Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 79. Early Modern Attitudes | Dr. Jeremy Fogel (Universalism & Particularism #4)

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79. Early Modern Attitudes | Dr. Jeremy Fogel (Universalism & Particularism #4) · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

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  Speaker 1: Gweting's friends and welcome back to the Podcast of Jewish Ideas,
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  Speaker 1: a Terror in Morosion production. I'm jj kimbre Here on
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  Speaker 1: the Podcast of Jewish Ideas, we are currently running a
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  Speaker 1: multi part series on the forny and intriguing issue of
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  Speaker 1: Judaism and universalism. In pursuit of enlightenment and insights on
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  Speaker 1: this topic, we will be journeying through the false sweep
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  Speaker 1: of Jewish intellectual history from the Bible down to our
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  Speaker 1: own day, inviting our Areo digests to reflect on the
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  Speaker 1: many questions that are brought to the fore by the
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  Speaker 1: consideration of universalism and Judaism. On today's episode, we will
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  Speaker 1: be moving into the modern era and exploring the universalistic
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  Speaker 1: philosophy that lies at the heart of two major German
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  Speaker 1: Jewish thinkers of recent centuries, Moses Mendelssohn and Herrmann Coin.
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  Speaker 1: On this journey, universalism shall serve as a useful lens
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  Speaker 1: through which to understand the worldview of these Titanic philosophers
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  Speaker 1: in particular, as well as the broader scope of ideological
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  Speaker 1: challenges confronting Judaism in the modern period. Our guest today
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  Speaker 1: to discuss these philosophers and other things. Is the wonderful
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  Speaker 1: doctor Jeremy Fogel, a faculty member in the Department of
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  Speaker 1: Jewish Philosophy and Talmood Television University. He's the author, among
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  Speaker 1: other things, of the book Jewish Universalisms, Mendelstohn, Coin and
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  Speaker 1: Humanity Sized Good released by Brandeis twenty twenty three, as
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  Speaker 1: well as a translator of Song of Songs published by Sadik,
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  Speaker 1: among many other writings. Also on a note of professional jealousy,
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  Speaker 1: doctor Jeremy Fogel is, in my characteristically humble opinion, the
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  Speaker 1: finest podcast host currently in the Hebrew language, and those
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  Speaker 1: who have not listened to his podcasts such as Think
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  Speaker 1: and Drink Different or Radical as well as others, are
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  Speaker 1: certainly missing out. And there's a pleasure to welcome him
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  Speaker 1: to the podcast of Jewish Ideas today, doctor Fogel.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome sir, Thank you very much, Thank you very much. JJ.
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  Speaker 2: Is such a pleasure to be here and take you
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  Speaker 2: for the very generous introduction.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, of course, now the pleasure is all us excellent,
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  Speaker 1: so let us jump into this thorny issue of universalism
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  Speaker 1: and modernis philosophy and other things. But the first i'd
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  Speaker 1: like to define terms as as we characteristic you'd like
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  Speaker 1: to do. And so if you could just tell us
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  Speaker 1: what do you mean exactly by universalism? How does that
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  Speaker 1: word has that term function in your ideas in your writings.
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  Speaker 2: Well, if we're going to be talking about definitions, I
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  Speaker 2: think you know, there's this one sentence by Nietzsche that
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  Speaker 2: I really live by as a scholar, as a human being,
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  Speaker 2: and I always tell my students this is a sense
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  Speaker 2: you have to remember, because with this sentence only you
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  Speaker 2: will be winning about ninety percent of all arguments you
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  Speaker 2: will ever have. And it's something that Nietzsche says in
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  Speaker 2: the Genealogy of Morality in the second part, and he
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  Speaker 2: says that you can only define that which has no history. Right,
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  Speaker 2: so you can define an even sign the triangle, because
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  Speaker 2: and even side the triangle ten thousand years ago, twenty
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  Speaker 2: thousand years from now, two hundred million years from now,
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  Speaker 2: if there are aliens or distant descendants who will be
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  Speaker 2: doing a geometry, it will be exactly the same thing. It's,
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  Speaker 2: you know, seemingly an ahistorical object, which you can therefore
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  Speaker 2: define and essentialize. But anything that is historical changes and develops,
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  Speaker 2: and therefore you can't just define it because it's always
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  Speaker 2: slightly different, you know, you have to do with Nietzsche
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  Speaker 2: refers to it as a genealogy. You have to see
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  Speaker 2: how meanings change, our values are prioritized differently, how influences
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  Speaker 2: come to bear, how internal dynamics change, whatever historical phenomena
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  Speaker 2: you are dealing with, right, maybe a big, fat example
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  Speaker 2: would be Judaism itself, you know, like it's it's it's
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  Speaker 2: a grave in Israel, especially a grave political question. What
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  Speaker 2: is Judaism?
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  Speaker 1: You know?
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  Speaker 2: And I always try to encourage people to realize that
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  Speaker 2: Judaism as a historical phenomenon is always changing. You know,
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  Speaker 2: there's a semi pagan cult of sacrifices on the Temple Mount,
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  Speaker 2: and then there's a revolutionary a rabbinic movement, and then
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  Speaker 2: there's the highly as tract philosophical Judaism of Rambam, and
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  Speaker 2: there's the mythical Judaism of the Kabala, and there's the
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  Speaker 2: popular Judaism of early Hassidism, and as the enlightened Judaism
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  Speaker 2: of Mendosen, the Judaism as you know, some fascist Judaism
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  Speaker 2: of Itama Beenvil, and the completely secular Judaism of Larry David.
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  Speaker 2: And these are all part of an ever changing thing
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  Speaker 2: which you can't necessarily define, but which you can try
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  Speaker 2: to create a genealogy of. And universalism itself also is
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  Speaker 2: on the one hand, you know something which you can
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  Speaker 2: think of in abstract terms, like an even sider to triangle.
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  Speaker 2: I would say my definition, which is, you know, worth
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  Speaker 2: whatever it is. But I tend to think of it
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  Speaker 2: in terms of axiology, i e. In terms of the
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  Speaker 2: theory of values that it reflects. And so for me,
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  Speaker 2: a universalistic theory is one in which the highest good
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  Speaker 2: is available to all, or sought to be made available
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  Speaker 2: to all in some sense. But that's rather abstract niversalisms,
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  Speaker 2: and that's why I tried to talk about Jewish universalisms
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  Speaker 2: in the plural are particular local historical phenomena. Right, So
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  Speaker 2: you have universalisms, uh, you know, you have universalistic theories
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  Speaker 2: in ancient China. You have universalism in the Bible, as
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  Speaker 2: you well know of course, JJ, you've got Christian universalism. Uh.
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  Speaker 2: The universalism and the world of the cultural world which
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  Speaker 2: I was interested in is the enlightened universalism, which also
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  Speaker 2: you know, you have different variations, different versions, but these
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  Speaker 2: were all forms of universalisms that are taking pare within
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  Speaker 2: a certain particular European culture, and I think it's a
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  Speaker 2: form of universalism that can relate to the great revolutions
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  Speaker 2: that brought about modernity itself.
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  Speaker 1: So thank you for taking that up a mix. Tell
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  Speaker 1: you where I was going next, which is that, of course,
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  Speaker 1: the universalism that modern Jewish Jewish thinkers of the eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth century had to contend with, it wasn't an abstract
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  Speaker 1: a sort of a historical idea, but rather, as you say,
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  Speaker 1: it was something that was brought up by a certain
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  Speaker 1: specific intellectual movement, namely the European Enlightenment and the scientific Revolution.
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  Speaker 1: And so then the question becomes to what is what
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  Speaker 1: are the characteristics of this new form of university, all
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  Speaker 1: the new ideas that were brought up in this particular
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  Speaker 1: time and place, and in what ways would that present
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  Speaker 1: a challenge to Judas and of those Jewish thinkers of
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  Speaker 1: that time period looking at this new nexus of ideas,
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  Speaker 1: what would they have to respond to?
