requires isolating an anthropological counterpart of exegetical hermeneutics, which can be done by juxtaposing Canpanton’s version of Talmudic rationalism to the broader category of Aristotelianism, either purely philosophical or not philosophic, but sophistical, rhetorical, grammatical, or exegetical. Unlike Aristotle, the Aristotelians (in philosophy or in other disciplines) all combined philosophical hermeneutics with exegesis. As I have argued, in philosophical Aristotelianism, hermeneutics and anthropology emerged in an intrinsically close connection to one another. However, that did not yet mean that this connection automatically featured the nonphilosophical versions of Aristotelianism, as well. The latter need a special examination in this regard without any initial assumption of an intrinsic connection between anthropology and hermeneutics that Aristotle’s philosophy has so strongly exemplified. Therefore, juxtaposing Canpanton to Aristotelianism(s), philosophic or not, is far from a matter of making a simple comparison. As the direction of my analysis has already made clear, one way to make that juxtaposition is to consider Canpanton versus other Aristotelian intellectuals, philosophic, exegetical, grammatical, and phonetic, in terms of the transition from the classical philosophical hermeneutics of active intellect to the exegesis of Scripture. What plays the role in Canpanton’s Talmud that anthropology played for philosophy does not necessarily require recognizing all others as human beings. Instead, it requires a hermeneutical charity toward others, which is a mode of interpretation that respects the past, not for the historical value of its content, but for its form as the past, for its past-ness. It also regards that past-ness as the main vehicle of interpretation. Animated by no spirit at all, much less by the spirit of agreement, Canpanton’s Talmudist is no longer a thinker of the future. She or he thus is no longer either a philosopher of being or a Sophist of non-being. However, the Talmudist is not completely detached from philosophical and/or sophistical endeavor, either. He or she (if gender roles would still apply there, where future is not longer decisive) does not animate the hope for future agreement, nor does he or she see the future as the main characteristic of time. Respectful and charitable to past-ness as the indispensable attribute of the past, he or she no longer

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treats the past as a mere reservoir of historical content. Rather, the Talmudist makes the form of the past the main path of thinking along the ways of hermeneutical charity in his or her attitude toward others, now or then. Thereby, hermeneutical charity gives the Talmudist a direction and an attitude, regardless of whether those others emerge from the past, the future, or the present. He, she—or rather, they, the others and the Talmudist—end up in a place in which no spirit, much less the spirit of agreement, much less an individual mind or spirit, can dwell, but in which nonrepresentational, but truly finite bodies in disagreement can become.

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notes

introduction

1. I thank Anthony Lioi for proposing this succinct description when he read the manuscript. Now my only work is to explain what he has already said. 2. Martin Kavka, Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). chapter 1: what is talmud?

1. See, for instance, Moshe Halamish, Yosef Rivlin, and Raphael Shuchat, Ha-Gera U-Vet Midrasho (Ramat-Gan: Hotsa’at Universitat Bar-Ilan, 2002). 2. See Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). 3. Hermann Cohen and Bruno Strauss, Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, 3 vols., Jewish Philosophy, Mysticism, and the History of Ideas (New York: Arno Press, 1980). 4. See for example, Leopold Zunz and Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, “Zeitschrift Fuer Die Wissenschaft Des Judenthums” (Hildesheim and New York: G. Olms, 1976); Leopold Zunz and Berlin Zunzstiftung, Gesammelte Schriften Von Dr. Zunz (Berlin: L. Gerschel, 1875). 5. See, for example, Abraham Geiger and Charles Newburgh, Judaism and Its History, in Two Parts (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1911). 6. See Julius Guttman, Philosophie Des Judentusms (Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1985). 7. See Efraim Elimelech Urbach, The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

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8. See Raphael Nathan Nata Rabbinovicz and Rudman Foundation, Torah Microfiche Library, Sefer Dikduke Sofrim Kolel Nushaot Ve-Girsaot Ha-Nimtsaot Ba-Talmud Ketav Yad Mi-Shenat 103 Le-Elef Ha-Shishi Ha-Munah Beir Minkhen . . . Im Hagahot Nikraot Divre Sofrim, Kolelim Nushaot Shonot Mi-Gemara Ketav Yad Ha-Nimtsa Be-Eked Sifre Ha-Kesar Yar. H. Be-Fariz, Umi-Defusim Ha-Rishonim . . . Ve-Hearot Le-Varer Et Ha-Nusha Ha-Yesharah (Minkhen: bi-defus Heinrikh Resl, 1897), microform. 9. Joseph Habiba, Nimuke Yosef: Al Masekhtot Megilah U-Fesahim, Hotsaah 2nd ed. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: M. Y. Blau, 1979). 10. Joseph Caro and Moses Jekuthiel Kaufmann, Shulhan Arukh, Orah ’Hayim (1834). 11. Hanina Sherira ben and Benjamin Manasseh Lewin, Igeret Rav Sherira Gaon: Mesuderet Be-Shene Nus’ha’ot, Nusa’h Sefarad ‘Ve-Nusa’h Tsarfat, ‘Im ‘Hilufe Ha-Girsa’ot . . . ‘Al-Yede Binyamin Menasheh Levin (Jerusalem: Makor, 1971). 12. See Israel M. Ta-Shma, Ha-Sifrut Ha-Parshanit La-Talmud Be-Eropah Uvi-Tsefon Afrikah: Korot, Ishim, Ve-Shitot (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Sefarim a. sh. Y.L. Magnes ha-Universitah ha-Ivrit, 1999–2000). 13. Isaac ben Jacob Canpanton and Shemuel Alvalenci, Darkhe Ha-Talmud, Y. Sh. Lange, ed. (Jerusalem: 1980). 14. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that rhetorical art has a rationality of its own, expressed in enthymemes or rhetorical syllogisms as opposed to dialectical or logical syllogisms; thus, this rationality is different from that of either logic or dialectics. Continuing this line of thinking, the Talmudic art may also have a rationality of its own; it is precisely this possibility that I explore in the present work. chapter 2: the talmud in heidegger’s aftermath

1. Only the movement of European Orientalism in the nineteenth century seriously brought the Eastern wise man to the attention of Western philosophers, many of whom were secularizing Jews. Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason from the Sources of Judaism and The Love of Your Fellow in the Talmud signify an important transition. Cohen argued that the Talmud complied with the advanced norms of Kantian philosophy and with the religion of reason. (See Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan, 2nd ed., Texts and Translations (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1995). Cohen’s argument encouraged assimilating European Jews to cease derogating their “Eastern source” vis-à-vis the enlightened philosophy of Kant and to appreciate it vis-à-vis the diversity of cultures. (For an example of the derogation, which Cohen sought to cease, see Salomon Maimon’s autobiographic description of a Polish Yeshiva, in which Maimon, an enlightened disciple of Kant, portrays his own traditional

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education as a counterexample of Enlightenment: Salomon Maimon, Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 2. The term “learning” is my modest attempt at English and idiom for traditional students’ engagement with a page of the Talmud. The Yiddish verb for this engagement is lernen; however, the practice itself goes back to the long period of Talmudic discipleship, which is actually as old as the Talmud itself, because “Talmud” in a certain sense also means “learning.” 3. See Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 1st English ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983); Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Ish HaHalakhah (New York: [s.n.], 1944). 4. The academic discipline of Talmudic studies was shaped by the concept of culture; in turn, this concept imposed its power on their symbolic other—the “traditional” Talmud. The modern “traditional” Talmud becomes, in a sense, involved in the academic cultural argument, sometimes in order to resist it or, sometimes, to reappropriate its premises. For example, the learners of the Talmud link the results of academic analyses to the authorities found in their “traditional” commentaries, thus interiorizing the premises of the academic philological/cultural approach. 5. Leo Strauss, in “Freud on Moses and Monotheism,” stressed Freud’s distinction in which nonreligious Jews who identify themselves with Germans, the French, and so on become enormously preoccupied with “anti-Semitism,” sometimes reaching the point where anti-Semitism becomes a part of their “new identity.” See Leo Strauss, “Freud on Moses and Monotheism (1958),” in Leo Strauss and Kenneth Hart Green, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). 6. Neo-Kantian philosophers of culture read Kant’s transcendentalism as a philosophical foundation of the historic-cultural dimension they advocated. Kant’s philosophy provided a rational explanation of the diversity of cultures based on the unity of all human beings, they argued. Such explanation created room for the Talmud to be approached as a historical product of one of the cultures or even of different cultures and languages. Kant pioneered the road to the cultural approach to the Talmud, the road that academic Talmudic studies happened (or were fated) to travel. 7. I do not seek to decide whether Kant was a founder of the rationalistic philosophy of culture (and, as a result, of the history of culture), as neo-Kantians argued, or whether he was instead a philosophical predecessor of the question of being, the “forgetting” of which is to be “dismantled” in any cultural-historical investigation as preceding and underlying the latter, as Heidegger insisted. Without taking any stand in the disputation of the philosophers, I focus on their disagreement itself. My purpose is to look for what it could mean heuristically

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for the problem of the form of the Talmud as it appears both in specific units of the Talmudic discussion—sugiyoth—and on the broader level of the Talmudic treatise. I only ask what the disputation between Heidegger and Cassirer could mean for suspending an assumption (taken sometimes for an obvious one), that the Talmud is an entity, a book or a manuscript one may discern in the distant past behind the blurry veils of copies of the copies of the manuscripts and early printed editions. I refer here to an obvious but delusive image of a book or a manuscript of the Mishnah (by “delusive” I do not necessarily mean replaceable by anything clearer or more transparent). I equally refer to a similar image of the Talmud, which would be discernible far away in the past as the manuscript, even paradoxically an oral manuscript, and, paradoxically again, an evolving manuscript with thousands of Talmudic masters and sages developing and editing it. 8. See, for instance, Susan A. Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory, SUNY Series on Modern Jewish Literature and Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982). See also Betty Rojtman, Black Fire on White Fire: An Essay on Jewish Hermeneutics, from Midrash to Kabbalah, Vol. 10 of Contraversions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 9. See David Stern, “Midrash and Indeterminacy,” Critical Inquiry 15, no. 1 (Autumn 1988). 10. See Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000). See also Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. and extended ed. (London and New York: Verso, 1991). 11. Cf. Theaetetus, 161e. For an English translation see, for instance, Plato and Lewis Campbell, The Theaetetus of Plato: A Revised Text and English Notes, 2d ed., Vol. 5 of Ancient Philosophy (New York: Garland, 1980). 12. For example, Megillah 25a. 13. Daniel Boyarin, Sephardi Speculation: A Study in Methods of Talmudic Interpretation, Pirsumim Le-Tsiyun Hamesh Me’ot Shanah Le-Gerush Sefarad (Jerusalem: Institute Ben-Tsevi and Hebrew University, 1989). 14. See, for example, Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia—Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2000). 15. Both for Socrates and in the Talmud, being a philosopher interferes with family relationships. In the Apology of Socrates, Socrates is sentenced for violating the powers of the family, because he treated sons as if they were mothers and made them attached to him (or rather “to her”) as their midwife. What could be a stronger violation of family relationships? A similar approach to a philosopher is found in Yerushalmi Berachoth, where, according to one of the possible readings, a philosopher is an example of the strongest violation of family relationships. For further analysis of the relationship between sages, sophists, and

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philosophers, see Chapter 4 of the present work, “Talmud as Event” specifically the section “The Tannaitic Sages, The Talmudic Teachers of their Wisdom, and the Sophists.” 16. This way of thinking is not necessarily as old as it could seem. In fact, it might be not much older than a phenomenon of an assimilating Jew who, at his own discretion, retains or does not retain his being “Jewish” and maintains—or does not maintain—his being “Jewish” by knowing (or its counterpart, practicing) Jewish Kultur, history and tradition being included in this large category, as well. 17. See, for example: Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 18. I am speaking here not of “the Jewish question” or “jews” with a lowercase “j,” in Lyotard’s sense. See Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and “The Jews” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990). 19. Jean-François Lyotard and Roger McKeon, Driftworks, Foreign Agents Series (New York: Semiotext(e), 1984); Jean-François Lyotard, Robert Harvey, and Mark S. Roberts, “Jewish Oedipus,” in Toward the Postmodern (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1993). 20. “Exaction” refers to an exegetical device that Canpanton seemed to hold self-explanatory and left without any formal definition. Linking it to logical syllogism, specifically, in terms of antecedent and consequent, Canpanton nevertheless clearly does not equate exaction with logical syllogism. By analogy with Aristotle, who designated the main category of his Rhetoric with a term enthymeme, and described it as rhetorical syllogism, leaving it without any formal definition, we also can call “exaction” Talmudic syllogism, a choice that I will both discuss and substantiate in the Part II of the present work. 21. See Boyarin, Sephardi Speculation. 22. “As if the unity of the time itself were timeless” (see Maurice MerleauPonty, Andrew G. Bjelland, and Patrick Burke, The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences [Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2001]). 23. Gilles Deleuze, Sur La Musique I—Vincennes (1977 [cited May, 3, 2004 2004]); available from http://www.atol.fr/lldemars2/deleuze/anti-oedipe1000plateaux/ 1808-03-77.htm. 24. Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 8. 25. Derrida, “Différance,” 7ff. 26. Ibid., 8ff. 27. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (New York: Routledge, 2006), 170ff. 28. Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 8ff.

