Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, l/ Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame 30lOBl2O2O,17:41 ews 2OLg.L2.OB Everything * Samuel Lebens, Dani Rabinowitz, andAaron Segal (eds,) Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, Published: December 11, 2019 Samuel febens, Ilani Rabinowilz, andAaron Segal (eds.), JeutishPhilosophg inmtAnalgticAge' Offord University Press, 2otgr368pp., $ro5.oo (hbk), ISBN 978or988rL374' Reviewed by David-Hillel Ruben, University of Iondon Most departments of Jewish Studies offer a eourse in Jewish Philosophy. More often than not, such a couft;e will provide the history of what many of the main Jewish philosophers thought, philosophers from Philo andthe Medievals, through Spinoza and the Kantians, to the Modern period with such figures as lcvinas, Rosenzweig, and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik the course will not undertake anyinnovative Jewish philosophy, asthiswouldbeunderstoodin analytic philosophy circles. It wont adrnance any argument about a philosophical topic beyond those claimed to be discovered in the texts. Its primary pu4rose will be to seek to understand how those earlier philosophers approached various philosophical topics. But many contemporary philosophers, trained in analytic modes of philosophy, have begun to challenge that entirely historical approach to the subject, and this collection attempts to bring some of the main proponents of that challenge together in a single volume. Why now? My conjecture is that, until now, there just weren't so many analytic philosophers both with a good grounding in the classical Jewish texts andwho found it intellectually challenging to by and marrythe two traditions. That marriage of Jewish philosophy and analytic philosophyis promising. Platonic, Aristotelian, IGntian, and Husserlian philosophyall had some specific content, andso historic attemptsbyJewish philosophers working inthesetraditions necessitated either the demonstration of the compatibility of the philosophical tradition with Judaism or sometimes the alteration or adjusheut of the philosophical tradition to conforrn with Jewish doctrine' But analytic philosophy, uniquely, is specific-doctrine free. The 'analytiC is in the method, not the content. (Early analytic philosophy may have been combined with doctrines such as logical atomism, reduetionism, or logicism, but those days are long past') Arguabty, freed from the requirement of reconciliation of two sets of doctrines, analytic philosophy of Judaism is better placed than were its predecessors to allow for the emergence of an authentic Jewish philosophy (or better, philosophies)' In the collection, including an introduction and a skeptical overview at the end, there are eighteen essays, each raising a different philosophical topic. There are four main areas: Talmudic and Rabbinic Philosophn Maimonidean PhilosophS Philosophicallheolory, and Ethics andValueTheoryManyof theessays are orploratory, andhave a certainpleasing air of diffidence and suggestiveness about them. Often, they seem to be trying out ideas, orperimenting, with the result that often they do not read like standard analytic philosophical articles in the journals' Their undogmatic tone is commendable. Given the relatively large number of stand-alone contributions, the editore have done a good job in imposing strict limits of length on them, and in most cases, the artielm fit about the rigfut material into the space permitted. In one or two cases, however, this has led an author to biy and cram in too much in a short space' https://ndpr.nd.edu/newsljewish-philosophy-in-an-analytic-age/ Page 1 of 5 Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, /l Reviews /l Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame SO1OA|2O2O' 17"41 First, a word about the concluding skeptical challenge by Tzvi Noviclq at the end of the volume' Every philosophical movement, school, or style reeds a skeptical critic, so it is good that this has been included' But I can't say I have much sympathy with his point ofview. Novick's maitr point is that some of the analyric Jewish philosophy represented in this volume is not sufficiently historicat and, insofar as it is not, it might not count as a fully Jewish approach as that has beeu traditionally understoodNoviek also says that such essays display a 'statie' approach to Judaism' But t}e Jewish intellectual tradition is a blend of both the historieal and the non-historical' In a conventional house of Jewish study (a Bet Midrash), debate is conducted as if the compilers of the Talmud, the Medieval commentators' and their post-F'.nlightenment successors, are all simultaneously sitting alound a single, heavenly table, debating the sarne question, a question that has the same lasaning across twenty or so centuries' There is a kind of development in this method, but if it is historical, it is only historical per accidens. It is often closer to a logical sense of development' with refinements and distinction built on refinements and distinctions, much as it is in analytic philosophy' No one would care whether Descartes preceded Leibniz if there were an argument in Descartes that effectively countered one in Leibniz' So too, if we can fiu{ for example, a distinction in the Medieval successors to Rashi (the Tosafos) that deals with a point raised by a nineteenth century commentatorInsofar as developmental is the antonym of statie, there is both logical and historical development and no rea$on for Jewish analytic philosophy to prefer the latter rather than the former' What I shall do irr this review is