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  Speaker 2: Let's say, so in my book, I suggest like three
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  Speaker 2: different principles, three main kinds of focuses of valuation that
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  Speaker 2: are I think critical to understand the universalism of the
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  Speaker 2: European Enlightenment, and I think again that they all related
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  Speaker 2: to the wider revolutions that brought about modernity and enlightenment itself.
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  Speaker 2: But first of all, there's the notion of toleration, the
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  Speaker 2: notion of equality, and the notion of reason. I think
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  Speaker 2: our criticals, so if we start with equality, and you
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  Speaker 2: know here I'm basing myself on the book that I
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  Speaker 2: really love, Alexander Coira is from a finite world to
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  Speaker 2: infinite universe. If we think of the scientific revolution, and
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  Speaker 2: of course we think of fifteen forty three Copernicus on
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  Speaker 2: the movement of the heavenly bodies, you know, the heliocentric revolution,
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  Speaker 2: the first, as Freud said, the first hit on human narcissism.
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  Speaker 2: And also we have to think about Bruno. Right, we're
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  Speaker 2: moving from a closed, finite universe to an infinite universe. Now,
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  Speaker 2: once we live in an infinite universe, then hierarchies don't
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  Speaker 2: make as much sense as they did in the Aristotelian
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  Speaker 2: Ptolemaic universe, because if the universe is closed, then there's
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  Speaker 2: above and below, and there's left and right and our directions.
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  Speaker 2: Once the universe becomes infinite, as it does with the
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  Speaker 2: scientific revolution. Then there's no more above, there's no more below,
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  Speaker 2: there's no left, there's no right, As Russo says, you know,
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  Speaker 2: we are all the center of the universe. That's an
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  Speaker 2: exquisitely modern sentence. You know, if you think of the
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  Speaker 2: Countesian mathematics, it's also about locating a point in empty space,
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  Speaker 2: because you have to create artificial means by which to
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  Speaker 2: locate points in an infinite universe. Now, in a unifinite universe,
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  Speaker 2: there's a sense of equality that might arise, and it
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  Speaker 2: did for a while. You know, there's a golden bridge
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  Speaker 2: between these egalitarian notions and the development of pseudo scientific
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  Speaker 2: modern racism. But so equality is a critical part. There's
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  Speaker 2: this idea that in this new universe, in this infinite universe,
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  Speaker 2: it doesn't make sense to think of human beings as
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  Speaker 2: being inherently in some hierarchy, because you just can't have
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  Speaker 2: herarchies in an infinite universe. I think that it's particularly
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  Speaker 2: interested in this context to think of Thomas Jefferson, right,
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  Speaker 2: all men are created Equal, who referred to Epicurus as
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  Speaker 2: his master, and because of course believed in an universe,
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  Speaker 2: he was one of the sources for Bruno's insight. He
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  Speaker 2: says himself, Jefferson in his letters stuff to the effect
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  Speaker 2: that the universe is eternal, and it's part great or small.
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  Speaker 2: They ow interchangeable. So if you see like someone like
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  Speaker 2: you know, in the political enlightenment of the era, someone
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  Speaker 2: like Jefferson, you can really see how this notion of
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  Speaker 2: a universe leads to equality. So we have equality as
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  Speaker 2: a central aspect of the Enlightenment. Of course, liberty galite
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  Speaker 2: is part of the slogan of the French Revolution. You've
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  Speaker 2: got this idea of toleration and the moral of the
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  Speaker 2: right and the cosmopolitan age. So toleration, of course relates
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  Speaker 2: to one other major revolution that brought about modernity and
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  Speaker 2: eventually the Enlightenment, and that is of course the discovery
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  Speaker 2: of the Americas and the globalization of the world. Stage right.
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  Speaker 2: So once people discover two or discover new continents, discovered
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  Speaker 2: new cultures, Jesuits begin translating increasingly Chinese ancient Chinese wisdom,
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  Speaker 2: confuses and other stuff. And European intellectuals that are exposed
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  Speaker 2: to these ideas can't just keep going with excrusivistic views
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  Speaker 2: of religion, right, it doesn't make sense for God to
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  Speaker 2: create people and throw them in Japan or in the
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  Speaker 2: Amazon forest and then be like, well, fellas, you're stuck.
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  Speaker 2: You have absolutely not, not even a chance of finding
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  Speaker 2: salvation until a guy will come by with a book
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  Speaker 2: and tell you about you know, like Mohammad or Jesus
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  Speaker 2: or Moishe. And until you don't hear about Moishe, you're
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  Speaker 2: stuck somewhere and you know, bad luck to you. That's
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  Speaker 2: that sounds awfully, awfully cruel. It's something whose sour says,
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  Speaker 2: forget about the fact that it's half of the world
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  Speaker 2: that haven't even had the chance to even consider the
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  Speaker 2: religion that we used to present that exclusivistic Even if
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  Speaker 2: it's just one poor guy who dies the day before
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  Speaker 2: some you know, the boat arrives with the glorious news,
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  Speaker 2: that's as unfair the mental you know, a letter to
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  Speaker 2: Emdence says, you know it would be a well do
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  Speaker 2: you know it doesn't say what it doesn't say the
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  Speaker 2: world I was gonna say, But it's it's a it's
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  Speaker 2: a it's a naughty God, right, it's not a nice guy.
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  Speaker 2: It's not very loving God that would do that. So
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  Speaker 2: once you start taking very seriously the humanity of these
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  Speaker 2: different cultures as what's happening in the eighteenth century, and
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  Speaker 2: you start respecting them and even admiring them. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I always say that Leibniz reminds me of the first
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  Speaker 2: term Trump China, China, China. Trump was always on about China.
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  Speaker 2: Leibnitz is always on about China. You know, is somewhat concerned,
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  Speaker 2: but he's also extremely admiring of Chinese culture and of
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  Speaker 2: Chinese wisdom. Wolf the Great Metaphysician gives this lecture about how,
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  Speaker 2: you know, civil philosophy of China is superior to the
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  Speaker 2: European one. He gets kicked out of university because how
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  Speaker 2: could they be superior to us if they don't have Christianity.
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  Speaker 2: But these ideas are there, and once these ideas are there,
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  Speaker 2: and once this exposition to foreign cultures is so present
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  Speaker 2: and such a part of Europe that is absolutely obsessed
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  Speaker 2: with all these travel writings and new translations that you have,
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  Speaker 2: there's there's a sense of toleration. So we said, equality
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  Speaker 2: among men and later women toleration and then the rise
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  Speaker 2: of reason right again, this new era of scientific thought,
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  Speaker 2: of the universalization of thought. You know, the famous principles
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  Speaker 2: that laws of nature are universal, so we're trying to
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  Speaker 2: discover the laws of the human mind, and these are
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  Speaker 2: too positive to be universal. So everybody's got reason, and
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  Speaker 2: reason really is the big hero again of modern philosophy.
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  Speaker 2: You know, with the cats, there's nothing but reason. Right,
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  Speaker 2: everything is discarded, the religious authority, the opinions of the ancients,
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  Speaker 2: it's the it's the thinking individual that starts from zero.
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  Speaker 2: All over, reason is king. So I would say that
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  Speaker 2: modern European universalism reflects tends to reflect in different prioritization
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  Speaker 2: these three postulates the equality of human beings tolerted, the
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  Speaker 2: importance of toleration and universalistic ethics, and the rise of reason.