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29. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 5th ed., Studies in Continental Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Martin Heidegger, Kant und Das Problem Der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1991). 30. The fçp is a specific term, concept, and construct of medieval Biblical exegesis, which could be rendered in English not only as “plain meaning,” but also as “unveiled or disclosed sense.” Literally, “fçp ” is the “naked” or “unveiled” significance of a Biblical fragment, which well may be different from its grammatical meaning. The fçp is the rhetorical significance of a Biblical fragment, rather than a grammatically established sense of it. To get to the fçp is to reveal the rhetorical significance of a Biblical verse, to find significance behind the veils of grammatical sense or grammatical nonsense the verse may make. The fçp or the “plain sense” simply replaces the grammatical treatment of the Biblical text. The plain sense becomes possible only through a deferral or a displacement of the grammatical meaning through the procedure of unveiling the sense behind the grammatical meaning. Based on the deferral of a grammatical meaning, the plain sense does not preclude multiplicity, so that several unveiled or plain senses can coexist. Already, the plain sense involves some temporization: The sense is achieved as long as a grammatical meaning is dismissed (sometimes, even suppressed). Already, the plain sense involves some temporization: The sense is achieved as long as a grammatical meaning is dismissed (sometimes, even suppressed). However, even if the plain or unveiled sense is attainable only when another meaning is devalued, deferred, even dismissed, or still suppressed, the deferred meaning never disappears in full. Nevertheless, once achieved, the plain sense can stand by itself without any immediate reference to the deferred meaning, which is not the case in the argumentation of the Talmud. In the Talmud, no sense stands by itself unless related to the sense it dismisses. Therefore, in the Talmudic argumentation, the temporization of sense is much stronger than it was in the case of unveiled sense. 31. Rashi, ad locum. 32. If, in a Talmudic discussion, the plain sense (afyçp) is found, this is only a heuristic, temporary provision that should facilitate our way to a final explication of why a plain statement is still there in spite of the fact that it is plain (i.e. unveiled, at least potentially). In the Talmud, plain sense is afyçp , to my knowledge, never fçp , a difference in terms that goes far beyond the difference between Talmudic Aramaic and medieval Hebrew. The afyçp may be needed in order to necessitate a temporary explication, the rejection of which will allow us to come to a final explication of a verse or a Mishnaic phrase. An exemplary afyçp device is ˜l [mçmq hmyatd whm afyçp , interpreted as “Wait, the said is quite plain in itself, so where was a reason to say it at all! Yea, but if you will come up

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with such and such things, the said will serve you as an answer to that.” Applied mainly for analyzing phrases said in the Mishnah, this device first presents the said suspiciously and/or deceptively certain or obvious in meaning, and then invites explicating its purpose in terms of finding an otherwise obvious opinion, which the phrase came to reject. In such cases, obviousness never plays a positive role: It only signals that there is something avoided, and unless the avoided is found, the Mishnah in question cannot be exacted. In the Talmud, the plain meaning of a phrase may play a different role, as well. This role would also be temporary, but in a more positive way: Instead of signaling the missing/rejected element, the plain meaning may be the rejected element itself: afyçp may be given the role of an opinion rejected in the final agreement, but unavoidable on the way to this agreement. For example, one can see it in lòòmq . . . hnyma hwh or in lòòmq hnyma ˚t[d aqls μa . However, I would expect to find some difference between the two devices. Possibly, the first is interpreted as “If I were taught that . . . then the Mishnah lets us hear how should we treat such a teaching.” In the second case, “If it occurs that you have been taught so and so, the Mishnaic phrase lets us hear how we should treat this instruction indeed.” In either case, everything maintained temporarily, provisionally, or heuristically remains forever indispensable and unavoidable on the way toward the Mishnaic phrase, which thus becomes a telos. It becomes a telos as many times as provisional starting points are supplied; however, in every specific teaching, a phrase appears as only one telos. Moreover, this multiplicity of ends found in one and the same Mishnaic or Biblical phrase can be a key when, in the Talmud, one tries to reconstruct teachings that disagree with one another. 33. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (New York and Cambridge, Mass.: Zone Books; Distributed by MIT Press, 1990). 34. I thankfully borrow the term “synchronous plenum” and the approach it expresses from the comments offered to me by Dr. Bruce Rosenstock. 35. Ethics, Part I, Definitions, Definition 4. 36. Ibid., Definition 6. 37. To explain the terms the “form of content” and the “form of expression”: In the classical distinction between content and form, content was considered to be outside the text and independent of it. In turn, the text was considered a wrap or “form” in which the content is represented. In other words, the form was considered a secondary presentation, a re-presentation of something that was already present somewhere and sometime else. The structuralist model of language replaced the old notion of content by two new notions—structure and a secondary material re-representation of it in a medium, in script, sound, paint, or whatever. It was the merit of structuralism to show that content itself is never formless; it always has inner connections

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or a structure, without which the content is never present in any time and in any space. Furthermore, in structuralism, structure is primary to any presence and therefore, the concept of structure should be distinguished from that of substance or matter, because the latter includes any material re-presentations, scribal, visual, plastic, and so on. In structuralism, the paradigmatic model of structure was that of language or the linguistic sign, understood as the opposition of structural elements, each of them present if and only if the other is absent. In the new set of notions, structure and material medium, it was only structure that mattered. This approach was extrapolated to the analysis of all other contents to isolate structures, bringing things into presence. This projected a new universal science called semiology, in which linguistic structures would be only one instance of structures among others. The transition from structuralism to poststructuralism was not as straightforward as the term “poststructuralism” may suggest; neither can it be described conceptually from any third theoretical point of view. However direct it might have been in appearance, this transition was mediated through a process of friendship, discipleship, and disengagement with a thinker, Emmanuel Levinas, who attempted thinking of the Talmud as a locus of ontology that worked differently than Heidegger’s. Although structuralism replaced the old notions of content and form for those of structure and material medium, structuralism failed to appreciate the importance of the material element, a failure that was not a mere mistake but rather an unavoidable blindness inherent in structuralism’s model of language and linguistic structure, which could be corrected only by a poststructuralist reconsideration of the basic concept of structuralism. 38. In this new framework, one did not necessarily refer to language anymore, in the sense that structuralism or modern national states have used this word and this concept. Rather, language is part of a broader category, that of expression, a category in which language is not the concept par excellence. This is not to say that language is not an expression. However, it is to say that expression is not primarily language. 39. I take this removal of the issue from the domain of logic to be crucial for better understanding Canpanton’s relationship to logic. I develop this linkage further in Part II of the present work. 40. H . agigah, 2b. 41. What kind of certainness is it, if it is established only by means of final rejection (and thus, temporary allowance) of another certainty? 42. This can be understood only if the Talmud is not considered a peculiarity in the background of general, paradigmatic, or Western metaphysics or culture, but rather as a norm competing with that of the West. Indeed, in the Talmud, it

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is not only the sages who argue “Talmudically,” but all other persons who appear there, as well: philosophers, noble ladies, Babylonian kings all think in the same way as the sages themselves do, although they may not think as correctly or insightfully as the sages. 43. Deleuze does not identify himself with Spinoza for the reason that Spinoza, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, set out from an idea of positive or actual infinity—infinity that already is, rather than that becomes. It is for that reason that Deleuze distinguishes the form of expression from the form of content and, respectively, the expressed/being-expressed from essence/substance. Unlike Spinoza, Deleuze does not make expression condition the infinity of the substance, yet Deleuze does appreciate the multiplicity of the expression, as Spinoza suggested. In this way, Deleuze finds himself able to escape from the Heideggerian criticism of Spinoza for the naïve ontology of actual infinity, because, for Heidegger, Spinoza’s actual infinity would be relevant only to an ontic analysis, not to the ontological one. 44. The t[d in the Talmud cannot be grasped in full through Lacanian (or a broader psychoanalytical) concept of symptom, either, nor do the logical concepts of the implicit and the explicit help. t[d is neither implicit nor preconscious. Indeed, the implicit is a characteristic of an expression (or even language)—what is implicit in an expression is opposed to what is explicit in it. Rather, t[d is a mental disposition that is not graspable in the categories of expression, a disposition that precedes and grounds any expression. However, it is only expression, or rather expressed disagreement, which can make t[d appear. Further, t[d is not preconscious, because, unlike what is preconscious, t[d becomes realized only when abandoned or estranged. Anyway, psychoanalysis is of limited help here, because psychoanalysis does not involve disagreement in the same fundamental way in which t[d does. 45. Aristotle, Categoriae 1a. For an English translation see, for instance, Aristotle, Categories and De Interpretations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). 46. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). 47. See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, paperback ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 48. Ibid. 49. See Jacques Derrida and Henri Ronse, “Sémiologie et Grammatologie,” in Positions; Entretiens Avec Henri Ronse, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Louis Houdebine, Guy Scarpetta, Collection “Critique” (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972). 50. I am taking Rambam only as an example. This is why I do not focus on the uses to which Rambam puts the story. However, one could note that by saying that the Mishnah was composed by Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi, not by a prophet, and by showing that the composition of the Mishnah is not an

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indispensable form of the oral Torah, Rambam justifies his own project of the repetition of the Torah in his other code of the Law, the Mishneh Torah. 51. The reference is to Rabbi Yehuda, the Prince, the “composer” of the “Our Mishnah” in the beginning of the third century. The Mishnah of Rabbi Yehuda is the Mishnah assumed in both of the Talmuds whenever a Talmud refers to a Mishnaic phrase. 52. Compare Isadore Twersky’s translation: “From the time of Moses to that of our teacher, the saint, no work had been composed from which the Oral Law was publicly taught. But in each generation, the head of then existing court or the prophet of that time wrote down for his private use a memorandum of the traditions which he had heard from his teachers, and which he taught orally in public”—Moses Maimonides and Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (New York: Behrman House, 1972), 36. 53. The difference between technical and official/formal writings comes up in the Mishnah itself, however on a different occasion. The Mishnah grants an even greater authority to another text than to the Mishnah itself: the parchment of Esther, which also does not belong to the initial written Torah, and which sometimes, in the Mishnah, receives sanctity equal to that of the Torah itself. 54. See Saul Lieberman, “Pirsumah Shel Ha-Mishnah,” in Yevanit Ve-Yavnut Be-Erets-Yisrael; Mehkarim Be-Orhot-Hayim Be-Erets-Yisrael Bi-Tekufat Ha-Mishnah Veha-Talmud (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik, 1962). 55. By neutralizing the obviousness of the hypothesis of physical writing as mere inscription, historical analysis has created room to accommodate historicphilological investigations that date the first historically attested written text of the Mishnah later than the historically attested life of Our Holy Teacher, the Mishnah’s “composer.” 56. Mishnah Megillah, 2–2, wydb rpsh l[ tyrwça hbwtk ahtç d[ (Koifman Manuscript, Library of Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest, 207 [160]). Although an immediate subject of the Mishnaic phrase is the parchment of Esther, in the broader perspective of the tractate, the parchment is associated with the parchment of the Torah, as well. 57. Here, I will not take the opportunity to analyze a Hegelian alternative, which would be an interesting task in itself. I want just to note briefly that, for Hegel—probably in contrast to Descartes—memory belongs to understanding or thinking, and, thus, memory is active, not passive. For Hegel, memory is understanding: I remember as far as I understand, and to remember means to understand. Nevertheless, for Hegel, the claim that memory belongs to active thinking comes at a price: Memory becomes reduced to active thinking or understanding. To contrast Hegel’s position on memory to the status of memory and thinking in the Talmud, one could say that, in the Talmud, memory as thinking is passive, not active.

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58. However, this combination of judgment with memory does not go without affecting the very character of judgment itself: Judgment as remembering is not and cannot remain logical judgment. For instance, already in the beginning of the twentieth century, it was observed that the form of conclusion in kol-va-h. omer is not a correct syllogism. Thus, L. Kantzelenson (Л. Канценельсон) in his paper for Evreiskaia Enziklopedia (Εврейская энциклопедия. Свод знаний о еврействе и его культуре в прошлом и настоящем. Под общей редакцией А. Гаркави и д-ра Л. Канценельсона. v. XI, entry “Middot” (Миддот), columns 4–5) points out the discrepancy between “Aristotle’s syllogism”—by which he means the first one (All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; hence, Socrates is mortal)—and Hillel’s kal-va-h.omer (which he terms conclusio e minore ad majus—“conclusion from minor to major”) found at the end of the Baraitha de Rabbi Ishmael, in the opening part of the Sifra. Kantzelenson writes, “In any real syllogism there must be no more then three elements and three sentences [All man will die. Kai is a man. Kai will die], whereas kal-va-h.omer contains at least four elements and at least four sentences [Failure to offer Tamid does not result in sanctions. The offering of Tamid exempts one from regulations of Sabbath. Failure to offer the Passover sacrifice does result in sanctions. Hence the Passover offering exempts one from regulations of the Sabbath].” (Εврейская энциклопедия. Свод знаний о еврействе и его культуре в прошлом и настоящем. Под общей редакцией А. Гаркави и д-ра Л. Канценельсона. v. XI, Entry “Middot” (Миддот), columns 4–5). Showing the discrepancy between the “real syllogism” and kal-va-h.omer, between three elements in the former and four elements in the latter, is a part of Kantzelenson’s argument, in which he saves kal-va-h.omer and other middot from the criticism that John Stuart Mill and other positivists exercised with regard to “Aristotle’s syllogism.” Mill argued that the major antecedent of the syllogism (“All men are mortal” cannot stand against the “fact” of the incomplete character of any induction. To reformulate Kantzelenson’s argument, to reinforce it, and to put it to work for my own argument, I would say that kal-va-h.omer is not a logical syllogism at all. Rather, it is much more like the rhetorical figure a forteriori. The difference, however, is that the rhetorical a forteriori was expected to ornament and to delude, whereas kal-va-h.omer is to reconstruct a missing memory and thus to decide on the law, in a situation, when memory is or can be missing. 59. Rashi lists at least three cases of judgment eliminating incoherence a tanna created due to an intervention of his reproductive memory. Rashi writes, “[One who just repeats halakhoth, i.e., portions of the Mishnah] is only a fool who is full of books, but does not understand what is inside, yet he repeats halakhoth without helping the wise students to learn to understand the meanings of the Mishnah. But sometimes the words of Mishnah do not cohere with each other, and one needs to find a way out, as for instance ‘here is what the actual issue is’

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or ‘Whose is this Mishnah?—It is of Rabbi So and So’ or ‘This Mishnah is distorted and here is how one has to repeat it.’ However, the tanna does not know what he is repeating” (Rashi’s Commentary on Megillah 28b). Rashi listed three cases of incoherence within the words of the tanna: the theme or the question that the Mishnah addressed is not stated explicitly; the sage, whose authority the Mishnah comes from, is not mentioned directly; and the phrasing of the Mishnah itself is distorted. In these three cases, the reproductive memory is an insufficient memory, and the thinking memory is required. In all the three cases, the lack of memory is compensated by the work of thinking, or rather, in these cases, memory and thinking coincide, resulting in the process of the thinking memory. In fact, the cases of thinking memory in the Talmud expand themselves beyond Rashi’s list, because Rashi recalled only the cases where thinking serves to take care of a doubt; a care that, in medieval Talmudic terminology is called sometimes teruz. To mention at least one case beyond Rashi’s list, the device pshitah—mahu deteima—kamashma lan [“This part of the Mishnah is obvious, so why waste memory on it? —No, you have to remember it in case one will tell this Mishnah means so and so—the phrase in question will let you know what is the right response”]. This device involves thinking as an effort to check and, in fact, to expand the memory by embracing potential thoughts, thoughts that the Mishnaic phrase already took into account and that the learning yet has to “recall.” The work of memory thus involves not only solving doubts, but also generating them. 60. Regardless of whether kal-va-h.omer fits to the form of a syllogism or not, it does not pretend to be a syllogism. Otherwise, kal-va-h.omer could not be refutable without having agreed that it was logically incorrect. But such an agreement does not seem to either happen or be implied in the Talmudic disputation, where the refutation of kal-va-h.omer does not lead to erasing it from the memory, as a mere mistake should be erased. 61. The Talmudic form of thinking memory is to be carefully distinguished from memory as knowledge. The latter comes from the Platonic concept of the knowledge as the memory or the remembrance of the Idea. 62. Jack N. Lightstone, The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud: Its Social Meaning and Context (Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1994). See also Jack N. Lightstone and Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, Mishnah and the Social Formation of the Early Rabbinic Guild: A Socio-Rhetorical Approach (Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion– Corporation canadienne des sciences religeuses by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001).

