Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 90. Joseph B. Soloveichik's Existentialism | Dr. Daniel Rynhold

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90. Joseph B. Soloveichik's Existentialism | Dr. Daniel Rynhold · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

0:20
Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome to the podcast of Jewish Ideas,
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Speaker 1: a Torah in motion production. I'm jj Kimbrey. Rabbi Joseph B.
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Speaker 1: Solivatik was a giant of twentieth century Jewish life. A
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Speaker 1: Titanic scholar, teacher, and community leader, Rabbis Salavajuk was a
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Speaker 1: leading light of Yeshiva University for several decades, ordering thousands
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Speaker 1: of rabbis and cementing his place as a foremost authority
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Speaker 1: within the modern Orthodox community. In addition to this, from
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Speaker 1: Solivatrick was also one of the great Jewish thinkers of
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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, having received a thorough training both in
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Speaker 1: classical Jewish texts and in modern European philosophy at the
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Speaker 1: University of Berlin. It was this remarkable combination of the
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Speaker 1: traditional and academic that lent solav Atrix's ideas a unique
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Speaker 1: sophistication second to none, and it is this intricate flexity
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Speaker 1: of thought that we hope to be exploring today with
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Speaker 1: us to discuss the writings and legacy of Rabbi solav
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Speaker 1: ajac Is Doctor Daniel Reinholds, the Dean and Professor of
1:09
Speaker 1: jewsh Philosophy at the Bernard Revel Graduate School Jewish Studies
1:12
Speaker 1: at Yeshima University. Professor Reinhold has written and edited numerous
1:16
Speaker 1: works in the field of Jewish thoughts, most saliently nietzsche
1:19
Speaker 1: sola Agic and Contemporary Jewish Thoughts, published by Cambridge University
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Speaker 1: Press in twenty and eighteen. It is a pleasure to
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Speaker 1: welcome Professor Reinholds the podcast of Jewish Ideas Today.
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Speaker 2: Professor welcome, Thank you very much, j J. Pleasure to
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Speaker 2: be here.
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Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. So let us set the stage as I
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Speaker 1: want with perhaps a bit of a biographical overview, and
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Speaker 1: can you give us something of the life and times
1:41
Speaker 1: of a slave ajac When where did he live, his associations,
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Speaker 1: his pursuits. Let's have a background for this figure.
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Speaker 3: Sure, so it's his first It's worth noting that the
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Speaker 3: as if yet there's no critical biography of of Rosolovachik.
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Speaker 3: We know plenty about him, obviously as a significant public figure,
2:00
Speaker 3: constantly wrote, spoke, taught plenty of material thumb short biographies
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Speaker 3: and articles relevant to his biography, and a good book
2:09
Speaker 3: by Seth Farber on his work in Boston setting up
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Speaker 3: my Monody School.
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Speaker 2: But yeah, a critical.
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Speaker 3: Biography is a certainly something that would be extremely helpful.
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Speaker 3: But some basics. He's born in nineteen oh three in Prujan,
2:23
Speaker 3: it's often said in Poland. Truth is, it's been in
2:27
Speaker 3: many kind of ruled by many different authorities. Where the
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Speaker 3: Poland Russia it's right now, it's actually in Belarus. And
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Speaker 3: he was born into a significant rabbinical family of Lithuanian
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Speaker 3: nug dick persuasion, heavily associated with the Vologian Yeshiva, his
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Speaker 3: grandfather Raubrieim Soliachik in allgreates, this kind of method, risker
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Speaker 3: method that I'm sure will get to his father up
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Speaker 3: Moha Soliachik. He wasn't schooled in the sense that one
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Speaker 3: would be today. There were no high schools teaching you know,
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Speaker 3: Jewish studies in the morning and math and physics in
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Speaker 3: the afternoon. So was homeschooled, and that meant almost exclusively
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Speaker 3: in Jewish texts with Talmud intended to be at the
3:14
Speaker 3: fore interestingly taught at home, initially by khasid a Rabbi
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Speaker 3: Barich Reisberg, who he speaks very fondly of in later
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Speaker 3: years and clearly had a lasting influence and the story
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Speaker 3: is told that Solihchik's mother had some concerns and asked
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Speaker 3: his grandfather reph him to you know, to I guess
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Speaker 3: examine sol of Hix's learning, and he was concerned that
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Speaker 3: there was rather too much hussi dut being taught and
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Speaker 3: not enough talmod. So instead, sola Hchik's father upmost of
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Speaker 3: sol of Hix took on the educational burden. He received
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Speaker 3: some general education at home. At the very least he
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Speaker 3: imbibed a lifelong love of literature from his mother, But
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Speaker 3: formally speaking, his first real secular qualifications are He gets
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Speaker 3: a diploma from the Liberal Arts Gymnasium of Dubno in
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Speaker 3: nineteen twenty two, though we don't actually know if he
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Speaker 3: formally attended classes there, and then he did a few
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Speaker 3: semesters studying political science in at the Free Polish University
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Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty four, but most significantly, of course, in
4:24
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty six he atturns the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin,
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Speaker 3: where he pursues a PhD on the philosophy of harramank
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Speaker 3: Cohen and on the philosophy the pure philosophy if you like.
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Speaker 2: Of HERMANK. Cohen not on hermank Coin's Jewish works.
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Speaker 3: He gains that in nineteen thirty two, having got married
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Speaker 3: to the previous year in nine thirty one to his
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Speaker 3: wife Tanya, who herself was the holder of PhD in education,
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Speaker 3: and then in nineteen thirty two, following this, he joins
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Speaker 3: the family in the United States. His father had moved
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Speaker 3: there in ninety twenty nine to be the Russiashiva at
5:03
Speaker 3: rietz At Yeshiva ro Yitzak Elhanan the why of Yu
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Speaker 3: the Yeshiva Yushiba University, So he joins the family there
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Speaker 3: and shortly thereafter becomes a I suppose Chief Rabbi Boston
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Speaker 3: Education and Kashrut a major fosi FokI for him at
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Speaker 3: that time. He sets up in the Mimonod school in
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Speaker 3: nineteen thirty seven, which is you know, somewhat revolutionary at
5:25
Speaker 3: co ed school teaching.
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Speaker 2: Talmud co ed that.
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Speaker 3: He's considered for position of Chief Rabbi tel Aviv in
5:32
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty five gives a sure at Raf Kook's Yeshiva
5:39
Speaker 3: americasar Raf that impresses rough Cook. Apparently, he was also
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Speaker 3: invited in the sixties to become Chief Rabbi of Israel,
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Speaker 3: but he decides not to anyway. Nineteen forty one, his
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Speaker 3: father dies and he takes over as head of Rietz
5:52
Speaker 3: and day to day from nineteen forty one through to
5:55
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five, that's what he were. He was a
5:57
Speaker 3: mugged sheer right. He taught talmud day to day, ordaining
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Speaker 3: influencing countless rabbis, but at the same time also teaches
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Speaker 3: at the Bernardo Revel Graduate School as a professor of
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Speaker 3: Jewish philosophy through the forties and fifties. We're getting now
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Speaker 3: some student class notes beginning to appear over the past
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Speaker 3: decade or so, and at that point begins to compose
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Speaker 3: the theological philosophical works that are the reason we're probably
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Speaker 3: talking about him today in terms of at least his
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Speaker 3: fame beyond the modern Orthodox world, though the current extent
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Speaker 3: of his significance and influence, I suppose as a thinker
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Speaker 3: took some time to build a colleague of mind.
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Speaker 2: David Schatz wrote a piece.
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Speaker 3: Where he noted this was already a decade ago, but
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Speaker 3: he said of three hundred and eighty three English or
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Speaker 3: Hebrew pieces that would show up as studying Rabbi Soliachik
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Speaker 3: in Rumby. Only seventy six of them are before he
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Speaker 3: died in nineteen ninety three, so things really coalesced, if
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Speaker 3: you like, after his death in terms of him becoming
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Speaker 3: a major, a significant figure of academic study of his philosophy.
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Speaker 3: But anyway, so publishes his first major work, kalak man
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Speaker 3: Isha Halacha in a Hebrew journal in nineteen forty four.
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Speaker 3: It's translated by Presor Lawrence Captain in nineteen eighty three.
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Speaker 3: Again that's significant in bringing him to the wider world.
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Speaker 3: But then other than you know, the odd articles, an
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Speaker 3: article in nineteen forty five Sacred and Profane as it's
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Speaker 3: translated College Bohol. It wasn't until the nineteen sixties we
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Speaker 3: see a series of articles appearing in the journal tradition
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Speaker 3: there was apparently a tradition of family reticence to publish,
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Speaker 3: so there isn't, you know, a copious amount of publications.