briefly describe the contents of the sixteen remaining contributions, and selectively remark on some. I won't have the space to deal even very briefly with all of themUnlike the others, Eli Hirsch is a longstanding contributor to the analytic philosophy of Judaism and is in many ways one of the inspiring figures for the movement. Many will already lmow of his 'Identity in the Tahnud' in Mtdwest Studtes in Phtlosophy, aggg.In this collection, Hirsch's ltalmudic Destiny' returns to a set of concerns that Hirsch has previously addressed elsewhere, and attempts to tease out a view about the open future and time from some Talmudic and postTalmudic material. Suppose there is a purported legal transaction at t (say, I want to contract to buy the house that my wife will only choose ne:fr week), so that this contract at t is dependent on the oeflurence of some event at a later time, t*' An Aristotelian should hold there is no valid transac{ion. The question, says Hirsch, is whether 'the house that will be chosen by her next week' refers. According to Jewish Law, it must refer if the transaction is valid' There are, for the Aristotelian, no facts about future. Hirsch eonsiders anti-Aristotelian responses, but he finds of particular interest the response, as he interprets it, by Rashi, the great late eleventh centuryJewish legalisL On this view, unlike the Aristotelian absence of facts, there is a presence of indefinite facts. Hirsch's essay provides a good foil for Aaron Segal's 'Metaphysics out of the Sources of the Halalcha or a Halalchic Metaplrysic?'. (Halakha means'Jewish law'.) Segal challenges the Hirsch-type project of finding metaphysical positions in the Jewish sources. Assuming a realist view of metaphysics, Segal points out the prima facie difficulty of reconciling this project with certain interpretative principles of Jewish IawWhat he proposes as an alter:rative is that these Talmudic discussions are establishing a specifically halaHric'metaphysic and that it is wrong to read back into these discussions the same metaphysics that philosophers discussThe point of view needs firrther clarification' Are the questions the same both in metaphysical and halakhic discussions? If they arrive at different ans:\M€r'ls, then, on a realist construal of metaphysics, one at most can be true. And ilthe questions they address are themselves different, then we need to be told how the questions themselves differ. Segal contrasts, for example, two different rabbinic responses to what appears to be a metaphysical quefion, that of Hillel and of Shammai: Beit Hillel is making a metaphysical claim aboutwhatwe might call Beit-Hillel-identityand Beit Shammai is making a metaphysieal claim about what we might call Beit-shammai-identityTheir dispute is about whidr of the various candidate re}ations in the vicinity of identity is the one that's relevant for halakhic purposes' (55) But that still leaves unresolved the Erestion of the relation between either candidate relation and the metaphysically correct one. What do we sayif one orboth of the candidates is metaphysicallyfalse? https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/jewish-philosophy-in-an-analytic-age/ Page 2 of 5 Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, // Reviews /l Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Oame 30lO8l2O2O, 17:41 In 'AJurisprudential Puzzle as Old as the Talmud', Jeftey S. Heknreich notes the conflict bet'ween two central principles of Talmudic and Rabbinic jurisprudence: (r) pluralism: the elu v'elu principle (tr,vo incompatible answers, both of which are licensed bythe sources), and (z) faithfulness, which enjoins that the legal decider is required to determine the correct answer. Helmreich considers various purported solutions. Samuel Lebens' 'A Commentary on Midrash: Metaphors about Metaphor'considers an extended metaphor in a source about the Song of Songs. An extended metaphor is a metaphor whose unpacking requires at least one other metaphor. Lebens argues that, whatever else extended metaphors are like, 'they have the (mysterious and still unexplained) power to transmits non-propositional lmowledge.' Dani Rabinowitz raise an epistemological question in the course of a discussion of repentance. Does repentance entail knowledge of forgiveness? If it does not, and so if the repenter never can be sure that he has been forgiven, whatever else repenting can achieve, it can't offer a catharsis to the repenter. In this context, Rabinowitz seeks to make sense of the rabbinic discussion of why one might require a person to repent repeatedly for the same fault. The second section of the collection contains thee papers on Maimonidean Philosophy. To some extent, the section is an outlier in a volume which has the overall character that I have described. Mark Steiner's 'Hume and Maimonides on Imaginability and Possibility' compares the views of Hume and (Maimonides' version o0 the Kalam Ttreolory (which elides the possible with the imaginable) on the one hand with that of Maimonides on the other, which does not. To his credit, Steiner link his discussion to a contemporary discussion of a related question by Charles Parsons. Given the prominence of the topic of what linkage there may be between possibility, conceivability, and imaginability in contemporary philosophy (e.g., the possibility of zombies), the topic has a lot more relevance than the short space Steiner is able to provide for this. Daniel Frank's paper on 'Dispassion, God, and Nature: Maimonides and Spinoza' concerns the requirement of acting imatatio dei, and so, like God himseH, acting dispassionately