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63. Emmanuel Lévinas, Outside the Subject (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994); Emmanuel Lévinas, Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). 64. Defending the Bible and the Talmud against philological, literary, and historical criticism, Levinas nevertheless positioned himself as a novice in Talmudic tradition, as if he had discovered the Talmud anew after the whole epoch of criticism. (In this, Levinas resembles Socrates, who considered himself a novice with regard to wisdom.) Such a position predetermined that his Talmudic Readings would evoke strong criticism for both interpretive violence and for Western metaphysical ethnocentrism. 65. Aristotle, De anima, 429a. 66. Ibid., 429b. 67. Ibid., III, 5 (430a), translated by J. A. Smith: Aristotle, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle, 2001 Modern Library, Paperback ed. (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 592. 68. Ibid., 429a. 69. In his The Psychology of Aristotle: In Particular His Doctrine of the Active Intellect, [1867], Brentano wrote: “Many attempts, especially that of Zeller, have shown us that we cannot take the active intellect to be the deity, or some other higher substance essentially distinct from us. Furthermore, we have seen from the attempts of Trendelenburg and Brandis that it is impossible to envisage it as something peculiar to the soul and at the same time something that thinks. The fact that it is the efficient principle of thoughts does not imply that it has thoughts within itself, since thinking, being a king of affection, must be found, like motion, not in the active but in the affected element. Finally, we have seen from the attempt of Suarez that it is also impossible to take the active intellect as an active power of the soul whose efficacy is directed immediately upon the soul’s passive intellectual faculty, and hence as a power that does not itself think but whose immediate influence generates thoughts in the thinking faculty. What then remains, but to suppose with Thomas Aquinas that the active intellect is indeed an active principle of the intellectual soul whose activity, however, is directed immediately to a lower part? But even here we are warned by the criticism of Durandus not to conceive of its activity as if it is generated something intellectual within the sensory element. And so it seems as though every road is blocked. But unless my trust in Aristotle deceives me, there must remain a way out, and this way out will lead us to the correct understanding of his doctrine.” —Franz Clemens Brentano, The Psychology of Aristotle: In Particular His Doctrine of the Active Intellect: With an Appendix Concerning the Activity of Aristotle’s God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 26.

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chapter 3: the art of (the) talmud

1. Research considered Canpanton’s book either a peak of (or key for) the four centuries of Talmudic interpretation before it, the beginning of a completely new stage, that of pilpul, or an “early modern” predecessor of the developments in the (neo-Kantian) logic of the Talmud of the nineteenth century and on. In any of these ways, or in all of them, Canpanton is a very important name in the history of Talmudic learning; sometimes he even becomes important in too obvious and too strong a way. In making him a predecessor, a founder, a highest point in this or that phenomenon or approach in Talmudic learning, the tradition or its history connects to him too closely, without a distance one really needs in order to appreciate the larger scale of his work. Indeed, often one fails—or does not feel any need—to discern between Canpanton’s concepts, as the latter were either consumed in tradition or projected backwards to its history, and these very concepts, as they were shaping themselves—before their historical or traditional significance was fixed and established in the tradition in which they became an almost commonplace. A situation like that shapes a blind spot. While seen only through lenses of a tradition, a source of it either hides or marginalizes itself, or yet makes it absolutely obvious and thus unnoticeable. It happens exactly because the tradition can never be sharply discerned from its own source, while without such a discerning, the “source” is very easily consumed, but is hardly appreciated beyond such a consumption. For an analysis of the historiography on Canpanton, see further footnotes in the present chapter. 2. In spite of the fact that Canpanton composed The Ways of the Talmud in the fifteenth century, a historian of the Talmudic interpretation of the four preceding centuries, Israel Ta-Shma, feels uncomfortable not including Canpanton in his two volumes of The Literature of the Talmudic Interpretation 1000–1400. He writes: Of R. I. Canpanton we know very little, yet for our purposes it is important to note that the year of his death is 1463 and therefore his activity occurred mostly in the first half of the fifteenth century. In spite of the fact that this period is beyond the scope of my book, I have included The Ways of the Talmud in it. This is because of his work’s contribution to our understanding of what preceded it. It is important to note that most, if not all of the great [Talmudic scholars] in Spain in the second half of the fifteenth century were his students, Izh.ak Abuav, Izh.ak de Leon, and Shemuel Alvalenci among them. The main point of The Ways of the Talmud and the objective of composing it was to transform the assumptions about learning allowed in the approach of the [Tosfoth] Gornish in all its variations— which was already well known in Spain before—into a detailed order of instruction capable of serving as an instruction guide in all the sciences in general and in the

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science of Talmud in particular, as well as serving as a standard for developing a unified “language of learning” for every student in every yeshiva in Spain. It was the fact that the majority of the great people of the country of that time were his students and followers that both initiated and led to the full, indeed, exceptional success of Canpanton’s system for a period of around two hundred years. His system also provoked a strong resistance, remnants of which can be found in print and in manuscripts, yet since the majority of the great people of the generation were his students, and all the important chronographers of the time were his students, too, this resistance was shadowed, and suppressed. (I. Ta-Shma, Part Two, 141–42)

It is remarkable that, intentionally or not, the connection Ta-Shma makes between Canpanton and the approach of the Gornish has a larger scope in which Canpanton is not only a historical peak or telos of the Gornish, but also of all the developments in Talmudic interpretation during the four centuries before Canpanton. Indeed, in Canpanton, a very general trajectory of learning traverses three main stages: the independent attempt of a student to follow the language of a Talmudic argument, a critical return to the actual language of the Talmud as the student aims at understanding the language and the argument in a more precise way, and, finally, problematizing either the language or the argument itself. Ta-Shma likewise represents the history of the Talmudic interpretation in the four centuries before Canpanton as a gradual progress in three large steps. It goes from periphrastic interpretation of the Talmudic arguments in the eleventh century to analytical or emphatic commentary on the arguments in their own language (Rashi) at the turn of the eleven and twelfth centuries, and then to rendering the Talmudic arguments problematic vis-à-vis other arguments in the whole Talmud, or even vis-à-vis themselves (Tosfoth). Does not Ta–Shma’s historical picture follow the path of learning offered in Canpanton? In any case, this parallelism may contribute to answering the question of why Ta-Shma believes he is correct to see the fifteenth century, not only as a peak, but also as a key to understanding the processes that had been going for four centuries before Canpanton. Likewise, I. Ta-Shma represents the history of the four preceding centuries as the movement from paraphrasing the Talmud to Rashi’s emphatic commentary, in which one already leaves the language of the Talmud unchanged and valued as is. This process leads ultimately to the Tosfoth’s harmonization of the whole Talmud, and indeed of the whole of rabbinic literature, as if it were produced in one invisible college where every scholar was perfectly aware of all the others. This progression—from paraphrases to emphasis and then to harmonization—makes a philogenetic story that complies with Canpanton’s merely logical description of the ontogenetic stages of Talmudic learning as the individual endeavor of a student.

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3. The historical place of R. I. Canpanton’s The Ways of the Talmud is as crucial as it is undetermined. Some historians have seen his work as one of the peaks of that tradition, a key for historical developments in Talmudic interpretation in the preceding four centuries (see Israel M. Ta-Shma, Talmudic Commentary in Europe and North Africa: Literary History, Part One: 1000–1200 [Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magness Press, 1999]; Idem, Part Two: 1200–1400, 2000), while others have considered Canpanton to be the founder and representative of the whole new stage in the history of Talmudic learning—that of pilpul—which flourished for about two centuries following Canpanton’s work; see Chaim Z. Dimitrovski’s publications “Rabbi Yaakov Berab’s Academy” (Hebrew), Sefunot 7 (Safed Vol. 2, 1963), 41–103, and “On the Method of Pilpul” (Hebrew), Sefer Hayyovel likhvod Shalom Baron (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Studies, 1975), 111–81. See also S. Shalem, “The Exegetical Method of Rabbi Yosef Taitazak and his Circle, its quality and the way of research” (Hebrew), Sefunot 11 (Greek, Vol. 1, 1970–1977), 67–112; Daniel Boyarin, “Pilpul: The Logic of Commentary,” Dor Le Dor 3 (1986); Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation: A Study in Methods of Talmudic Interpretation (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Instituite, 1989); and Boyarin, “Moslem, Christian, and Jewish Cultural Interaction in Sephardic Talmudic Interpretation,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism Ancient, Medieval and Modern 5.1 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1–33. Other historians have found in Canpanton’s work an early precedent of the “methodological,” “logical,” or “philological” analysis of the Talmud in the sense these terms acquired from the nineteenth century onward, under the aegis of neo-Kantianism. If compared with the merely periphrastic interpretation of the Talmud in the tenth century (for example, R. Chananel’s commentary on the Talmud), with the commentary aimed at emphasizing various elements of the Talmudic discussion offered by Rashi in the eleventh century, or with the masters of Tosfoth, who in the following two centuries meticulously associated the various arguments in the Talmud one with another, the work of Canpanton represents a significant shift of focus. Canpanton moves from paraphrasing, from emphatic commentary, and from comparative investigations of the Talmud to rational inquiry and systematic conceptualization of the ways of the Talmudic discussion itself, as well as of the ways that a student of the Talmud needs to follow to keep up with a given Talmudic argument. In turn, if compared with the developments of Talmudic learning in the consequent two centuries, the work of Canpanton represents not a shift or change, but rather a new beginning, silently standing behind any consequent endeavor. Even later on, when newer approaches to learning emerged, Canpanton’s work did not lose this role. On a historical scale, his work and the epoch of its influence belong somewhere in the intellectual realm between the hermeneutics of the Talmud in the

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centuries preceding it and the new logical analysis of the Talmud in the nineteenth century, when the neo-Kantian “logical” and “methodological” projects of Talmudic learning emerged. It is therefore very easy to take Canpanton’s work as either hermeneutical or logical, or even both, but it is no less important to appreciate the unique position that this work—and the tradition following it—developed with regard to both the hermeneutical elaboration and the logical analysis of the Talmud. 4. See Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, and “Moslem, Christian, and Jewish Cultural Interaction in Sephardic Talmudic Interpretation,” The review of rabbinic Judaism: ancient, medieval and modern V, no. 1 (2002). See also Hayim Zalman Dimitrovski, “Al Derekh Ha-Pilpul,” Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, The Hebrew Section (1975); Hayim Zalman Dimitrovski, “Two New Evidences on the Dispute on Smikha in Safed,” Sefunot (1966); and Simon Shalem, “The Hermeneutic Method of Rabbi Joseph Taitazak and His Circle,” Sefunot 11 (1956). The main term in Canpanton’s work, ˜wy[, or as it is transliterated, iyyun, has been translated as “speculation,” and I adhere to that usage here. However, it is important to note that both “speculation” and “iyyun” could just as well be translated as “contemplation.” Keeping this in mind helps us to avoid both the confusingly derogative connotations of “speculation” and the hermetic character of “iyyun.” At the same time, the term “contemplation” is not totally foreign to the meaning of “contemplating various possibilities,” as well as to “contemplating a matter,” which connotes an important link, always present in Canpanton’s work, between ˜wy[ (contemplation), and ˜yyn[ (the “matter” or “issue” being contemplated). 5. Daniel Boyarin’s Sephardic Speculation is a pioneering work that exceeded the limitations of the traditional views of Canpanton’s book. In this work, Boyarin further developed the argument of Chaim Dimitrovski, who introduced Canpanton as an earlier representative of the approach to Talmudic learning called pilpul [lit: (a learning as sharp as) pepper]. Dimitrovski characterized the approach of pilpul as analytical-philological in principle; as a result, in such an approach to learning, all the speculative energy of a learner was to express itself only within the framework of a given Talmudic argument. This led to two consequences. On the one hand, an independent effort of interpreting [a given] argument became both a legitimate phenomenon and an established curricular element of any learning, so that no learning was complete unless, besides the [established] interpretations of Rashi and Tosfoth, other interpretations were brought in. On the other hand, there emerged a tendency to analyze every single detail of a given Talmudic argument while putting an exaggerated emphasis on either excesses in wording or deficiencies in it. In its quality and intention, this approach to learning was, therefore, analytical-philological in principle, because in this approach one disassembled a [given]

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Talmudic argument into its smallest parts and looked at them as if they all were of equal value. Following Dimitrovski’s definition of pilpul as “analytical-philological in principle,” Boyarin’s Sephardic Speculation makes a strong connection between Canpanton’s concepts of Talmudic learning and the Arabic Aristotelian theory of language in which grammar and logic were assumed to parallel each other, thus ultimately enabling the independent “philological-analytical” approach to Talmudic interpretation that Dimitrovski identified. Boyarin’s Sephardic Speculation not only made this crucial connection and proved it, but also opened a new horizon in Canpanton studies. While his work is even more appreciative of the traditional place of Canpanton, by illuminating the connection with the Aristotelian tradition, it invited the very plausible hypothesis that the connection well may go, not only through logic and grammar, but also through rhetoric, as I elaborate further here. 6. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 48–49. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine. 7. Ibid., 50. 8. I render rwbyd and its derivatives as “speech.” 9. I render both the Hebrew qwyd and the Aramaic aqwyd as “exaction.” 10. Canpanton and Shemuel Alvalenci, Darkhe Ha-Talmud, 26. I render hdlwt as logical “consequent.” 11. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 50–51. 12. Ibid., 51. 13. I render rmam and its derivatives as “oration.” 14. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation; Canpanton and Alvalenci, Darkhe HaTalmud, 26. 15. The implicit explained in such an explanation is not logically implicit, but rather is rhetorically implicit or a position, oration not mentioned explicitly but refuted in the oration implicitly. 16. I render ˜yyn[ as “matter.” 17. I interpret the term çwdyj and its correlatives by the term “invention,” which I borrow from the theory of rhetoric, in which it means both finding something out and persuasively presenting it in a way as if it has always been there. Thus, for instance, in his De inventione, Cicero considers invention the most important of all the divisions of an oration (which are: invention of a position that allows one to dispute another position; the arrangement of the oration itself; elocution, or the choice of words and expressions; and delivery—the orator’s intonation, gestures, and so on). He defines invention as “conceiving of topics, either true or probable, which may make one’s cause [in the disagreement] appear probable” (De Inv. VII, transl. by C. D. Yonge—Marcus Tullius Cicero and Charles Duke Yonge, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Vol. 4 (London:

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G. Bell and Sons, 1888), 241–380. For Cicero, invention is what makes one’s oration worth being made: If there is no topic that makes one’s oration competitive against one’s adversary, the oration is not effective, even if one has a good cause to dispute. 18. Notably, Canpanton’s two main parts of an oration, the theme and the ruling, do not overlap with his concept of the sentence (fpçm ). The sentence as the combination of a theme and a ruling is only a subordinate unit of an oration, not a main part of it. Of course, a separate combination—one theme and one ruling—can always be abstracted from any given oration, but such a combination rarely constitutes the actual form of it, nor does it prevail over the dynamic, and often very complicated, relations between various themes with regard to the same ruling and various rulings with regard to the same theme. In addition, the sentence cannot be the main part of oration, because the oration may intrinsically include differentiated affinities in topoi, which, by definition, do not coincide with any theme, either explicitly stated or grammatically implied. Also, for Canpanton, any oration includes a doubt that it should eliminate, and, again by definition, such a doubt cannot be expressed in the sentence designed to eliminate it. Due to this element of unexpressed doubt, even a simple combination of one theme and one ruling is, by definition, more than a mere sentence. Besides this, neither theme nor ruling can fully comply with the grammatical subject and predicate, the elements of sentence. These do not relate to either the differentiated affinities or doubts, nor do the concepts of subject and predicate comprise an oration as not only an assertion (either positive or negative), but also, as always, already a refutation or an elimination of doubt. More broadly, unlike the pair of theme and ruling, the pair of subject and predicate characterizes a positive linguistic expression given for a positive meaning. The latter can stand alone outside of any polemical situation or any disagreement. The former is always already involved in polemical exchanges. Canpanton’s speculation not only treats refutation as a fundamental feature of any oration or saying, but also seeks to distinguish between a false disagreement and a true one. The former is a result of mistakes and can be clarified, while the latter should remain standing, even after logical and grammatical clarification, as well as after all the attempts to refute one of the sides refuted. Unlike mistakes, true disagreements involve a transition to differentiated affinities in topoi, a process that neither logic nor grammar can fully control. 19. As Kelale Shmuel comes near doing. 20. The English translation of the introduction of this work is Boyarin, “Moslem, Christian, and Jewish Cultural Interaction in Sephardic Talmudic Interpretation,” 8–33. The paper also contains a comparative analysis of Kelale Shmuel and Thomas’s rational psychology. 21. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 51–52.

