Matt Goldish – Hakham David Nieto’s Failed Skepticism in his Argument from Acoustic Delusion
David Nieto 1654-1728 was born to a Sephardic family in Venice and trained both as a rabbi and as a physician. He went to London in 1701 to assume a rabbinic post there. Upon arriving, he found a lot of religious skepticism. This was a community of former conversos skeptical of the Talmudic tradition and of the Oral Law. Nieto wrote a book titled the Kuzari HaSheni to defend the Talmud. Nieto often referred to science. As David Ruderman discusses, in this he was a parallel to the Newtonian physico-theologians.
In the fourth dialogue of his Kuzari, Nieto discusses the issue of acoustic delusions. People can be tricked into thinking they hear heavenly voices. This is Neito’s explanation of the story in the Talmud of the ovens where a heavenly voice comes out to defend Rabbi Eliezer and the rabbis still go against him. This is why Rabbi Joshua was right to reject the heavenly voice. To accept it would open one up to tricks by those with greater knowledge of technology. Nieto brings down various stories of tubes use to amplify the voice; there is one for example about a lord who watches his servant with a telescope and calls out with a voice tube, scaring the servant nearly to death. Where did these tales come from? Nieto was almost certainly familiar with the German theologian Athanasius Kircher. This line of work is part of a larger body of works, which attempted to use the new science of sound to explain ancient texts. These texts are often viewed as an embarrassment by modernists. They are in many respects closer to the magic of Robert Fludd and John Dee than to the science of Newton.
Despite Neito’s university education his sources were thirty to sixty years out of date. Nieto was interested in science but he was dealing with issues of a generation ago. He was still going up against the likes of Uriel de Costa, who challenged the Talmud. His congregants were dealing with Spinozism and radical skepticism, which point blank denied scripture. He kept to the role of a learned cleric devoted to dealing with the breaches that he could deal with.
Why was the Haskalah a German phenomenon? Nieto with his congregation of former conversos had the opportunity to do what many of his contemporary Christian clerics were doing to create a conservative Enlightenment. Why did Nieto not have followers like Mendelssohn? Nieto was just not a big enough guy. He stops sort of the big argument. Maybe he was acting as a provocateur? If the head of the Beit Din of Venice (Leone Modena) could be suspected of writing Kol Shakol maybe Nieto as well. Neito, though, seems to have been a very conservative person. That being said, we do have him early in his career saying that God is nature and that nature was God.
Sharon Flatto – Ecstatic Encounters on the Danube: Enlightenment and Mysticism
The maskil Moshe Kunits (1774-1837) writes of a mystical encounter on the river Danube where God tells him to write the biography of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. This becomes the book Ben Yochi. This work was supposed to offer the reader a mystical experience. This is not as strange as it might seem as many maskilim espoused Kabbalistic ideas. Moshe Maimon and Moshe Landeau followed a similar line.
It has generally been claimed that the haskalah and Kabbalah had nothing to do with each other. Isaiah Tishby and Gershom Scholem argue for this. Shaul Magid, today, also claims this. As Boaz Hoss, though, argues, the early maskilim did not always reject Kabbalah. This is in keeping with the work of David Sorkin and Shmuel Feiner who argue that the haskalah was actually not that radical. We have a poem by maskil Moses Mendel eulogizing Rabbi Ezekiel Landau that is built around the names of the sephirot. Contrary to Alexander Altmann, who argued that Mendelssohn banished mysticism from Judaism. Mendelssohn goes with the Kabbalists over Maimonides in regards to the principles of faith. Solomon Maimon talks about preferring Cordovarian Kabbalah over Lurianic Kabblah.
Scholem believed that Kabbalah served as a means to argue for Halachic reform. Jacob Katz disagreed. This talk plays to both views. Many of these maskilim were still committed to normative Jewish practice, but they were also committed to challenging the status quo. Kabbalah served both sides of this agenda.
