Jewish Studies and Analytic Philosophy of Judaism

To what extent are the methodological assumptions of contemporary Jewish studies in conflict with the project of this book? Tzvi Novick begins a discussion with the editors in order to bring the contours of this issue sharply into focus.

Atzmut and Sefirot

The term atzmut designates the divine essence. The sefirot, by contrast, have to do with the ways in which the divine essence is manifest or expressed. The dual doctrine of atzmut and sefirot aims to preserve the notion that while God’s essence is perfectly one, it is also true that this essence manifests itself in many different ways. In this chapter, we shall explore different ways of understanding this doctrine. The standard view is that atzmut is an entity or being, and that the sefirot are also entities or beings. The alternative approach is that neither atzmut nor sefirot designate entities or beings. Rather, atzmut designates Being itself, and the sefirot designate the ways in which Being is manifest. I shall argue that the alternative approach has several philosophical or conceptual advantages over the standard approach.

Dispassion, God, and Nature

Spinoza is a severe critic of Maimonides and the whole medieval theistic tradition. Nevertheless, as recent philosophical scholarship has shown, Spinoza shares much with Maimonides in his own philosophical outlook. In this chapter I point to an important commonality in their respective views of the human good, namely the emphasis each places upon dispassion as a corollary of any deep understanding of God and/or nature.

Metaphysics out of the Sources of the Halakha or a Halakhic Metaphysic?

A handful of analytic philosophers have examined certain legal (halakhic) passages from the Talmud to uncover what appear to be fairly clear views on the metaphysics of material objects, actions, identity, and time. Should we take these appearances at face value? I will argue that the rabbis of the Talmud employed legal variants of concepts that are naturally and automatically employed in ordinary metaphysical theorizing, where the variant is determined in large part by what would make the rabbis’ metaphysical claims true. This latter fact has the consequence that it is very difficult for a Talmudic rabbi to stake out a controversial metaphysical claim, or even a straightforwardly metaphysical claim, period. We philosophers should continue trying to extract metaphysics from halakha, but we shouldn’t presume that what we uncover will involve the metaphysical concepts we’re accustomed to. We should rather be prepared for a halakhic reconceptualization of the world.

Talmudic Destiny

My aim in this chapter is to explore various connections between the Talmudic topic of “breira” and philosophical issues related to time and destiny. I argue that it is plausible that two leading positions in the Talmudic literature correspond respectively to Aristotle’s view and Ockhamism. I then try to defend the more ambitious claim that Rashi’s position corresponds to a novel third view on the open future not found in any familiar literature. I attempt to explain this new view

The Good, the Bad, and the Nonidentity Problem

Individuals often feel moral indignation, resentment, and regret, regarding wrongs committed towards their collective in the past. However, there are good reasons to be skeptical about such beliefs and sentiments or, at least, to see them as more problematic than normally thought. Building upon my previous work, particularly concerning “Fortunate Misfortune” and the implications of the “Nonidentity Problem” for history, I consider some of the associated difficulties. I focus upon the Jewish case; which seems to express the difficulties in a particularly acute way.

The Fabric of Faith

Emunah (Hebrew for “faith”) is not to be thought of as cognitive assent to a proposition. It is no mere state of the head, something internal to consciousness. It is rather, in my language, a stance, an attitude in an almost nautical sense, as if the agent were facing, tracking the sun. And as with tracking the sun, faith is dynamic; one does not face God in a static way. Faith concerns living in God’s tempo. What God wants of us, what He needs, changes over time and circumstances. In this chapter, I begin to unpack these metaphors for faith.

Catharsis and the Epistemology of Repentance in the Talmud and Jewish Law

The psychology of repentance has dominated the attention of both Jewish theologians and western philosophers at the expense of the epistemology of repentance. This chapter is an attempt to rectify this lacuna. In an attempt to elucidate a somewhat obscure Talmudic debate about confession with the tools of current analytic epistemology, the cathartic value of repentance is thrown into sharp relief. The results reached here naturally generalize to many theological traditions within Christianity and Islam which similarly recognize the cathartic role of repentance.

Introduction

This chapter attempts to characterize analytic philosophy as an intellectual tradition, and sketches the potential it has to spark a new age in Jewish philosophy. The chapter also outlines the structure and content of the rest of the volume.

A Classical Jewish Approach to “The Normative Question”

One of the fundamental questions in analytic meta-ethics is what Christine Korsgaard calls “the normative question.” It is a question that typically arises when a moral agent is confronted with a difficult moral obligation, and as a result, asks himself, “Must I really do this? Why must I do it?” In mainstream analytic philosophy, the responses to this question invariably take the form of a philosophical argument that starts from (allegedly) universally compelling premises, and draws from them the conclusion that, therefore, we really must do what morality requires of us—that morality is really binding for us. In this chapter, however, I explore a fundamentally different approach to the “normative question” based on (or inspired by) classical Judaism. First I formulate a parallel “normative question,” as it would arise in a Jewish context, and seek the appropriate classical Jewish response to it. Then, I offer a way of applying it to morality in general.