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22. The radical past in which successful speculation takes place is not to be confused with two other approaches to the past. The first is positivistically historical: A historian “digs” into the past in order to make it present by means of his research, which results in a narration that makes the past present. The second is poststructuralism’s critique of the first. In the view of this critique, the positivistically historical or any other narrative past takes place only within the narration itself, in which it is granted “reality” or presence. However, beyond the narration, such a past has never been present, the poststructuralist tradition claims. (For an example of such an approach applied to Freud’s narratives of the “primary scene,” see Philippe van Haute and Jozef Corveleyn, Seduction, Suggestion, Psychoanalysis, Figures of the Unconscious, Vol. 1 (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2001); and Philippe van Haute, Against Adaptation: Lacan’s “Subversion of the Subject”: The Lacanian Clinical Field (New York: Other Press, 2002). The radical past of the Talmudic student is obviously not a positive historic past. However, it is not “the past that has never been present,” either. The radical past is not engaged with presence, even in the sense of would-be presence: The student himself, his presence or his absence, does not figure where the speculation reaches. Nor does the Talmudic master/orator wait for the student in any historical past. The only thing that connects a Talmudic oration to any past is that the oration has been made, and as such is granted to have an invention that the student is yet to find through the procedures of external judgment and exaction. Finally, the radical past should not be confused with the category of pure becoming without any presence, which, in Deleuze, comes from his ontology of expression. Expression happens in pure becoming, in which the past and the future are two sides of one and the same process. (See Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza [New York: Zone Books, 1990]). Speculation or a student’s entry into an external judgment on the matter of an oration has an element of refutation, which in itself is foreign to what the philosophy of expression is. Expression does not necessarily involve refutation, while speculation deals with refutation prior to anything else, yet this refutation does not come from the future. It, like an oration itself, is not made by the student. He only has to find it as matter that has already taken place. 23. I reserve the term “sages,” μymkj , for the sages of the generation of Mishnah only. In turn, I use the term “Talmudic masters” solely for the masters of the generations of the Talmud. 24. Canpanton and Valensi, Darkhe Ha-Talmud, 26–27. 25. Whatever “itself” means—a historical system of the later Babylonian masters or Canpanton’s theory of their way of intellectual action. See Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 52. 26. Ibid., 53. 27. Ibid., 54.

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28. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 53. 29. I refer here to reduction, rather then merely to interpretation, because Aristotle himself insisted that enthymeme characterizes the art of rhetoric, not the arts of grammar, exegesis, or even dialectics and logic. 30. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 54. 31. Ibid., 55–56. 32. Ibid., 57. 33. I use the terms “first rationalism” and “second rationalism” according to Leo Strauss, for whom the first rationalism (the Middle Ages, with Rambam and Al Farabi as representatives of it) holds truth to be already given in writing in the soul, although not understood yet, as opposed to the second rationalism, which considered truth something yet to be found with the power of rational understanding. See Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, Suny Series in the Jewish Writings of Strauss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 34. See José Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism, no. 213 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999). 35. The difference between outer speech and inner speech could stand only as the difference between spoken outward speech and what is written in the soul. The realm of meanings, including homonymy and synonymy, is a prerogative of a linguist, who deals only with outer speech. Unlike the linguist, the logician aims at the inner speech. Outer speech is always an ongoing process, while what is written in the soul is always already there and is finalized. Therefore, to make the transition from the ongoing process of speaking to what is written in the soul, a logician must make the transition from outward speech to reading, or from a speech belonging to a speaker to something of which a reader can never take possession by any right. Reading from the soul must not be confused with outer speech. The only condition of such reading is that it must be true to what is written—true logically, rather than linguistically; true not in meaning, which is inevitably dubious, but in that it is reading, rather than speaking. A condition of such logical truth is thus the elimination of any ambiguities of outer speech, which are inevitably there due to synonymic and homonymic meanings in it. 36. Shmuel Ibn Sidilio, The Review of Rabbinic Judaism Ancient, Medieval and Modern, Vol. V, trans. Daniel Boyarin (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1–34. 37. See Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 58. 38. Ibid., 58; translated from the quoted text. 39. Ibid. 40. Boyarin, “Moslem, Christian, and Jewish Cultural Interaction in Sephardic Talmudic Interpretation,” 12–18. Arguing that “the same cultural pattern” appears both in Canpanton and in Said Shmuel Ibn Sidilio (Kelale Shmuel),

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Boyarin nevertheless indicates that the differences between them may stem from the intellectual alliance of Said Shmuel Ibn Sidilio with Thomas. For the purposes of my argument, the most important difference is that the Kelale Shmuel does not seem to use the rhetorical concept of invention, while Canpanton uses it heavily. Specifically, while Canpanton builds his concept of exaction on the concept of invention, Ibn Sidilio appeals to purely logical concepts of in actu and in potential. While Canpanton instructs his students to look for an invention in the plain enthymeme of an oration, and if not there, then in an exaction from it, Ibn Sidilio switches to the concepts of logically the “obvious” or the “already said” (see Boyarin, “Moslem, Christian, and Jewish Cultural Interaction in Sephardic Talmudic Interpretation,” 22), thus reducing the rhetorical elements of invention and refutation to the logical concepts of the obvious or nonobvious, a distinction based on the novelty of information. This difference is greater than it seems: the second approach leaves no place for Canpanton’s central concept, disagreement, supplying instead the concept of logical polemics. 41. Translated from Canpanton and Valensi, Darkhe Ha-Talmud, 57. 42. Ibid., 57ff. 43. See Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 60. 44. Some versions of pilpul gave an example of such mistreatment of disagreement as if it were a goal in itself. A practitioner of pilpul could more than rarely create disagreements with him- or herself. He or she would do so for the sake of disagreement with him- or herself, not for the sake of a true disagreement, which always involves a disagreement between two mutually irreducible finite minds speculated in the mind of their student. 45. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 61. 46. Instead of logical premises, one can try using the concept of linguistic context. However, the latter concept controls only linguistic meanings in a linguistic context, not polemical agendas, because these agendas belong to a rank with which no context could cohere. Disagreement by definition is coherent with only one linguistic context. 47. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation, 62. 48. Gittin, 43a. 49. Boyarin, Sephardic Speculation. 63. 50. Ibid. 51. The classical formulation of this principle goes back to Aristotle’s Categoriae 1a, which determines that what is homonymous shares names only, but not matter (logos tes ousias). Instead of comparing names and matters through the mediation of a third point of view, Aristotle accesses matter directly via logos. It is this Aristotelian version of logos directly conjoined to ousias, logos tes ousisas, or the logos of the matter, that, later on, in the works of the Arabic Aristotelians, would become “inner speech” or what is “written in the soul,” as opposed to

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“outer speech,” which entails “names” or lexis alone, as long as the names are taken before their relation to any specific logos of the matter. To stress a substantial difference between this approach to matter in logos/speech on the matter and Canpanton’s matter (˜yyn[ ): for Canpanton, any matter is always a matter of disagreement between finites, rather then a bare component of a universal logos. 52. See Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. 53. See Paul de Man, “The Epistemology of Metaphor,” Critical Inquiry 5, no. 1 (Autumn 1978). 54. See Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 55. Lange, 72. (From here on, the text is translated from I. Lange’s edition of The Ways of the Talmud: [mçç hçarh ˜baw ˜wfnapnq qjxy ’ rl dwmlth ykrd drwpskwa ,˜wdnwl ybtk y’’p[ç l’’ wy ysnalww la lawmç’ r wdymlt wypm a’’mçt μylçwry .hgnl ˜wmçm qjxy ydy l[ atçwq swpd y ’’p[w μylçwryw [1980]). 56. Printed in Abulafia, Hezekiah David. Ben Zek.unim. Livorno: Bi-defus A. Sa’adon, 1793. chapter 4: talmud as EVENT

1. Megillah, 28a. 2. TB Horayot, 2b, cited from the MS Paris (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale), Supl. Hebr. 1337.

òpa hryty hnçmmd [. . .] :harwhl ywarw dymlt wa w[fç ˜hm dja [dyw rymg alw rybs wa rybs alw rymg [Mishnah: If a Beth Din instructs and one of its members knows the instruction is a mistake or he himself is a student capable of instructing [he will be responsible for following their instruction.] [Gemarrah:] From the excessive Mishnah, it follows that this person is responsible even if he is capable of only teaching [gemara] but not of innovative argumentation [svara], and even if he is capable of innovative argumentation but was not taught [a relevant law].

3. I use the term “record” to refer to an always secondary process, a repetition of something that symbolically comes before, even if historically or in terms of the linear time is reachable only after being recorded, either in memory/thought or on paper/parchment. In this sense, a record is not the same as writing, which symbolically is always prior to any meaning, sense, or interpretation derived thereof. 4. See for example, Iaacov Susman, “I. N. Epstein Ve Ha-Universitah HaIvrit: Perek Be-Hithavato Shel Mosad Akademi,” in Toldot Ha-Universitah HaIvrit Bi-Yerushalayim: Shorashim Ve-Hatchalot, ed. Shaul Katz and Michael Heyd (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at sefarim a. sh. Y.L. Magnes, ha-Universitah ha-Ivrit, 1997). Referring to Epstein, whom Lieberman titled “the father of the strict science of

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the Talmud,” Susman writes, “Almost everything before Epstein in his field was dilettantism, almost everything before him was like building on sand—Epstein was the one who put the discipline [of Talmudic studies] on the basis of solid science. I am speaking here of a revolutionary approach, of a new school in the field, which is both old and well known. I would almost say, [Epstein created] a new discipline—‘Talmudic philology’”; Susman, “I. N. Epstein Ve Ha-Universitah Ha-Ivrit: Perek Be-Hithavato Shel Mosad Akademi,” 485. I thank Ishai Rozen-Zvi for referring me to this publication. 5. See J. N. Epstein, Mavo Le-Nusah Ha-Mishnah: Nusah Ha-Mishnah VeGilgula’v Lemi-Yeme Ha-Amoraim Ha-Rishonim Ve-Ad Defuse R. Yo.-T. Lipman Heler (Ba’al To. Y. T.), Mahad. 3. ed. (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at sefarim a. sh. Y.L. Magnes ha-Universitah ha-’Ivrit, 2000). 6. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 7. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). I consider philosophy as making concepts in response to a problem, so that no philosophical concept can be accurately approached unless we discover a problem to which the invention of the concept was both an articulation and a response. 8. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Derrida, Of Grammatology, 1st American ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Derrida and Henri Ronse, Positions: Entretiens Avec Henri Ronse, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Louis Houdebine, Guy Scarpetta, Collection “Critique” (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972). 9. Needless to say, Derrida could not introduce this latter distinction without beginning strategically from a nonphilosopher, whom he first shows to be a metaphysician and then finds the same metaphysics not only in the philosophers but also in antiphilosophers as well, including not only Nietzsche and Levinas, but also Heidegger. 10. Derrida himself does not seem to expect différance to exclude a new replacement of it, which in itself would also be replaceable. See Derrida, “Différance.” In particular, he writes, “I wish to underline that the efficacity of the thematic of difference may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement, at least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed.” Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 7. 11. These two approaches are different, no less than Heidegger’s fundamental ontological outlook is different from a merely empirical or “ontic” approach to things, in terms of “observing them scientifically.” 12. A. Ibn Akra and Zimra David ben Solomon ibn Abi, “Dibbur Ha-Tosfoth Bep[erek]” K[ama] Demegilah Me[Morenu] “Ha[-Rav] R[Abbi] I[Zhak] Be Rab

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in Me-Harere Nemarim: Kelale Ha-Talmud (Israel: [h. mo. l.], 1971) [1599]. See also Dimitrovski, “Al Derekh Ha-Pilpul.” 13. Ibn Akra and David ben Solomon ibn Abi, “Dibbur Ha-Tosfoth Bep[erek] K[ama].” 14. Even if, as already mentioned, I reserve the term “sage” for the earlier rabbinic authorities appearing in the Mishnah and the term “master” for the rabbinic authorities appearing later, in the Talmud, in the digesis of the Talmudic arguments, Shmuel belongs to the early generation of the masters, but the argument relates to his authority as if it would be close to the authority of a sage. 15. In the Talmud, this argument appears in the context of a larger inquiry on the reason the sages allowed the book of Esther to be officially written. In the Bavli Megillah 7a, Rav Yehuda tells us Shmuel did not hold that touching the book of Esther can defile one’s hands. There, the Talmud heuristically reads his position as radically as if Shmuel also held that the book of Esther was not commanded by the Holy Spirit. However, this radical heuristic reading results in the immediate declining of it in favor of a more conservative reading: Shmuel still could have held that the book of Esther was commanded by the Holy Spirit, not in terms of writing the book, but only in terms of reading it publicly. 16. Such a form of apology for the statement of an earlier authority is endemic in the Talmud, found on nearly every page. However, instead of Shmuel, the apologetic argument may involve other Tannaitic sages or masters of the Talmud of earlier generations. 17. Logical or dialectical perspectives on the Talmud show it to be a process of finding contradictions and eliminating them through a dialogue of finite minds ultimately complying with an infinite reason. In the Canpantonian hermeneutical and rhetorical perspective, however, true contradiction allows no reconciliation, and, in terms of truth, two contradictory statements are mutually exclusive. What is more, any truly contradictory statements are rare, but if they are there, they remain forever, and the contradictory character of their relationship does not change with time. Unlike a dialectical process, in which the mind travels through the words of eternal ideas, and in which time is only an extrinsic burden, the relationship of two or more contrary statements is intrinsically time-sensitive. As opposed to contradiction, contrariness is an invitation, not to a dialectical choice between true and false, but to a change in the rhetorical relationship between the statements. Such a change occurs, however, only within the flow of time, not in a timeless immobility of contradictions, a flow, a sequence, from which no one could detour, because no change can happen without time. When sorted out from contradictions, contrary statements become an invitation for reconciliation, and when the time of reconciliation comes, the contrariness