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Speaker 3: But in the sixties we start to see we see Confrontation,
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Speaker 3: a very significant article dealing with interfaith dialogue in nineteen
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Speaker 3: sixty four, and probably most significantly nineteen sixty five, Lonely
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Speaker 3: Man of Faith, particularly for me by the way, that's
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Speaker 3: the work that got me into Jewish philosophy. And then
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Speaker 3: there's a volume of Tradition consisting of articles by Russell
8:16
Speaker 3: Regi nineteen seventy eight, Uvi kashtem Michamp published in Hebrew
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Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine. Other major essay, though that was begun
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Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties.
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Speaker 2: So he seems to.
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Speaker 3: Have had works that he was working on for a
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Speaker 3: long period before they saw the light of day. Notably
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Speaker 3: among those is his book Balachic Mind, which was only
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Speaker 3: published in nineteen eighty six, though written initially in the
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Speaker 3: nineteen forties. So yeah, those that I suppose, of the
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Speaker 3: major works, there's only of a shift in the nineteen sixties,
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Speaker 3: people feel where his work becomes more existential. It's kind
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Speaker 3: of more of an emotional sort of existential peace to it,
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Speaker 3: and he ultimately he kind of retires from public life
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Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty six and he dies in nineteen ninety three.
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Speaker 3: But yeah, kind of potted biography, I guess that will No,
9:16
Speaker 3: that's that's very good.
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Speaker 1: That was the improblem because it covered both his life
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Speaker 1: and his works. So as you mentioned that he had
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Speaker 1: I would think it's fair to say two very major
9:26
Speaker 1: educational formative influences, right, which may be characterized it as
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Speaker 1: brisk and Berlin. Those are the two schools within which
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Speaker 1: he gained a very large amount of his uh I
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Speaker 1: was world view, and then you know of his general
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Speaker 1: educational orientation. So can you take us a little bit
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Speaker 1: through those? I mean, what defined these two schools of
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Speaker 1: intellectual activity and to what extent in what ways do
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Speaker 1: they shape his future ideas? Right?
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Speaker 3: Well, I mean the Brisker method, or you know, the
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Speaker 3: analytic method is a mode of toll would study inaugurated
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Speaker 3: by his grandfather at him, and it's revolutionary and it
10:03
Speaker 3: doesn't simply take the Talmud as a text to be
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Speaker 3: studied at face value in order to understand just the
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Speaker 3: flow of the argument, the back and the forth that
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Speaker 3: shutler for tari as we say, of the legal or
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Speaker 3: for that matter, non legal discussions, often with a focus
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Speaker 3: on practical conclusions instead.
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Speaker 2: Underlying the Brisker.
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Speaker 3: Method is the idea that the time is a self
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Speaker 3: contained theoretical structure, a system worthy of study for its
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Speaker 3: own sake, independent of its connection to practical reality. And
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Speaker 3: what the method does is analyze the text conceptually, searching
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Speaker 3: for underlying principles or concepts that stand behind the material
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Speaker 3: being analyzed, systematize it much like in sort of h
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Speaker 3: it's own view, much like a scientist would conceptualize, you know,
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Speaker 3: his or her data in consons and principles in order
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Speaker 3: to categorize the data of the natural world. My monodes
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Speaker 3: is Mishnertra becomes a key text here where you know,
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Speaker 3: the legal conclusions are the outer expression of a conceptual
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Speaker 3: or conceptualization of the law. And that's very very important
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Speaker 3: to Rasolovchik, this idea, that halarcha, and for the moment,
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Speaker 3: let's take that narrowly just to mean Jewish law is
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Speaker 3: the expression of some conceptual system, you know, for Rasolovacik
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Speaker 3: in his work Halachic Mind, that work is sort of
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Speaker 3: an argument that concludes with this very famous statement that
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Speaker 3: there is only a single source from which a Jewish
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Speaker 3: philosophical Weltenschung worldview could emerge, and that's the Halarja. And
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Speaker 3: that's that's revolutionary if you think about let's take my
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Speaker 3: monodies for my monodyes, the repository of Jewish philosophy are
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Speaker 3: mab Rati, Mars America var the opening chapters of Genesis
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Speaker 3: and Chapter one Ofzekiel. Not legal texts, right alait legal
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Speaker 3: texts are not a source of philosophy. It's more the
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Speaker 3: argadic material. But for Urslochik, halacha itself, the legal text,
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Speaker 3: the legal disputes, that is a source for Jewish philosophy,
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Speaker 3: and that's pretty revolutionary actually, and grows out of this
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Speaker 3: belief of the Briskers that there is this conceptual system
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Speaker 3: behind the halachic system. What's different for Oslavchik is that
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Speaker 3: he's going to dig further down, shall we say so,
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Speaker 3: Just to take one very schematic example, when he talks
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Speaker 3: about repentance and he finds a contradiction between two halarchic
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Speaker 3: statements that my monodies makes about repentance, he analyzes that
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Speaker 3: by seeing them reflecting two different categories of repentance that
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Speaker 3: he calls atonement or cuparah and purification or Taharah. But
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Speaker 3: then philosophically he'll go beyond that because he'll start to
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Speaker 3: look at what theories of time lie behind these concepts
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Speaker 3: of purification and atonement. So you're digging down kind of
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Speaker 3: further and further into the background theories and these background
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Speaker 3: theories that lie behind even the harlachic content. That's really
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Speaker 3: important to Slovachk and grows out of this kind of
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Speaker 3: his brisker background.
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Speaker 2: Shall we say, in.
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Speaker 3: Terms of Berlin, if you want to, if you want
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Speaker 3: me to go on to kind of straight onto that.
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Speaker 3: So as we said, he's a PhD. On the philosoph
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Speaker 3: of Haromon Cohen, I mean, for our purposes, obviously, so
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Speaker 3: Haran Cohen was the founder of a school of Neo
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Speaker 3: Kantian thought. I suppose, for our purposes what some of
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Speaker 3: the most important elements of that that Rasslovata would take
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Speaker 3: forward through his career. I would say number one is
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Speaker 3: a fascination with and commitment to science and scientific method.
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Speaker 3: He writes that in Alaric Man he says that religion
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Speaker 3: should ally itself with the forces of clear logical cognition,
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Speaker 3: as uniquely exemplified in the scientific method. Now, exactly what
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Speaker 3: scientific method means for him is actually an interesting question.
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Speaker 3: But one of the key things it means for him
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Speaker 3: is and this again takes us back to the kind
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Speaker 3: of Alaric basis of his philosophy. It means basing it
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Speaker 3: on data. Right, you can't pluck philosophy out of thin air.
14:50
Speaker 3: Jewish philosophy can't be done by just saying, well, I
14:53
Speaker 3: think and just coming up with something. It has to
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Speaker 3: be based on data. That's key in terms of if
15:00
Speaker 3: you're like scientific method. He goes beyond that in terms
15:04
Speaker 3: of his commitment to science. So, for example, the creation
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Speaker 3: narrative as he understands it, he states he is more
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Speaker 3: akin to modern science than it is to the way
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Speaker 3: that Christianity, or indeed many Jewish thinkers as far as
15:22
Speaker 3: he's concerned in the past, have read it. You know,
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Speaker 3: he sees this as continuous human beings emerge through a
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Speaker 3: natural process, rather than splitting the story into with some
15:33
Speaker 3: kind of miraculous change that brings about human beings. He's
15:39
Speaker 3: very naturalistic in the way he approaches his philosophy. Obviously
15:44
Speaker 3: not a pure naturalist. He believes in God, so that
15:48
Speaker 3: is far from natural.
15:49
Speaker 2: But you know, he has.
15:51
Speaker 3: Little time for strange metaphysical properties. His understanding of holiness.
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Speaker 3: For example, it's not some strange, ghostly other worldly property.
16:00
Speaker 3: It's more institutional to do with midsvot right, So you
16:04
Speaker 3: do something and that is a market of holiness. It's
16:09
Speaker 3: not some strange property that hovers. So you know, those
16:13
Speaker 3: are key from his Berlin Neocantianism, but also I think
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Speaker 3: key and emerging out of the tradition of idealism, if
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Speaker 3: something else that is particularly modern. If you like about
16:32
Speaker 3: his thought, I'll try and put this as simply as
16:35
Speaker 3: non technically as I can. But idealism, philosophically speaking, philosophy
16:43
Speaker 3: is traditionally seen as a search for objective truth. Right,
16:47
Speaker 3: there's a reality out there. It exists, ready made as
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Speaker 3: it is, independently of human beings. If I disappear, the
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Speaker 3: world still out there the same, and knowledge is a
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Speaker 3: matter of us letting all that flood in. So to speak, Right,
17:02
Speaker 3: we record or we photograph the reality out there. Right,
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Speaker 3: it's already made world. We open our eyes. It hits us,
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Speaker 3: we know it. But they're all manner of problems with
17:14
Speaker 3: that picture. To give you again a non technical analogy,
17:18
Speaker 3: think about a newborn baby. So a newborn baby has
17:23
Speaker 3: presumably all sorts of experience, right, things hitting their retina,
17:30
Speaker 3: but it's a complete mess. It's a jumble. They can't
17:34
Speaker 3: actually category, they can't even see shapes or colors. They
17:37
Speaker 3: don't have those concepts. So the way the world, if
17:40
Speaker 3: you like, hits us isn't in and of itself necessarily
17:45
Speaker 3: organized until we formed the concepts to organize it. Thus,
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Speaker 3: and the idea is the kind of the basic idealist
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Speaker 3: view would be that it is human cognitiate, right, human
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Speaker 3: beings that so to speak, organize that into a coherent experience.