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  Speaker 2: Now I say different prioritizations because even within the once
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  Speaker 2: you do a genealogy of these opinions, there could very
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  Speaker 2: well be tensions. Right, someone could very much emphasize equality
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  Speaker 2: and toleration at the expense of reason, and on the
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  Speaker 2: other hand, somebody could very much emphasize reason but then
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  Speaker 2: go on to claim that not everybody has reason to
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  Speaker 2: the same degree. So there could be different tensions. But again,
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  Speaker 2: roughly speaking, I would say that the European Enlightenment is
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  Speaker 2: characterized by these three principles. And I would then say
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  Speaker 2: that that's also part of the universalistic devaluation of Judaism,
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  Speaker 2: because if you think in a nutshell, if you say, well,
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  Speaker 2: you know, now, in this new world, we want to
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  Speaker 2: have equality among all human beings, and we want to
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  Speaker 2: have toleration and cosmopolitanis and we want to emphasize reason,
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  Speaker 2: and the Jews are perceived as betraying all three of
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  Speaker 2: these principles. We're talking about equality and you're walking around
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  Speaker 2: being superior because you're the chosen people were thinking about
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  Speaker 2: universalistic ethics and you're focused on the particularistic ethics of
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  Speaker 2: the Alha and you know, we want a world of reason,
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  Speaker 2: and you keep clinging onto your mythological, ancient, sanctified books.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, the great hero or anti hero, I guess,
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  Speaker 2: depending on your perspective, is Finosa, because you know, the
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  Speaker 2: avant garde of the Enlightenment, the one who preceded the
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  Speaker 2: all the eighteenth century figures. Because with all due respect
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  Speaker 2: to Voltaire and Kant, and they're pretty and then they're
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  Speaker 2: pretty strong criticism of Judaism. In these lines, they didn't
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  Speaker 2: really know much or that much about Judaism Spinoza did know,
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  Speaker 2: and his criticism was perhaps the most.
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  Speaker 1: Virulent in and what Spinoza can you they didn't really
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  Speaker 1: like very much. In other words, it wasn't that the
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  Speaker 1: more they discovered, the more they respected Judaism. It was
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  Speaker 1: quite the reverse, right, So this is so, this is
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  Speaker 1: why I wanted to ask, because, well, firstly, it's an
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  Speaker 1: interesting point simply to reflect that that this kind of
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  Speaker 1: universalisms that were universalism that was emanating from the European
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  Speaker 1: Enlightenment also had the kind of a darker side to it.
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  Speaker 1: That it's it proposed a kind of hegemony that marginalized
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: particularity and particularity of specific communities or specific sects. But,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: as you say, I don't want to interrupt you, the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: major challenge, as you see it, as you present it,
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  Speaker 1: to Jewish particularity comes from within the camp as it were,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: namely Spinosa. So can you outline for us what was
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the challenge that Spinosa laid out to all future thinkers
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  Speaker 1: and in whose shadow centuries of Jewish thought had to
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: had to wrestle.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to to just say a word about
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: a very important point you just made that JJ, which
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  Speaker 2: is about you know that darker side, and we, of course,
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  Speaker 2: uh are you know, we can be grateful and blessed
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  Speaker 2: to have been enlightened by post colonial criticism of the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Enlightenment and the way in which enlightened discourse was used
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  Speaker 2: to justify the horrific crimes of colonialism, right because white
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  Speaker 2: man's burden and you know we we you know, reason
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  Speaker 2: is the law and reason is enlightened. So now we
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  Speaker 2: have reason, we are the reasonable culture. So we have
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  Speaker 2: to we have to you know, we have to help
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  Speaker 2: the North Africa, we have to help India, we have
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  Speaker 2: to bring reason out. The thing I would the point
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  Speaker 2: I would like to make is, you know, this is
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  Speaker 2: something that has to be discussed and thought about at
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: length and critically. But I do think, especially for someone
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: that's talking from Israel at the moment, that we can't
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: throw away the baby with the water or maybe the
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: water with the baby. I don't know which is more
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: valuable nowadays. But you know, we can't throw the baby
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: with the water with the water baby, because yes, we
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  Speaker 2: have to be very critical about the danger of universalistic
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  Speaker 2: ways of thinking and the way in which it could
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  Speaker 2: be a form of particulism that isn't aware of its
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: own particularity, and that just posits itself as the central
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  Speaker 2: voice and doesn't let any other voices. And that's a
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: generous way of presenting. It might even be ent great
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  Speaker 2: lead to great violence. But the only hand, I don't
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  Speaker 2: think we have much of an option today as a
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  Speaker 2: global society, as a human species, but to try and
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  Speaker 2: think of a form of universalism that wouldn't fall in
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  Speaker 2: that horrific trap. Right, the fact that it's a potential
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  Speaker 2: danger doesn't mean we should still be pursuing these universalistic
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  Speaker 2: ideas about Spinosa. You know, I like to I publish
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  Speaker 2: this paper. Why I call it the Anti Christ and
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: the Anti Moses, Because I think that if Nietzsche thinks
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: of himself as the anti Christ, then there's all reasons
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  Speaker 2: in the world to think of Spinosa as the anti Moses.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, and incidentally, by the way, Nize delighted
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  Speaker 2: to discover Spinozza's philosophy, and I think it was in
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  Speaker 2: the summer of eighty one one, of course. But so
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  Speaker 2: I think that the challenge of Spinoza is two fold.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, I always try to characterize it with
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: a biblical quote, have you killed and inherited? Because I
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  Speaker 2: think that's what Spinoza does to Jewish tradition. It's both
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  Speaker 2: a murderer and an inheritance. So the inheritance, to start
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  Speaker 2: with the end is that Spinoza doesn't only devaluate a
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  Speaker 2: Jewish tradition. He suggests an alternative form of salvation. He
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  Speaker 2: is the one who will provide the salvation. The Judaism
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  Speaker 2: and other forms of organized religion promise, but can't and
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  Speaker 2: but can't you know, realize in the end, right, So
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  Speaker 2: he will be the one who will show us the
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: path to genuine salvation of assaults and at least of
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: course the ethics. Once you understand that the eternal and
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: infinite being we call God or Nature acts from the
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: same necessity from which he exists, et cetera. So God
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: or Nature, once we understand that everything is God on nature,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: and that we are only modes of the one substance
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: that is God on nature, then that realization itself is
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: part of God's self realization, and then you become part of,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: you know, that kind of eternal consciousness of that eternal
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: and infinite being we call God or Nature. I always
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: said the wave, the wave that stops thinking of itself
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: as a wave, but starts thinking of itself as an ocean,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: ceases us to worry about wave problems, like this is
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: a better wave, or this wave is smarter, or this
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: wave has got better hair, or this wave it looks younger,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: or and here's the show almost you know to the end. No,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: once you're the ocean and you know everything fine. I
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: always try. I always like to summarize the Spinoza with
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: learnd Coin and said, if you don't become the ocean,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: you will be seasick every day. So Spinoza is the
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: philosopher who teaches us how to become the ocean, and
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: that is this salvation. So that's have you inherited, that's
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: the yashta. That's of course more in the theological political treatise,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: whereas Pinoza will depict Judaism as you know, essentially a
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: political movement, a national movement, moses like Alexander Great and
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: other leaders which you know, plenty of such leaders we
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: can bring to the mind even today that use the
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: image of proximity to God for purely political purposes. Right.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: It's like Spinoska has got this great bit in this
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: in chapter seventeen when he says, well, you know, Alexander
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Great explained to his generals, he said, you know, you know,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: pray God that the Indians would believe that I'm divine.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, in other words, who do you think they're
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: going to be rebelling against a human being or God?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Human being? If I'm a god? You know this, it
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: serves our purposes. So Moses is just another leader that
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: uses a sense of proximity to God to push for
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: overd his political agenda. And he has a brilliant idea
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: of Moses. He has an absolutely brilliant idea, which is
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: given that it's a stiff naked people. And Spinoza agrees,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: and I tend to agree to I always say that.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: You know, I was a waiter in a few summers
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: at the television beach, and I really understood the Moses.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I felt like Israel in the desert. You know, when
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: people start arguing all the time they bring food from
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: the home. They said you shouldn't, you shouldn't be bringing
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: food on home, but they bring the food and then
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: you compromise. So we're stiff, were stiff naked bunch.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So I think that, sorry, I think the waiter and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: now he's very apt of course, because the one time
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: that Mosha tries to resign in the home match is
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: when the people complain about the food.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: It's like He's like, yeah, I forget to complain about
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: the food already. It's like, we miss the onions, and
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: we missed the garlic, and we missed the meat, and
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: like once this food sucks.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Three and a half millennia of yelling at waiters.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, god, so so so Moses is a brilliant idea,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: you know. And and when I think I have this
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: paragraph here, I love this paragraph because I think it's
