Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 92. Analytic Philosophy (Repent!): Dr. Noam Oren

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92. Analytic Philosophy (Repent!): Dr. Noam Oren · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

0:20
Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the podcast of Jewish Ideas,
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Speaker 1: a Terra Immersion production.
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Speaker 2: I'm jj Kimbray. On today's episode, we will be.
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Speaker 1: Exploring the dynamic encounter between analytic philosophy and Jewish thought.
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Speaker 1: Analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on clarity, argument, and conceptual precision,
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Speaker 1: has shaped much of contemporary philosophical discourse.
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Speaker 2: In recent decades, some thinkers.
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Speaker 1: In the analytical tradition have brought the tools and the
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Speaker 1: paradigms of their philosophical school to bear on questions within
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Speaker 1: Jewish philosophy, and in the process provide new lenses through
0:49
Speaker 1: which we might view, age old debates and analyze major
0:52
Speaker 1: Jewish thinkers.
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Speaker 2: We will be thinking about this.
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Speaker 1: Dialogue more broadly and through the lens of a very
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Speaker 1: specific case study, namely the problem of repentance with its
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Speaker 1: theological and philosophical challenges. Johnny us today to discuss these
1:04
Speaker 1: topics is doctor no i'm orn, a post doctor or
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Speaker 1: fellow at the New York University and a gross Scholar
1:10
Speaker 1: in residence at the NYU School of Law. Doctor Arn
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Speaker 1: received this PhD in philosophy from the Hebrew University in
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Speaker 1: Jerusalem and writes on a range of topics across the
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Speaker 1: analytical philosophy of religion, modern Jewish thoughts, philosophy of alaja,
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Speaker 1: and a special emphasis on the points where these feels intersect.
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Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to welcome doctor arn to the
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Speaker 1: Podcast of Jewish Ideas today, Doctor Oren, Welcome.
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Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, pleasure to be here.
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Speaker 2: Excellent, excellence.
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Speaker 1: So let's start from the very beginning, and let's imagine
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Speaker 1: for a moment that there will be one or two
1:41
Speaker 1: listeners who don't have multiple advanced degrees in philosophy, and
1:46
Speaker 1: perhaps you can start with a basic question, which is,
1:48
Speaker 1: what do we mean when we speak of analytical philosophy,
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Speaker 1: What is it? Where did it come from? And what
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Speaker 1: distinguishes it as a philosophical tradition.
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Speaker 3: Okay, question, and I have a couple of ways to
2:02
Speaker 3: answer this, so I will start with like with historical
2:05
Speaker 3: answer and then more conceptual answer. So, historically speaking, analytic
2:10
Speaker 3: philosophy is a philosophical stream or movement that began its
2:14
Speaker 3: way in the end of the nineteenth century at the
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Speaker 3: beginning of the twentieth century, and again within the historical framework,
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Speaker 3: there's many ways to describe how it's begun and world
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Speaker 3: the main figures. But it's commonly viewed that the main
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Speaker 3: figures that started the whole movement is godlb Reggae, I'm
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Speaker 3: the German logician, Breton Russell the British logician and philosopher,
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Speaker 3: and lodg villians Day. This is the three big names.
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Speaker 3: There are a couple of more names that are being
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Speaker 3: dropped over here, Ge Moore for example, and the story
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Speaker 3: goes something like this. Philosophers from ancient times to modern
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Speaker 3: times loved logic, logic who was way way of thinking
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Speaker 3: and examine and examining propositions and arguments. But the logic
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Speaker 3: philosophers have was the Aristotilian kind of logic. And the
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Speaker 3: arist kind of logic was pretty nice, but it was
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Speaker 3: not too strong and it was hard to imply it
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Speaker 3: on a regular kind of discussion, Like when we discuss arguments,
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Speaker 3: it's will be very hard to take these arguments and
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Speaker 3: to transform into those arguments into a logical Aristotoilian logical form.
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Speaker 3: So the philosophers that really admired logic cannot really use
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Speaker 3: logic in their philosophical words. So you can we can think,
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Speaker 3: for examples, Spinoza when he writes the Ethics, he writes
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Speaker 3: us as if it is in the logic form, but
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Speaker 3: he cannot really use technical logical tools. He wants to
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Speaker 3: use it, but he can't. And that changes changes with
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Speaker 3: the log that godlip Reggae invents or develop. So he
4:04
Speaker 3: developed a new kind of logic that makes us. It
4:08
Speaker 3: makes a really a real big change in how do
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Speaker 3: we think about logic and language, and it enabled us
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Speaker 3: to transfer ordinary language speaking into logic form and to
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Speaker 3: better investigate philosophical ideas. But the moment he developed this
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Speaker 3: kind of this kind of philosophy, a lot of philosophers,
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Speaker 3: Forgae himself, but Russell Rigachen as well thinks some like, wow,
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Speaker 3: that's great. All the time, until now we did philosophy
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Speaker 3: with mumbling, with a lot of words and was we
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Speaker 3: didn't know what we're talking about. Now we can do
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Speaker 3: it in a very rigorous, precise, accurate way that we can.
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Speaker 3: We need now to start philosophy all over Okay, what
5:01
Speaker 3: we did until now was not so serious, not too good.
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Speaker 3: Now we can do it all over again with a
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Speaker 3: precision and clarity that we always wanted. And there was
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Speaker 3: its spring, a new spirit to the to the world
5:17
Speaker 3: of philosophy. So they started to do philosophy in a
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Speaker 3: more logical, mathematical orientation, and this is how the whole
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Speaker 3: movement of analyt philosophy had immersed. One example that can
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Speaker 3: is often used to demonstrate the beginning of analy philosophy
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Speaker 3: is the debate between Heidiger and Rudolph Karner. Rule of
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Speaker 3: Karnap was a kind of a student of of Vidiness
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Speaker 3: Stain and Frega and Russell and Heideger was the famous philosopher,
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Speaker 3: the famous German philosopher, and he wrote the paper was
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Speaker 3: published after giving a lecture the same name, what is Metaphysics?
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Speaker 3: And Rudolph Karnap take this peace and try to articulate
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Speaker 3: that what what Heideger is doing over there is not false,
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Speaker 3: but it's nonsense. He's not doing anything. His propositions has.
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Speaker 3: Whatever he says over there, it's again, it's not even false.
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Speaker 3: If you take a logical way of thinking about it,
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Speaker 3: you see that his sentences are meaningless. He's not saying anything.
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Speaker 3: So with that kind of debate between Karnap and Heidiger,
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Speaker 3: there's a depart between what was the main philosophy in
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Speaker 3: German in that days and analytic philosophers that says, okay,
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Speaker 3: all this is nonsense. We're stugning all over again. So
6:42
Speaker 3: this is the historical kind of story. And again it's
6:45
Speaker 3: not the whole story. It's part of the story. But
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Speaker 3: there's back then till now, a lot of things has changed.
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Speaker 3: So Radleigh speaking, when we were talking about analytic philosophy,
6:56
Speaker 3: we're talking about philosophical stream. That what's unique. What's what's
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Speaker 3: unique in this stream, it's not specific idea. So anally
7:06
Speaker 3: philosophers are not embracing a specific ideology or idea. They
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Speaker 3: are embracing tool, and the tool is logical kind of thinking.