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Speaker 3: It's not a given, it's not already made. So Herman
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Speaker 3: Cohen sees the world as we experience it as in
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Speaker 3: some way being constituted by our scientific thinking. We contribute
18:17
Speaker 3: to the constitution of the experience that we have. It's
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Speaker 3: not just out there as it is and we simply
18:26
Speaker 3: passively record it. And that's really important to Rosolovachic because
18:34
Speaker 3: while that can't be the case in its entirety, there
18:37
Speaker 3: are real things out there. There's God, there's right, there's
18:39
Speaker 3: a world. But he does take on the idea that
18:44
Speaker 3: the idea of some pure objective world as it is
18:48
Speaker 3: is an illusion, is a chime error. He does think
18:51
Speaker 3: our knowledge of the world is mediated by our conceptual schemes.
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Speaker 3: And why that's so important is because for him that
19:00
Speaker 3: opens up the possibility of studying the Jewish way that
19:06
Speaker 3: our experience is mediated. Right, How does Judaism understand the
19:10
Speaker 3: concept of time or space or causality. That's Jewish philosophy.
19:15
Speaker 3: That's what we can do. We can find the Jewish
19:18
Speaker 3: perspective by mining our textual tradition halachic and otherwise. It's
19:23
Speaker 3: not purely halak right, the whole textual tradition. But we
19:29
Speaker 3: mine that data in order to understand key concepts of Judaism,
19:37
Speaker 3: of Jewish thought. But the point being those aren't exclusive,
19:42
Speaker 3: those aren't, so to speak, in competition with a scientific way.
19:46
Speaker 2: Of understanding it. It's different.
19:48
Speaker 3: If I'm in a laboratory, then you know, time is
19:53
Speaker 3: something that moves on. I can't change the past. If
19:58
Speaker 3: I'm doing repentance, then according to Rasslovac, there's a sense
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Speaker 3: in which I can.
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Speaker 2: Change in the past.
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Speaker 3: He wouldn't bring that concept of time to bear if
20:06
Speaker 3: he were in a laboratory doing science. But when you're
20:12
Speaker 3: doing Jewish so to speak, when you're trying to understand Judaism, well,
20:17
Speaker 3: then there is a concept of time that you can
20:19
Speaker 3: bring to bear. So this and this comes from this idealism, right,
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Speaker 3: the idea that there isn't a single ready made world
20:26
Speaker 3: out there, that the world is mediated by conceptual schemes,
20:30
Speaker 3: and there are multiple conceptual schemes that pick up on
20:33
Speaker 3: different aspects of reality. One of them's a Jewish one,
20:36
Speaker 3: and that's what he's interested in.
20:38
Speaker 1: Interesting. Okay, fine, So I want to ask you a
20:43
Speaker 1: question wich you've partially answered already, but perhaps to expand
20:46
Speaker 1: on it, which is looking at Sulovicik's writings as a whole.
20:50
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, as you say that, there are many
20:52
Speaker 1: they are manifold, many of them will published after his death.
20:56
Speaker 1: He was the most prolific posthumous writer, as has often
20:58
Speaker 1: been said. But so question is, were there certain major issues,
21:05
Speaker 1: major difficulties, things that bothered him that could be said
21:08
Speaker 1: to be animating him across his writings? Were there certain
21:11
Speaker 1: major not even major themes, but just issues that had
21:15
Speaker 1: to be addressed and were perhaps addressed in different different
21:18
Speaker 1: points and different methods, et cetera. So you know, are
21:21
Speaker 1: there anything that could be readily identified?
21:23
Speaker 3: Let's say, Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, in part,
21:25
Speaker 3: maybe it's worth beginning with the things that didn't bother him.
21:31
Speaker 3: Some criticize him for this, but he famously says at
21:34
Speaker 3: the beginning of a Lonely Man of faith, you know,
21:37
Speaker 3: problems of biblical criticism, for examples, they've never bothered me.
21:40
Speaker 3: I'm not interested, ye gind of, that's never really perturbed me. Also,
21:44
Speaker 3: again in line with his Cantian influences.
21:49
Speaker 2: I guess.
21:52
Speaker 3: He's not really engaged in traditional metaphysics, so you know,
21:58
Speaker 3: you will find it difficult to find him talking about
22:03
Speaker 3: proofs for the existence of God, or scholastic discussions of
22:06
Speaker 3: the nature of God, divine attributes, even you know, questions
22:11
Speaker 3: about rewill versus omniscience, these kind of traditional questions. For
22:16
Speaker 3: Russell of Achik, it seems that his central concern is
22:23
Speaker 3: to do with how to make sense of faith in
22:28
Speaker 3: the modern world? Right, how does faith speak to modern man?
22:34
Speaker 3: We live in a world Again, this is in Lonely
22:37
Speaker 3: Man of Faith, where he talks about, you know, how
22:40
Speaker 3: can a man of faith who lives by this doctrine
22:42
Speaker 3: that isn't particularly utilitarian, it's you know, it's not going
22:46
Speaker 3: to help you conquer the world or make a million bucks?
22:49
Speaker 3: What meaning does faith have in our contemporary society? And
22:56
Speaker 3: particularly for him, of course, the Halacic life, which one
22:59
Speaker 3: might think of as some outmotive, passive, anti modern, you know,
23:06
Speaker 3: way of life. And he's not really doing this particularly apologetically.
23:12
Speaker 3: He's not interested in proving the truth of Orthodox studism,
23:15
Speaker 3: for example, right, it's not interested in justifying it. He
23:19
Speaker 3: is interested in, if you like, displaying it and in
23:24
Speaker 3: all its glory in terms of and I think he
23:28
Speaker 3: thinks he has something very novel to say about it
23:30
Speaker 3: that maybe hasn't been said before, certainly not from or
23:34
Speaker 3: within the Orthodox world, whereas he's situated. So I think
23:40
Speaker 3: it's really to do with trying to explicate the continuing
23:46
Speaker 3: relevance of faith, you know, within modern society. Probably if
23:52
Speaker 3: I were going to think about a theme that runs
23:56
Speaker 3: through I think that might be it interesting.
24:00
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, fair enough. A question then, about method, which
24:04
Speaker 1: has always struck me that something interesting, which is that,
24:08
Speaker 1: in a few of his different works, loves to explore
24:11
Speaker 1: an issue through archetypes. He sets up, I don't know
24:16
Speaker 1: if there's a better way to say it, just sort
24:17
Speaker 1: of idealized figures, gives them names, and proceeds to describe them,
24:23
Speaker 1: all the while admitting that these figures don't really exists
24:27
Speaker 1: in actuality. They're they're they're sort of I don't know,
24:30
Speaker 1: figments of his you know, philosophically vibrant imagination. Let's say, so,
24:34
Speaker 1: I want to ask on that, you know, typical examples
24:36
Speaker 1: given an Adam one and Adam too from writing amount
24:38
Speaker 1: of faith or halak man versus scientific man or whatever
24:41
Speaker 1: it is. Firstly, where did this come from? This, this
24:45
Speaker 1: construction of archetypes, and what is what was he seeking
24:47
Speaker 1: to do through these archetypes, which let's say he couldn't
24:51
Speaker 1: do through you know, other ways of writing philosophy, other
24:54
Speaker 1: ways of writing Jewish thoughts. I mean, it's it's a
24:56
Speaker 1: very strange, very very unusual appearance, let's say, within within
25:00
Speaker 1: the history of Jewish thoughts. So you talked to us.
25:02
Speaker 2: About that, right, so.
25:05
Speaker 3: Well, Number one, this this method of typologies, right of
25:09
Speaker 3: drawing these these ideal typologies, is from a kind of
25:13
Speaker 3: early twentieth century thinker, Edward Spranger, who used this method.
25:17
Speaker 2: And clearly this is.