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: the single most heretic paragraph in the history of Jewish philosophy,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: saying something which says, finally, I'm reading from the fifth
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: chapter of the Theological Treaties. Finally, in order that the people,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: who were not capable of being their own masters, should
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: hang on the words of its ruler, he did not
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: permit these men, accustomed as they were to bondage, to
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: act just as they pleased. For the people could do
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: nothing without being bound at the same time to remember
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: the law and to carry out commands which depended only
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: on the will of the ruler. For it was not
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: at their own pleasure. But according to a fixed and
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: determined command of the law, that they were permitted to plow,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: to sow, to reap. Likewise, they were not permitted to
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: eat anything, to dress, to shave their head or beard,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: to rejoice, or to do absolutely anything except according to
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: the orders and commandments prescribed in the laws. This was
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: not all. They were also bound to have on their doorpost,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: on their hands, and between their eyes certain signs which
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: always reminded them of the need for obedience. This, then,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: was the object of the ceremonies. That men should do
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: nothing by their own decision, but everything according to the
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: command of someone else, and that they should confess, both
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: by constantly repeated actions and by meditations, that they were
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: not their own masters in anything, but were completely subjected
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: to someone else's control. From all this, it is established
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: more clearly than by broad daylight that ceremonies contribute nothing
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to blessedness, and that those of the Old Testament. Indeed,
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the whole law of Moses was concerned with nothing but
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the Hebrew state, and consequently with nothing but corporal advantages.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, drop the mic, throw the mic into the
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: red sea. You know this is crazy, because what he
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: does here, Spinoza is depict the great hero Moses. You know,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: are Santa Claus, the Michelangelo's Moses, the mythical Moses, the
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Moses that is usually perceived as the great heroic figure
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: who releases it from Egyptian bondage into somebody who replaces
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Egyptian bondage into an internal bondage. That is far more
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: radical because if you think of it, what kind of
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: a political law? Once you think as Pinoza does, right,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Because obviously, if God is natured, and God doesn't create
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: miracles and reads the Bible, it does a naturalistic reading
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: of the Bible. That means he also a political reading
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: of the Bible. So once you have a political reading
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: of the Bible, you try to think, what kind of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: a political leader would impose these kinds of laws that
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: dictate when or when you saw, when you reap, when
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: you make love, when you grow, how you grow your beard,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: what you do with your hair. I mean, it's North
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Korea if you think today, right, So Moses here is
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: a kind of Kim John Unn who was incredibly successful
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: in imposing this law. And the poor Jews, the poor
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: foolish native Jews, are like if one day God willing
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: this horrific situation in North Korea ceases, and the North
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Koreans keep maintaining that absolutely draconian North Korean law two
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: thousand years in the future without even their being and
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: country that makes sense for them to maintain it. That's
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: the situation of the Jews. So if you think about it,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: the allaha is not a path to salvation to the country.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: The Alaha is a political ploy for complete domination by
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: a certain kind of leadership. And it's something that is
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: that that generates a learned helplessness, right, It makes people passive.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: That's why in the chapter three says that if their
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: souls wouldn't be in their minds, wouldn't be weakened by
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: the essence of their religion, they might create their country. Again,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: why are the Jewish minds, Spinoza things weakened by the religion,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Because that's what the alaha was meant to do to
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: begin with. It is meant to make you weaker. It
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: is meant to turn you into somebody who always acts
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: out of obedience. And once you only know how to
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: act out of obedience, you are less likely to rebel
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and you're much more likely to go along with whatever
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: plans the political leadership has for you. Now, that's extremely
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: successful in terms of politics, because Moses is able through
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: this ploy to create the Hebrew state that lasts for
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: a few hundred years. But it's detrimental to our ability
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: to act as independent agents, and it makes absolutely no
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: sense to keep doing it once that country has been gone.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: And by the time Spinoza's writing that, you know, the
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: sovereignty has been gone for hundreds of years. So Judaism
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: is not only neutraally useless and lacks value, it's actively harmful, right,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: And I think that as well with you know, and
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: that's just part of you know, I mean, we want
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: to talk about Mendos on the coin, we could talk
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: only about Spinoza's critique on Judaism, but that's part of
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: of his critique. I think that's the most and that's
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: the juiciest part in so far as I'm concerned. But
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: he also the particularism and all the arrest of it.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: That's part of it. But this bit I think is
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: particularly u spicy.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Right, definitely is, and that is quite a criticism to
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: lay out in that respect. And then so of course,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: once that criticism has been laid out, then future Jewish
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: thinkers will have to respond in kind. And so therefore
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: let's let's move on from Spinosa who thinks himself as
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: an anti Moses, to Moses who thinks himself as an
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: anti Spinosa, namely our good friend Moses Mendelssohn writing toward
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the end of the eighteenth century Berlin. And so I mean,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: let me ask as followers, because before we get to
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: specifically the universalism, you pouch his universalism in his axiology,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: meaning in his list of priorities that characterizes entire philosophical framework.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: So let's start there, what are that this kind of
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: framework priorities? And then after addressing the universalism and the
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: way in which this kind of this challenge by Spinoza
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: has been confronted within this rum so mental philosophical framework.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, the actroological framework is something that
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I've also taken from the very same Nietzsche book, which is,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I think it is a really great book, Morality, where
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: he started, you know.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: To say, the first chapter of that is scary as hell.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't if you know those you've read it,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: it's chilling and haunting, I think, yes, the very best haunting. Anyway,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: those who want to, you know, talk to themselves and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and you know, disturbed their sleeper upcoming weeks and months.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Please feel free anyway, go ahead.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's what philosophy does when it's really good. It
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: disturbs you will sleep, now, doesn't it. So it starts
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: and he says you, when we don't know ourselves, we ourselves.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: We know us, and there's a pretty good reason we've
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: never searched for ourselves. And where should we be searching.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: We should be searching in our values. That's which we value, right,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: which is part of this kind of Copernican revwlution of values,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: which both Hobs and Spinosa. Incidentally, I don't know if
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: they knew specifically about that aspect of their common in philosophy,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: but both Spinosa and Hops suggest already a few hundred
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: years earlier, which is basically, once you start considering the
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: good as something that's out there, like some kind of
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Platonic idea, then the good is an aspect of reflect
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: your desire and your will and many of the things
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: that we consider to be constitutive of ourselves in modernity.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: So Spinosa says, very explicity and very beautifully, it is
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: not that we work for desire, search for the good
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: we define as good that which we work for, desire
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: and want, so our desires are want of volition, that
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: which we direct our lives too. That's a very good
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: way of trying to think of yourself, and my view
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: is that it's a very good way to start thinking
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: about philosophers as well. So, for example, Mendelssohn, Right, I
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: think a good question to start thinking about what Mendelssh's
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: philosophy is all about is to think what it values,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: what it's aimed at, what it prescribes as the highest good. Right,
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: we saw the highest good. Spinoza's highest good is the
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: love of God and comes through the understanding of God
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: and the third kind of knowledge, etcetera. What is Mendelsshn's
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: highest good and Mendossenn's highest good is felicity gluk zeileikite
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: in the original German, which is one of these untranslatables, right,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: because it's not just happiness glukikite, and but as also zealekite,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: which has you know, more like a blessedness kind of
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: it's like happy blessedness or something like that. Right. So,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: but felicity is a term that's sufficiently awkward and distinctful.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: That's why I used it in the book. But it's
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: a religiously enabled felicity. Right. Mendelssohn believed that basically there's
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: a like Nitsian God. Right. Mendossin used to that he
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: was a hunchback because he read Mamonda's so much. But
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: he's far more distant to Mimonidas in his philosophy than
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: his two Leibnitz and Wolf and German metaphysical tradition, which
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: posits in the end a good God in the best
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: possible world. Right, that optimism, that cosmic religious optimism of lightness,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: that's what Mendelssohn is. His very sanity is related to that. Right.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: He says, if I didn't believe in that, I'd be crazy,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: I'd be depressed. I wouldn't be able to find any
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: joy in life. So there's a god that's the principle
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: of the good, that's the best god we can hope