Showing posts with label Isaac Newton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isaac Newton. Show all posts
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
History 112: Final
Here is the final I gave my students. It consisted of two sections, identifies, where they had to give the proper context for a given person or term, and a pair of short essays for them to write. With the exception of a few disasters pretty much everyone did well on this final. The average for this final was about an 84. My philosophy is that I demand more than most from my students, but I am a fairly generous grader.
Identifies – 70 pts (Pick 7)
1. Friedrich Engels
2. John Calvin
3. Thomas Hobbes
4. Spanish Armada
5. Versailles
6. Immanuel Kant
7. Schlieffen Plan
8. Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty
9. Six Day War
10. Maximilian Robespierre
Bonus: Deborah Lipstadt
Essays – 130 (Pick 2)
1. What is the Whig narrative? Give specific examples from the material we covered in class such as the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. How would a Whig view these events? Is the Whig narrative particularly useful? What might some alternatives?
2. What are primary and secondary sources? How does each of these things contribute to an understanding of history? Give specific examples from the reading and your non-fiction book.
3. What were some of the major implications of the Scientific Revolution? Did the Scientific Revolution mean an end to faith? Discuss the religious beliefs of at least three major figures from the Scientific Revolution (e.g. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bruno, Newton)
4. Describe some of the methods used by the Nazi and Soviet Regimes to promote their views. Can brilliant art be put into the service of totalitarian regimes? What is the moral responsibility of the artist for the uses of their work? Can one separate art from the historical context in which it was created?
Identifies – 70 pts (Pick 7)
1. Friedrich Engels
2. John Calvin
3. Thomas Hobbes
4. Spanish Armada
5. Versailles
6. Immanuel Kant
7. Schlieffen Plan
8. Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty
9. Six Day War
10. Maximilian Robespierre
Bonus: Deborah Lipstadt
Essays – 130 (Pick 2)
1. What is the Whig narrative? Give specific examples from the material we covered in class such as the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. How would a Whig view these events? Is the Whig narrative particularly useful? What might some alternatives?
2. What are primary and secondary sources? How does each of these things contribute to an understanding of history? Give specific examples from the reading and your non-fiction book.
3. What were some of the major implications of the Scientific Revolution? Did the Scientific Revolution mean an end to faith? Discuss the religious beliefs of at least three major figures from the Scientific Revolution (e.g. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bruno, Newton)
4. Describe some of the methods used by the Nazi and Soviet Regimes to promote their views. Can brilliant art be put into the service of totalitarian regimes? What is the moral responsibility of the artist for the uses of their work? Can one separate art from the historical context in which it was created?
Monday, April 20, 2009
Historians in the Philosophy Department: A Response (Part III)
(Part I, II)
I see the field of history as consisting of three parts. First, there is the collection and editing of primary source material. Then there is the analysis of the primary source material, creating secondary source material, in order to see what directions the primary sources point. Finally, there is the creation of a narrative, which puts together the conclusions of the secondary sources into some consensus. The history familiar to the general public is really this last stage. For the most part, academic historians devote themselves to the second stage and it is this stage that forms the real heart and soul of the study of history. It has actually very little to do with narrative.
The issue of narrative is a sore spot for historians. It is the part of history that is the furthest from objective truth and the closest to personal opinion. If historians cannot be scientists they still wish to be better than artists or literature professionals. Again, considering the tight job market, this is not an academic question; real careers are on the line. I recommend Hayden White’s Metahistory, where he subversively treats history as a form of literature. What is important to note about White is that he only deals with issues of historical narrative. I suspect that most historians would gladly do away with narrative as at best a distraction and at worst an illusion that undermines "real" history.