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Speaker 3: So this is what united analy philosophers. But from that
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Speaker 3: you can derive derive many more things, for example, and
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Speaker 3: the analytic philosophers are not like ancient philosopher or medieval
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Speaker 3: or even modern philosophers. They are not dealing with you
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Speaker 3: with all the questions at once. When you think about
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Speaker 3: my Monodis or Spinosa or the card or Plato, you
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Speaker 3: think of someone who gave us like a really big
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Speaker 3: picture that deals with metaphysics, with the pistemology, with logic,
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Speaker 3: with ethics, with political philosophy altogether. And analytic philosophers most
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Speaker 3: of the time deals with one specific quest they are
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Speaker 3: like scientists. Okay, they're not dealing with all science at once.
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Speaker 3: They're dealing with a specific puzzle question, and if it's
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Speaker 3: not related to other kinds of questions, they will not
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Speaker 3: deal with that. So well, ethicists that writing about eating
8:14
Speaker 3: animals will not deal with the metaphysics of time.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: So the way of approaching philosophy as puzzle based and
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Speaker 3: not like a broad rush, it's a feature of anally philosophy.
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Speaker 3: One last feature I want to I want to talk
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Speaker 3: about is the a historical approach. Ani philosophers kind of
8:37
Speaker 3: deny the importancy of the history of philosophy. They think
8:41
Speaker 3: something like, as a physicist don't need to know Aristotalian
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Speaker 3: physics in order to do good physics, and philosophers philosophers
8:50
Speaker 3: don't need to know what Plato said in order to
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Speaker 3: do good philosophy. Okay, we are developing. If you want,
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Speaker 3: if you're interested in history, okay, learn the history philosophy.
9:02
Speaker 3: But if you want to do philosophy, there's no place
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Speaker 3: to the history of philosophy. So I'm a little bit exaggerating here.
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Speaker 3: This is not really the situation. And from the beginning
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Speaker 3: of an anally philosophy to this day things are changed
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Speaker 3: and now only philosophy is more historical oriented. But this
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Speaker 3: is how it begun, and this is the basic features
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Speaker 3: of analytic philosophy. I think, I hope it's no.
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Speaker 2: That was a good overview.
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Speaker 1: I know that that was actually a pretty good especially
9:32
Speaker 1: important of the clarity and the the language and the
9:35
Speaker 1: historicity of that was important. So before diving most civili
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Speaker 1: into the Jewish components, I mean, analytic philosophy has not
9:42
Speaker 1: always had a particularly happy relationship with religion in general.
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Speaker 2: Many of the figures that you go.
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Speaker 1: To before, especially Russell Wilkinson, also to a certain degree,
9:51
Speaker 1: we're not particular friends of established organized religion. Do you
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Speaker 1: think that is sort of a feature or a bug
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Speaker 1: i meaning, is there something in analytic philosophy which is,
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Speaker 1: I don't know, necessarily antagonistic towards religion or no, it's
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Speaker 1: just it so happens that a certain generation, certain famous
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Speaker 1: ones were whereas others, meaning other analytic philosophers, seem to
10:11
Speaker 1: be fine or even you know, very committed religion. So
10:14
Speaker 1: if you could just comment on that particular fraud relationship.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're totally right, and I think it's at
10:21
Speaker 3: the beginning it was a feature, and then he went
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Speaker 3: to into a bund. So what do I mean as
10:30
Speaker 3: at the beginning of an anti philosopher philosophy, the philosophers
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Speaker 3: try to understand what is a meaningful sentence and what
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Speaker 3: is unmeaningful, as I said, Karnav accused Heidegger saying meaningless sentences.
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Speaker 3: And when they try to do that, they establish the
10:50
Speaker 3: principle they called the verification principle. And both ludvit Vitgimstein
10:56
Speaker 3: and the members of the Vienna Circle, who was the
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Speaker 3: core member of the group that establish anially philosopher, they
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Speaker 3: both develop and and and encourage this kind of this principle.
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Speaker 3: And the principle says, loosely speaking, something like, if you
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Speaker 3: say something and you cannot disprove it or prove it
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Speaker 3: with logical or experimental tools, then meaningless. If you're saying
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Speaker 3: something and you don't know when you will abandon this faith, Okay,
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Speaker 3: you believe in p like some proposition, and you don't
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Speaker 3: know what are the logical or empirical tools that you
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Speaker 3: can falsify this claim or prove this claim, then you're
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Speaker 3: not saying anything. You're not saying something false, but you
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Speaker 3: were saying nonsense. And as I said, they accused Heideger
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Speaker 3: of speaking nonsense. But both against the and the Vienna
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Speaker 3: Circle members accused religion in general us saying nonsense. They
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Speaker 3: thought that the whole theological kind of discussion, whether there's God,
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Speaker 3: what the nature of God, the attributes of God, whether
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Speaker 3: God intervenings the world, all this kind of question are
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Speaker 3: really nonsense because it cannot be disproven with empirical or
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Speaker 3: logical tools alone. So at the beginning, anti philosophers this
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Speaker 3: card like the guard religion has really nonsense, and this
12:27
Speaker 3: is why they're not engaging in philosophy of religion. So
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Speaker 3: this is like a feature of their philosophy. But the
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Speaker 3: principle of the perfiguan principle was abandoned rightly, so we
12:38
Speaker 3: will not get into into this. But now there's not
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Speaker 3: even one philosopher I think will embrace this kind of principle.
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Speaker 3: And once this principle was rejected, the room for religious philosophy,
12:51
Speaker 3: of theology and philosophy of religion to come in was open,
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Speaker 3: and in that time from a feature to bach. At
13:01
Speaker 3: that time there was a room to doing philosophy of religion.
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Speaker 3: But an only philosopher were really against philosophy religion. They
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Speaker 3: thought it's obvious that there's no God, it's obvious that
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Speaker 3: religious is nonsense, so we should just ignore it. And
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Speaker 3: the few philosophers a only philosophers that wrote about religion
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Speaker 3: were pure atheistic and make fun of religion. This is
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Speaker 3: all we had for the early period of Anily philosophers.
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Speaker 3: But all of that has changed when couple of Christian
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Speaker 3: philosophers started to do serious analytic philosophy of religion. And
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Speaker 3: they didn't they didn't really they did it really smartly
13:44
Speaker 3: because oz we can take my minds for example, for
13:47
Speaker 3: that he's not of anly philosopher, but they're a saying
13:51
Speaker 3: that he wrote me in order to establish his gadlute.
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Speaker 3: He's really goddle in halakah, and then he can publish
13:59
Speaker 3: moo got through the puplex. Now everyone knows that he
14:03
Speaker 3: is a really good tem and something similar with in
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Speaker 3: anlat hilosophy of religion. Great analytic philosophers not in only philosophy,
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Speaker 3: wrote great things in analytic philosophy, and then after they
14:18
Speaker 3: established their name in Ali kilosophy, they said something like, oh,
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Speaker 3: we're also religious and we do only philosophy religion, and
14:26
Speaker 3: you already know that we are good philosophers, so you
14:29
Speaker 3: cannot even know what we're doing and when we're doing
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Speaker 3: Alan philosopher religion. And the main figure I'm speaking now
14:35
Speaker 3: is Alvin Planting. Alan Planting guy has done a big
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Speaker 3: name of analyti philosophy of religion. He established both philosophically
14:44
Speaker 3: the world of Anlan philosophy religion, but also academically he
14:48
Speaker 3: developed the whole field. He developed the departments that deal
14:51
Speaker 3: with Alan kilosophy and the journals. And also we established,
14:57
Speaker 3: with a couple of his friends like will Austin and
15:02
Speaker 3: Linda Tegzevsky and Eleanor Stump, the Society of Christian Philosophers.