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: to imagine. And he created us for us to find
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: that everlasting, eternal felicity. And that's that's you know, that's
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: the Archimedean point of his philosophy. And he thinks that
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: in order for us to experience that felicity, we have
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: to come to realize three sealvific truths, if you will, right,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: which which are widely perceived to be the truths of
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: natural religion generally right, which were perceived by many of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the enlightenments to be common to all of human beings.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And that's the existence of God, the providence of God,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: and immortality. Menderson, of course, is obsessed with immortality, like
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: his first Schlagger where his first very popular book is
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: a rewriting of Plato's Phidon, where he makes renewed, modernized
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: arguments for the immortality of the soul, and that for
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Menderson is absolutely critical. You know that. I mean, I
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: don't know if I was completely convinced by the book,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: but there's an interesting form of argumentation where he says, well,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: there is a God, that a good God and loving God,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: and so if there is a God, a good and
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: loving God, it just doesn't make any sense for death
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: to be our absolute end. It just doesn't make any sense.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: No good God would create human beings. And then you know,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I walk down the street and I've got like a
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: piano falling on my head, and if I were a
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: good person or a creep or whatever doesn't matter now,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: and that doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any sense.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: So there has to be a life eternal. And once
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I realize these three truths, that there is a God,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: that it's a providential God, and that I'm immortal, then
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I can experience the felicity for which I was created.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: So that's the structure of his method of valuation. And
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: what is critical, of course, is and that's why I
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: think it's philosophically universalistic, is that he makes the claim
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: again and again and again, and in between the lines
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: pointing as opposed to Christianity, he says, Judaism doesn't deny
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: the access to these three selvific truths and to the
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: felicity that God created us for. Judaism never claims that
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: you have to be Jewish to understand this, or as
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: opposed to Christianity, as opposed to at least you know
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: major streams within Christianity, and there's no path to the
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Father but through me, and you have to accept Christianity
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: to find salvation us. No, you know, Judaism never sought
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: to convert a Confucius or is solon. That seems ridiculous
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: to just Confusius can find within his own culture and
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: according to his own past, he can find the way
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: to these three truths and then to the felicity that
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: all human beings can at least potentially share. So this last.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Point you mentioned is very interesting to me because it seems,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and tell me if you agree with this, that what
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Mentaline is doing is flipping a script on his head
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit, because he essentially argues at least it
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: seems to me that the Judaism's particularity is specifically its
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: strength in the modern periods.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly that.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: One would think that Christianity and let's say Islam, which
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: are universal religions, which have universal pretensions and hope to
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: save everyone and provide the one single path to salvation
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: that every single human being ought to be on, one
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: would think that under universalistic well view, those kinds of
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: religions would make more sense. But actually medalists say no, Actually,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: it is a particular religion which focuses on a particular
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: people in a particular relationship we've got that actually makes
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: most sense because it allows space for others.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Essentially, it's a very very very astute point, I think,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: and again we have to think not in terms of
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: who's more universalistic, but going back to the beginning of
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: our conversation about which universalisms do we prefer. And so
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: it is the case that often and even you know
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: by this is also often done by modern writers who
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: present Christian you know like but you. For example's book
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: The Foundation of Universalism, he presents Paul's universalism as the
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: beginning of universalism. That's true universalism, which is something that
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Paul himself and you know, the other Apostles seem to
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: be saying themselves. You know, this is it. We're done
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: with this Jewish particularism. And the famous passage in the
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Epistols to localations there is no longer Jewel, Greek, no
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: longer slaves nor freemen, no longer man, no female for
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: your all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: to Christ and your Abrams officer. So you could think, oh, wonderful,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: this is this is universalisms and we've got this universal thing.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Not everybody is one. But if you think about it
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: a second time, there's a new demarcation between who's part
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: of accepting Christ and therefore part of that unified universal vision,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: and who's not. And if you go back to Judaism
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: and to Mendossence Judaism and exactly as you said, very eloquently,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you've got menos. We don't have this problem, right, We
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: don't have to tell you. Listen, everybody is gonna be one,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: but you have to join us. And if you don't,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: then you know there's gonna be a big problem. Right,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: It's gonna get ugly, which is one of the criticism
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: that is provided to universalism, that to forms of universalisms
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: that really are particularly hegemonic particularisms that impose themselves often violently.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Mendussence says, where we are living, let live. We've got
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: our thing. God asked of us to perform certain ceremonial
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: acts and gave us a certain law, and we have
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: to do this thing. But it says that doesn't oppose
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: in any way the ability of anybody else to reach
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: exactly the same three selvific beliefs, namely the existence of God, is, providence,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: and immortality that are necessary for felicity. So in that
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: when you think about it in that way, Judaism is
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: far more has far more in common with the universalistic
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: enlightened ethos than Christianity might have.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Even though one could argue that it's not so much
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Judaism is universalistic. It's that rather it it leaves everyone
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: else alone, which isn't quite the same thing.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: It's a big question. First of all, you know, I
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: think if everybody would leave everybody else alone, I think
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: it's not right.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that would be a bad start admitting exactly.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: You know, like, let's you know, it's like a hyppocatist, right,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: don't don't don't harm, do no harm first of all,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: a do no harm first of all, you know, just
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Steve us, you know the flon first of all. Right,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: but most seriously, you know, it's a question. I think
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: it's a question of interpretation. In the end, again, I
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: don't think there's one Judaism and you can we'll talk
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: later about Hamilcon was a very different, similar universalistic, but
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: very different interpretation. You can focus on versus that are awful.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: You can focus and you know, again it's difficuely, it's
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: such a joy talking to you to the JJ, and
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: for a few minutes, I even for a few minutes
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: where my mind is dedicated to these beautiful ideas, I
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: forget the absolute horrific situation that is all around me
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: at this time, and also, you know, horrific in terms
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: of the terrible suffering on all sides, and also horrific
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: in terms of what I see happening to this tradition
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: that I have a lot of admiration and loveful right
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: and the way in which that which is emphasized in
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: mainstream current Judaism in Israel are the most ruthless, cruel
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: iron Age principles of war, et cetera. And you can
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: emphasize that, and that's Judaism. But you can also find
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: within the same iron Age books and texts you can
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: find very beautiful passages about, you know, the humanity created
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: as one big family through two parents, as the mission
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: that tells us about a socialistic prophetic demands about universalistic
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: ethical principles. So it's a question of interpretation, right. The
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: text Judaism itself never says anything. Right. I've got kids
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: coming to study Jewish philosophy in the first year and
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: then they say, well, but Judaism is for conquering this,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: or Judaism is against the LGBTQ rights. And I'm like,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: if you heard Judaism say anything to you, because I've
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: never heard Judaism tell anybody anything. To me, it's always
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: a Jew someplace at some time, or a group of Jews.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: It's never Judaism. So it's always a question of interpretation.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: And so what I think is incredibly moving with Mendossin
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: is this effort of interpreting Judaism in such a way
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: as to make it harmonious with you know, what I
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: take to be very beautiful aspects of the enlightened ethos.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Right, and so in which case, let's let's move the
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: focus of the lens back to Spinoza and with mental
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Sine's well view, in what way does this answer the
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: challenge of Spinosa, especially the accusation of Judaism, is is
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: exclusively a particular oh sorry, exclusively a political system designed
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: for the hegemony of a state or the hegemony of
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: a certain way of life.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's it's actually quite interesting that as
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: first of all, Menderssen, who has such a noble soul
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: and gentle human being by all accounts, and anybody who's
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: met him for like even just a few minutes, had
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: this very generous view of Spinoza in spite of the
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: fact that Spinoza is this grave threat to his life's
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: work of showing the Judaism and enlightenment could work together.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: But his main problem with Spinosa. Incidentally, it's not only
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: it's not necessarily a Spinoza's Jewish interpretation, which Mendosson in