25:18
Speaker 3: Therefore infiltrated, you know, ra soli hi. It's consciousness such
25:22
Speaker 3: that he feels that it is a useful method for
25:26
Speaker 3: him to express, I guess, aspects of religious faith. And
25:33
Speaker 3: this again comes back to his avoidance of metaphysics. Right,
25:38
Speaker 3: so the fact that human understanding for him cannot, in
25:47
Speaker 3: a kind of Cansen sense, reach beyond human experience. So
25:50
Speaker 3: as to talk about, for example, you know, the nature
25:53
Speaker 3: of God, the nature of the afterlife, I don't know, right,
25:59
Speaker 3: so we have no data to work.
26:00
Speaker 2: On their, right.
26:03
Speaker 3: So instead his philosophy is far more phenomenological. It's much
26:08
Speaker 3: more to do with trying to analyze the nature of
26:12
Speaker 3: religious experience, the structure of the religious consciousness. So you know,
26:17
Speaker 3: those are the kinds of things he's able to do
26:21
Speaker 3: so in trying to talk about the nature of the
26:25
Speaker 3: religious consciousness, talking about archetypal figures who maybe doing so
26:32
Speaker 3: allows us to crystallize how Judaism or faith more generally
26:38
Speaker 3: looks at certain values.
26:41
Speaker 2: Right.
26:41
Speaker 3: I think the typeological approach is a useful one, and
26:46
Speaker 3: you know, it would be worth maybe us us digging
26:48
Speaker 3: down a little deeper because you mentioned this notion of
26:51
Speaker 3: these made up or you know, not these types not
26:55
Speaker 3: necessarily being real beings. I think it's interesting because in
27:00
Speaker 3: Lonely Man of Faith he seems to say he's talking
27:04
Speaker 3: about a real life, real world problem. So Lonely Man
27:09
Speaker 3: of Faith strikes me as a real type a man
27:14
Speaker 3: not so much or I've maybe come to that a
27:17
Speaker 3: little later. But if we let's take Lonely Man of
27:20
Speaker 3: Faith as an example, and dig down a little bit
27:23
Speaker 3: on Adam one and Adam two in order to really,
27:26
Speaker 3: you know, answer the question. So drawn from the data
27:31
Speaker 3: as ever right the opening chapters. In this case of
27:34
Speaker 3: the ratio of Genesis, we have two different accounts of
27:37
Speaker 3: the creation of man, and he identifies differences, the textual
27:42
Speaker 3: differences in the accounts in order to speak of Adam
27:47
Speaker 3: one and Adam two. So the first account, Adam one,
27:50
Speaker 3: for example, not to go not to you know, go
27:53
Speaker 3: through the entirety of the text. But Adam one is
27:57
Speaker 3: famously create in the image of God, right, sell him,
28:02
Speaker 3: melo him, and is charged with this mission to you know,
28:07
Speaker 3: to dominate the earth, right to be threw from our
28:11
Speaker 3: plight and kind of till the earth, if shure, right
28:14
Speaker 3: to kind of conquer, to dominate. The second story, and
28:18
Speaker 3: the second is created from the dust of the earth,
28:24
Speaker 3: and far from being told to dominate, is told to
28:27
Speaker 3: look after the loved chenre right to till it, to
28:30
Speaker 3: keep it, to guard it, to look after it. So
28:33
Speaker 3: you know, what does Solivahik do with these two accounts.
28:36
Speaker 3: So he builds up, as you say, these archetypes. Adam one.
28:41
Speaker 3: Adam one's the image of God. That's got to make
28:44
Speaker 3: you feel pretty good. Image of God is a majestic type.
28:49
Speaker 2: More than that. What's God doing right now? What is
28:51
Speaker 2: it to be in the image of God? Well, he's creating.
28:55
Speaker 3: So he reads this as speaking of a type who
29:00
Speaker 3: is a creative type.
29:02
Speaker 2: To be in the image of God is to be
29:03
Speaker 2: a creative.
29:04
Speaker 3: Type, and a creative type who's supposed to dominate, subdue
29:08
Speaker 3: the earth, right, to in effect take control, to be
29:15
Speaker 3: a scientist in effect?
29:16
Speaker 2: Right, what does science do?
29:19
Speaker 3: Not just a scientist, could be a politician, right, but
29:21
Speaker 3: somebody who is effectively utilizing their intellectual creativity in order
29:28
Speaker 3: to conquer nature. Right, This is Adam the first. So
29:32
Speaker 3: Adam the first is this majestic, striding, one could almost
29:36
Speaker 3: say arrogant type. Adam the second dust of the earth. Right,
29:42
Speaker 3: it doesn't make you feel quite as powerful, right. And
29:46
Speaker 3: he's not told to dominate, he's not told to subdue,
29:50
Speaker 3: he's told to look after it. So Adam the Second
29:53
Speaker 3: is this kind of humble type, a type who is
29:57
Speaker 3: asking about the mysteries of creat rather than thinking about
30:02
Speaker 3: how to dominate it. Who's concerned with the kind of
30:05
Speaker 3: questions of why am I here? Right, is a lonely type.
30:11
Speaker 3: Adam the first is created un vaba as a community,
30:16
Speaker 3: already made community. Adam the second is lonely and has
30:20
Speaker 3: to be you know, put to sleep and has to sacrifice,
30:24
Speaker 3: so to speak, a part of himself in order to
30:27
Speaker 3: form community. This is a very different type, much more
30:31
Speaker 3: humble type, a type who can only find genuine community
30:37
Speaker 3: by some type of sacrifice and covenantal commitment, not just
30:42
Speaker 3: through getting together with people in laboratory with shared interests.
30:46
Speaker 3: So you have these two very different types, the Adam
30:48
Speaker 3: one the Adam two, and he draws on those types
30:52
Speaker 3: in order to explicate this apparent contradiction in the biblical text.
30:58
Speaker 3: But then you go further, which is, all right, why
31:00
Speaker 3: are they both there? And that's the key question, and
31:06
Speaker 3: there could be different answers. Many people might when I
31:10
Speaker 3: teach this often for the first time, you know, and
31:14
Speaker 3: you were to people who don't know the work, and
31:16
Speaker 3: you would ask them what's going on here? They often
31:18
Speaker 3: think that this is a progression. Well, Adam the first
31:21
Speaker 3: clearly isn't a religious type, because he's some kind of
31:24
Speaker 3: utilitarian scientist. Whereas Adam the second, oh, well, he's the
31:29
Speaker 3: religious type. Who is, you know, imbued with God. God
31:33
Speaker 3: breathes into Adam the second right in order to give
31:36
Speaker 3: him life. But that's not what Sulivahik does with it
31:41
Speaker 3: right for him. The whole point of presenting these two
31:46
Speaker 3: is that every human being has within him both of
31:51
Speaker 3: these characteristics. Sometimes you wake up in the morning feeling
31:56
Speaker 3: like God Almighty, I'm the image of God and I'm grand.
31:58
Speaker 3: Sometimes you're the dust of the earth. And it is
32:03
Speaker 3: for soli Achick incredibly important that these are both cultivated.
32:10
Speaker 3: If we're pure Adam one, then yes, we might well
32:13
Speaker 3: turn into some kind of all controlling, totalitarian demon. If
32:18
Speaker 3: we're only Adam two, we never get out of bed
32:20
Speaker 3: in the morning. As in, both of these have to
32:24
Speaker 3: be given expression, and what's key to our Slivachick is
32:30
Speaker 3: that they can only come together intention. You can't just
32:36
Speaker 3: dollop fifty percent of Adam one fifty percent of Adam two.
32:40
Speaker 2: Because they're contradictory.
32:42
Speaker 3: If you feel like you're in the image of God,
32:44
Speaker 3: then humility isn't really getting a looking. If you're humble,
32:49
Speaker 3: being in the image of God doesn't really get a
32:51
Speaker 3: looking As in, these two poles are intension with each other.
32:56
Speaker 3: And therefore what he's doing here is he's drawing these
32:58
Speaker 3: ideal types like cognitive sorry Adam one Adam two. Nobody's
33:04
Speaker 3: a pure Adam one or a pure Adam two, but
33:09
Speaker 3: all of us have elements of both. And therefore what
33:14
Speaker 3: he's doing here is trying to exhibit these characteristics and
33:19
Speaker 3: then give us a kind of evaluative takeaway, which is
33:23
Speaker 3: that according to the Torah. And therefore, at this point
33:28
Speaker 3: this is the creation narrative applicable to all human beings effectively, right,
33:33
Speaker 3: the life of faith is actually a life of conflict
33:39
Speaker 3: where we're oscillating between these two poles, and that's what
33:43
Speaker 3: we ought to be doing. We should be giving expression to.
33:47
Speaker 2: Both of them.