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Speaker 3: It was a group of Christian philosophers that do Anly
15:11
Speaker 3: philosophy and well recognized as good philosophers. And now they're saying, okay,
15:17
Speaker 3: we're also doing Christian philosophy, and you cannot ignore us
15:22
Speaker 3: because you already know that we are great philosophers. So
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Speaker 3: from that, I don't know stuff. Fifties of the twentieth century,
15:32
Speaker 3: from that time to this day, philosophy of religion is
15:36
Speaker 3: gaining more and more recognition in the world of analyt philosophy,
15:40
Speaker 3: and I must say that today's it's really driving it's
15:44
Speaker 3: our whole ranch of only philosophy.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I can. I can second that. So let
15:52
Speaker 2: me so that let me the following question.
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Speaker 1: Analytical philosophers use a certain set of tools of analysis
15:59
Speaker 1: of lafe guage, analysis of concepts are sort of a
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Speaker 1: logical rigor. Let's say, do you think there are precursors
16:05
Speaker 1: to analytic philosophy with within the history of Jewish thoughts?
16:08
Speaker 1: In other words, you know, for the last thousand years
16:10
Speaker 1: or so, Jews have produced many famous, important thinkers who've
16:13
Speaker 1: approached a whole series of philosophical questions. When because you
16:17
Speaker 1: not only do academic philosophy also to the history of
16:20
Speaker 1: Jewish thought, that that's one of your subjects. And do
16:22
Speaker 1: you see anyone in the Jewish tradition some kind of precursor,
16:25
Speaker 1: some kind of habits of thought, let's say, which you
16:31
Speaker 1: know aren't quite analytic philosophy, but are not too far
16:33
Speaker 1: away from it. How close do we get to this
16:35
Speaker 1: kind of thinking in juistradition prior to let's say, to
16:38
Speaker 1: the twentieth century.
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Speaker 3: Okay, that's a great question, and I think there are
16:44
Speaker 3: many philosophers or not even philosopher Jewish thinkers that wrote
16:48
Speaker 3: in a similar vein or a similar way of analyt
16:51
Speaker 3: like of analyt philosophers, So they most of the time
16:55
Speaker 3: they are not using the same terms or the same
16:57
Speaker 3: metaphysical framework, but it's kind of easy to translate them
17:02
Speaker 3: into the analytic philosophy kind of language and discourse. So
17:07
Speaker 3: of course I'm thinking of the more rational kind of philosopher.
17:10
Speaker 3: So when you think of my Monodez or Sadia Gone,
17:14
Speaker 3: many medieval thinkers that warned the Aristotelian kind of world
17:19
Speaker 3: are really doing kind of I will not say analythilosophy,
17:23
Speaker 3: but I will say some kind of rational philosophy that
17:26
Speaker 3: deals with arguments and premises and try to prove or
17:33
Speaker 3: have evidence to their kind of views or against other views.
17:37
Speaker 3: So they're doing something very similar to what analytilosophers are doing.
17:42
Speaker 3: And when you go further in time, you go to
17:46
Speaker 3: I don't know, Spinosa, I don't know if you regard
17:48
Speaker 3: them as a Jews philosopher or not, or Mendesine. I
17:51
Speaker 3: think those philosophers are doing something that is really easy
17:55
Speaker 3: to approach from the world of analyt philosophy. One more
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Speaker 3: realm of Jewish tradition that I think is suited very
18:04
Speaker 3: well to the only tradition is the world of Alaha.
18:08
Speaker 3: So Alaric thinkers are also doing something very similar to
18:12
Speaker 3: anti philosophers. Again I said before that alt pilosophers doing
18:17
Speaker 3: dealing with specific puzzle. Of course, then each time and
18:20
Speaker 3: and and they're using a very theoretical, logical way of thinking.
18:25
Speaker 3: You can think of a lot of the Alaric figures
18:29
Speaker 3: and even more so that they're doing something that are similar.
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Speaker 3: So I think there are similarities. Again, it's not there's
18:38
Speaker 3: no quurse, there are no historical influences back forward, but
18:42
Speaker 3: there is Indeed there's a lot of similarity between the
18:46
Speaker 3: two worlds.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting point.
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Speaker 1: I've often observed that as well, that you know, many
18:50
Speaker 1: of the major hlak things, especially in the world of
18:52
Speaker 1: pillpull or sort of automotive analysis, even though they're not
18:55
Speaker 1: using any philosophical terminology or explicit methodology, but the way
18:59
Speaker 1: they are analyzing text, where they are asking questions, where
19:02
Speaker 1: they are conceptualizing things, is close enough to the analytics
19:06
Speaker 1: to well, it's a philosophical method in general, that they
19:09
Speaker 1: are in a certain sense doing a form of philosophy,
19:12
Speaker 1: of course, very rigidly bounded by uh, you know, with
19:16
Speaker 1: certain presuppositions.
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Speaker 2: Okay, fine, fair enough, that's the DAK point. So let
19:20
Speaker 2: me okay, let me ask the followings.
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Speaker 1: You're an analytic philosopher approaching the vast body of Jewish thought,
19:24
Speaker 1: and of course, within Jewish thought, there are many subjects
19:27
Speaker 1: that are approach.
19:27
Speaker 2: To, many topics. There are many points.
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Speaker 1: Are there certain areas, certain genres, certain topics within Jewish
19:35
Speaker 1: thought that are let's say more susceptible the analytic approach,
19:38
Speaker 1: and the analytic philosopher can go in and say, ah, yes, good,
19:40
Speaker 1: you know, I can apply my particular way of doing
19:43
Speaker 1: philosophy to this and this and this, and are there
19:45
Speaker 1: others which are just less So? I mean, you know,
19:48
Speaker 1: are the limits within the boundaries of a religious tradition
19:51
Speaker 1: like Judaism to which the analytic philosopher is not you know,
19:56
Speaker 1: either either won't go or can't go, or the methodology
20:00
Speaker 1: just works so well, I mean, let's say, what are
20:02
Speaker 1: the limits of this particular encounter?
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Speaker 3: Okay? So I will say that there are several realms
20:11
Speaker 3: within the Jewish world that it's more easy for anti
20:14
Speaker 3: philosophers to go into. But I don't think there's a
20:18
Speaker 3: specific relevant at philosophers cannot go into. So let's take
20:22
Speaker 3: that extreme example, okay, of mysticism, kabbalah, those kinds of things.
20:27
Speaker 3: There are analytic Jewish analytic philosophers that are doing today
20:30
Speaker 3: analytic kabbala. Okay, it seems kind of weird thing about,
20:35
Speaker 3: but I will mention a couple of names like Sam
20:38
Speaker 3: Libins or a Lasomiak. So Sam Libins writes metaphysics out
20:43
Speaker 3: of the sources of HASI do, and he writes is
20:46
Speaker 3: pretty well amazing. So he's doing it and all asiac
20:51
Speaker 3: rite metaphysics out of kabbala. So again, it's not easy
20:56
Speaker 3: because those thinkers that lurianic cabalistics things are not writing
21:01
Speaker 3: in the way that ant philosophers write. But you can
21:04
Speaker 3: kind of extract their arguments, their worldview and try to
21:09
Speaker 3: make sense of it with the tools of anly philosophy.
21:12
Speaker 3: So yeah, I will not say there are limits to
21:15
Speaker 3: the meeting between the anal philosophy and and Jewish philosophy,
21:21
Speaker 3: but there are areas that it's more easy to do,
21:24
Speaker 3: and there are areas that will be much more difficult.
21:27
Speaker 2: But again possible, fair enough.