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: a very interesting way uses for his own advantage. It's
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: the disillusion of the individual within the one substance that
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: is God again, because that's a form of death. Mendossn
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: has a repeat and obsession with the annihilation of the self.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: He cannot accept that idea. He's like, you know, he's
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: like in this panic, lifelong panic attack of death and
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Spinosa's and a vision of salvation is dissolution in a
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: way of the self, a cancellation of the self in
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: a wider substance. And that's and that's the thing that
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Mendersson really finds how to swallow. Of course, it disagrees
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: with Spinoza. Mendosshn in that sense is a traditional Jewish believer.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Now it's a question in philosophy at the end of
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: the day, it's a question of who is more convincing. Right,
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Mendossin believes for arguments that aren't awfully original, that you know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: God gave on Mount Sinai Torah, and here I completely
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: disagree with the interpreditions that started with kant And and
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: there's a contemporary scholars as well that Menderssine is a
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: hidden days who pretended to be a traditionalist Jew for
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: his for whatever purposes he might have had within the community.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think that Mendisson was an
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: actual believing traditional Jew who believed. Now, am I convinced,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: you know, not really right? I don't put that filling
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: in the morning, so I would if I were convinced.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: So in that sense, I'm more convinced by Spinoza anyway. Right,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: But Bendo some things differently, Bender some things that God
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: gave the Torah, and the Torah and its ceremonies are binding,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: and that Jewish life is something that we as Jews
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: are bound to uphold. What he does think, and again,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: he does it very very He's very moving in that sense.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: And he's even exceptional among the other Cosmopolites of Europe,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: because if you look at the terrible story of Hume's
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: footnote right, Hume did a whole career where he's more
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: or less never says anything that we would find completely distasteful.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: He's slightly antisemitic in some of the passages on the miracles.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: But you know, I say it's an antisem BETANTV. I
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: say in Hebrew, it's how do you translate that? JJ,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: It's not, it's not, it's not tastelessly anti semitic else, right,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: so he's a little bit of symthic. But you know,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: oh white, But then he adds that awful footnote, racist
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: footnote about black people's awful thing, which you know, rightfully
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: so gets that people upset on him today. Can't you
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: know he's also the great, the great cosmopolite universalistic can't
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: you know with hindsight he kind of almost single andly
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: developed pseudo scientific racism. A Voltaire, the great Voltaire, the
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: great lomer enlightened Voltaire, everybody else brothers were brothers in China,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: is awfully antisemitic, like tastelessly this time anti semitic. So
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of the great cosmopolitan universalistic philosophers, Christian philosophers
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: in lighten maybe because they were part of a Germanic
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: group and they were less sensitive to the kind of
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: slights that you are continually subjected to as a minority,
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: had moments of you know, blindness and that's being generous.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Mendelssohn is incredibly pluralistic. Again, maybe not to our eyes,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: but at his time is exceptionally so. I always, I
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: would strongly encourage people to read the two three pages
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: in the second part of Mendosshn's Jerusalem where he describes
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: the visit of a Polynesian visitor called Ma to Basadao's
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Temple of Enlightened Temple temp of Providence in Dasaw. And
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: then he moves to Jerusalem, and then he moves to India.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: And in two pages of text, Moses talks about you
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: know what he thinks of Polynesia, of ancient Jerusalem, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: of India. And it does so not to the mark
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: a sense of superiority to the very countrary. He does
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: so to show that we are the ones who are
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: quick to judge cultures that we don't understand. And whenever
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: Menderssh in his pages, writes about foreign cultures, about Eskimos
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: in the North, about Confusius, about whoever he writes about,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: it's always to make that point that we are quick
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: to judge, that we are the ones that don't allow
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: these different cultures the spiritual depth which he assumes they
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: have now it's a restricted It might be a restricted
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: pluralism because mendossh assumes that everybody more or less believes
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: in the same God. And you know that's a strong assumption,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: which you know, what Mendelson wants to hear is not
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: necessarily what Indian people or Polynesian people at his time
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: would have told him. But still comparatively speaking, the way
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: he writes about foreign cultures as and and his concern
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: for their ability to find salvation within their frameworks is
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I think inspiring.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, good it actually Having thoroughly investigated mendelssohne, let's
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: move on to the next hero of your work, which
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: is also also a fascinating German Jewish thinker who we've
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: we've spoken about on this podcast before, namely Herman Coin.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: And Cohen's worldview is is quite different. It is axiology
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: has his framework of priorities, let's say, and so so
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: let's attack it again from the same angle in order
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to understand Cohen's relative universalism when it comes to Jewish writings,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: What do we need to know about his general framework
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: of ideas that lets us place his universalistic tendencies within.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Well, if we talked about Mendusson's universalism, and clearly Mendersson's
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: universalism emphasizes values such as equality and toleration right now.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Helman Coen is similarly universalistic in his philosophy, but his
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: universalism is pretty much squarely focused on reason. Incidentally, Mendersson
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: is not that big on reason. Mendersson thinks that common
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: sense reminds in in German right, which isn't like in
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: the English. Common sense is far more important in leading
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: to the selvific truths, and common sense is first of
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: all common. The common of Menderssohn's common sense is all
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: of humanity, so he has a vested interested in finding
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: agreements with all kinds of different cultures. Herman Coin thinks
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: hermon Coin has a universalistic vision, thoroughly universalistic vision. He
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: thinks that Judaism is essentially the movement on Earth that
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: is all about bringing the Messianic future to bear for
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: all mankind. But what is critical in his vision is reason.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: And there there's a pretty i'd say, deep pitfall and
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: danger and trap, because once he focuses so much on reason,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: then he becomes far more discriminatory about who gets it
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: right and who gets it wrong. And he gets far
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: less tolerant to people who he knows with absolute certainty
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: get it wrong. Mendesince says, ah, you know who knows
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: reason is? You know, we use words to talk about
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: very simple thing, JJ. Bring me the salt of JJ.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Where's the water? You know? And then we use it
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: to talk about this high falluting metaphysics. And I don't
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: when you say substance and I say substance, who knows
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: we were saying something? But Lemon Coin, no, Elemon Coin
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: has this view, neo Cantian view, where he's all about
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: being extremely precise with the concepts he uses, and then
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: he says this is right, and anything that is beyond
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: this is a hindrus to the universalism that I will
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: be bringing forward. And therefore there's passages in human coin
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: that are that I think that I find completely awful
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: and and and and I think that's part of the mistakes,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: the mistaken direction that brought him into I don't know
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: if it's a into you know, into great trouble. You know,
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: we have to remember that his wife died at Tresenstadt,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: and he himself right was trumpeting that Deutschem and Jewish
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: and German culture that the marriage the synthesis of Jewish
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: and German culture would bring about universal Messianism because we
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: get it so right, you know, And I always tell
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: to my students, always say, you know, if a Chinese
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Buddhist would go on a philosophical inquiry and reach the
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: conclusion that the German Judaism, Germanism and Judaism are the
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: cultural forces that will be leading to everlasting universalistic Messianicism,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: I would be intrigued. I would be out it. What's
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: the argument? But if it's a German Jew says so,
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: then I'm rather suspicious, you know.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: As you should be. And this is a very interesting
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: example of what we're perhaps talking about earlier, which is
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: the the possibility that reason itself or ideology is based
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: upon reason, which theoretically should be the most universalistic, because
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: reason is at least in theory, accessible to everyone and
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: by everyone, and therefore reasonable conclusions ought to be reached
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: by everyone. But nonetheless such an ideology can be discriminatory
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: or oppressive in a certain way, precisely because if you
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: don't reach the correct inclusions, if you misapply or fail
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to apply reason, then then you failed. But in a
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: very in an unforgivable way.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, And that's something you find again
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: and again and again in Hamon Coins philosophy, you know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Hermon Coins. I think there's a fascinating passages in the
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Introduction to Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: where he says is magnimopous, of course, or he's Jewish
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: magnumoves and he said, well, how how am I going
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: to inquire into Judaism? And basically he's thinking of the
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: kind of niche cheired position I posited earlier. Right, I
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: don't have a problem because I don't think there's a
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: definition of Judaism. Again, I don't think you can define
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: things which have history. Judaism is an eminently historical phenomena,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: so I don't think you can define it. And it's