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of the statements is already in the past. Aristotle’s De Interpretatione insists on the difference between what is contrary and what is contradictory, thus giving Aristotle a polemical instrument he applies there against sophists. For an analysis of the relationship between De Interpretatione and dialectical contradiction, see C. W. A. Whitaker, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectics, ed. Julia Annas and Lindsay Judson, Oxford Aristotle Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). The author detaches De Interpretatione from the traditional line Categories—Of Interpretation—Topics, and reconnects it to dialectics, yet still not to rhetoric. 18. I use the terms of rational rhetorical argumentation in line with Aristotle’s insistence, in his Rhetoric, that the art of rhetoric is based on its own form of rational argumentation, which is called enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism, and is certainly distinct from syllogisms in either dialectics or logic. 19. As my analysis progresses, I will return to the apology for Shmuel, linking it to the continuation of the argument in the next folio of the Talmud (Megillah, 8b), where the masters present a contrary view on the divinity of the book of Esther’s writing, a view that, even if finally rejected, will be rhetorically demonstrated to be no less considerable. 20. The speaker seems to put together these two explanations of seemingly unrelated parables, Esther-doe and Esther–the dawn, because the two together decipher a comparison of the book of Esther to the morning star, rjçh tlya , which means literally “doe of the morning.” By putting these two seemingly unrelated comparisons in connection with the morning star, the speaker also makes Esther seem both a person and a book, respectively, a doe and the morning. 21. As opposed to either emendation or interpretation, the rearticulation process builds itself not on purely logical (including textological) considerations, but rather on the rhetorical process, which could only be both initiated and continuously supported by the arguments of primary rhetorical refutations, which never originate from a text itself, but are always rooted in the finite point of view that only a student and an apologist of the records may have. 22. The Tosfoth, an analytical comparative commentary on the Talmud, inquires how this distinction between the holiness of the reading of Esther and the lack of holiness of its writing holds up. They address this question in their lemma ad locum—“bwtkl alw twrql hrman .” They open the inquiry by an inference that gives them an opportunity to refute heuristically the distinction the Talmud granted to the position of Shmuel: “Had Shmuel held that, he would have also considered it permissible to read it by heart, not from a written book.” The latter is refutable, however, since Shmuel would therefore disagree with an (unattributed) phrase in the Mishnah from the second chapter of the same Mishnaic

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tractate, which explicitly says “reading the book of Esther by heart does not yet fulfill the obligation of reading.” To the same effect, had Shmuel held such a position, he would also have to disagree with Rabi, who, later on in the same tractate (Megillah, f.19a), was reported to say that the book of Esther is to be both written and stitched, like the book of Torah. In addition, Shmuel would have had to disagree with Rabbi Yoh.anan, who was reported to say (idem, 19b), “reading the book of Esther amongst Writings does not yet fulfill the obligation of reading.” Despite all this, the masters of Tosfoth still found that there remains a way of settling these contrary positions by rereading Shmuel’s words as if they have said: “Even if writing of the [book of Esther] was not authorized by the Holy Spirit, the rabbis authorized it not only for [public] reading, but also for [official] writing (from which the reading is to be made).” Immediately upon having provided this temporarily settlement, the masters of Tosfoth proceed to refute it. The refutation comes from the chapter Memune in the tractate Yoma (29a), in which Esther (both the book and the event) is compared to the Morning star or Dow (rjçh tlya ): As the morning star or Dow is the end of night, so also Esther is the end of miracles. In the Memune, the comparison is however temporarily undermined by the mention of an even later miracle, Chanukah, and is immediately saved by a more narrow reading of it: “The end of only those miracles that were authorized for writing.” However, the argument in the Memune validates such a solution only in part, because it would comply only with a party saying there indeed was an instance authorizing the book of Esther for official writing. Yet in the Memune’s argument, this solution remains unacceptable for a party who recognizes no authority to validate the official writing of the book. The continuation of the argument in the Memune, however, is outside the inquiry the masters of the Tosfoth conduct. They use a record of the Memune’s argument only to provide evidence that among the masters of the Talmud, there was a party acknowledging there having been some instance that authorized the official writing of the book. Yet unlike the reading of Shmuel, the Memune argument seems to witness that even if such an instance of authority exists, it could not be rabbinic, so either the reading or Shmuel or the argument in Memune seems to have to fall apart. Reminding us that rabbis authorized writing of even later miracles of Chanukah, the masters of the Tosfoth conclude that the argument recorded in the Memune does not assume rabbis are the source of authorization. The record of the discussion in the Memune cannot read “authorized for writing by rabbis.” Otherwise, the comparison of Esther to the morning star would not hold up, even for the party agreeing that the book of Esther was indeed authorized for writing.

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As we saw, the masters of the Tosfoth have just excluded the reading “authorized by rabbis” by arguing that otherwise, the Memune’s argument would not befit the comparison from which it starts, even for the first party in the Memune. What it means, however, is that either the reading of the Talmudic apology of Shmuel or the whole record in the Memune is about to fall apart. It is at this dramatic moment that the masters of Tosfoth cite Rabbi Elchanan’s defense, which saves the Memune argument from falling apart without, however, destroying the current reading of the Talmudic apology of Shmuel. What Rabbi Elchanan contributes is that the writing of Chanukah and of the book of Esther are on a sliding scale of strictness: The writing of the book of Esther is more important, since it requires leather sewing, lining up, and other things that are not required in writing of Chanukah in the scroll of Taanith. As a result, the comparison between Esther and the morning star stands, and the rereading of the Talmudic apology of Shmuel is not destroyed, either. The comparison holds even for the party who said it was the rabbis, not the Holy Spirit, who authorized the writing of the book of Esther. In addition, and as the main result of the whole inquiry, the reading of the Talmudic apology of Shmuel does not fall apart either, since Shmuel holds reading the book to be authorized by the Holy Spirit and the writing of it to be authorized by the rabbis. 23. In the printed edition, the Tosfoth links this saying not to Shmuel, but to Rabbi Yoh.anan. (See my translation above.) 24. “Reading” here means “rearticulation.” 25. Urbach, Efraim Elimemlech. The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. 26. Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II–IV Centuries C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942). 27. See David Daube, Collected Works of David Daube, Studies in Comparative Legal History (Berkeley, Calif.: Robbins Collection, 1992). 28. Jack N. Lightstone, The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud: Its Social Meaning and Context (Waterloo, Ont: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1994). 29. For an analysis of relationships between the Mishnaic sages, Talmudic masters, and noble Roman ladies, see Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1997). See also an analysis, criticism, and further elaboration on the relationships of the characters of “sages” and “nobble ladies” in Dina Stein, “Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature,” Scripta Classica Israelica XX (2001). 30. Yerushalmi Berachot, Chapter 9, Folio 13b, Halacha A, cited from Yaacov Susman and Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden Bibliotheek, Talmud Yerushalmi:

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Yotse Le-or ’Al Pi Ketav Yad Skaliger 3 (Or. 4720) Shebe-Sifriyat Ha-Universiòtah Shel Laiden ’Im Tashlamot Ve-Tikunim (Jerusalem: ha-Akademyah le-Lashon ha-’Ivrit, 2001), Folio 13b in the manuscript; Column 68, lines 20–25 in Susman’s edition. 31. See Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II–IV Centuries C.E. 32. Phaedrus: 228a–c (Jowett Translation): “Socrates. I believe that I know Phaedrus about as well as I know myself, and I am very sure that the speech of Lyseas was repeated to him, not once only, but again and again;—he insisted on hearing it many times over and Lyseas was very willing to gratify him; at last, when nothing else would do, he got hold of the book, and looked at what he most wanted to see,—this occupied him during the whole morning;—and then when he was tired with sitting, he went out to take a walk, not until, by the dog, as I believe, he had simply learned by heart the entire discourse, unless it was unusually long, and he went to a place outside the wall that he might practice his lesson. There he saw a certain lover of discourse who had a similar weakness;—he saw and rejoiced; now thought he, [228c] ‘I shall have a partner in my revels.’ And he invited him to come and walk with him. But when the lover of discourse begged that he would repeat the tale, he gave himself airs and said, ‘No I cannot,’ as if he were indisposed; although, if the hearer had refused, he would sooner or later have been compelled by him to listen whether he would or no. Therefore, Phaedrus bid him do at once what he will soon do whether bidden or not.” 33. Megillah 28a:

hyl wrmaw wta bykçw [(atpswtw) yrpysw arpys] atklh ynt ywhd awhh ylmd anx [ya] (yh) hydpsn ykyh rma rm hydpsyl [qjxy rb] ˜mjn brl (rsjd ) [arpys ] yrpys [A person, who taught (tni) halakha, sifra, and sifre, and tosephta, died. People came to R. Nah.man asking to eulogize him. He refused, saying, “How should I eulogize him?—What a basket full of books (tzna dmli sifri) did we lose?!”]

34. See Bavli, Horayot, 2b. 35. Cf. Aristotle’s indication of the role of the orator to put a judge in a set of mind in which the judge will decide on a past event whether it has happened or not, as well as on a future event, whether it will happen or not, in Rhetoric 1354b: “But questions as to whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will not be, is or is not, must of necessity be left to the judge, since the law giver cannot foresee them. If this is so, it is evident that any one who lays down rules about other matters, such as what must be the content of the ‘introduction’ or the ‘narration’ or any of the other divisions of a speech, is theorizing about non-essentials as if they belonged to the art. The only question with which these

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writers here deal is how to put the judge into a given frame of mind. About the orator’s proper modes of persuasion they have nothing to tell us; nothing, that is, about how to gain skill in Enthymemes.” Aristotle, and Richard Peter McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle. 2001, 1326. Thus putting the judge into a given frame of mind about what has happened, i.e. reinvention of the events is one of the basic tasks studied in rhetoric. 36. Kaufman Manuscript of the Mishnah, Megillah, Chapter 1, Mishnah 14, Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts [picture] (Hebrew University of Jerusalem [cited February 29, 2004]); available from http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud/ mishna/showmish.asp?mishnanum=9&pereknum=0&masecet=21; see also TB Megillah, 8a. 37. The translation is mine. 38. I refer here to diversity in recording or penning the same set of idioms or linguistic expressions in different alphabets, not to translating or transforming it from one language into another. 39. Mishnah, Kaufman Manuscript (Budapest Akademia MS A 50), Yaddaim, Chapter 4, Mishnah 5. 40. Talmud Bavli, British Library [picture] (Hebrew University of Jerusalem [cited February 29, 2004]); available from http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud/ bavly/showbav1.asp?mishnanum=1&pereknum=008&masecet=21_7&numpek =&mnusriptnum=4752&p=1. 41. Was the term “language” a reference to a system of linguistic signs and paradigms capable of producing a potential infinity of speeches constituting what is today called a “national language”—Greek, French, Hebrew or any other object of modern linguistics? Alternatively, and less theoretically, did the term “language” refer only to a finite, previously known set of the writings on record? Further, were the terms “writing” and “recording” interchangeable, or did they distribute their meanings differently, so that “writing” linked itself to “language,” the known set of speeches, while “recording” was only a secondary transformation of them? Furthermore, did “Greek” refer to writing/recording; or was it a characterization of an oral language? Finally, and mostly crucially, did “Assyrian” refer to a “language,” or only to a type or lettering, or, to a record, or to writing? To summarize these questions in a bigger question: Was a difference in writing a mere synecdoche for a “substantial” difference in languages, and recording a mere technicality of writing? Alternatively, was not the difference in languages, this synecdoche for substantially different languages, a synecdoche with no other substance in it, that is, without any substantial languages behind the differences in writing? 42. A version of the theoretical difference between meaning and sense can be found in Levinas’s essay of 1964, called “Meaning and Sense.” Levinas makes a strong distinction between (1) philological meaning, either “literal” meaning

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or metaphorical/metonymical meaning, including moral meaning as well, and (2) sense, which he always sees as primarily ethical and also ontological. See Emmanuel Lévinas et al., “Meaning and Sense,” in Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings, Studies in Continental Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). In my present argument I ally with Levinas in his departure from the philological territory of meaning and lending in the fields of sense. However, relating to Talmudic arguments, I connect sense to the economy of rhetorical exchange between finite parties rather than to the ethical-ontological dimension of the relationship of a human being to his or her Other. 43. For the convenience of future reference I mark the translation with numbers. 44. Rabbi Dr I. Epstein, ed., Megillah Translated into English . . . by Maurice Simon, M.A., Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino Press, 1990), 8b–9a. Formatting is modified. Brackets are of the translator. 45. Cf. Aristotle, De Interpretatione 16a. 1–9: “Spoken words are the symbols of experiences or passions of thinking (te pshyche pathematon symbola) and recorded words (graphomena) are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those matters (pragmata), of which our experiences are the images”; Aristotle, Categories and De Interpretations, Aristotle, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle, 40. I modified the terminology of the translation according to that in my argument and provided the original terms in parentheses. 46. Both Russian formalism and structuralist theory taught us, regardless of any specific ramifications of content, that there can always be found a more general form of it. Thus, Propp’s “The Historical Form of the Fairy Tale” (see V. Propp, Istoricheskie Korni Volshebnoi Skazki [Saint Petersburg: Izd-vo S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 1996]) is an example of such an invariable form of content irreducible to variety of content itself. Yet as Deleuze suggests, beyond this invariable form of content, and even beyond the specific material in which it is expressed, there is room for yet another form—what is absolutely unique to this specific expression as opposed to any other. It is an attention to the unique form of expression that gives us both hope for getting at a thing uniquely expressed in it and disappointment resulting from the irreducibility of what is expressed to what was on its way to expression. 47. Aryeh Cohen, “The Task of the Talmud: On Talmud as Translation,” in Paratext and Megatext as Channels of Jewish and Christian Traditions: The Textual Markers of Contextualization, ed. A. den Hollander, Ulrich Schmid, Willem F. Smelik, and Society of Biblical Literature, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series (Leiden and Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2003), 97. 48. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 21. 49. Ibid.