21:32
Speaker 3: I want also to mention that I'm not hastied of
21:37
Speaker 3: the view that antilosophy should do everything. Okay. There is
21:41
Speaker 3: a place, of course, to other ways of approaching text. Okay,
21:47
Speaker 3: so I'm using anletlosophy as another approach besides the historical,
21:52
Speaker 3: the philological, the literature, the sociological whatever. Okay. I'm a
21:58
Speaker 3: true believer in combining all this tools together.
22:03
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, So then let me let me sort
22:08
Speaker 1: of ask a parallel question, which is that what might
22:11
Speaker 1: be the dangers of applying something like analytical philosophy to
22:15
Speaker 1: a religous tradition, because there are some who may claim that, Okay,
22:22
Speaker 1: let me let me backtrack on moments. There are some
22:24
Speaker 1: thinkers who sort to systematize Jewish thoughts. We're talking about
22:27
Speaker 1: people like Zadigon, people like my monodeseosopher Alba, and also
22:31
Speaker 1: in the modern ty I mean spinners that we can
22:34
Speaker 1: put to one side, but people like mental and others.
22:36
Speaker 2: You try to make like a system at a Jewish thought.
22:38
Speaker 1: But there are those who always attempted to resist this
22:40
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And it seems to me that analytic
22:42
Speaker 1: philosophy at least presumes that there are topics that can
22:48
Speaker 1: be analyzed logically, are there? I mean, I'm'm trying to
22:54
Speaker 1: think anyone I'm asking is do you'd think there's maybe
22:56
Speaker 1: a danger of kind of flattening or forcing ideas into
23:02
Speaker 1: a box that can be analyzed?
23:04
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? This analytic philosophy seems to
23:06
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously this is not me saying this.
23:08
Speaker 1: It's quite clear analytic philosophy is a kind of a
23:11
Speaker 1: borrowing from a scientific methodology, which is very useful in
23:14
Speaker 1: some cases. But do you see that in other cases
23:18
Speaker 1: it may be made of a steamroll ideas or shoe
23:23
Speaker 1: shoe hool them into the conceptual categories to which they
23:25
Speaker 1: don't really belong.
23:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely. As I said before, I think in
23:33
Speaker 3: when discussing and investigating Jewish ideas Jewish text, it's wrong
23:38
Speaker 3: to use only one method and analyt philosophy is one method.
23:42
Speaker 3: So if you will ask me the same question about
23:45
Speaker 3: philology or history or literature, I will answer the same
23:48
Speaker 3: kind of answer. Using one method is.
23:50
Speaker 2: Not the right way.
23:51
Speaker 3: So if you are dealing with Jewish ideas, Jewis text
23:55
Speaker 3: and using only anly philosophy, yes you're flattering, flatting something
24:01
Speaker 3: and you're definitely missing something. There are historical dimension, there
24:04
Speaker 3: is literature. They mentioned in every Jewish text, every energy
24:12
Speaker 3: Jewish figure. So yeah, using only philosophy as as one
24:18
Speaker 3: tool and the only tool, I think it's flooded. And
24:22
Speaker 3: this is why I in my own researcher, and I
24:25
Speaker 3: think many of the Jewish and only philosophers are also
24:28
Speaker 3: doing it as well. We're using all the different kinds
24:31
Speaker 3: of tools that Jewish studies and Jewish tradition gives us.
24:36
Speaker 3: So yeah, I have this worry, but I hope I
24:40
Speaker 3: do it, and I hope that in my work and
24:43
Speaker 3: the other Jewish anily philosophers are not going to this
24:48
Speaker 3: kind of way of approaching Jewish tradition.
24:51
Speaker 1: Which is an excellent segue into the specific case study
24:54
Speaker 1: that I wanted to discuss today.
24:55
Speaker 2: Which is the question of of truva. Right This is
24:59
Speaker 2: a penance right now. Again, this is something that as religious.
25:03
Speaker 1: Jews, we're relatively familiar with something that you know that
25:06
Speaker 1: there's a certain time of year for it, and then
25:08
Speaker 1: you know days devoted to it and texts and et cetera,
25:11
Speaker 1: et cetera. But you approach it as some others. But
25:15
Speaker 1: specifically when you approach it. You aproach it as a
25:17
Speaker 1: philosophical puzzle. Let's say, so, can you lay out for
25:20
Speaker 1: us in relatively simple terms, what is the nature of
25:22
Speaker 1: this philosophical puzzle, like how.
25:25
Speaker 2: How does it work?
25:26
Speaker 1: And you know, what are the problems involved that require
25:30
Speaker 1: philosophical attention?
25:32
Speaker 3: Okay, great, thank you. Just before delving into this kind
25:36
Speaker 3: of like my my paper about repentance, I want to
25:38
Speaker 3: have size that I'm not sure that this is the
25:41
Speaker 3: greatest example i've philosopher. Is just my kind of example
25:47
Speaker 3: that I worked on. So this is why we're delving
25:50
Speaker 3: into death.
25:51
Speaker 2: Okay, why I asked, I asked you the question, but yeah,
25:54
Speaker 2: I agree, but it is.
25:55
Speaker 1: It is I think an interesting case example, especially because
25:58
Speaker 1: there are those previously, like you know famously round salivation
26:01
Speaker 1: and others who.
26:01
Speaker 2: Have found within this topic.
26:04
Speaker 1: Philosophical dimensions which you know are of interest and wouldn't
26:10
Speaker 1: initially strike the reader, but but a deep thought about
26:12
Speaker 1: the possibilities of repentance of what that means in fact
26:15
Speaker 1: is I don't know, there are the philosophical hefts to this,
26:19
Speaker 1: so as well of your exploration.
26:22
Speaker 3: Okay, So the puzzle, as I see it is themes
26:26
Speaker 3: from three propositions that are intentioned with one another. Okay.
26:31
Speaker 3: The one is that the past cannot be changed. Okay,
26:33
Speaker 3: everyone almost everyone accepted one cannot change the past. Okay.
26:39
Speaker 3: The second proposition is something like guilt concerns action or
26:44
Speaker 3: intention that occurred in the past. Okay. So if I'm
26:47
Speaker 3: guilty of something or guilty of something I did or
26:50
Speaker 3: I intended to do, so it's something in the past. Okay.
26:55
Speaker 3: And the third proposition as yields can be shd okay.
27:01
Speaker 3: So Truvia's possible, repentance is possible. One can do chuva. So,
27:05
Speaker 3: according to this view, repentance is a mechanism to shed
27:08
Speaker 3: out guilt. Okay, I have some guilt, I do juvai,
27:12
Speaker 3: I repent and then I'm no longer have this kind
27:15
Speaker 3: of guilt. But if you're rased that the past gonna
27:18
Speaker 3: be changed and the guilties on the past, it kind
27:23
Speaker 3: of follows that repentance is impossible. Okay. So this is
27:28
Speaker 3: the three propositions, and this is the puzzle. And when
27:32
Speaker 3: philosophers deals with puzzles, okay, like this, the only options
27:38
Speaker 3: that we have. If there's indeed a contradiction, when the
27:41
Speaker 3: three proposition is to reject one of the propositions. And
27:45
Speaker 3: what I try to do in my paper is to
27:48
Speaker 3: investigate how different Jewish philosophers or different Jewish streams rejected
27:54
Speaker 3: each one of this propositions. So, for example, there are
27:59
Speaker 3: a couple of cabalistic and also Assidic thinkers that rejected
28:04
Speaker 3: the first premise that the past cannot be changed. They thought,
28:07
Speaker 3: no one can change the past, and true repentance is
28:11
Speaker 3: exactly the cases where one can change the past. So
28:15
Speaker 3: and I think it's in the in the bad world.
