[Avodah] More Philosophy, If Anyone's Up to It

[Ira Tick]

I'm beginning to see what you mean in your understanding of holiness
and religious commitment, especially since I see that you seem to
understand my questions and the dichotomy I made between metaphysics
and psychology, between objective and subjective definitions of
religious truths.  I really appreciate the time you put into
responding to my posts and for the suggestions for further study.  You
should know that I learned a Maharal on Pirkei Avos (about the three
things on which the world stands) that fits well with your quote from
RSS (Rabbenu Yonah's piece on the three things is also similar).

Regarding RSG, I think that your reference fits well with what I said
about the difficulty in understanding the unity of the soul and how
the Unity of G-d can be defined similarly to the unity of the soul --
i.e. that qualities of "Life," "Ability," and "Knowledge" are all
really one existence in the individual person, despite our inability
to describe or depict this.  We must simply live it and know it.  As
far as the validity and permissibility of this view, I have trouble
believing that by your definition of religious truth and commitment, a
more abstract or absolutely simple definition of G-d's unity is
necessary.  It's only necessary that G-d be personal, indivisible, and
individual, like a human being, only with a very different
relationship to the world than human beings.

I still agree with my frustration with the medieval philosophers for
their ontological, rather than moral or religious, discussions and
depictions of G-d.  I continue to believe that many new and foreign
ideas crept into their thinking and colored the way they approached
religious and philosophical questions.  I also continue to believe
that in their encounter with resurrected Greek philosophy, these
Jewish philosophers developed their responses in a way that included a
concern for pagan and Christian heresies, because of the historically
cumulative nature of Jewish Polemics (this is especially easy to see
nowadays, when people ask questions and offer arguments that are
strung together from a thousand different assumptions and approaches
that were never meant to be taken together --  kind of like learning
certain Acharonim on Shas  :)   ).  But you are correct that many of
their concerns were in refuting challenges to Torah presented by Greek
thinkers.

As far as Christian nations and Kabbalah, one must keep in mind that
Kabbalah as we know it today began in the Arab countries as a backlash
against philosophy after the Expulsion from Spain and only later
migrated from Israel and Italy into Eastern Europe (I guess the
Maharal would be a strong exception to this).  Interestingly, much of
kabbalah shares elements with the Greek philosophic tradition (think
Neo-platonism, Pantheism, etc) and at the same time Oriental
mysticism.  It is true, of course, that Ashkenazim were exposed to
European pagan mythology and Christian mythology--demons, devils,
ghosts, etc--in a way that the Sephardi philosophers often balked at.
(BTW, we know that much of the discussion of mysticism in the Talmud
comes from Persian and Zoroastrian mythology; Lilith for example, who
has a large role in Kabbalah, comes from ancient Persian demonology).

I must also point out that in your translation of RSS, he mentions
that "His Holiness is greater than ours," seemingly in an objective,
qualitative fashion that does not easily conform to the explanation of
holiness as commitment...

I don't even want to get into the problems with the postulate that G-d
must be benevolent because "nothing can be added or subtracted from
Him."  But for starters:  Certainly, G-d's knowledge and desire could
be for malevolence, G-d forbid, or for any random goal imaginable,
without having to change with human action.  Certainly, G-d could
demonstrate His benevolence even if we viewed His knowledge, activity,
satisfaction or experience as constantly changing according to man's
deeds.  Certainly, a truly workable definition of G-d's Unity need not
have to be at odds these kinds of changes, as I have explained before,
because change in the experiential self is not "addition or
subtraction" of divisible pieces or parts, nor is it tantamount to the
division of Divinity into multiple entities.

(A similar problem is the argument for benevolence from omnipotence,
which is totally fallacious, because G-d's lack of needs does not fit
any better with benevolence than it does with malevolence; it's just
that in our experience, the self-dependent are less likely to exploit
others, but even this is not always true...  In fact, the
philosophers' obsession with an absolute definition of omnipotence is
also foolish, because that kind of uncompromising position creates
unnecessary paradox, is itself unnecessary for a relationship with
G-d, and is blatantly false given the fact that Torah itself tells us
that evil is a necessary but undesirable means towards an end -- as
much as we know that adversity and pain are "good for us" we only
believe so because of the benefits that they bring, not because we
think of them as independently desirable.   G-d does not desire evil,
but He allows it and uses it to reach His goals.  Sounds like G-d has
to put up with that as an unavoidable limitation...)

Always good to hear from you,

IJT