Lawrence J. Kaplan is Professor of Rabbinics and Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Jewish Studies of McGill University, Montreal Quebec, where he has been teaching for over the past forty years. Born in 1944, he received his B.A. from Yeshiva College, his M.A. and PhD. from Harvard University, and Rabbinic Ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elkhanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He was a Starr Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies of Harvard University in 2005, a Tikvah Fellow at the Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization of New York University Law School in 2011-2012, and a Polonsky Fellow at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Judaic Studies in 2013.
This exchange focuses on Maimonides – Between Philosophy and Halakhah, a book edited by Professor Kaplan which features Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik’s lectures on Maimonides. Part 1 can be found here.
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Dear Professor Kaplan,
In the previous round you stated that “one can say that the book’s overall argument is devoted to showing that there is a higher level of ethics that follows upon the intellectual perfection attained through scientific knowledge of the cosmos, as opposed to serving only as a steppingstone to attaining that intellectual perfection…”
Now, it seems that at the time Maimonides was writing the Guide, ideals like “intellectual perfection” and “scientific knowledge of the Cosmos” were something that students of Aristotelian philosophy could actually strive for wholeheartedly.
Today, and even at the time Soloveitchik gave these lectures, scholars and scientists appear to have far more modest aims – making small strides in very specialized areas of interest is what most of our greatest minds seem to be dreaming of. The idea of “intellectual perfection” leading to divinely-inspired ethical perfection is a very difficult one to grasp in an age when science and divinity are rarely seen as interrelated.
How did the idea of intellectual perfection leading to a superior ethical life change from Maimonides to Soloveitchik? How did Soloveitchik’s encounters with modernity affect his understanding of the interaction between intellect and ethics?
Yours,
Shmuel.
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Dear Shmuel,
R. Soloveitchik is well aware of the change in intellectual climate from Maimonides’ time to our own. He attributes it primarily to Immanuel Kant’s successful refutation in principle (in R. Soloveitchik’s view) of the standard rational proofs for the existence of God. That is, Kant showed – so R. Soloveitchik, along with most modern philosophers, believes – that one cannot rationally demonstrate the existence of God based on a scientific examination of either the existence or order of the universe, since scientific categories, as categories intended to organize finite empirical experience, are operative only within the bounds of time and space. In this respect, as the question correctly notes, “science and divinity are rarely seen as interrelated.”
Does that mean that Maimonidean rationalism is obsolete? For R. Soloveitchik, while it is impossible to maintain Maimonidean rationalism its original form, it may be possible to update it. Here my comment in my previous reply “that R. Soloveitchik’s stress in these lectures on human subjectivity and, following from that, on the subjective nature of religious experience … have a modern flavor and reflect his emphases more than those of Maimonides” is important. That is, while R. Soloveitchik’s stress on subjective religious experience may not be true to Maimonides’ own views, it can provide us with a way of updating them.
Thus, in his important monograph And From There You Shall Seek, R. Soloveitchik argues that the first stage of the individual’s search for God takes the form of a natural-cosmic encounter with Him. He describes this initial encounter with God as a rational religious experience, though, in truth, it derives not so much from man’s rationality, but from a dynamic, powerful desire to sense the transcendent in the finite, from a quest for the presence of God in the world. That is, for R. Soloveitchik, while the world as understood scientifically cannot lead one from finitude to infinity, the world as experienced in its natural and naive immediacy shines with the light of infinity and eternity. Judaism, R. Soloveitchik contends, unequivocally approves of this cosmic encounter with God. Indeed, in his view, following here that of Maimonides, every individual is religiously obligated to search for God and seek His traces in every cosmic phenomenon, both natural and spiritual.
This view of the rational religious experience as encountering God by experiencing the world “in its natural and naive immediacy,” it must be confessed, is very un-Maimonidean. But why cannot one have a rational religious experience, a cosmic encounter with God, that does derive from man’s rationality? That is, man explores with his reason the scientific order of the universe and perceives behind it—not as a rational demonstrative inference, but as an immediate intuitive inference—the presence of God as its universal sustaining organizing Intelligence. Indeed, this seems to be the way R. Soloveitchik in his lectures understands certain texts of Maimonides, particularly the beginning of Maimonides’ great code of law, the Mishneh Torah, where, so R. Soloveitchik contends, Maimonides moves via immediate inference from the existence of the world to the existence of God. I do not think this contention can be sustained form a scholarly point of view, but, again, we can view it as a legitimate updating of Maimonides.
R. Soloveitchik in And From There You Shall Seek claims that this stage of natural-cosmic religiosity reaches a point where it breaks down. But in the lectures, speaking as an expositor of Maimonides, R. Soloveitchik maintains that this cosmic intellectual experience does not break down, but culminates in a mystical-ecstatic experience. To state his point in modern terms, man, as we saw, first explores with his reason the scientific order of the universe and perceives behind it the presence of God as its sustaining organizing Intelligence. But as he continues to explore the cosmos he perceives its existence and order not only as an expression of God’s Intellect, but, more, as an expression of His Hesed, His loving-kindness. In this mystical-ecstatic experience man comes to understand that the world’s existence and order is not the result of a one-time act of creation in the past, but results from God constant Hesed, that is from God’s constantly overflowing onto it, and onto man as part of it, existence and order. Indeed, R. Soloveitchik, going beyond what Maimonides states explicitly, maintains that in this mystical-ecstatic experience man perceives God’s Hesed as not only His conferring existence upon the world, but as His continuously sustaining it by including the existence of reality as whole in His order of existence.
Here we come to R. Soloveitchik’s understanding of the interaction between intellect and ethics for Maimonides. Man begins with a cosmic intellectual experience, exploring with his reason the scientific order of the universe and perceiving behind it the presence of God as its sustaining organizing Intelligence. He advances from there to the mystical-ecstatic experience where he perceives the world’s existence as deriving from God’s constant Hesed, a Hesed whereby God not only confers existence upon the world, but continuously sustains it by including the existence of reality as whole in His order of existence.
Following this—and here we have the turn to ethics—man first internalizes this all-embracing divine Hesed, and then imitates it in the sense that he not only helps and confers benefits upon all who are in need, but, rather, in God-like fashion, invites them to share in, to participate in his own existence, including them in his own order of being. Here I would contrast R. Soloveitchik with Levinas. Hesed, for R. Soloveitchik, is not extended to the other qua other, as Levinas would have it; but, to the contrary, it is extended to the other because he is not other, because I have made him part of myself, of my own existence. What is truly ethical is not acknowledging the otherness of individuals I interact with, but identifying myself with them. And this, to repeat, constitutes the true imitation of God.
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