28:18
Speaker 3: This is the dominant view of the nature repentance. So
28:22
Speaker 3: you can find places where where the Lubabbe writes explicitly
28:28
Speaker 3: that one when one repent one truly changing metaphysically the past.
28:35
Speaker 3: It's not like kind of a metaphor they are using
28:38
Speaker 3: kind of midrash says. There's a famous saying saying in
28:42
Speaker 3: the table that if anyone says that David does sin,
28:46
Speaker 3: he's mistaken, or according to different reads, he's not mistaken.
28:51
Speaker 3: He's also a sinner himself. Okay, And now the course,
28:56
Speaker 3: that is why you can read it that David does
29:00
Speaker 3: it seems like a historical fact. And the explanation here
29:05
Speaker 3: goes along those lines. David has repent, and from the
29:10
Speaker 3: moment he was repent, he never has said he changes
29:16
Speaker 3: the history. So when we moved backwards the movie of
29:21
Speaker 3: the history, we will not find the moment when David
29:25
Speaker 3: has said so, it's only in the story, but it's
29:28
Speaker 3: never happened. So, according to this view, repent is a
29:31
Speaker 3: metaphysical mechanism to change the past. Okay, so this is
29:36
Speaker 3: one view I myself cannot endorse it because it's kind
29:40
Speaker 3: of whack up for me. I'm not going to that
29:44
Speaker 3: kind of well thinking. By the way, Sam Libbins that
29:46
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, has this view that one can change
29:50
Speaker 3: the past. God can change the past, and so he's
29:53
Speaker 3: done with in any problem with that.
29:56
Speaker 1: We had him on the show before, so we may
29:59
Speaker 1: we may dragging back on and demoded an explanation from him.
30:04
Speaker 3: So you can you can, you can it's eight episode.
30:08
Speaker 1: Exactly as the producers of this podcast, we can go
30:10
Speaker 1: back into the episode and sort of you know, uh yeah.
30:13
Speaker 3: Exactly, Okay, yeah. One one other view that I'm exploring
30:19
Speaker 3: is the rejection that repentance, as I laid it out,
30:23
Speaker 3: is possible. So a couple of really readers of my
30:27
Speaker 3: monitis thought that his thought about repentance, he's only forward looking.
30:33
Speaker 3: One cannot shed out guilt, okay, one, Once you you
30:38
Speaker 3: are you are guilty of something you sinned. You cannot
30:41
Speaker 3: do anything about that. You can do other good things
30:45
Speaker 3: that will balance it, but you cannot shed out guilt.
30:50
Speaker 3: When he when he writes about repentance in his he
30:56
Speaker 3: gave this example. What one second, I will find it.
31:00
Speaker 3: A person should always look at himself as equally balanced
31:03
Speaker 3: between merit and sin, and the world has equally balanced
31:07
Speaker 3: between merit and sin. If he performed one sin, he
31:10
Speaker 3: tips his balance and that of the entire world to
31:13
Speaker 3: the side of guilt and brings the instructure upon himself.
31:17
Speaker 3: On the other hand, if you perform on mitzvah, he
31:20
Speaker 3: tips his balance and that of the entire world the
31:23
Speaker 3: side of merit and brings deliverance and salvation to himself
31:27
Speaker 3: and others. So this is a famous quote for my monds.
31:31
Speaker 3: And here if he thought that shutting out guilt is possible,
31:36
Speaker 3: he should make it as an option. So if the
31:40
Speaker 3: world is balanced, okay, there are two ways you can
31:44
Speaker 3: change the balance. You can do a mitzvah and you
31:48
Speaker 3: can shed out guilt you can take out, but he
31:51
Speaker 3: is not taking it as an option. All you can
31:54
Speaker 3: do is do more mits fault, so you can balance
31:57
Speaker 3: it out in the future, but you cannot share your
32:01
Speaker 3: guilt from the past. Okay. So, accord to this view,
32:04
Speaker 3: repentance as a mechanismity to shout out guilt is impossible.
32:11
Speaker 3: Repentance is something else. But towards that of the paper,
32:16
Speaker 3: I'm suggesting a different view, and this view will reject
32:19
Speaker 3: the second proposition I claimed before, the guilt is considered
32:24
Speaker 3: action and intention occurs in the past. In order to present
32:28
Speaker 3: this view, I'm using the work of the analytic philosopher
32:34
Speaker 3: Derek Parford. So Derek Parford wrote wrote a lot about
32:39
Speaker 3: personal identity. So in his famous book Reasons and Persons,
32:43
Speaker 3: he deals a lot with the metaphysics of personal identity
32:46
Speaker 3: and its relation with ethical questions. So one way to
32:53
Speaker 3: present it is to present the whole discussion is imagine
32:57
Speaker 3: you were encountering the picture of of you in the
33:01
Speaker 3: first grade and you're asking yourself is this me? It
33:06
Speaker 3: seems that the right answer will be just yes, yeah,
33:09
Speaker 3: it's you, I know, twenty or thirty years ago. And
33:13
Speaker 3: if you take some other person picture and ask if
33:17
Speaker 3: this you the answer will be plately no, but Parfitt,
33:23
Speaker 3: following many thought experiments and like a lot of like
33:27
Speaker 3: philosophical discussion about it, try to give us a different
33:31
Speaker 3: kind of answer. You tried to argue that maybe the
33:34
Speaker 3: answer is not yes or no but quite a bit
33:38
Speaker 3: not entirely. Okay, So the quest whether I am the
33:42
Speaker 3: same person as the person I was in first grade,
33:46
Speaker 3: the answer will be something non binar kind of answer.
33:50
Speaker 3: I will I just for accuracy, partly said it that
33:54
Speaker 3: about personal identity, but what we should care about personal identity?
33:59
Speaker 3: So never mind, I will not go into details. A
34:02
Speaker 3: very analytical fight greating details over here. But he's not
34:06
Speaker 3: saying it about personal identity, but about what we care
34:09
Speaker 3: about personal deity.
34:11
Speaker 2: And yeah, no, I was just say, don't have let
34:16
Speaker 2: me explain.
34:16
Speaker 1: So what what would be the main problem involved in
34:21
Speaker 1: asserting the personal identity? Let's say, well, why are you
34:24
Speaker 1: an issue saying oh, I'm just the same person and
34:26
Speaker 1: as I was in first grade?
34:27
Speaker 2: Like why am I not? Is it because I don't
34:29
Speaker 2: a memory of it?
34:30
Speaker 1: Because what is the what's the issue of of sort
34:34
Speaker 1: of assessing just one continuous personal identity because it's important
34:37
Speaker 1: for your your article and true.
34:39
Speaker 3: Actually yeah yeah. So classically there are like two main
34:42
Speaker 3: views about personal identity. One is the more psychological one
34:46
Speaker 3: and one is the more theological one. The psychological one
34:50
Speaker 3: will say, I am my thoughts, my feeling, my character.