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chapter 5: THE WAYS OF THE TALMUD in its rhetorical dimension: a performative analytical description

1. The implicit explained in such an explanation is not logically implicit, but rather is rhetorically implicit or a position, oration not mentioned explicitly but refuted implicitly. 2. If my hypothesis is justifiable, Canpanton did not immediately follow Maimonides’ version of Aristotelian causality, which was limited by formal and material causes only. Note also that, for Canpanton, unlike Maimonides’ early tractate ˜wyghh twlym (Logical Terminology) there can be no “neutral” orations: any valid and not mistaken speech whatsoever is assumed by Canpanton to be always already a refutation. 3. Noticeably, Canpanton’s two main parts of oration, theme and ruling, do not overlap with his concept of sentence (fpçm ). Sentence as a combination of a theme and a ruling is only a subordinate unit of an oration, not a main part of it. Of course, a separate combination—one theme and one ruling—can always be abstracted from any given oration, but such a combination rarely constitutes the actual form of it; neither does it prevail over the dynamic and often very complicated relations between various themes with regard to the same ruling and various rulings with regard to the same theme. In addition, sentence cannot be the main part of oration, because oration may intrinsically include differentiated affinities in topos which, by definition, do not coincide with any theme, either explicitly stated or grammatically implied. Also, in Canpanton, any oration coincludes doubt, which it should to eliminate, and, again by definition, such a doubt can not be expressed in the sentence designed to eliminate it. Due to this element of nonexpressed doubt, even a simple combination of one theme and one ruling is, by definition, more than a mere sentence. Besides this, neither theme nor ruling can fully comply with grammatical subject and predicate, the elements of the sentence. The latter pair relate to neither the differentiated affinities nor doubts; neither the concepts of subject nor predicate can comprise oration as not only an assertion (either positive or negative), but also as always already a refutation or an elimination of doubt. Ultimately, unlike the pair of theme and ruling, the pair of subject and predicate characterizes a positive linguistic expression given for a positive meaning. The latter can stand alone outside of any polemical situation or any disagreement; the former is always already involved in polemical exchanges. It is this very lack of account for disagreement that prevents the arts of logic and grammar from comprising the oration in full. For both of the arts, any disagreement is either a mistake to correct or a private opinion to respect, in the sense of “to ignore.” In contrast, Canpanton’s contemplation not only treats refutation as a fundamental feature of any oration or saying, but also seeks to discern between false and true disagreement. The former is a result of mistakes and can

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be cleaned up, while the latter should remain standing even after the logical and grammatical cleaning, as well as after all attempts to have one of the sides refuted. Unlike mistakes, true disagreements involve a transition to differentiated affinities in topoi, a process that neither logic nor grammar can fully control. 4. Such Talmudic procedures as exemption, inclusion, and ˜ytyntmd aqwyd would belong to the invention in the register of the plain, which only eliminates doubts of a careful reader who does not yet disagree with another reader, as opposed to the invention in exaction, which occurs on the level of well-structured disagreement, reached through the process of expounding. 5. The principle of limited applicability of logic parallels Aristotle’s limited applicability of dialectics for the art of rhetoric. Although a master of dialectics is the first to understand rhetorical syllogisms or enthymemes, the latter are not reducible to dialectical syllogisms, demanding instead an art of their own, the art of rhetoric. The dialectician is the best candidate for a rhetorician, but to become a rhetorician, a dialectician does need new training. 6. I interpret the term çwdj and its correlatives through the term invention, which I borrow from the theory of rhetoric, in which it means both finding out and persuasively presenting it as if it has always been there. Thus, for instance, in his De Inventione, Cicero considers invention the most important of all the divisions of oration (invention of a position making one dispute the other position, arrangement of oration itself, elocution—the choice of words and expressions, and delivery—the orator’s intonation, gestures, etc.). He defines invention as “conceiving of topics, either true or probable, which may make one’s cause [of disagreement—S.D.] appear probable” (De Inv. VII, transl. by C. D. Yonge, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero Literally translated by C. D. Yonge [London: George Bell, 1888], Vol. 4, 241–380). For Cicero invention is that which makes one’s oration worth of being made: if there is no topic that makes one’s oration competitive against one’s adversary, the oration is not effective, even if one has a good cause to dispute. 7. Pages 21–22. From here on the pagination of Canpanton’s book appears in parentheses and refers to the I. Lange edition of The Ways of the Talmud: Canpanton, Isaac ben Jacob, Isaak S. Lange, and Shemuel al V.alensi. Darkhe ha-Talmud. Jerusalem: Y. Sh. Lange, 1980. 8. Getting the language precisely or grammatically correct occurs somewhere between the written language and the matter or topos assumed to correlate with it. This is not a correlation between words and their meaning, because the latter is always expressible through other words. Rather, so-called “grammatical” precision is in fact not a grammatical, but rather a rhetorical, operation, in which one follows the topos, the matter, the line of argument, or else one puts oneself in the rhetorical place from which the statement was made. Just as Velasquez puts

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the spectator in the position of the painter and ultimately in the position of the king (see Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith [New York: Pantheon Books, 1972], so also it is only, as-it-were, “grammatical” precision that can deal with putting a student in the position of the master of a given argument so that the student can attune himself to the matter that made the master speak so precisely as he did. 9. The term may refer to a scriptural phrase, which is often considered the source of any sense whatsoever. 10. The term means “different,” as is clearly the case on page 67 of the Lange edition. 11. Is this recipe not for a rhetorician? 12. This is the theory of memory as understanding. 13. Canpanton not only makes a connection to the art of logic, but also distances himself from it, just like Aristotle who, in his Rhetoric, connects rhetorical syllogism or enthymeme to a dialectical one, but carefully distinguishes the two “syllogisms,” indeed, two disciplines one from another. Canpanton does not fully ally with masters of the art of logic, admitting however, that logic is an art closest to the art of Talmudic learning. In this, he does as Aristotle does in his Rhetoric, as Aristotle does not fully ally rhetoric with dialectics, yet admits that a master of dialectics is the easiest person to master rhetorical syllogisms. 14. To sum up the terminology of this paragraph: The antecedent is getting the manifest understanding (fçp). That is to say, you start by generating your own free understanding of the orator’s language, and you check your understanding with the language; this gives you your plain understanding of the language. The consequent is précising the language. Here, you start again by understanding negative affinities the language both shapes and denies. You should inquire whether there is any invention in negative affinities. You also inquire whether there is any invention in your plain understanding. Now, if there is no invention, neither in the language nor in the negative affinities surrounding it, you should attempt to refute the language. Yet, you should not even try refuting a phrase if any invention is found either in the beginning or the ending part of it. An external judgment on the matter. See what your judgment on the matter would be without the oration of a master in either the Mishnah or the Talmud. If you yourself would judge the matter the same way as the Master did, try refuting him by “it was already plain or self-explanatory, even without your oration.” Now, if you would judge an opposite of what the master has judged, you are to search for a cause making his judgment unavoidable, and yours a bad or a weak one.

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15. Thus, for example, Canpanton writes, “çyçk yk μyanth wghn ˜klw μyfpçmh raç rmay fpçm wa ˜yd wtwa bga yk hm açwn l[ hm rbdl μhl açwn wtwab μyawçnh” [Therefore, when they said a certain word on a certain theme, by the way of this very sentence or ruling, the masters of the Mishnah used to say the rest of sentences and rulings related [lit: married, μyawçnh ] to this theme]; Lange, 51. 16. So Canpanton also has some intermediary rhetorical conclusions. 17. The Aristotelian rhetorical principle of persuasion through possible and refutation through necessary seems to be in operation in the book. This principle itself works only because one who was persuaded through possibility only already wanted to be persuaded. This element of desire to be persuaded or of the lack of persuasion organizes the basic rhetorical temporality. This looping temporality is fundamental if we accept, as a phenomenologist does, that “the unity of time is itself not timeless.” The same looping effect underlies the work of memory: when you recall something, in a nontrivial sense, you call it for the first time. When you were there you did not call it, because you were there, even if such a position of being there is never present, but is only presentable. 18. Actually the text lists only two, not three. 19. Canpanton also used the same term hmdqh as a logical designation for fçp. Hence the question: Is he referring here to fçp, as well? “Yes” seems to be a plausible answer. To undermine an antecedent could also mean to undermine the way of thinking in a phrase as it plainly appears. 20. Is he talking about two antecedents in the sense of two phrases, each of them with its own plain being? This is so if “antecedent” still refers to fçp . Alternatively, if the term “antecedent” is purely logical, then Canpanton may be talking about two premises with regard to the one and the same phrase. The last option seems to be less plausible. To clarify it, one may go over Canpanton’s example from Niddah 19a. 21. Canpanton follows almost the same wording he used when connecting the logical terms “antecedent” and “consequent” [hmdqh and hdlwt ] (see p. 26 in the Lange edition) and his own terms qwyd and fçp . On page 26, he says, “hdlwt qwydlw hmdqh fçpl warq ˜wyghh tkalm yl[bw .” He uses almost the same terms here (pages 36-37) as well: “. . . hçyjkhl wl rçpya yaçk hmdqh

wl hdwmç wa ˚çmhh rwtsl wjk lkb ldtçm μnma μhynyb tmsrwpm wa tjrkwm ayhç dxm hnmm dylwhl ˜ywkm awh rça.” 22. Thus, Canpanton describes fçp as something that may or may not fit

either the language of a text or its matter, or both. 23. Matter and theme come together as long as we are talking about a topos, atmqwa, which thus would be a correlation between the matter and the explicit theme of an oration. 24. For example, rmwjw lq is a breakable opinion (page 39), rather than a necessary judgment.

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25. The word “conclusion” is another possible way to render the concept of

qwyd in English. To employ the concept, one is to look at the word “conclusion” more literally than functionally: In addition to its common meanings, the word “conclusion” lets one understand that there is something con-cluded, or included together with something else. So, an oration that says “Paul is not wise” may include the claim that Paul is foolish, or alternatively that, in terms of his intellectual (or other) abilities, he is only an average person. Similarly, an oration that says “Now is night” coincludes the claim that now is not a daytime. Coinclusion as a procedure for making an oration coinclude other propositions should not be confused with the logical procedure of implication, which (either as part of a sentence or as a connection between sentences) follows quantitative, logical rules of referential correctness, not qualitative rhetorical rules of thinking along affinities. The procedure of making an oration coinclude another concept (the very process of making qwyd ) involves a step toward the closest affinity of a thing, not necessarily to a negative or contrasting affinity of it. And, of course, making an oration coinclude another oration should not be confused with logical rules for correct propositions or sentences, because the latter build on the relationship between propositions and matters of fact, whereas the former builds on a movement from one oration to another. This, of course, does not cancel the rules of logic, but clearly has aspects going beyond their control. This being “beyond” comes not merely out of the fact that logic has no means to define implication without a recurrence, but rather because the relations of orations in disagreement have aspects that go beyond the scope of correctness and mistake. Wise orations involve true disagreement that no correction of mistake could eliminate. 26. I render the term ayçq (lit.: “difficult”) not in accord with its logical meanings of “contradiction” or “contrariness,” but rather according to its rhetorical function of “refutation.” 27. Lange, page 55. 28. Matter is needed here as a measure of excess in the language. Theme and ruling are basic to any use of Talmudic language. 29. So matter is a topos to which a theme and ruling relate. 30. It does not say who actually uses the language, “you” or the one who explains it. 31. Lapidary language for Canpanton is obviously writing. Talmudic speech is also writing for him. 32. A logician would probably call them “strict,” “nonstrict,” and “indirect.” 33. This passage is a good example of one of the ways in which rhetoric overrides logic and grammar, because neither of the latter two can control doubt.

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34. Canpanton seems to characterize the Written Torah as the books of Torah, while relating the Oral Torah to the books of Wisdom. His note is remarkable in its obvious wrongness in the view of grammar, unless he wants to say that even the things that are grammatically requests and appeals are to be read either as agreements or as surprises or doubts. 35. The mind’s eye: another term for speculation. The mind’s eye is looking for the topos/matter of the speech. These are unusual words, so far. 36. This section is purely theoretical. It does not include any links to the language of either the Talmud or the commentators. The only example it provides is a mental model that does not come from any specific phraseology in the Talmud. 37. The point is not the same in Aramaic and in Hebrew, but rather hjnh is a term related to saying, rmam , whereas atmqwa is a term related to matter, ˜yn[. 38. Compare the Rhetoric: enthymemes are arguments of probability, not necessarily of necessity. 39. This could be developed in an analysis of the fundamental character of disagreement in Canpanton’s “linguistics.” 40. The language is the potential, jkb ; the matter is the actuality of the language, the l[wpb . 41. Part of the language has already been explained, and it seems that Canpanton had started generating a list of devices and then realized he had to give a more sophisticated outline that would bear in itself a conceptual frame (that of the “semantics” or rhetoric of doubt, disagreement, matter and language, theme and ruling), so that his initial list of devices moved to the end. Without such a conceptual frame, one can provide nothing but paraphrases of the devices, which would be of no use, since if one already knows the proper schemata of the devices, one does not need any paraphrases, and if one does not know the schemata, the paraphrases alone would not help. 42. Here we have a meta-example of what a matter is: It is a topos, or a line of argument, or the situation in which the disputants disagree. 43. If the language may or may not be said, obviously, this idiom implies that this particular language is something written. What we say about it does not have any intrinsic connection to the language of the passage: Saying in itself does not belong to that language, being rather in a realm parallel to but not overlapping it. 44. The ˜wçar lkçwm must be a fixed concept, approximately meaning the very first intelligible thing about the matter. 45. Invention (çwdj ) occurs where there is disagreement (tqwljm ).