even when one is acting justly or virtuously. The Maimonidean view is compared to both the Stoic and Spinozan views. Here, some reference to contemporary action theory might have been helpfrrl. On the so-called standard $ory, one needs both a desire and a belief to motivate action. Presumably, the human actor has the desire: the desire to act imatatio dei. God lacks that desire, since He lacks all desires. So perhaps the human actor can never be dispassionate in the way in which God is. The third essay in the section, Josef Stem's 'Maimonides and his Predecessors in Dying for God as "Sanctification of the Name of God"'is an ouflier in an outlier section. It is a fine essay, and certainly displays all of the analytic skills one would expect of a philosopher of the distinction of Stern, but the essay would more easily appear in a journal of Jewish Studies than in a collection of Jewish philosophy. The section on Philosophical Theolory commences with Howard Wettstein's The Fabric of Faith'. Wettstein's is perhaps the least analytic essay in the collection. His discussion is inspired by some remarks by Martin Buber, 'integrated with my owr sense of religious life'. Wettstein offers an account of various attifudes, part of or closely associated with faith, and concludes with the intriguing idea of a centred-life, walking in God's tempo. Personally, I found this essay quite inspiring, although it might not appeal to everyone looking for a hard-edged analytic sell. David Shatz's 'Should Theists Lschew Theodicies?' addresses a number of arguments that purport to show the undesirability or impossibility of aftempts to justifr the compatibility of evil in the world and God's goodness. A series of such arguments are described; Shatz finds all of them wanting, for one reason or another. To that extent, Shatz justifies the enterprise of theodicy. Tyron Goldschmidt's'A Proof of E:rodus: Yehuda Halevy andJonathan Edwards Walkinto a Bar'is both good fun (partly because of his engaging, humorous style) and philosophically interesting. It builds on an argumeut found in the Kuzari of Judah ha-Levi. Ttre Jumbled Kuzari Principle says that a tradition is likely to be true if it is (r) accepted by a nation; it (z) describes a national experience of a prwious generation of that nation; which (3) would be erpected to create a https://ndpr. nd.edu/news/jewishphilosophy-in-an-analytic-age/ Page 3 of 5 Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame 3010812020, 17141 continuous national memory until the tradition is in place; is (+) insulting to that nation; and (S) makes universal, difficult, and severe demands on that nation. Goldschmidt shows that some'obvious' objections to this'proof don't hit their mark. One problem I had with the proof is its unclarity in what exactly is being proven. What is the content of 'tradition'in the argument? Is it a traditional belief, like the belief that the Exodus story is tnre? Or is it the onerous legal tradition, since it is practice and not belief that might be said to be 'dtfficult'? One's view about the shength the argument could provide will depend, inter alia, on the precise content in the conclusion. Joshua Golding's 'Atnnut atd.sefirot:ANewApproach' discusses two ideas central to the Kabbalistic (mystical) tradition of Judaism: Atamut (God as He is in Hirnselfl and Sefirot (His manifestations). Golding is keen that these are not taken to be entities of some sort, since so doing raises difficult theological problems. Sefirot, he says, are basic ways in which atzmut . . . is manifest or expre$sed in the world' (z1r-z1z). But what is a way, metaphysically speaking? What is Atzrnut? He says that the latter is Being as such. In one place, Golding compares the idea of Being in ItseHwith Plato's Forms, but without the existential commihnent to Forms as Entities; it is what all beings have in corlmon. What is the metaphysical status of something zuch that all things of a certain kind have it in common? Some clearer statement, alive to questions of whether existence is a property and related metaphysical issues, might have been helpfirl. The article really has, to my mind, no clear positive account of what this Being in ltseHor its manifestations are meant to be. The last section is on Ethics and Value theory. Shira Weiss discusses The Morality of Biblical Deception: Misleading T?utlrs, Geneiuant Daht, and Jacob's Deception of Isaac'. Is the duty not to lie absolute? There is a distinction between telling 1is and lslling a misleading tnrth. The closest parallel in Jewish Law is geneivat da'at (theft of one's wisdom or knowledge). A defense against x for having lied to y is that it is y's own fault that he did not correctly understand what x said or its implications, and so the alleged deception by x of y is akin to a form of seHdeception of y by himself. With this in mind, Weiss re-reads the story of Jacob deceiving Isaac in order to obtain the blessing of the first born. There may be no geneivah, as a case canbe made for Isaac having deceived himself in the circunstances. She makes a plausible case for her reading of the relevant text, based on the important distiuction mentioned above, found in IGnt and elsewhere. Yonatan Y. Brafrnan poses a dilemma for rabbinic authority in his 'Neither Authoritarian nor Superfluous: A Normative Account of Rabbinic Authority'. If the commandments have an independent justificatiou, rabbinic authority seems superfluous. If they have no independent justification, ttren rabbinic authority seents authoritarian, for it commands one to do something one has no reason to do. Brafrnan considers this