34:56
Speaker 3: And Locke has the John Locke, very philosopher, has this
35:01
Speaker 3: famous thought experiment if a prince and a lay people
35:04
Speaker 3: would will change their psychological state. Okay, So the thought
35:10
Speaker 3: that the character of the prince will go into the
35:12
Speaker 3: lay person and the lay person will go into the
35:15
Speaker 3: body of the prince. Where is now the prince and
35:18
Speaker 3: where is now the lay person? And it's pretty natural
35:23
Speaker 3: for many of us to say, no, the prince moved
35:26
Speaker 3: to the body of the lay person and the layperson
35:31
Speaker 3: moved to the body of the prince. This means that
35:34
Speaker 3: what we are is our psychology or something. A lot
35:39
Speaker 3: of this lines okay, So this is the psychological kind
35:42
Speaker 3: of view, and the biological kind of view is no,
35:46
Speaker 3: we are our body and we are in the Locke
35:51
Speaker 3: thought experiment, the prince stays the princes body, okay. And
35:56
Speaker 3: there are many arguments for each views, and there are
35:59
Speaker 3: eventween views and their additional views but according to many
36:04
Speaker 3: of these views, it seems that we are constantly changing.
36:09
Speaker 3: So when I'm asking whether I am the same person
36:12
Speaker 3: I was in the first grade, I don't have the
36:14
Speaker 3: same body. I have similar body, but I don't have
36:17
Speaker 3: the same body, and I don't have the same psychology.
36:20
Speaker 3: So I'm not the same person. But if you don't
36:23
Speaker 3: want to say that I'm just not the same person,
36:27
Speaker 3: you can say, as Parfect says, Okay, maybe I'm not
36:30
Speaker 3: the same person, but I'm quite the same and there's
36:33
Speaker 3: similarities between me and me and me at first grade.
36:39
Speaker 3: By the way, there are also similarities between me and
36:42
Speaker 3: someone else in first grade. Okay, So the whole boundaries
36:46
Speaker 3: between people, according to the perfitting kind of worldview kind
36:51
Speaker 3: of fade away. So he has this kind of weird
36:55
Speaker 3: metaphysical view that people are similar in some sences to others,
37:00
Speaker 3: are dacimo to others, but there's no like binary way
37:04
Speaker 3: of thinking of personally the.
37:06
Speaker 1: Right okay, so so then so so with that introduction
37:10
Speaker 1: in the backgroun, let's let's return to the particular conundrum.
37:13
Speaker 2: So you have these three seemingly.
37:16
Speaker 1: Incompatible propositions regarding Tuba, regarding the possibility of changing the
37:20
Speaker 1: past if you are in fact the same person.
37:22
Speaker 2: And so and so.
37:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, So how does this I don't know how to,
37:26
Speaker 1: It's just so, how does your particular view of personal
37:29
Speaker 1: identity help with the question of what tuba is or isn't,
37:33
Speaker 1: or how it works or doesn't?
37:35
Speaker 3: Okay? So what once your accept approach similar to perfect
37:40
Speaker 3: kind of personal identity, you can think something like repentance
37:45
Speaker 3: is the active davor to changing yourself. So the guilty
37:51
Speaker 3: is in the past, okay, and the past cannot be changed,
37:55
Speaker 3: but you can be changed. Therefore, if I changed, I'm
37:59
Speaker 3: no more like, I'm not guilty anymore of what I
38:02
Speaker 3: did because it's not me, it's him, It's a different person. Okay.
38:07
Speaker 3: So repentance is a wave of changing yourself. So the
38:12
Speaker 3: parts of yourself that the war we're guilty is no
38:16
Speaker 3: longer parts of yourself. So this is like using perfect
38:19
Speaker 3: kind of thinking and embracing it into the world of repentance.
38:24
Speaker 3: After we I have this kind of thought. After reading
38:28
Speaker 3: perfect I went back to the George tradition and actually
38:33
Speaker 3: found that there are many places you can find this
38:36
Speaker 3: kind of thinking and writing about repentance. Repentance is changing yourself.
38:41
Speaker 3: So one great example again from my monoliths, so it's
38:45
Speaker 3: presenting here another and different reading of my monodis and
38:49
Speaker 3: repentance is when he writes about the nature of repentance.
38:53
Speaker 3: He writes, and I'm quoting it now, among the paths
38:56
Speaker 3: of repentance is for the petitionaire petition to constantly call
39:02
Speaker 3: out before God, crying and entertaining, to perform charity according
39:07
Speaker 3: to his potential, to separate himself far from the object
39:12
Speaker 3: of his sin. And here comes out poor parts to
39:14
Speaker 3: exchange his name, as if to say, I am a
39:17
Speaker 3: different person and not the same who are sin? Okay,
39:22
Speaker 3: So here seems that my mind is explicitly say a
39:25
Speaker 3: repentant like a repented person who is someone who is
39:29
Speaker 3: not the same person as he was, as he's said.
39:33
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure if to read my mind is
39:35
Speaker 3: here as using metaphorical kind of language or metaphysical language
39:40
Speaker 3: as perfect using. But I think it's a very interesting
39:43
Speaker 3: way to look about repentance. So this is only one example. Again,
39:48
Speaker 3: Roberts Lavechik has a similar kind of writing, and also
39:53
Speaker 3: in the table you can find a lot of saying
39:55
Speaker 3: about repentance that echoes this kind of you and perfect
39:59
Speaker 3: enable us and help us to articulate it in a
40:03
Speaker 3: very clear and also convincing way. So in this kind
40:08
Speaker 3: of podcast, I can I go into the details, but
40:11
Speaker 3: part of it really gives us a good analytic arguments
40:16
Speaker 3: in favors views, and once you're embrace it, the view
40:20
Speaker 3: of repentance here seems kind of natural and really reasonable.
40:26
Speaker 1: Is this is very interesting? I have two questions on this.
40:30
Speaker 1: One is it's an interest question. Is that when you
40:33
Speaker 1: talk about changing personal identity, do you mean that this
40:36
Speaker 1: is undertaken sort of naturalistically or supernaturalistically. In other words,
40:42
Speaker 1: it is your position that through a pros of repentance,
40:45
Speaker 1: you sort of change your attitude and mindset and you know,
40:50
Speaker 1: intentions about the future such that you may in fact
40:53
Speaker 1: be considered substantively different to the person that you were
40:56
Speaker 1: when you sit there. Therefore, repentance works just because you
40:59
Speaker 1: aren't guilty any because you're just not that that same person.
41:01
Speaker 1: Similar to let's say someone who's been in prison for
41:03
Speaker 1: a long time and is repentance and is released on
41:05
Speaker 1: parole because we assume, oh, he's not so bad anymore,
41:07
Speaker 1: he's you know, learn his lesson. That sort of thing,
41:09
Speaker 1: or do you mean it in or not you? Or
41:12
Speaker 1: like did do you imagine that truva functions in such
41:14
Speaker 1: a way it's like supernaturally? No, we say different person
41:16
Speaker 1: a ten mean that like God effectuates a miracle as
41:20
Speaker 1: it were, and grants you this kind of new life
41:23
Speaker 1: in which you're not the same person and therefore don't have.
41:25
Speaker 2: Don't have the guilt that's clinging to you from the past.
41:29
Speaker 2: You see what I mean. It's it seems to be.
41:31
Speaker 2: It can be taken in need of direction. But it's
41:33
Speaker 2: all your thoughts on this.
41:35
Speaker 3: Okay, So part of it himself was an eighties as
41:38
Speaker 3: far as I know, so it always been accept his view.
41:43
Speaker 3: You don't need God in the picture, okay. Repentance is
41:47
Speaker 3: a natural phenomenon, so God does not give needs to
41:54
Speaker 3: give us the gift of repentance, so to say we
41:57
Speaker 3: can just repent, and I don't think it's up bad
42:02
Speaker 3: feature of this explanation. Repentance as a natural phenomenon, and
42:07
Speaker 3: in the Revetish realm, it's really important because we sometimes
42:12
Speaker 3: sin and we want our mechanism to shout out our guilt.