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: you have to do genealogies. And I think that Nietzsche
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: of one, right, Nitzsche one humanity is today for co
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: basically is using this in his research, and humanities today
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: are deeply historicists in that sense. Right, nobody's going to
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: be saying in an academic paper Judaism. It's going to
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: be saying I'm studying a group of Jews in Eastern
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Europe in the seventeenth century. You know, so we're going
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: to be much more localized, much more careful not to
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: be making essentializing claims. But Helman Coin, what I find
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: fascinating with all my disagreement with his position is that
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: he's seeking to provide a deep and profound and systematic
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: methodology grounding filmmaking sensilization. And he says, how am I
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: gonna be able to use the term Judaism? Right, we
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: need we are gonna be looking at Judaism, But how
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: can I create a term your judas? And he says,
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna be able to create a unified concept
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: of Judaism using induction. So if I take a bag,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: a conceptual bag or like an AI program, and I
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: throw at it all phenomena that I recognize as Jewish,
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, here's the Bible, yatoa up you go
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: in the bag. Oh, here's the missionh yeah, here's the
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: term oh it, here you go, here's my money is
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: here you go, here's mendosm here you go. Oh, here's
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: a you know, whatever other text of phenomena or architectural findings, whatever,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: And we throw it in the bag, and then we're
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: gonna try to derive from that form of Judaism. He says,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: that's never gonna work. That's just never gonna work. What
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: you have to do, it's like with embryology. You have
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: to start from the concept. You have to start from
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: the things that it's the scientific method, anythings that play
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: to discover it. And it's basically cantiin idealism. But you
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: know it's a long story. So you start with an
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: idea with a hypothesis, and then in virtue of that
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: hypothesis you will try and find out the Judaism. So
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: it says, first somebody says, it's like embryology. Right, you
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: don't go and check an embryo in womb inductively you're like, well,
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: let's see what's there. Oh some cells. Interesting, Oh it
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: has five legs and a tail, wonder what it will be. No,
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: you go check a human embryo with a very precise
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: hypothesis idea of what you're supposed to find, Namely, you're
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: supposed to find something that is going to develop into
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: a human, a healthy human child, and he's going to
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: do the same thing with Judaism, says you have to
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: have an idea of what Judaism is before you start
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: looking at the actual sources of Judaism. And his idea,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: of course, is that Judaism, the healthy child that the
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: embryonic phenomena is supposed to turn into, is messianic mankind. Now,
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: this thing with the hypothesis, which is it's an interesting idea,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: and you know it takes it and you can find
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: it all the way back in the Plato's Mino, which
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: I think is insane right in the fourth century. What
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: a genus Plato was anyway, So you have an hypothesis
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: which you can't directly empirically test, but you can derive
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: from its stuff that you can test, and that then
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Marchese confirms the hypothesis. So Psychopannicus Copanicus has got no
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: empirical proofs to show that the sun is in the center,
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: but it says, let's assume that the sun is in
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: the center, and then we can do these calculations. We
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: do the calculations, they figure out, and now I've confirmed
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: my hypothesis. So emmon consists. I will throw out this
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: hypothesis and then I will confirm it by the fruitfulness
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: of its use in interpretive research of Judaism. So his
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: hypothesis is that Judaism is this thing that is supposed
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: to bring forth messianic mankind. So it's a very interesting
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: piece of philosophy because I think it's the most convincing
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: argument for essenialism, and essentialism is not very popular nowadays,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: so I think it is always interesting to think about
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: the opposite position. I'm not an essentialist, I am need chain,
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: but and I'm not convinced by herman Coin's argument, but
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: I respect the fact that he makes an argument for essentialization,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: because most of the essentializations that we are facing most
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: of the time are naively done. You meet some guy
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: who's as well, but Judaism is, and he's essentializing. He
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: doesn't even know that it's a problem. But Hemmon, going
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: to his credit, knows it's a problem and seeks to
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: explain how he will be able to do it. The
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: great tragedy of his thought, I think, is that because
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: he was only thinking at the world through the lens
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: of these high idealized notions of in Deutsche tom, he
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: completely at some point lost track of the empirical phenomena
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: that was at his feet. And so you know, the
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Zionism is for him the very opposite of it's a
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: completely anti Jewish position because Judaism is the historical task
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: of Judaism, he says, was only really revealing history with
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: the Daspa, where Jews become scattered throughout the world from
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: where they will be able to act towards that universal
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: Messianic mankind. Zionism seeks to undo that. It's an opposite
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: of what he says other stuff, which is completely ridiculous. Right.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: I think he says that Kant's philosophy is more Jewish
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: than Mendelssohn's because Mendosshn was not Messianic, and Kant, with
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: his writings about Eternal Piece, had some more Messianic aspects
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: to him. So the Jewish believer Mendelssohn is not Jewish
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: in philosophy. And the slightly anti Semitic, again tastefully anti
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Semitic account he was a Jewish. And then you don't
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: see in front of your eyes what's happening in Germany
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: and what's happening with Judaism. And and that's why I
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: always said that elemond Coins philosophy is the Titanic. At
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: the end, it sinks, it's you know, it crashes against
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: the iceberg of actual history. But even in the Titanic,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: the chairs are amazing, and the food is nice, and
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: the architecture was great. So there's all these bits and
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: pieces in his philosophy that are really amazing. But the
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: general direction is tragic and very intolerant, because those who
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: don't get that particular hypothesis which has mathematical certainty scientific certainty,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: are completely left out, and he's highly intolerant towards these
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: kind of peoples.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: So this is pretty interesting. Would you say that what
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: do you greet the following proposition, which is that while
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: both thinkers were universalistic, but for coin Judaism, it's ultimately
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: it's greatest He lost was on behalf of the rest
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: of mankind, whereas for mental sin, it seems the ultimate
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: mission for Jews is Judaism, and the rest of mankind
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: can make use of their rationality, figure out the basics
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: about God and about man, about ethics, and i go
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: live their own life, you know, perhaps looking at Judaism
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: as for inspiration or for some sort of grounding, whatever
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: it is, but that could be the essential difference between them.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Is this That's an interesting way of thinking of it,
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: and it's a way that perhaps very contrarily to the
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: movement of my arguments today in our conversation where you know,
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: I guess you can sense that I'm nearer in my
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: own sensitivities to Mendousnes's position than to Coin. And I
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: think you're giving a way of thinking more positively about
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Coin because he's concerned with everybody else in a very
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: active kind of way. And Mendosence is like, well, you know,
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: we're doing all stuff you do yours Again, I would
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: say that Anderson Mendersson does think that it might be
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: the case that God provided Judaism with its calling for
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: universalistic reasons. Right, God might have believed that it was
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: necessary for a particular people to maintain a particular set
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: of laws because them having this antidote to idolatry would
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: have great universal significance somehow in the end, and Mendusson's
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: position of profound philosophical humility and cognitive modesty means that
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: he doesn't try to understand what exactly God had in mind. Right,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: that's just the way it is. It's very kind of
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: you know, like raising your shoulder kind of Jewish way.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: That's just the way it is. You know, God gave
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: us this thing. I think it's a great, good, loving God.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: It probably not does it for the best it may
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: have given, he says, other means of salvation to other peoples.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: He might one day choose to rebuild the sovereignty with
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: another people. You know, that's just what God does. And
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe one day will understand. And in the meanwhile,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: we don't, and we still have to understand that every
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: human beings are part of His children, and we have
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: to consider and respect thisself. It is the case that
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Cohen in that sense, I would say this way, Mendoson
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: seeks to argue that Judaism doesn't contradict the universalism of
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: the Enlightenment, and in between the lines that Christianity stands
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: in far greater tension with it than Judaism. Heman Coin
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: makes a stronger claim, andman Coin says that the universalism
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: of the Enlightenment is a derivative from the ancient Jewish
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: universalism right in that sense. By the way, Nietzsche agrees
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: with him. Nitsche thinks that the a gallistic spirit of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: the French Revolution is a form of Galilean revenge. I
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: think he calls it so. So there's there's there's an
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: agreement there between these two, and it is so yeah,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: you could think that that kind of more forceful and robust, ambitious,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: universalistic voice is more to you liking. I do think
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: that the for me unforgivable passages. And you know, nobody
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: asked me to forgive him, but I you know, especially