33:48
Speaker 3: Sometimes we should be the striding forward Adam one, but
33:52
Speaker 3: at other times we have to admit defeat and be
33:58
Speaker 3: Adam two. But being both of those is key. So
34:02
Speaker 3: what he's done here is tried to through the use
34:05
Speaker 3: of types. So I find it's significant about the faith experience,
34:11
Speaker 3: something novel about most people think of faith as the
34:13
Speaker 3: answer to all your problems, not for our sult of ature,
34:17
Speaker 3: right that the night of faith has a kind of
34:20
Speaker 3: tragic paradoxical existence, fighting this sort of tension within that's
34:29
Speaker 3: the nature of the human personality. It is dialectical nature,
34:33
Speaker 3: and he's using his types in order to draw out
34:38
Speaker 3: that point.
34:39
Speaker 1: So there's there's a lot there. Let me let me
34:43
Speaker 1: drill down on another architecrature you said you won once
34:45
Speaker 1: image later, which, of course halakk Man, which is the
34:47
Speaker 1: subject of his probably his most I don't know it's
34:50
Speaker 1: his most read book, but it's certainly a book that
34:53
Speaker 1: those who take Jews philosophy of the twentieth century seriously find,
34:57
Speaker 1: as you know, perhaps his most philosophically dense work. There's also,
35:01
Speaker 1: you know, a Jewish work. At the same time, What
35:05
Speaker 1: is he trying to do there? It's a question that
35:07
Speaker 1: actually it's a more difficult question to answer them would
35:13
Speaker 1: otherwise appear and maybe people read the book, but you know,
35:16
Speaker 1: he presents this archetype of the Halaric man. Is he
35:19
Speaker 1: trying to say that everyone ought to strive to be?
35:21
Speaker 1: That is that ideal that is being held up? Is
35:23
Speaker 1: it simply a description of what a likely you know,
35:28
Speaker 1: observant individual ought to be doing. And you know, because
35:31
Speaker 1: that that is an ideal type that doesn't quite seem
35:34
Speaker 1: to conform with how you've described the ideal types until now.
35:36
Speaker 1: This is something something quite different and also seems to
35:40
Speaker 1: have a certain element of perhaps autobiography within it. I mean,
35:43
Speaker 1: is he trying to describe what he's doing himself? So
35:45
Speaker 1: you know what is going on there? Yeah?
35:48
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's interesting. So I do think that you're
35:54
Speaker 3: right there is there is a distinction between the type
35:57
Speaker 3: that is halaric man and the type that is lonely
36:00
Speaker 3: man of faith. And I think many people maybe miss
36:05
Speaker 3: this not so much kind of nowadays. I think, you know,
36:08
Speaker 3: people have now cottoned onto this. But I think it's
36:11
Speaker 3: the very first footnote where he talks about halaric man
36:15
Speaker 3: as an ideal type. There is no such thing right
36:18
Speaker 3: in reality. Now, now what does that mean and what
36:21
Speaker 3: therefore is he doing? So the book is trying to
36:24
Speaker 3: set up this type, this ideal type of halaric man. Again,
36:30
Speaker 3: he does so by beginning with two other types who
36:35
Speaker 3: in combination will become the halaric man, much like Adam
36:39
Speaker 3: one Adam two together create the lonely man of faith.
36:44
Speaker 3: I should have said, by the way, the lonely man
36:46
Speaker 3: of faith is lonely because he's not at home in
36:49
Speaker 3: either community. He's not at home as Adam one. He's
36:52
Speaker 3: not at home as Adam too. When he's Adam one,
36:54
Speaker 3: Adam two is calling him. When he's Adam to Adam
36:56
Speaker 3: one is calling him. Therefore, he's always lonely, has a
37:00
Speaker 3: kind of stasis a home. But to come back to
37:04
Speaker 3: to palak Man the two types that he describes at
37:11
Speaker 3: the beginning of the book. He starts with cognitive man,
37:16
Speaker 3: you know, the scientific type. A cognitive man is concerned
37:21
Speaker 3: with this world and concerned to understand the world in
37:25
Speaker 3: terms of scientific law, which he creates based on the data.
37:30
Speaker 3: There's a lot of overlap with Adam one. He's a creative,
37:33
Speaker 3: intellectual type who manages two understand the world by subjecting
37:41
Speaker 3: it to scientific analysis, understanding the principles and the laws
37:44
Speaker 3: that underlie it. That's the cognitive man. The other type,
37:48
Speaker 3: with which he begins with Homo religiosis, is a very
37:52
Speaker 3: otherworldly type. The fact that the world works scientifically is
37:57
Speaker 3: just the beginning of the mystery for him. He's intrigued
38:00
Speaker 3: by the mystery of existence. It's all very well, but
38:04
Speaker 3: why am I here? What's the point? Right sees this
38:07
Speaker 3: world as a peal limitation of the true world that
38:11
Speaker 3: transcends our reality and where holiness resides. Right, So the
38:15
Speaker 3: very religious type. What's interesting about Alaric Man is that
38:22
Speaker 3: Halachic Man for Arsillavat is a combination of the two,
38:26
Speaker 3: though notably is much more cognitive man than homo religiosis.
38:32
Speaker 3: Homo religiosis in some senses is the villain of the piece,
38:36
Speaker 3: certainly in the second part of the book. Now, why
38:40
Speaker 3: is halak Man so much cognitive man. Well, Halachic Man,
38:45
Speaker 3: for him is somebody who treats the data of the
38:53
Speaker 3: Halaric texts the same way that cognitive man treats data
39:00
Speaker 3: of natural world, by subjecting it, by effectively doing the
39:05
Speaker 3: brisker thing, right, by imposing a conceptual scheme, by being
39:10
Speaker 3: a creative intellectual, a kind of scientist of the bait midrush,
39:15
Speaker 3: so to speak, who you know creates these as Rossloh
39:20
Speaker 3: speaks in terms of a priori concepts, right, So coming
39:23
Speaker 3: up with the conceptual understanding of the material in order
39:30
Speaker 3: to delight in this wonderful theoretical construct that is that
39:35
Speaker 3: the fruits of tom would study in the brisker mode.
39:39
Speaker 3: So he's very much an analogue to and this is
39:43
Speaker 3: stated explicitly by Rassalovh the kind of mathematical scientist. That's
39:48
Speaker 3: what the halachik man does. However, at the same time,
39:54
Speaker 3: he's doing it with holy material, right, He's not doing
39:57
Speaker 3: it with the natural world. He's doing it with the
40:01
Speaker 3: texts both, you know, whether he's doing it with the
40:04
Speaker 3: Talmudik texts or frankly, whether he's doing it by understanding
40:10
Speaker 3: the world through a halachic prism. So there's the intellectual
40:14
Speaker 3: piece of it that I just mentioned in terms of
40:16
Speaker 3: understanding in the bake Madrash. There's also the way that
40:19
Speaker 3: he views the natural world. Right, when he sees a sunset,
40:23
Speaker 3: it's time to pray, as in understanding the world through
40:27
Speaker 3: the prism of these so to speak, halachic spectacles. Right,
40:33
Speaker 3: So this is halachic man. So he combines cognitive man
40:40
Speaker 3: with the Homer religiosis by doing everything cognitive man does,
40:48
Speaker 3: but with religious material rather than natural material. So the
40:53
Speaker 3: point being that cognitive man is a this worldly type.
41:00
Speaker 3: Religiosis is another worldly type. Halachic man is a deeply
41:04
Speaker 3: this worldly type. His halachic man has no interest in
41:08
Speaker 3: the in the next world, in other worlds, in transcending existence.
41:13
Speaker 3: His interest is in this world and in enacting holiness
41:19
Speaker 3: in this world. So he's almost exclusively a cognitive man.
41:23
Speaker 1: But.
41:25
Speaker 3: And it's obviously a key, but a religious cognitive man.
41:30
Speaker 3: He's doing this with religious divine material.
41:35
Speaker 1: This is all very well, and this is an excellent description,
41:37
Speaker 1: but it still leaves the reader. And this is the
41:40
Speaker 1: curious thing about this book. It leaves the reader wonry
41:42
Speaker 1: is describing what the reader ought to be doing?
41:47
Speaker 2: Right?
41:48
Speaker 1: Or? Yeah? So is this normative? Is a prescriptive? This
41:51
Speaker 1: is what does things about this book? It goes This
41:53
Speaker 1: is very detailed, almost psychoanalysis almost of what this what
41:58
Speaker 1: this figure is halackic man? Where iss come from? And
42:01
Speaker 1: what is he applying? And how does he do this?
42:04
Speaker 1: And then sort of and as I said to what
42:06
Speaker 1: it's a description of that like is this supposed to
42:09
Speaker 1: be a lighthouse for how the religious individual in the
42:12
Speaker 1: twentieth to twenty first century is supposed to behave or think?
42:16
Speaker 1: Or is this a description of how people used to
42:18
Speaker 1: make right? What is he recommending here? Yeah?
42:21
Speaker 3: No, it's a very good question. It's a very important question.
42:23
Speaker 3: I guess my one word answer is no, right, he
42:27
Speaker 3: is not describing any actual individual. And it's not prescriptive.