42:17
Speaker 3: So yeah, my approach is going to the more natural
42:20
Speaker 3: way of.
42:20
Speaker 2: Explaining things interesting.
42:22
Speaker 1: The second question I have on this is sort of
42:24
Speaker 1: it's more broad implications. Let's say you are correct that
42:27
Speaker 1: truva should be understood as a kind of mechanism that
42:30
Speaker 1: allows you to assume or assumes that you assume a
42:33
Speaker 1: new personal identity free from the burdens of the past.
42:36
Speaker 1: So what are some broader implications of this, uh, for
42:40
Speaker 1: questions such as forgiveness, punishment, moral responsibility. And the second
42:46
Speaker 1: question I wanted to approach is just on on the
42:50
Speaker 1: implications of this particular view of truvie and other words,
42:52
Speaker 1: if you if it is in fact the case that
42:55
Speaker 1: the mechanism works in such a manner as to give
42:59
Speaker 1: one a new idea entity, or to allow them to yeah,
43:02
Speaker 1: assume basically a new self, as it were, So then
43:06
Speaker 1: what do you think are the broader implications of this
43:08
Speaker 1: for things like forgiveness, moral responsibility?
43:11
Speaker 2: Inwards?
43:12
Speaker 1: How does this portrait of this concept? What are the
43:17
Speaker 1: ramifications of this philosophically? And I guess religiously, you know,
43:21
Speaker 1: more broadly.
43:22
Speaker 3: Tarlin speaking, I would be very cautious about implying this
43:26
Speaker 3: views view on different realms. So forgiveness or maybe about blame,
43:34
Speaker 3: blameworthyness in the legal kind of world. So my view
43:40
Speaker 3: is about repentance and applying it on different realms. It's complicated.
43:44
Speaker 3: For example, if you think something like want to forgive,
43:49
Speaker 3: if the other one who sent is repentant, it seems
43:52
Speaker 3: kind of wrong because person of forgiveness. It's really about
43:57
Speaker 3: a lot of psychological kind of things. So if I've
44:01
Speaker 3: changed changed. Let's say I harmed you, okay, and I
44:06
Speaker 3: did Juvie repented and I changed, I'm not the same person,
44:10
Speaker 3: but you are still very hurt. The course, whether you
44:13
Speaker 3: should forgive or not, it's not only a metaphysical question
44:17
Speaker 3: about what I change, What is my personal identity or not? Okay,
44:21
Speaker 3: So they may be connection between the two, but I
44:23
Speaker 3: will be very cautious in implying directly from repentance to forgiveness.
44:31
Speaker 3: I will say the same thing about I don't know
44:34
Speaker 3: the world of justice of legal justice. Okay. So John
44:38
Speaker 3: Locke famously said that if someone really don't remember doing something,
44:44
Speaker 3: he cannot be accused of that, okay, because he is
44:48
Speaker 3: not the same person. Because of the ideas of John
44:52
Speaker 3: Locke had about personal identity. This view is kind of crazy, okay,
44:57
Speaker 3: because it seems as again, if this view is true
45:01
Speaker 3: and we embrace it on the perfitting kind of view,
45:04
Speaker 3: what the judge needs to do is to do metaphysics
45:07
Speaker 3: and to ask whether I'm the same person or not. Again,
45:10
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's not relevant at all, but I
45:14
Speaker 3: will again I'm will be very cautious of implying it
45:18
Speaker 3: in different realms. I must also say that my view
45:22
Speaker 3: has I emphasize this the pros, but there are a
45:25
Speaker 3: lot of cones to my views. So, for example, it
45:28
Speaker 3: seems that if I'm not the same person, I'm not
45:31
Speaker 3: guilty anymore if the thing I have done in the past,
45:35
Speaker 3: but I'm not praise of word anymore for the good
45:38
Speaker 3: things I've done in the past, And this seems kind
45:40
Speaker 3: of weird. Again, if you go to the perfiting kind
45:43
Speaker 3: of view, I can change the part of myself of
45:45
Speaker 3: myself are guilty and not change the part of myself
45:50
Speaker 3: that are praise word. So this is maybe a solution
45:54
Speaker 3: to this kind of puzzle, but it just what's just
45:57
Speaker 3: one example. I think there are many puzzles that embracing
46:01
Speaker 3: this kind of view will bring bring us. So this
46:06
Speaker 3: view is not It's not perfect at all.
46:08
Speaker 1: Right, so so so, so, uh, let's elaborate that sort
46:12
Speaker 1: of what do you think is the usefulness of this,
46:15
Speaker 1: uh of the solution here, Like you mentioned, it will
46:18
Speaker 1: solve other things.
46:19
Speaker 2: What kind of things would it solve?
46:20
Speaker 3: One thing it solves if if it's correct, of course, yes,
46:27
Speaker 3: it solves the question what is repentance? How repentants? For?
46:31
Speaker 3: How can I shed out guilt and without changing the past?
46:35
Speaker 3: So this is one thing it's solved. And if you
46:37
Speaker 3: are religious person and you really care about repentance, or
46:42
Speaker 3: you really care about understanding my modernists and I'm offering
46:46
Speaker 3: a new reading of a monodis so maybe i'm I'm
46:48
Speaker 3: I mean so also helps us to understand my monolis
46:52
Speaker 3: Here we need also to use other tools, like phological tools,
46:55
Speaker 3: historical tools to see whether it's plausible to think that
46:58
Speaker 3: my mona is really thought that way. But in those
47:02
Speaker 3: kind of questions, I think my kind of answer helped us.
47:07
Speaker 2: Interesting.
47:08
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, So I guess what is left to ask
47:11
Speaker 1: you is just you know, what do you see on
47:14
Speaker 1: the horizon. So it seems to me that this interaction
47:17
Speaker 1: between analytic philosophy and religion in general, as you mentioned,
47:21
Speaker 1: planting and others, but certainly within the religious tradition of
47:25
Speaker 1: Judaism is relatively young. So you mentioned some names that
47:27
Speaker 1: Sam Libins is one of them. There are a few others
47:29
Speaker 1: who sort of trains in this analytical school and wish
47:32
Speaker 1: to apply the terminology and the methodology that they have
47:36
Speaker 1: to questions and ideas within within Judaism.
47:39
Speaker 2: So where do you see this going? Like what other
47:42
Speaker 2: big topics that ought to.
47:45
Speaker 1: That there ought to be that are next sort of
47:48
Speaker 1: on the on the menu of the engagement between these
47:51
Speaker 1: these two U these I don't know the methods of
47:54
Speaker 1: analytical philosophy and Judaism, you know, Yeah, where does the
47:57
Speaker 1: engagement go from here? And is there sort of a
47:59
Speaker 1: natural limits of this or is this, I don't know,
48:02
Speaker 1: an ongoing project with with no with no end.
48:05
Speaker 3: Okay. What I'm thinking about the encounter between ant philosophy
48:10
Speaker 3: and the Jewish world, I'm thinking of three different kind
48:13
Speaker 3: of encounters and and I'm I'm thinking it as an
48:17
Speaker 3: academic three kind of way of developing this kind of
48:22
Speaker 3: research project. One is historical, Okay, So there are many
48:28
Speaker 3: scholars who wrote about the influence of continental philosophy or
48:34
Speaker 3: I mean Thellian philosophy or kantient philosophy and the Jewish world. Okay,
48:41
Speaker 3: the same kind of project can be implanted in this
48:44
Speaker 3: kind of case. So there is influence of analyte philosophy
48:47
Speaker 3: on Jewish philosophy. So as as I said before, the
48:51
Speaker 3: Fiata Circle is the kind of founder group of analytic philosophers.