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46. Canpanton does not say “should call,” nor does he say “I propose to call.” He does not want his idea of external judgment to be his invention, nor does he want anyone to argue with or to disagree about this concept. 47. Unlike Plato, Canpanton does not distinguish between judgment and opinion, because he does not assume that there can be an opinion without a judgment, either extraneous or true. It is not the opposition of true and false that makes the heuristic of speculation possible, but rather the dynamic of entering the topos from the outside. 48. Obviously, this is not in a grammatical sense of the term. 49. Lange, 72. 50. Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Baltimore, Md. and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 51. Baba Mez.ia, 39ab. I exposed this Talmudic fragment in the aspect relevant to the issue of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd . For a more general exposition of the text, one can go to Soncino’s English translation: “R. Huna said: A minor is not permitted to enter upon a captive’s estates, nor the next of kin upon a minor’s estates, nor a next of kin of a next of kin upon a minor’s estates. A minor is not permitted to enter upon a captive’s estates,” lest he injure them. Nor a next of kin of a next of kin upon a minor’s estates—this refers to a brother on the mother’s side. Nor a next of kin upon a minor’s estates: since he [the minor cannot protest, he may take presumptive possession thereof. Said Raba: It follows from R. Huna’s dictum that one cannot claim presumptive ownership of a minor’s estate [39b], even if he attained his majority.” I. Epstein, ed., Baba Mezia, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino Press, 1962), 39a–39b. 52. Ketuboth, 15b–16a. R. Joshua admits that, if one says to his fellow, “This field belonged to your father and I bought it from him,” he is believed, [16a] for the mouth that bound is the mouth that loosens. But if there are witnesses that it belonged to his father and he says, “I bought it from him,” he is not believed.” I. Epstein, ed., Ketuboth, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino Press, 1971), 15b–16a. 53. Ketuboth 17b. [“]And R. Joshua admits that if one says to his fellow etc.[.”] But let him teach: R. Joshua admits that in [the case when] one says to his fellow, “this field belonged to you and I have bought it of you” [he is believed]?— Because he would have to teach [in] the last close: If there are witness that it was his and he says “I have bought it of you,” he is not believed. [And] how shall we imagine this case? If he ate [the fruits of] it [during the years of h. azak. ah why should he not be believed? And if he did not eat [the fruits of] it [during the] years of h. azak. ah it is self evident that he is not believed.—If so, with regard to his father also [one could argue]: If he ate [the fruits of] it [during the years of h. azak. ah] why should he not be believed? And if he did not eat [the fruits of] it

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[during the] years of h. azak. ah it is self-evident that he is not believed! We grant you with regard to his father, [because] there may be a case, as, for instance, when he ate [the fruits of] it two [years] during the life of the father and one year during the life of his son. And this would be according to R. Huna, for R. Huna said: One does not acquire the ownership of the property of a minor by the undisturbed possession of it during the prescribed period, even if [he] continued in the possession after the minor had become of age. But R. Huna comes to let us hear [what is already taught in] our Mishnah!—If you wish, you may say, R. Huna says, “what is to be derived from our Mishnah by implication.” And if you wish, you may say, “he let us hear, even if he had become of age.” Ibid, 17b. 54. A similar use of ˜ytyntmd aqwyd , limiting it to explicating what was assumed to be implicitly stated in the Mishnah without any immediate element of invention in disagreement, can be also found in TB Shabbath, 37b. The discussion there concerns the Mishnah, which says that at the time close to Shabbath, a cooked food may be put on a stove heated with straw or stubble, but neither with marc nor with wood, unless the stove is cleaned of the coals or covered with ashes. The same Mishnah reports the school of Shamai to limit all this to water, and not to the food, while the school of Hillel to extend all this to both water and food. It is also reported there that the school of Shamai permits removing the things from the stove, but not to replace them back on it, whereas the school of Hillel permits replacing as well. In the passage of the Talmud, which will be in our focus now, R. Shesheth brings an oration of R. Joh.anan, and draws a conclusion from it. He reports R. Joh.anan said a person may leave halfwarmed water and half cooked food on the burning stove, yet if taken off, those things should no longer be replaced back on the stove, unless the stove does not burn anymore. As R. Shesheth holds it, R. Joh.anan thought the Mishnah related to replacing the things back on the burning stove, but not to leaving the things on it; therefore R. Joh.anan implicitly taught that one can leave those things on the stove even if it still burns. Regarding the conclusion R. Shesheth has drawn from the words of R. Joh.anan, Raba notes: These very rules on both leaving and replacing the things on the burning stove were already taught by the sages in other places— either implicitly, or even explicitly. As for leaving the things on the burning stove the sages taught “One should not put bread in the oven close to darkness, neither a cake on the coils, unless there is time sufficient for forming a crust,” which implies that if the crust is already formed one may leave the cake in the oven. Again, as for replacing these things back on the stove, the sages taught ‘The School of Hillel taught one can even have it replaced, (though only on the stove which does not burn anymore).’ Since all this was already—implicitly or explicitly—taught by the sages, R. Shesheth had also brought it as a self-obvious implication about replacing the things on the cooling stove, Raba suggests.

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According to Rashi, in Raba’s opinion, R. Shesheth brought this implication for showing that the Mishnah mattered not only for leaving the things on the burning stove, but also for replacing them on the cooling one, which lets him narrow the restrictive power of anonymous clauses in it. Tosfoth, however, suggested that R. Shesheth did not bring any implication from the sages’ ruling on the stove, but rather came up with a more precise formulation (if not emendation) of the Mishnah itself. Their interpretation suggests, by the way, that like Canpanton himself, the Tosfoth do not feel comfortable with understanding ˜ytyntmd aqwyd as a simple explication of what has been taught implicitly. An option of emendation seems for them to be more attractive. At any rate, both in Rashi and in Tosfoth, ˜ytyntmd aqwyd means a mere process of explication of something which had been assumed to be already taught by a sage in the Mishnah, though only implicitly. Therefore, unlike Canpanton, aqyd ˜ytyntmd is completely detached here from the agenda of making an invention. The relevant passage from TB Shabbath 37b is translated in the Soncino edition of the Talmud as follows: “R. Shesheth said in R. Joh.anan’s name: If a stove is fired with peat or wood, hot water insufficiently heated, and a dish insufficiently cooked, may be kept upon it. But if he [the owner] removed [them], he must not replace [them] before he sweeps or covers [it] with ashes. Thus he holds that we learnt our Mishnah with respect to replacing, but keeping is permitted even if it is not swept or covered with ashes. Said Raba: We learnt both: We learned with respect to keeping: ‘Bread may not be set in an oven before nightfall, nor a cake set upon coals, unless its surface can form a crust while it is yet day.’ Hence if its surface formed a crust, it is permitted. With respect to replacing we also learnt: ‘Beth Hillel rule: we may replace too.’ Now Beth Hillel permits it only when it is swept or covered with ashes.—R. Shesheth indeed informs us of the deduction of the Mishnah [˜ytyntmd aqwyd ]”; TB Shabbath, 37b, Soncino translation (1938), 174. 55. TB Shabbath, 92b. “Mishnah. If one intends to carry out [an object] in front of him, but it works round behind him, he is not culpable; behind him, but it works round before him, he is culpable. [. . .]” Gemara. What is the difference in [intending to carry it] ‘before him, but it works round behind him’, that ‘he is not culpable?’ [Presumably] because his intention was not fulfilled! But then [if he intended to carry it] ‘behind him, but it works round before him,’ [there] too his intention was not fulfilled!—Said R. Eleazar: There is a contradiction: he who learned the one, did not learn the other. Raba said: But what is the difficulty: perhaps [where he intended to carry] ‘before him, but it works round behind him,’ this is the reason that ‘he is not culpable,’ because he intended a strong vigilance whereas he succeeded [in giving it only] a weak vigilance; but [if he intended to carry it] ‘behind him, but it worked round before him,’ this is the reason that ‘he is culpable,’ because he intended [only] a weak vigilance

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whereas he succeeded [in giving it] a strong vigilance. But then, what is [R. Eleazar’s] difficulty? The implications of the Mishnah are [his] difficulty: ‘if one intends to carry out [an object] in front of him, but it works round behind him, he is not culpable’: hence [if he intends to carry it] behind him and it comes behind him, he is culpable. Then consider the second clause: ‘behind him, but it worked round before him,’ only then ‘he is culpable:’ hence [if he intends to carry it] behind him and it comes behind him, he is not culpable?—‘Said R. Eleazar. There is a contradiction: he who learned the one did not learn the other’” (Soncino translation: Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud/ Translated into English with Notes, Glossary and Indices by Maurice Simon, under the Editorship of I. Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1965–1994). 56. Idem. 57. Idem. 58. Idem. chapter 6: the art of disagreement

1. Jacques Rancière, Dis-Agreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), xi. 2. Hermann Cohen and Albert Görland, Logik Der Reinen Erkenntniss (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1902), 131. For Cohen, as well as later on for Heidegger, there is no past without a future. In Heidegger’s famous version of this position, time comes from the future. I am very grateful to Robert Gibbs for a very fruitful discussion we had in relation to Cohen’s view of time and messianism. 3. Martin Heidegger and Joan Stambaugh, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996). 4. Published in Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Studies in Continental Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 193–208. 5. As Plato nearly admits in his Sophist through a reference to Parmenides, the ontological choice of being versus non-being and the respective refusal to grant any being to non-being was not much more than an act of will, nor of necessity; Sophist, 237a. “This statement involves the bold assumption that notbeing exists, for otherwise falsehood could not come into existence. But the great Parmenides, my boy, from the time when we were children to the end of his life, always protested against this and constantly repeated both in prose and in verse: Never let this thought prevail, saith he, that not-being is; But keep your mind from this way of investigation.”

316

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In Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12, trans. Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921). Cited from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plat.+Soph.+237a. 6. Martin Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist, Studies in Continental Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 7. Edmund Husserl and Dermot Moran, Logical Investigations, International Library of Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2001); Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998). 8. See Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004). 9. Ibid., 16. 10. See Ibid., 89–102. 11. De Interpretatione, 16a, in Aristotle, Harold Percy Cooke, and Hugh Tredennick, The Catagories: On Interpretation, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 325 (London and Cambridge, Mass.: W. Heinemann, Harvard University Press, 1983), 125. 12. In Part VI, where Aristotle expounds on his initial mention of affirmation (apophansis) as quoted, he explains the need in a definition of affirmation “in view of the puzzles propounded by importunate Sophists”; ibid. They have failed to distinguish between contradictory and contrary, resulted in opposing two affirmations, which in the (for him) desirable case of philosophical governance of thought over speech should not stand in opposition. 13. Ibid. 14. See Whitaker, C. W. Aristotle’s De interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic, Oxford Aristotle Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). 15. See Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism (New York: Zone Books, 1988). 16. Husserl, Edmund, and Dermot Moran, Logical Investigations, International Library of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2001). 17. Deleuze, Bergsonism, 13. 18. Ibid., 17. 19. Deleuze, Gilles, and Fèlix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 20. David Halivni, Mekorot U-Masorot: Beurim Ba-Talmud: Masekhet Shabat (Jerusalem: Bet ha-midrash le-rabanim ba-Amerikah, 1982). 21. This was discussed in Chapter 2 of the present work. 22. The project of hermeneutics of Dasein emerges already in Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist. It develops further in his Sein und Zeit; see Heidegger and Stambaugh, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit. 23. I thank Daniel Boyarin for communicating this information in conversation. What I received from him was an example of an oral tradition from

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his teacher, in the sense in which traditions are transmitted in the ways of the Talmud. 24. Edmund Husserl, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum Phanomenologischen Ursprung der Raumlichkeit der Natur,” in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940). 25. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). 26. See Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Andrew G. Bjelland, and Patrick Burke, The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2001). 27. Derrida, Jacques. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 17–19. 28. Ibid.

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index

Abulafia, Hezekiah David, 115 Abun (Rabbi), 149 active intellect, 66–68, 271–72; Aristotle and, 65, 252–53; and invention and refutation, 84 affections, Aristotole on, 251, 253 affinity, 89; and truth, 110 Agamben, Giorgio, 248 agreement: Aristotle and, 249–53; assumption of attainability of, 237; Deleuze and, 254–60; Plato and, 242–49; time of, 267–73; Western philosophy of, 233 Aha (Rabbi), 149 Albek, Chanoch, 261 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 65 Al Farabi, 91–92 Al Gazali, 99–100 allegorical reading, 22 antecedent, 75, 197, 308n14 anthropology: Aristotle and, 249–53; Canpanton and, 240–67; contemporary, 263–67; Deleuze and, 254–60; and hermeneutics, 261–63; Plato and, 242–49 argument. See Talmudic argument

Aristotelianism: and Canpanton, 72–73; diversity in, 73; and external judgment, 88; and rhetoric, 147–48; versus Talmudic discussion, 167 Aristotle, 64–65, 249–53, 296n51; on orality, 305n45; and philosophy, 23, 152; on refutation, 99; and rhetoric, 42, 77; on thought, 67–68 art of Talmud, 12, 69–116; concept of, 118–19; definition of, 113; and disagreement, 233–73; example of, 113–16, 127–47; mind and, 265–66; procedure in, 168–69 Ashi (Rav), 46, 165 Asi (Rav), 131–32 attributes: expression and, 51; Spinoza on, 36, 38 Augustine, 261 Babylonian Talmud, 8, 39, 170–71. See also Talmud becoming, and temporality, 84 being, 267–73; Deleuze on, 157; Heidegger on, 19–20, 22, 60. See also Dasein; ontology Benjamin bar Yafet (Rabbi), 131 Berab, Y. (Rabbi), 127, 133, 137–47

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Index

Bergson, Henri, 242, 254–60 Berlin, Naftali Zvi Yehuda (Rabbi), 245 Bialik, H. N., 9 body, 267; anthropological dimension of, 264–65 Boethius, 78 book, Talmud as, 8 Boyarin, Daniel: on Canpanton, 72–75, 97, 291n5, 316n23; on explication, 112; on external judgment, 86–88, 90, 110; on mistakes, 101; on refraining, 99–100; on Sidilio, 295n40; on speculation, 73, 78–79, 83 Brentano, Franz, 66–67, 78, 287n69 Canpanton, Yitzchak (Rabbi; Gaon of Castalia), 26, 288n2; and art of disagreement, 233–73; Deleuze and, 33–34, 39–41; Derrida and, 173–76; and exaction from radical past, 158–73; on explication, 111–12, 112t; on imagination, 93; instructions for student of Talmud, 78–79; and metaphysics, 154–55; on nature of Talmud, 12; and philosophy, 23, 71–82; and Spinoza, 34–37; on Talmud as event, 117–76; and temporization, 30–32; terminology of, 96t, 195t. See also Ways of the Talmud Caro, Joseph, 10 Cassirer, Ernst, 17–18, 242, 262 Chananel, Rabbenu, 11 Cicero, 79, 292n17 clarifications, nature of, 207–12 Cohen, Arye, 170 Cohen, Hermann, 9, 238, 276n1 commentaries, rationale for, 97–98 concepts, Deleuze on, 259 conclusion: term, 310n25; of The Ways of the Talmud, 113–16, 221–22 consequent, 75, 193, 197, 308n14 contemplation. See speculation contradiction. See refutation culture: artifact of, Talmud as, 9; concept of, 15–17; criticisms of, 17–18; Greek, sages and, 150