42:33
Speaker 3: This is and this goes back to that initial point.
42:36
Speaker 3: This is an ideal type. Now what does that mean here?
42:41
Speaker 3: So again let me buy analogy. So this is an
42:45
Speaker 3: ideal type. There is no such person. And I mean
42:47
Speaker 3: the following. If people are listening to this, you who
42:50
Speaker 3: you know, have no idea who I am. But they
42:53
Speaker 3: now know that Daniel Einhold is a Jewish philosopher. Now
42:57
Speaker 3: I'm also I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a
43:00
Speaker 3: beetle maniac. Yeah right, so all kinds of things that
43:04
Speaker 3: are true of me in my work life, I am
43:09
Speaker 3: expressing my philosophic man elements, shall we say, But I'm
43:14
Speaker 3: not and no one is the pure ideal philosophic man. Right,
43:17
Speaker 3: everybody's got to go out by food, you know, budget,
43:20
Speaker 3: pay the bills. We're fully fleshed out human beings. Halachic
43:25
Speaker 3: man is if you like, siphoning off the theoretician of
43:31
Speaker 3: the bait mid rush. And it's important he's not a rabbi,
43:34
Speaker 3: right that the joke you make hell like man never
43:37
Speaker 3: Puskin's a shila, right, He's not your pulpit Rabbi Hall
43:40
Speaker 3: like man is the scientist in the Bait mid Rush.
43:44
Speaker 3: He is the theoretician working in order to understand the
43:49
Speaker 3: halarchic material and of course enacting it right, seeing the
43:53
Speaker 3: world that way. But primarily what he's doing here is
43:58
Speaker 3: building out into a whole personality, what is in truth
44:04
Speaker 3: a part of certain people, like for example, his father
44:10
Speaker 3: and grandfather were they halahik men? Well yeah, but they
44:14
Speaker 3: also played with the grandchildren, so not all the time.
44:16
Speaker 1: Right.
44:16
Speaker 3: That's the idea of being an ideal type. It's an
44:19
Speaker 3: idealization of a segment. And what it's therefore talking about
44:24
Speaker 3: is and talking about certain characteristics and values that accrue
44:31
Speaker 3: to that endeavor of the religious type. Right, So when
44:35
Speaker 3: somebody is in the Bake Midrush and they are doing that, right,
44:40
Speaker 3: what he's doing in this work is trying to describe
44:43
Speaker 3: that type in again in a somewhat revolutionary way. Most
44:46
Speaker 3: people would see the rabbi in the Bake Midrush who
44:50
Speaker 3: is studying Talmud as some you know, extremely passive, asthetic,
44:57
Speaker 3: submissive type, not as some creative, this worldly intellectual as
45:06
Speaker 3: portrayed by Rasolovacik. So on the one hand, he you know,
45:10
Speaker 3: he is portraying a key element, let's say, of his
45:16
Speaker 3: ancestors and of him, right, kind of. Obviously he did
45:19
Speaker 3: a lot of this as well, and doing so in
45:22
Speaker 3: a manner that highlights aspects of that experience that he
45:28
Speaker 3: feels have been misunderstood, maybe ignored, maybe not always true, right,
45:36
Speaker 3: kind of. Not everybody always did this with the Tolman
45:38
Speaker 3: this is the Brisker revolution again. But that's what kind
45:42
Speaker 3: of he's trying to do here, So a like man's
45:44
Speaker 3: idealized type. But it allows us to crystallize aspects of
45:49
Speaker 3: that element of our experience.
45:53
Speaker 1: Right.
45:53
Speaker 3: It's not everybody has to be a like man. It's
45:55
Speaker 3: that those who are you know, involved in this endeavor.
45:59
Speaker 3: These are the kinds of characteristics of it at its
46:02
Speaker 3: best and how it expresses one's judaic faith.
46:09
Speaker 1: Interesting, I'd like to turn to an aspect of Ramislova
46:13
Speaker 1: that you mentioned earlier, which is is sort of how
46:17
Speaker 1: someone say existential turn, and that is present throughout much
46:22
Speaker 1: of his writing, especially as you correctly said, his later writings,
46:25
Speaker 1: and of course you wrote a book throwing him into
46:28
Speaker 1: conversation with one of the great existentialists of the nineteenth century,
46:31
Speaker 1: or at least someone who's you know, associated with the
46:33
Speaker 1: existential school, let's say, which a free drug nature the
46:37
Speaker 1: German philosopher of the late nineteenth century. And so let
46:39
Speaker 1: me ask, I mean, firstly, what do you mean when
46:41
Speaker 1: you say that rabbisolovtric had an existentialist turn? And secondly,
46:45
Speaker 1: you know, to what extent could he be said to
46:48
Speaker 1: be part of the broader world of extensions? Lastly, because
46:51
Speaker 1: of course most of those who were, well at least okay,
46:53
Speaker 1: I take that back, some of those associated with that
46:57
Speaker 1: school were not exactly religious. I mean famously, certainly it
47:00
Speaker 1: was not. Camu certainly was not, and sub suddenly was not.
47:03
Speaker 1: So there's there's no shortage of those who you know,
47:08
Speaker 1: who are not exactly the rabbinic type who existentially So
47:11
Speaker 1: what do you mean when you say Rabisloc was a
47:13
Speaker 1: religious extend existentialist? And how does that manifest itself in
47:17
Speaker 1: his writings? Right?
47:20
Speaker 3: So, I mean you begin to see in the description
47:23
Speaker 3: I gave even a lonely man of faith, where he's
47:26
Speaker 3: talking about this this tragic existence, right, this conflicted existence.
47:30
Speaker 3: So he's talking there about grappling with the kind of
47:34
Speaker 3: existential problems rather than the kind of things he's talking
47:38
Speaker 3: about in halahk Man where we're talking about you know,
47:41
Speaker 3: creative a priori systems of Halaha. So you see a
47:44
Speaker 3: shift immediately in just the very tenor of what's interesting
47:49
Speaker 3: him and what he's putting out there. But in terms
47:52
Speaker 3: of in terms of the you know Niature, I guess
47:55
Speaker 3: as a proto existentialist the the way, well, let me
48:02
Speaker 3: I guess begin autobiographically. I'd read solo Achik before I
48:08
Speaker 3: did a philosophy degree, and in my third year doing philosophy,
48:12
Speaker 3: I took a course on Nietzsche, expecting it to be
48:17
Speaker 3: my little rebellion right, studying the great atheist for whom
48:20
Speaker 3: God was dead, and you know, thinking that it would
48:23
Speaker 3: be deeply challenging. Instead, what I found on reading Nietzsche
48:28
Speaker 3: is that it all seemed pretty familiar to me, because
48:31
Speaker 3: it seemed to be highly reminiscent of things i'd read
48:35
Speaker 3: in rosolo Achik. And what I mean by that is
48:41
Speaker 3: Nietzsche obviously an atheist, and Roslovchik has no part of that.
48:47
Speaker 3: But Nietzsche's main critique of religion has little to do
48:51
Speaker 3: with whether or not God exists, and much more to
48:54
Speaker 3: do with his view that religion has as he puts it,
48:59
Speaker 3: it debates, is the concept of man that, as far
49:02
Speaker 3: as he's concerned, religion is a psychologically damaging, life denying
49:08
Speaker 3: illusion that acts as a crutch for people too weak
49:12
Speaker 3: to deal with the terrible truth, which is life is
49:15
Speaker 3: really hard and inescapably. So, so what do we do
49:18
Speaker 3: with that as a religious people? According to nietzsure, let's
49:24
Speaker 3: wide a bad things happen to good people. Okay, Well,
49:27
Speaker 3: religion answers because you're not good, right, You're a sinner,
49:31
Speaker 3: and a main sort of source of your sin is
49:34
Speaker 3: your very humanity. You're led by passions and desires. These
49:39
Speaker 3: evil must be cut off. You should be an extreme asthetic.
49:43
Speaker 3: In order to repent for that, we have to wallow
49:46
Speaker 3: in an orgy of guilt and self torture. That's what
49:49
Speaker 3: repentance is. And we attempt in doing this to bring
49:53
Speaker 3: a chaotic world in some way under our control, at
49:57
Speaker 3: least through being able to understand and blame it. Right,
50:01
Speaker 3: Suffering isn't the problem. It's not having an explanation for
50:04
Speaker 3: it that nietzschre thinks is really what bothers us. So
50:08
Speaker 3: we create what for him as this illusory metaphysical crutch
50:11
Speaker 3: for the weakening insipid encourages passivity, denial of this world
50:16
Speaker 3: because everything good and great is in another world, you know,
50:20
Speaker 3: pathological self hatred for how lousy we are given our humanity,
50:25
Speaker 3: and for niatsure God is a gross answer to those questions. Right,
50:31
Speaker 3: and more than that, kind of what he sees us
50:34
Speaker 3: admiring as god like is actually an error, a crime
50:37
Speaker 3: against life. As he puts it right, it denigrates this life. Now,
50:43
Speaker 3: the point for me and my co author Michael J.