48:56
Speaker 3: And among this group there were there was uh Jewish
49:01
Speaker 3: philosopher Joseph Schefter, who was a rabbi and after after
49:05
Speaker 3: the Fantas Circle broke apart, he bade to Israel and
49:09
Speaker 3: became like a religious, uh spiritual leader. But he's not
49:14
Speaker 3: only one. When you think about vich he's also a
49:18
Speaker 3: great example when when in one of the journalistic article
49:24
Speaker 3: once Child was asked who is the great philosopher who
49:29
Speaker 3: who was influenced him? And his answer was Breton Russell.
49:33
Speaker 3: And okay, so just one example. But he he didn't
49:38
Speaker 3: say about.
49:40
Speaker 2: He didn't say that's really strange, that's really really strange, because.
49:43
Speaker 3: That's yeah, I thought, people say content.
49:47
Speaker 2: My models, Yeah, okay, everything.
49:54
Speaker 3: When you think about Robbie Selo in his early writings,
49:57
Speaker 3: he discusses logical post and it was logical Posit was
50:02
Speaker 3: a part of the philosophy of the ant philosophy in
50:04
Speaker 3: the beginning of its development, and when you go on
50:12
Speaker 3: in time you find more and more Jewish thinkers that
50:15
Speaker 3: were really influence influenced by by a philosophers. I think
50:18
Speaker 3: the great example is Robbie Sacks. Robbie Sacks grew up
50:22
Speaker 3: in the UK, in Cambridge and Oxford, where any philosophy
50:28
Speaker 3: was the key kind of philosophy. And as advisor, we're
50:33
Speaker 3: kind of an only philosophers. And again today there are
50:37
Speaker 3: more and more Jewish ante philosophers. I don't want to
50:41
Speaker 3: go into the game of mentioning names because I will
50:44
Speaker 3: forget some. But just a couple of examples. Aaron Siegel
50:48
Speaker 3: one of my PhD advisor and and I'm I'm a
50:51
Speaker 3: real travid of him. He is a great analytic Jewish philosopher.
50:56
Speaker 3: Mosche Halbertal I'm also a student of his. He's also
51:01
Speaker 3: he's using Ani philosophy to develop his own kind of
51:05
Speaker 3: philosophy and reading of Jews text. So, as I said,
51:09
Speaker 3: the encounter between anti philosophy and jew philosophy has this
51:14
Speaker 3: historical they mentioned that need to be further investigated. One
51:19
Speaker 3: other field of the encounter between the two is hermonoudics.
51:24
Speaker 3: A lot of scholars use different methods of hermoneutics to
51:30
Speaker 3: read Jewish texts and Jewish ideas to interpret them. I
51:35
Speaker 3: think anaint philosophy gives us additional tools to read ancient texts,
51:41
Speaker 3: as I said, as I did now with repentance and
51:43
Speaker 3: my monolis and jabad, we can do the same thing
51:47
Speaker 3: and use the insight and the tools that anly philosophy
51:50
Speaker 3: give us to read and to present and to make
51:56
Speaker 3: sense of Jewish texts and ideas. So this is the
51:59
Speaker 3: kind of hermoneutical kind of project. The third kind of
52:03
Speaker 3: project that I'm thinking about is actually doing analytic Jewish philosophy.
52:09
Speaker 3: So as my body is did Aristilian kind of Jewish philosophy,
52:14
Speaker 3: and I don't know hermic Cohen did Kanty and jewishilosophy.
52:18
Speaker 3: Now there are many Jewish thinkers that are doing Jewish
52:23
Speaker 3: ant philosophy. So this is the three the mains that
52:27
Speaker 3: I think Jewish philosophy and analy philosophy and the Jewish
52:32
Speaker 3: vision can be enriching each other. And I hope it
52:37
Speaker 3: will be done more and more in the coming years.
52:41
Speaker 1: Yes, I hope so too, because as you say, I
52:43
Speaker 1: think that as a school as a method of philosophy,
52:48
Speaker 1: it has a power to analyze, to deconstruct and reconstruct,
52:54
Speaker 1: to sort of penetrate bodies and systems of ideas that
52:58
Speaker 1: there's really unparallel. When it's properly one has done well,
53:01
Speaker 1: then the power of analytic philosophy to make sense of
53:07
Speaker 1: and to really get into it is how do you
53:09
Speaker 1: know if anyone is doing what we mentioned earlier, which
53:12
Speaker 1: is that sort of the the application or least similarities
53:15
Speaker 1: between analytics and let's say talmudik thinking.
53:18
Speaker 2: In other words, you know other of.
53:20
Speaker 1: Those who try and draw out the parallels or even
53:24
Speaker 1: into place between something like the methodologies of analytic philosophy
53:28
Speaker 1: and and analysis of texts of of the Gamara, the name,
53:33
Speaker 1: et cetera.
53:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, as I said, I think that that the similarity
53:36
Speaker 3: is here is amazing between the Anad philosophy and how
53:39
Speaker 3: they approach things and and and and and there are
53:45
Speaker 3: I will not say many, but I will say several
53:47
Speaker 3: thinkers that embrace Ani philosophy in order to investigate ideas
53:53
Speaker 3: and and and texts from the Ala world. One example
53:58
Speaker 3: is again Aaron Siegel. He wrote a couple of papers
54:01
Speaker 3: about the better physics of a laca. Okay, So again
54:07
Speaker 3: I think philosophers don't like to ask the big question
54:11
Speaker 3: that at the beginning, okay, what is halaha? What is
54:14
Speaker 3: those kinds of things? Okay? We want to go into
54:17
Speaker 3: specific details of halaka okay, go again or or whatever
54:24
Speaker 3: and try to extract from that what do you need
54:27
Speaker 3: to assume in or to make sense of this a
54:29
Speaker 3: bunch of alacot so Arozia wrote about causality and aloha
54:34
Speaker 3: what is the the the notion that had in mind
54:39
Speaker 3: about how causation works and how time works, you know,
54:43
Speaker 3: to make sense of their rulings have a great fate
54:47
Speaker 3: of mine. Is Coin also wrote about the nature of
54:50
Speaker 3: a lakic rules, so how lakic rules are similar not
54:54
Speaker 3: similar to natural rules okay, to the rules of the
54:58
Speaker 3: natural world or to borrow rules, and we have different
55:01
Speaker 3: kind of rules. So there are a couple of scholars
55:06
Speaker 3: that are writing at this day about the connections, mostly
55:11
Speaker 3: the conceptual connection between the world of alaha and early philosophy.
55:15
Speaker 3: I also myself engage with such a project, and I
55:19
Speaker 3: think it's really really promising.
55:23
Speaker 1: Yeah interesting, okay, fine, that is I think enough and
55:27
Speaker 1: more than enough to go on for the time being,
55:29
Speaker 1: Doctor nor Laarren, thank you so very much for joiny
55:31
Speaker 1: yesterday on the podcast Jewish Ideas. We look forward to
55:34
Speaker 1: seeing your fantastic work in this particular fruitful field in
55:38
Speaker 1: the future.
55:38
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'll just speak to you again soon.
55:41
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you very much.
55:44
Speaker 1: This has been the podcast of Jewish Ideas by Toro
55:46
Speaker 1: in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself JJ Kimbrie,
55:50
Speaker 1: edited and mixed by Alisha Kelman. You can stay up
55:53
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56:00
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