Dasein, 262–64, 268–69; Heidegger on, 17–18; term, 269–70. See also being Daube, David, 148 dawn, Esther as, 131–34, 139 deconstruction, 19–20; term, 126 deduction, versus exaction, 223–29, 229t De Interpretatione (Aristotle), 249–53 Deleuze, Gilles, 25, 52, 254–60; on being, 157; on event, 118, 121, 123; on expression, 32–34, 50, 107, 156; and Spinoza, 37–41 de Man, Paul, 54–55 denial, 205–6; and disagreement, 206–7 Derrida, Jacques, 19, 21, 25, 123; on being, 268–69; and Canpanton, 125– 26; on différance, 173–76, 298n10; on time, 28–32; on written and oral, 53–56, 124–26 Descartes, René, 38, 58–59, 67 dialogue, Plato and, 242–49 différance, 28–29, 173–76, 298n10 difficulty. See refutation Dimitrovski, Chaim, 263–67, 291n5 disability, 43–47 disagreement, 92–103; art of, 233–73; causes in, 187–88, 199–200; denial and, 206–7; impersonal nature of, 104–5; versus misunderstanding, 236; sages and, 154; teaching, 49–50; theory on, 189 doe, Esther as, 131–34, 139 doxa, 234–35 dynamic thinking, Bergson on, 254 East, and rhetoric, 20–22 editorial voice, of Talmud, 171 Elazar (Rabbi), 131–32 Eliyahu (Gaon Rabbi; Vilna Gaon), 8 Elkhanan (Rabbi), 134, 145 enthymeme, 42–43, 65, 77; and exaction, 188; external judgment and, 85–92 epistemology, Canpanton and, 186 essence: expression and, 51; Spinoza on, 39–41 Esther, status of, 127–47 ethnocentrism, and metaphysics, 20–21

Index event: rabbinic authority and, 126–28; Talmud as, 117–76; term, 118 exaction, 26–27, 193, 195–96; Deleuze and, 39–41; and disagreement, 239; on Esther, 137–47; and expression, 33–34; versus implication/deduction from Mishnah, 223–29, 229t; importance of, 188; and invention, 80; mechanism of, 181; procedure in, 185; from radical past, 158–73; and recollection, 49; speculation and, 75–77; and temporization, 30–32; term, 223, 279n20 exclusion, 43–47 exegesis, hermeneutics and, 260–61 explanations, nature of, 207–12 explication, Sidilio versus Canpanton on, 111–12, 112t expounding, 186; series of, 189 expression, 28, 33–34; Canpanton on, 107–10; characteristics of, 51–52; Deleuze on, 38–41, 107, 156; and event, 124; Husserl on, 246; and learning, 43–47; and ontology, 106–7; and recollection, 47–49; and Talmud, 52–53, 156–60, 171–73 extension, 36, 110 exteriority, inside, 110–13 external judgment, 85–92, 96; and mistakes, 101–2; and refutation, 99; term, 87, 308n14 failures, 101, 103 film, relation to novel, 156–57 first rationalism, 92; term, 295n32 forgetting, Heidegger on, 19–20, 22, 60 form: of argument, Talmudic, 156–58; Deleuze on, 39–41; exaction and, 27–28; terms, 281n37 Freud, Sigmund, 25 Geiger, Abraham, 9 Gemüt, term, 269 grammar, 87, 116, 307n8 Greek culture, sages and, 150 Guttman, Julius, 9

329

Habiba, Joseph, 10 Halivni, David, 261 heaven, help from, and speculation, 185 Hegel, G. W. F., 284n57 Heidegger, Martin: on being, 121, 262–64, 268; on culture, 17–18; Derrida on, 53–54, 173; on logic, 27; on memory, 60–61; and metaphysics, 18–25; and Plato, 242–44, 247; and Talmud, 14 hermeneutics, 121–22, 261–63; Aristotle and, 249–53; Canpanton and, 240–67; Deleuze and, 254–60; and exegesis, 260–61; terminology in, 96t heuristics, of contemporary anthropology, 263–67 hidden, term, 202 homonymy, 91–92, 96, 100, 295n35 human being: concept of, 239, 241. See also anthropology Huna (Rav), 223 Husserl, Edmund, 173, 245–47, 255, 264 Ibn Sidilio, Shmuel, 81, 93–94, 295n40; on explication, 111–12, 112t imagination: and disagreement, 92–103; Maimonides on, 35 implication, versus exaction, 223–29, 229t implicit: exteriority and, 110–13; and external judgment, 89; term, 89–90 incoherence, 285n59 intuition: Bergson on, 254–58; Deleuze on, 255–56 invention, 82–85; Canpanton on, 79–80; and causes of oration, 184–85; definition of, 181; and disagreement, 239; principles of, 190–93; rhetoric and, 80–82; term, 80, 292n17, 307n6 Jewish identity, 16–17 Judah (Rabbi), 165 judgment, and memory, 59, 285n58 Kant, Immanuel, 99, 277n7 Kantzenelenson, L., 285n58

330

Index

Kavka, Martin, 3 Kultur, 17 language, 51–52; Canpanton and, 95–96, 96t; Derrida on, 124–25; and external judgment, 90–92; in Mishnah, 160–68; in Talmud, 26, 214–21; term, 90, 182, 304n41; types of, 209; written and oral, 53–56 lapidary speech, 204–5, 310n31 learning, 234–36; levels of, 46–47; versus sensing, 43–47; term, 234, 277n2. See also Talmudic learning Levinas, Emmanuel, 25, 40, 50, 63, 148; Derrida on, 53, 173; on meaning, 304n42; on past, 175–76; and Talmud, 287n64 Lieberman, Saul, 148, 150 Lightstone, Jack N., 148 logic: Canpanton and, 308n13; de Man on, 54; Heidegger on, 27; and ontology, 106–10; and rhetoric, 43; and speculation, 73, 81–85; on status of Esther, 129–30; Talmud and, 26, 74–77; terminology in, 96t, 195t; and wisdom, 113–15 logos, and text, 122–23 Lyotard, Jean-François, 25 Maimonides: and Canpanton, 34–35; on composition, 57; on imagination, 92; on language, 90; on Mishnah, 58; on philosophy, 23; on Talmud as origin, 10 Mar Zutra, 46 material intellect, 65–66 matter, Canpanton and, 90–91, 95–96, 96t, 183 meaning: external judgment and, 91–92; Levinas on, 304n42 memory: Heidegger on, 60–61; judgment and, 285n58; writing in, 56–62 Meno (Plato), 234–36 mental affections, Aristotole on, 253 metaphysics: Canpanton and, 103–8; Derrida and, 53–56; post-Heideggerian,

18–25; sages and, 154–55; and Talmud, 151 middle term: and argument, 200–1; isolation of, 189; rules of, 212–14 Mikra, 86, 162–67 Mill, John Stuart, 285n58 mind, and art of Talmud, 265–66 miracles, Esther and, 131–32, 145 Mishnah, 158–73; Maimonides on, 58; and Talmud, 123 mistakes, 100–1, 103; concept of, 99–100; term, 101 misunderstanding, versus disagreement, 236 modi, 52; Spinoza on, 36 Nachmanides, 210–12 Nachman (Rab), 151–52 Nahman b. Isaac (Rabbi), 165–66 necessity: and reader, 104–5; and refutation, 186, 197 neo-Kantianism, 14–16, 266 non-being, Deleuze on, 256 novel, relation to film, 156–57 objection. See refutation Odysseus, 20 ontology, 19–22; Canpanton and, 103–8; Deleuze and, 40, 50; expression and, 106–10; and hermeneutics, 261–63; Plato and, 242–49; and Talmud, 26, 62–64. See also being orality, 170–71, 174, 271; Aristotle on, 305n45; Derrida on, 29, 53–56, 124–26; and disagreement, 187–88; and writing in memory, 56–62 oration, Talmudic, 159–73, 188–89; causes in, 183–87; exchange of, 185–86; invention in, 80–82; parts of, 293n18, 306n3 Pappa (Rabbi), 165–66 passive intellect: Aristotle on, 64–65; and invention and refutation, 84 persuasion, 81–82, 252 Phaedrus (Plato), 303n32

Index philology, 119–23; term, 2 Philo of Alexandria, 22 philosophy: of agreement, 233; Canpanton and, 71–82, 118, 240–67; Levinas on, 63–64; rabbinic authority and, 126, 147–58; and rhetoric, 18–25; Talmud and, 14–68 phonologocentrism, 124 pilpul, 87, 288n1, 290n3, 291n5, 296n44 plain meaning, 180–82, 193; temporization and, 30–31; term, 79, 280n30, 280n32 Plato, 125, 147, 242–49, 303n32, 315n5; on enthymeme, 42; on learning, 234–36; on writing, 54–55 postponement, precept of, 120–21 poststructuralism, 18–19; and philosophy, 24; and Talmud, 25; transition to, 282n37 premises, establishment of, 98–99 problematic inquiries, 202 Propp, V., 305n46 psychoanalysis, and Talmudic process, 174–75 rabbinic authority: and event, 126–28; and philosophy, 126, 147–58; status of, 146 Rabinovicz, Raphael Nathan Nata, 9 radical past, 84, 108, 244, 260, 266, 294n22; and disagreement, 102–6; exaction from, 158–73. See also temporality Rancière, Jacques, 236 Rashi, 11, 285n59 rationality: Canpanton and, 34–36; and memory, 59; and Talmud, 7, 11–12; terminology in, 295n32 Rava, 168, 223, 227 reader: Canpanton and, 31, 78–79; as not necessary, 104–5 recollection, 47–49; and Mishnah, 169; Plato on, 235 record, 120; term, 297n3 refraining, 99–100

331

refutation, 81–85, 99; on Esther, 134–37; exaction and, 137–47; implicit, 110–13; necessity and, 186, 197; sages and, 154; second, 188, 203; support against, 212–14 rhetoric, 18–25, 34, 42–43, 64; Derrida on, 55–56; and disagreement, 92–103; and exaction, 77; on invention, 79–82; rabbinic authority and, 126, 147–58; of Talmudic learning, 52; in The Ways of the Talmud, 179–229 Rishonim, 11 Romm family, 8 rulings, 293n18, 306n3; ways of knowing, 198–99 sages, 11; and philosophy, 22–25; and sophists, 147–58; term, 294n23 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 55, 124–25 science, Talmud and, 15 scientific philology, 119–23 second rationalism, term, 295n32 semantics, 106 semiology, 29 sentence: concept of, 293n18, 306n3; term, 194 Sherira Gaon, Rav, 11 Shmuel, and Esther, 127–31 sign, Derrida on, 29 Simeon b. Gamaliel (Rabbi), 164 Simeon b. Laqish (Rabbi), 149 Simon, Maurice, 163 Socrates, 20, 151–52 Sokoloff, Michael, 23 Soloveichik, Hayim (Rabbi of Brisk), 23, 245 Sophist (Plato), 243–44, 315n5 sophistry/Sophists, 20, 119–20; Aristotole and, 249; Canpanton and, 176; and mistakes, 100–1; rabbinic authority and, 126, 147–58 specter, Derrida on, 29 speculation: on conclusion of The Ways of the Talmud, 113–16; definition of, 73, 180; and disagreement, 239; and exaction, 75–77; external

332

Index

speculation (continued ) judgment and, 85–92; help from heaven and, 185; logic and, 81–85; method of, 72–73, 78–79, 193–95; ontology and, 103–8; principles of, 190–93; procedure in, 181–82; on status of Esther, 127–47; term, 291n4, 306n3; writing and, 94–95 speech: normative ways of, 204–7; sequence of, 204; types of, 209, 295n35 Spinoza, B., 25, 33–41, 50, 156 spirit: and agreement, 267–73; and body, 264–65; Derrida on, 29; and Talmud, 241 Stambaugh, Joan, 19 Strauss, Leo, 17, 277n5, 295n32 structuralism: Derrida on, 53, 55; transition from, 282n37 subaudition, term, 87–88 substance: Deleuze on, 52; Descartes on, 38; expression and, 51; Spinoza on, 36 supporting, rules of, 212–14 Susman, Iaacov, 297n4 svarah, 120, 153 syllogism, 42, 61–62; and exaction, 76–77 synonymy, 91–93, 295n35 Talmud: as book, 8; as cultural artifact, 9; as event, 117–76; and expression, 52–53; and hermeneutics, 260–61; languages of, 214–21; metaphysics and, 23–25, 56; Mishnah and, 123; nature of, 7–13, 18; as object, 8–10; as origin of practical law, 10–11; and philosophy, 14–68; reading, elements in, 26–53, 148–58; on thinking, 62–64. See also art of Talmud Talmudic argument: character of, 170–71; expression in, 171–73; form of, 156–58; language of, 216–17; rules of, 196–98 Talmudic learning, 15–16; rhetoric of, 52 Talmudic masters, 11; term, 294n23; terminology in, 195t. See also Tosfoth, Masters of

Talmudic studies, 15–16 Targum, 161–67 Ta-Shma, Israel, 11, 288n2 teaching, 49–50 temporality, 28, 30–32; and agreement, 267–73; Canpanton and, 174–75; and disagreement, 103–6, 157–58, 238–39; and exegesis, 261; Plato on, 235; sages and, 154; and speculation, 82–85; Tosafists and, 136–37. See also radical past temporization, 28–29; and Talmud, 30; and teaching, 49–50 text, 120–23 text criticism, 263 theme, 293n18, 306n3 Thomas Aquinas, 66, 68, 81, 94, 107 thought: activity and, 64–68; versus memory, 58–59; Spinoza on, 36; Talmud and, 61–62 Tosfoth, Masters of, 11; Dimitrovski on, 263; on Esther, 133–37 tradition: on philosophy and rhetoric, 22–25; sages and, 152–53; and thought, 61–62 truth: attunement to, 201–2; Bergson on, 259; and disagreement, 92–103; inverted, Canpanton and, 108–10; sages and, 151 Twersky, Isadore, 284n52 universal human nature, concept of, 15 Urbach, Efraim Elimelech, 9 The Ways of the Talmud (Canpanton), 69–116; composition and concepts in, 180–89; conclusion of, 113–16, 221–22; rhetorical dimension of, 179–229; Section 1, analytical description of, 190–93; Section 2, analytical description of, 193–95; Section 3, analytical description of, 195–96; Section 4, analytical description of, 196–98; Section 5, analytical description of, 198–99; Section 6, analytical description of, 199–200;

Index Section 7, analytical description of, 200–1; Section 8, analytical description of, 201–2; Section 9, analytical description of, 202–3; Section 10, analytical description of, 204; Section 11, analytical description of, 204–7; Section 12, analytical description of, 207–12; Section 13, analytical description of, 212–14; Section 14, analytical description of, 214–21; Section 15, analytical description of, 221; status of, 290n3 Western metaphysics, 19–22; Derrida on, 53–54; and Talmud, 151. See also metaphysics Whitaker, C. W. A., 251–52

333

wisdom, logic and, 113–15 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 9 writing: Canpanton and, 186; Derrida on, 53–56, 124–26; in Esther, 140; and hermeneutics, 271; in memory, 56–62; in Mishnah, 160–68; and speculation, 94–95 Yehoshuah (Rabbi), 143–44, 224 Yehuda (the Prince, Rabbi), 57, 128, 159–60, 283n50, 284n51 Yohanan ben Gudgda (Rabbi), 46 Yohanan (Rabbi), 134–35, 141 Yosi (Rabbi), 170 Zera (Rav), 131 Zunz, Leopold, 9