50:48
Speaker 2: Harris is that.
50:50
Speaker 3: We, in reading Solivachik, felt that actually Solivachi agreed with him,
50:56
Speaker 3: which is not to say a obviously that he's an
51:00
Speaker 3: atheist or he thought religion is an illusion for the week.
51:04
Speaker 3: But the point is that Soliveachik is critical of precisely
51:08
Speaker 3: the form of religion that nietzsure despises, and creates an
51:12
Speaker 3: interpretation of Judaism that instead does all the thing nietzschre
51:17
Speaker 3: likes right, go back to a lachk man. He like
51:21
Speaker 3: man is a this worldly He has no interest in
51:25
Speaker 3: transcendent worlds afterlife. That doesn't factor in to his religious
51:31
Speaker 3: life whatsoever. He is a this worldly type. It's all
51:34
Speaker 3: about what we do in the here and now right
51:38
Speaker 3: repentance for our Solivacik famously he speaks a great length
51:42
Speaker 3: about repentance, you know, throughout his life, and gave these
51:44
Speaker 3: annual repentance she are in, many of which have since
51:50
Speaker 3: kind of been published. Repentance for him is not about
51:55
Speaker 3: self flagellation. It's not about torturing yourself for your irredeemable
52:02
Speaker 3: sins that are in the past and can't be changed.
52:05
Speaker 2: Right.
52:06
Speaker 3: He actually states explicitly in Halachic Man, it is impossible
52:09
Speaker 3: to regret a pass that's already dead. Right, you can't
52:13
Speaker 3: all make a decision concerning a future as yet unborn.
52:15
Speaker 3: And he writes this himself. Therefore, Spinosa and Nietzsche, from
52:21
Speaker 3: this perspective, did well to deride the idea of repentance.
52:26
Speaker 3: He also hates their version of repentance. His point is,
52:32
Speaker 3: Halachic repentance, the repentant Alakic man.
52:34
Speaker 2: Is nothing like that.
52:36
Speaker 3: It's actually a psychological transformation to do with creating a
52:42
Speaker 3: new self. It is a creative affirmative, not a backwards
52:47
Speaker 3: looking life denying practice. So Rasolovachik, and this is something
52:55
Speaker 3: we find throughout his thought. We argue that he ultimately
53:00
Speaker 3: agrees with Nietzsche if they are talking about the same
53:07
Speaker 3: form of religion, the religion that Nietzscha is criticizing. So
53:11
Speaker 3: does russll of Achik right, not as stridently He's willing
53:15
Speaker 3: to allow people right, but it's absolutely not his version.
53:19
Speaker 3: His version he makes, you know, very definite choices. Particularly again,
53:24
Speaker 3: repentance is a very very good example, because he, you know,
53:28
Speaker 3: actually is highly critical of the kind of traditional views
53:32
Speaker 3: of repentance you find in medieval works like Sharrey, like
53:36
Speaker 3: the Gates of Repentance of raben U Yana, extremely critical
53:41
Speaker 3: and gives us instead this deeply life affirming version of
53:45
Speaker 3: repentance more than that. And this is if you're looking
53:50
Speaker 3: for a key theme of russal of Hik's work, you know,
53:55
Speaker 3: this is certainly one of them. The idea that religion
53:59
Speaker 3: is some kind of like we say, crutch for the
54:01
Speaker 3: weak and insipid is anathema to Solivah. He famously believes
54:08
Speaker 3: that religious consciousness that the most elevated form of it. Famously,
54:14
Speaker 3: the fourth footnote of Halachic Man that everybody quotes, he
54:18
Speaker 3: says that, you know, if you think that religion is
54:20
Speaker 3: some oasis of calm that will solve all your problems.
54:25
Speaker 3: That is a falseome pernicious view of religion. Instead, for him,
54:31
Speaker 3: it's complex, it's tortuous, it's antinomic and antithetic, as he
54:36
Speaker 3: famously says, it's an experience that is deeply challenging. It's
54:44
Speaker 3: not an answer to all your questions. It's maybe a
54:48
Speaker 3: way of living with them, coping. It's definitely not an answer.
54:53
Speaker 3: And therefore, again what Soli refuses to do use religion
55:03
Speaker 3: as a way of escaping the reality and denying the
55:08
Speaker 3: terrible truth about existence. And that's exactly what Nietzsche's looking for.
55:12
Speaker 3: He wants us to maintain that enigma of existence and
55:15
Speaker 3: not try and cover it up with what he used
55:17
Speaker 3: to call a kind of gaudy paint job, right that
55:21
Speaker 3: just you know, pretends that eye it's all works out,
55:24
Speaker 3: whether that working out is religious or even scientific.
55:28
Speaker 1: So, firstly, absolutely, that is a very curious and interesting
55:32
Speaker 1: parallel between nature and Salivator. I would when I ask
55:36
Speaker 1: existential I have to state the following, which is that
55:40
Speaker 1: there's something odd and different about Ramo Salvation's risings, which
55:43
Speaker 1: is that he seems in a certain way distinctly uncomfortable
55:46
Speaker 1: in his own skin, if that's fair to say, No
55:48
Speaker 1: one is. There's something about his life that is throwing
55:51
Speaker 1: him off and making him, you know, discombobulated in the
55:56
Speaker 1: deepest possible sense, and which is again just very, very
55:59
Speaker 1: odd for an Orthodox Jewish thinker. I mean, most of them,
56:03
Speaker 1: most of most of even address the internal displacement of
56:08
Speaker 1: the personal psyche. So it's just not it's not a
56:09
Speaker 1: category they're thinking, it's not a it's not what they
56:12
Speaker 1: see as a legitimate, you know, avenue of inquiry. Whereas
56:17
Speaker 1: for Amazon of ag he's numerous times and as you mentioned,
56:20
Speaker 1: I think man only man a favor of the famous footnote,
56:22
Speaker 1: et cetera. Many different places he seems to vent his
56:25
Speaker 1: personal you know, a lack of at homewardness in this world,
56:31
Speaker 1: you know, you know, for lack of better term. Yeah,
56:35
Speaker 1: and again I just wonder, am I correct in thinking
56:38
Speaker 1: of this is just exceedingly unusual. Where does he get
56:40
Speaker 1: it from?
56:42
Speaker 3: I look, I think it is particularly in the Orthodox world.
56:47
Speaker 3: I think it's very unusual. I think two things. By
56:51
Speaker 3: the way, he knew this right, and he often spoke
56:56
Speaker 3: about it. There's a wonderful remark that he makes at
57:01
Speaker 3: the workswhile School of Social Work at Yeshua University in
57:05
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four. He says this, and he's talking about
57:08
Speaker 3: his own students, and he's saying, look, they think I'm
57:14
Speaker 3: wonderful when it comes to my lundus, right, so my
57:17
Speaker 3: traditional learning in told they absolutely enthralled to me. But
57:23
Speaker 3: he says, and well quote directly, when it comes to
57:25
Speaker 3: my philosophical experiential viewpoint, I am somehow persona non grata.
57:31
Speaker 3: My ideas are too radical for them. If they could
57:34
Speaker 3: find another one, he goes on, it would be all right. However,
57:37
Speaker 3: the substitutions are completely infantile. Right, this is a tremendous
57:42
Speaker 3: problem in America, he goes on, and he puts extremism,
57:46
Speaker 3: fanaticism down to that, to a lack of security, and yeah,
57:51
Speaker 3: he says that just there's a religious immaturity, right. He
57:55
Speaker 3: talks about kind of people of thirty and forty. They
57:58
Speaker 3: act like children and experienced religion like children, even though
58:02
Speaker 3: they're you know, very they're not stupid people. So he
58:05
Speaker 3: is aware that his conception of faith as this much
58:13
Speaker 3: more complex, you know, dialectical type of experience doesn't sit
58:22
Speaker 3: comfortably with many of his co religious, co orthodox religionalist
58:27
Speaker 3: religionists in particular, So he definitely is aware of that,
58:32
Speaker 3: and it is fair to say that this is why,
58:36
Speaker 3: you know, many of his own students at the, if
58:41
Speaker 3: you like, practical rumintic level, are not necessarily students of
58:45
Speaker 3: his at the philosophical level. And whether or not that's
58:52
Speaker 3: a case of feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, I
58:56
Speaker 3: think that comes down to one's religious stability. And this
59:02
Speaker 3: is more I guess me speaking on how I view
59:06
Speaker 3: Rasslo chic than you know his thought itself. But you
59:10
Speaker 3: know I do for many people the idea that religion
59:18
Speaker 3: doesn't have all the answers more than that. But I
59:21
Speaker 3: can't even prove it's true. Right, Russell of A doesn't
59:24
Speaker 3: think you can prove that Judaism is the best religion.