dilemma in the light of the jurisprudential philosophy of R Eliezer Berkowitz. On Berkowitz's conception, the purpose of ritual commandments is indirectly moral, because they stimulate the motivation for moral actionThe interpersonal comrnandments of course directly achieve this end by comrnanding moral actions. In addition to the discussion of Berkowiu, Brafinan's contribution ranges over positivism, and some of the ideas of H.LA Hart, Ronald Dworkin, and Joseph Raz. He concludes with a description of inclusive legal positivism, on which the principles described by Dworkin are intemal to the law itseH. There follows a discussion of the extent to which this undermines Raz's service conception of law. Once principles are included in the law, dont the judges have to engage in practical reasoning too, and not just rely on texts? If they do, what real service does the law provide? Brafrnan's contribution is very full, perhaps overly full for a short contribution of this length. Nor was I entirely sure what the bottom line was meant to be for the topic of the esffiy. A Classical Jewish Approach to '"The Normative Question"', by Melis Erdur, addresses the question: Why should I be moral? After considering the realist and anti-realist answers, Erdur zuggests that Judaism might provide a new way of looking at the problem. Think of this question as being asked by an insider to morality or Judaism, as tte case may be, not an outsider . . . it's confessional, not apologetic (my gloss-DHR). We say something that makes the agent reconnect, that reinforces his commitrnent in face of his doubt. We don't fy offering a rational argument that will be equally valid for insiders and outsiders. I can't really see how this is meant to help with the classical philosophical question about morality. The person asking Why should I be moral?'is taking the outsider's point of view. Philosophers as different as Plato and Hobbes tried to show that one can appeal to the outsider's seH-interest. Iater contract theorists of morality have tried to https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/jewish-philosophy-in-an-analytic-agel Page 4 of 5 Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame 30lO8l2O20, 17:41 do the same. Perhaps their attempts have notbeen wildly successfiil, but the question theywere attempting to answer was the outsider's question, to which the response to the insider is simply irrelevant. Nor is it easy to identifi' what exactly the insider's question might be, at least in the case of morality. One can surely use a part of morality to make the insider more sensitive to some other part of morality to which the insider has previously been insensitive. That isn't news. But that isn't any part of the answer to the question, Why should I be moral?'. Saul Smilans\z's 'The Good, the Bad, and the Nonidentity Problem' asks: how can we regret that something happened in the past, or prefer that it had not happened? 'But the vast majority of people who now exist would not have existed were it not for those historical events' (Soq). Nor would have their ancestons, etc., all the way back to the past events in question. So, we are offered a package deal: either (r) those events that one regrets happen plus oneself or (z) tle absence of the regretted historical calamity and the absence of oneself (and one's ancestors, etc.). It is not a logical inconsistency to want both (r) and (z). Smilanslry says that it's a matter of causation. His 'solution' is the advocacy of Illusion. Just ignore the problem and continue regretting some events in the past but continue with our common beliefs about the self and others. Perhaps Smilanslly has developed this elsewhere in greater depth, but as presented here, his view immediately raises unanswered, indeed undiscussed, questions about causation and essences. Does his choice between (r) and (z) presuppose that something could not have had a different causal history than the one it did have? If c is a distant prior case of e, then (assuming some more bells and whistles about chains, for example) in the closest possible world, w1, to the actual world in which c does not occur, e also does not occur. (At least on one well-lorown account of causation.) So, it makes no sense to want not-c but e anyway in the world as it actually is, barring miracles anyway. But maybe what I regtet isnt about a comparison between the actual world and wr at all, but the regret is that that the actual world isnt a world wa (a world that I would prefer to the actual world), a world that is less close than wr is to the actual world: I would prefer a world in which not-c but e anyway. Smilansky also seems to assume that no event, say a war or a revolution, could happen at some different time, thereby making temporal location an essential property of an event. The range of philosophical problems, raised in Jewish texts or in Jewish practice, which are addressed in this collection, is extensive. Most of the essays suggest new insights and different ways of addressing problems. Unsurprisingly, these relativelyshort essays all leave much more to be done. In all of the essays, so much more could be said, but alas, the nature of the collection simply does not allow for this. I think there is great promise here about the way in which philosophers in the analytic tradition will change Jewish philosophy, deepening it and adding something of enormous value. Copyright @ zoeo ISSN: 1538 1617 College ofArts and Letters Accessibility Information Notre Dame, IN 46556 @ UNIVERSITYOF NOTRE DAME https://nd pr.nd.edu/news/jewish-philosophy-in-an-analytic-age/ Page 5 of