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