59:27
Speaker 3: He absolutely believes it, but he knows he cannot prove
59:31
Speaker 3: it to anyone other than a Jew. Right, Because you know,
59:36
Speaker 3: different religions, coming back to the pluralism with which we began,
59:41
Speaker 3: you know, start from a different data set and therefore
59:45
Speaker 3: produce different concepts and principles out of that data set
59:49
Speaker 3: that are very convincing if you're starting with that data set.
59:52
Speaker 3: But if not right, then you're not. So he doesn't
59:55
Speaker 3: believe one second you can even demonstrate this superiority of Judaism, right,
1:00:02
Speaker 3: does he have faith that it's the truth one hundred percent?
1:00:05
Speaker 3: It's just not something you can philosophically talk about. So, yeah,
1:00:09
Speaker 3: there's a discomfort there. But for some people that's very
1:00:14
Speaker 3: threatening and troubling. I think for other people it's actually
1:00:19
Speaker 3: a comfort because if you don't think if you're a
1:00:22
Speaker 3: religious person who's very let's say an Orthodox Jew, and
1:00:26
Speaker 3: you're very, very happy living your Orthodox Jewish life, but
1:00:31
Speaker 3: at the same time you have real questions in terms
1:00:33
Speaker 3: of the problem of evil and whatever, it might be
1:00:37
Speaker 3: the view that well, it's okay, God works. If so,
1:00:40
Speaker 3: there's an answer and God God did it to you
1:00:42
Speaker 3: or whatever put certain people off religion, right. They would
1:00:46
Speaker 3: prefer the no, no, you know, that's that's that's not
1:00:49
Speaker 3: what it's about. Right. I don't I don't need that
1:00:52
Speaker 3: version of God. Indeed, that version of God I would
1:00:55
Speaker 3: feel deeply off putting.
1:00:57
Speaker 2: Right.
1:00:57
Speaker 3: Dewey Phillips famously said, it's bad enough of a child
1:01:00
Speaker 3: God forbid is suffering from fretful cancer. To think that
1:01:03
Speaker 3: God did it to them on purpose makes it even worse.
1:01:06
Speaker 3: So if you're kind of, you know, pulling back from
1:01:09
Speaker 3: that idea that religion has to have all the answers
1:01:13
Speaker 3: for some people, that's actually comforting. And that's why therefore,
1:01:17
Speaker 3: the the kind of the emphasis on on the this
1:01:20
Speaker 3: worldly life of Judaism, how it can be you know,
1:01:24
Speaker 3: seen as an expression of your you know, of your
1:01:28
Speaker 3: innermost experience as he experiences halacha, right, the life him
1:01:33
Speaker 3: isn't some kind of imposition, it kind of it's his
1:01:36
Speaker 3: expressing his innermost being. That's how he experiences it. That's
1:01:41
Speaker 3: sufficient for the celebration of the religious life.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: I hear that, and that's definitely a valuable for So
1:01:49
Speaker 1: I just want to ask, you know, do you think
1:01:51
Speaker 1: that therefore there's limits maybe the potential reach of a
1:01:54
Speaker 1: thinker like rs of age. And you get this with
1:01:56
Speaker 1: a lot of philosophy and philosophers in general, both in
1:01:58
Speaker 1: the Jewish religion and more generally, which is that you know,
1:02:00
Speaker 1: they come't at problems from a very certain perspective, which
1:02:03
Speaker 1: speaks volumes about their own personality. And if you are
1:02:07
Speaker 1: so inclined to that particular personality, traits, so then you
1:02:10
Speaker 1: find their philosophy extremely interesting, extremely compelling, et cetera, et cetera.
1:02:13
Speaker 1: But for those who don't, then that's just not the case.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if a certain case can be because
1:02:17
Speaker 1: of course Rosavegic is enormously influential in certain areas of
1:02:21
Speaker 1: Jewish you know, Jewis communities nowadays, and even outside of
1:02:26
Speaker 1: those communities read and started to get great interest. And
1:02:29
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, you know, must one be of a
1:02:31
Speaker 1: certain personality disposition, as we've been describing for the last
1:02:35
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen twenty minutes, must have those kinds of
1:02:38
Speaker 1: personality dispositions in order to find his works interesting and useful.
1:02:41
Speaker 1: I mean, what if you're just generally happy or satisfied.
1:02:44
Speaker 1: What if you you know, what if the religious world
1:02:46
Speaker 1: just naturally makes sense to you? I mean, is reslavgi
1:02:48
Speaker 1: gend just not for you?
1:02:55
Speaker 2: It's a good question.
1:02:56
Speaker 3: I suppose that it depends on your level of intellectual
1:03:02
Speaker 3: curiosity have in you know, it's one could say the
1:03:08
Speaker 3: same about my monogies. Let's put it that way, right
1:03:11
Speaker 3: as in, you know, you read mymologies and some people
1:03:13
Speaker 3: we'd extremely put off by the extreme rationalism, but we'll
1:03:17
Speaker 3: still find it fascinating to you know, understand the world
1:03:22
Speaker 3: view of somebody who can apply that type of philosophical
1:03:29
Speaker 3: theology to the life of Halachic Judaism.
1:03:33
Speaker 1: Right.
1:03:33
Speaker 3: So, I think that it's certainly the case that there
1:03:39
Speaker 3: are people who will and will not find this personally compelling.
1:03:45
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that's different for any other thinker of.
1:03:51
Speaker 2: This ilk.
1:03:54
Speaker 3: And and you know, and for some people when they
1:03:56
Speaker 3: do read it, they'll suddenly eyes are opened and they're like, wow,
1:03:59
Speaker 3: you know, do find it convincing, and do find it,
1:04:04
Speaker 3: you know, compelling, But yeah, plenty not. But on that
1:04:08
Speaker 3: I like I say, I'm not sure he differs that
1:04:11
Speaker 3: much from other thinkers in this arena.
1:04:14
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fer enough. I think that's satisfactory answering. Okay,
1:04:18
Speaker 1: we'll let you go in a moment. But the last
1:04:20
Speaker 1: thing I would like to ask you, and it's something
1:04:22
Speaker 1: I'll ast asked him many of my guests, is if
1:04:25
Speaker 1: you had the opportunity to speak with Sullivtuk, if you
1:04:28
Speaker 1: could sit down this evening with him to dinner, Let's say,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: what would you would you be asking him? What would
1:04:33
Speaker 1: you want to know? What kind of subjects. Would you
1:04:35
Speaker 1: be broaching with him?
1:04:38
Speaker 2: Oh? Goodness me.
1:04:42
Speaker 3: Who? So I think I probably a boring academic answer
1:04:47
Speaker 3: a question I should say, because people have grappled long
1:04:51
Speaker 3: and hard with the apparent discrepancy between To go back
1:04:59
Speaker 3: to our types, halachic man and lonely man of faith,
1:05:03
Speaker 3: alack man doesn't seem to be a terribly conflicted individual
1:05:07
Speaker 3: unlike lonely man of faith, and scholars have tried to
1:05:11
Speaker 3: understand that difference in various ways. So yes, I think
1:05:17
Speaker 3: that getting his actual answer to that would be of interest.
1:05:26
Speaker 1: Well, well, then let me ask you some question. Do
1:05:29
Speaker 1: you think it will be an enjoyable experience? Then the
1:05:34
Speaker 1: reputation for being, shall we say, not the easiest person
1:05:39
Speaker 1: to talk to, talk with? You know, what it would
1:05:43
Speaker 1: be like to have dinner with him?
1:05:45
Speaker 3: So certainly there are many, you know, stories from students
1:05:49
Speaker 3: in his you know Tom share that that certainly would
1:05:52
Speaker 3: lead to the conclusion he did not suffer fools gladly
1:05:55
Speaker 3: althose who were ill prepared for his classes. But yeah,
1:06:01
Speaker 3: I think that I would approach it with great trepidation,
1:06:08
Speaker 3: but I would hope that we would find common ground
1:06:11
Speaker 3: to speak of.
1:06:14
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Okay, I suppose that I'll have to do.
1:06:18
Speaker 1: Professor Daniel Reinhold, thank you so very much. But Johnny
1:06:21
Speaker 1: us today on the Podcast of Jewish Ideas. This has
1:06:23
Speaker 1: been a most enlightening conversation. We are very grateful for
1:06:25
Speaker 1: your time and we look forward to seeing what you
1:06:28
Speaker 1: have to published soon in the near future.
1:06:30
Speaker 2: My great pleasure. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.
1:06:34
Speaker 1: This has been the Podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora
1:06:37
Speaker 1: in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself jjkimb, edited
1:06:41
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1:06:44
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