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: reading them in Hebrew in twenty twenty five. You know,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: in class the Passengers, way he justifies killing of idolatories
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: and holy wars, and you know, I'm thinking of the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: second chapter of Regional Reasons. These are awful passages. These
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: are simply awful passages. And the disdain with which he
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: writes about certain cultures about he says, it's a completely
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: ridiculous idea to think that you can understand Abraham by
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: by by by doing an anthropology of current Beduin culture,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: and not by reading Plato and and and and and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: just the way the way he writes bedoind culture doesn't
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: sit well with me in that context, and and and
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: when Mendosin writes about different cultures, he never writes in
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: that tone. So there's a tone that I find disturbing.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: Also in Coin.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Again, which points this wonderful irony that the more the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: most universalists of universalists, I Cohen wrote in this dismissive
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: turn of other cultures. Whereas Mendelsohn, who was a much
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: more modest than his universalistm let's say, or much more
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: or let's say, heavily favored Jewish particularism in to some degree,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: in the sense they really did believe they had been
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: given some sort of divine revelation that no one else
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: had nonetheless had more space and.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: More Well, but I have to I don't know if
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: he's not committed to a position that nobody else have
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: to the country, nobody else received that particular revelation.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: But he is not. He is not committed to the
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: to the country. He says explicitly that Providence might very
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: well have made available to other cultures different means.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, thats exactly my point, right. He has a
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: lot of patience with the possibility that other cultures have
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: a great value.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Again, I think it's a question of which universalisms we
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: want to promote in today's world, in today's Judaism, and
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: which values, Because again, universal doesn't mean anything in and
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: of itself.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: You could have.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Completely deranged forms of universalisms, where which are displeasing and
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: deeply morally object in our eyes. And you can have
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: universalisms that we find are uplifting and beatific. The real
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: question is what the highest good that any version of
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: university isn't actually seeking to promote? This right? The real
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: question is what the value and the value structure of
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: that universalism is. Mendoscence. Universalism suggests that we that felicity
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: for all. That's the game, and it's available to everybody,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: and we have to look at each other with tolerance
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: and and realize our own ignorance when we address of
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: the cultures. Herman Coin seeks a vision, you know, the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: tactles of Helmond's Coin's universalistic endgame. I like a lot, right,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: I like a lot the idea of like this kind
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: of semi socialist in the states coexisting in you know,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: like a like a European union, like a world union
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: of socialistic welfare states. I sign up. I sign up
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: for this thing. Any day of the week. I sign
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: up for this thing. You know, fine, love love it,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: love it, love it, love it, love it love. But
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: when in his worldview, the path too there is so
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: highly centered on reason and so highly discriminatory of those
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: perceived to have failed that reason, then we're a very
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: dangerous territory.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, this has been a fascinating and wide ranging conversation,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: and before we bring to a final close, I'd like
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: to post a question I posted many of my my guests,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: which is follows. If you could sit down to dinner
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: nights with your subjects and you'd have a meddlesome and
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: coin around your table, what what would you be asking them? What?
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: What subject would you like to broach with them?
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I have to be in all honesty, I don't
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: think Emmon Coin would like to sit with me at
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: the table. I think that Ramond Coin and I we
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: would very much not get along. And the person I
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: have to say, I think he'd hate me. It has
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: only disdain for everything that I am and represent and
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: you know, and and and if if I would be
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: in his class, he would have been shouting at me
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: and kicking me out of the class.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I think he would dislike you, not likelihood, but
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I think he'd be well mannered the middle class enough
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: not to show it too much. He sort of. I
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: think he'd keep a stiff up a lip, don't you like?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Very germanic?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: Would undercurrent would be awful, and you know it would
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: rooin dinner.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: So so what would you? So would you ask him?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, would you I started from to leave, you know,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: I'd be.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Shouting at his wife. I'd be going Matha, get out,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: go to Rahmad gang. You forget about it, about your
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: husband's theories with the designers and not signiss, get your
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: stuff and go drink tea with b Alex's wife in
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: Tel Aviv. You don't have to die in the resist
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: that because your husband is locked into his own hypothesis
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: and neo idealistic philosophy. But yeah, well you know enough.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: What about mendol state, I mean, I think you get
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: along with him, You play a good game of chests
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: with him.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: I would love I think I would love talking with
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Mendelssohn and and and what would I ask him?
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Or what would you? What do you want to discuss?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: What kind of subjects would come up?
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: You know, I think a comparative anthropology I have. I
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: share his curiosity for the wide variety of human experience
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: and culture, and I would like to exchange ideas about, uh,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: what's happening in China and in India and Polynesia and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: ancient Jerusalem. But I would you know, I would challenge
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: him on this point. I would be like, you know what, Moses,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: my friend, my brother, my Moses, why, like do you
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: really think why can't we play realistic be all the way? If?
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: What if? What is similar between Polynesia and ancient Israel
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: is not the content that you are seeking to oppold.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: I e. This highly idea, this highly universalistic, theistic, natural
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: enlightened religion. But you know they have a taboo, right.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Taboo is an ancient Polynesian term. We had a taboo
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: in our temple. Now, you know, I don't want to
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: say much about the Polynesian stuff, but I don't think
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: that our temple life was highly enlightened, et cetera. I
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: think it was a pretty archaic situation. But it's still
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: moving and incredibly interesting that we both share inform universalism.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: So even if the content of that universalism isn't what
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: Mendershon wished, it was the very fact that there is
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: that universally, I think is enough to generate the kind
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: of a solidarity between all human beings as human beings.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I would be challenging him to
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: to think about. Interesting.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's a probably fair response.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: What about dinner with Spinosa?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Okay, So okay, fine, you've picked my
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: curiosity now because I know that your feelings towards Spinoza
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: are shall we say, extremely warm. So so again, if
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: you had a dinner with Spinosa, I think be quite
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: quiet company. He wouldn't particularly, He's not, you know, one
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: of the world's great personalities.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: I can tell I'd get him drunk.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I'd ask him. Okay, even more interesting, what would you
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: ask a drunk Spinoza.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe I just sit around with him
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: in a field somewhere, you know, Okay, I ask Spinoza,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: you know, there's some stuff and I need to understand,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: you know. I basically i'd come with my you know,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: if we're not in a in a beatific mood, and
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: we're not saying in a canal somewhere in Holland looking
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: at the sky and listening to the beatles or whatever,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: I would be. I would be. I would be with
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: a copy of my ethics, and I'd be like, you know,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: this proposition and this proposition and what do you mean here?
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: And what's this thing with the you know, and death
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: and this and that, and I would also like to
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: ask him about Chinese philosophy, which he hadn't had on
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: an opportunity to consider. I think it. I think that's
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: Finoza would be absolutely delighted that so many Chinese scholars
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: that seek to make Chinese philosophy accessible to Western audiences
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: use Spinoza as a bridge. I think if he figned
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: that wonderful and I'd be happy to let him know
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: that this is the case.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, very interesting stuff. Indeed. Yeah, if this opportunity ever
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: comes about that you have dinner with any of these gentlemen,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: please do let me know. That would be be very interesting,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: did okay, Doctor Jeremy Fogel, thank you so much for
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: joining yesterday on the podcast of Jewish Idea Is. This
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: has been an absolutely thank you. I will look for
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: what to seeing what you produce in the future.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much, JJ, and also thanks to Elisha,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: who's you know helping setting this up. And I've had
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: a great time, and I wish you good health and
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: inspiration and learning and all the manyfold blessings and all
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: the very best. It was great meeting you, beautiful.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: The pleasure was all ours. This has been the podcast
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: of Jewish ideas by Tora in Motion, produced by Alisha
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: Kellman and myself Jjkimbri, edited and mixed by Alicia Kelman.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: You can stay up to date by subscribing in your
• 1:10:32
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• 1:10:35
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• 1:10:37
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