Narrative remains in place largely because it is necessary to make one's work relevant, first to fellow historians, then to scholars in the humanities and finally to the general public at large. One of the ways that this is done is by showing how one’s work fits into someone else’s narrative. For example, Dr. Goldish has a particular expertise in early modern Jewish thought and how it fits in with what we see with European Christians. He wrote his dissertation on Isaac Newton and his use of rabbinic sources. Similarly, his recent book, Sabbatean Prophets takes sixteenth and early seventeenth century Jews and shows how it is similar to, for example, Phyllis Mack’s discussion of mid-seventeenth century Quaker women in England. I see almost a caricature of this type of thinking at conferences where presenters rush to list off names of theorists just to force some greater “context.” With Dr. Goldish it never sounds forced; this speaks both to his talents as a historian and as a writer.
Working with Dr. Goldish has been very beneficial to me because of this and has given me a far greater range as a historian. I came to Ohio State with very strong skills in terms of textual analysis. I grew up studying Talmud, plus I have Asperger syndrome so I am naturally very comfortable with texts. (I was not actually officially diagnosed with Asperger syndrome until after I came to Ohio State.) When I came Dr. Goldish told me point blank that the other students do not have my text skills; he did this in order to soften the culture shock for me coming to a secular university and, for the first time in my life, having to deal, on a daily basis, with people not trained on Talmud. What Dr. Goldish then went to work on me was narrative, telling a larger story.
At the end of the day, narrative does have an important role to play in history. If narrative is necessary in order to show some higher relevancy and get a job it is because it is important to do something that is actually relevant. Kenneth Miller has a line: “biology without evolution is stamp collecting.” Evolution serves to take all the bits of information that we have about organic life and puts it together in one coherent “narrative.” Similarly with history; the Civil War buff, like my adolescent self, who can throw out lots of random facts about the Civil War, is not engaging in history. First, he needs to be able to analyze primary and secondary source material through the lens of the historical method. Next, he needs to be able to put everything together into some narrative. Without this, all that we have is a cute factoid machine that is of no practical use to anyone.
(To be continued …)
I see the field of history as consisting of three parts. First, there is the collection and editing of primary source material. Then there is the analysis of the primary source material, creating secondary source material, in order to see what directions the primary sources point. Finally, there is the creation of a narrative, which puts together the conclusions of the secondary sources into some consensus. The history familiar to the general public is really this last stage. For the most part, academic historians devote themselves to the second stage and it is this stage that forms the real heart and soul of the study of history. It has actually very little to do with narrative.
The issue of narrative is a sore spot for historians. It is the part of history that is the furthest from objective truth and the closest to personal opinion. If historians cannot be scientists they still wish to be better than artists or literature professionals. Again, considering the tight job market, this is not an academic question; real careers are on the line. I recommend Hayden White’s Metahistory, where he subversively treats history as a form of literature. What is important to note about White is that he only deals with issues of historical narrative. I suspect that most historians would gladly do away with narrative as at best a distraction and at worst an illusion that undermines "real" history.
Narrative remains in place largely because it is necessary to make one's work relevant, first to fellow historians, then to scholars in the humanities and finally to the general public at large. One of the ways that this is done is by showing how one’s work fits into someone else’s narrative. For example, Dr. Goldish has a particular expertise in early modern Jewish thought and how it fits in with what we see with European Christians. He wrote his dissertation on Isaac Newton and his use of rabbinic sources. Similarly, his recent book, Sabbatean Prophets takes sixteenth and early seventeenth century Jews and shows how it is similar to, for example, Phyllis Mack’s discussion of mid-seventeenth century Quaker women in England. I see almost a caricature of this type of thinking at conferences where presenters rush to list off names of theorists just to force some greater “context.” With Dr. Goldish it never sounds forced; this speaks both to his talents as a historian and as a writer.
Working with Dr. Goldish has been very beneficial to me because of this and has given me a far greater range as a historian. I came to Ohio State with very strong skills in terms of textual analysis. I grew up studying Talmud, plus I have Asperger syndrome so I am naturally very comfortable with texts. (I was not actually officially diagnosed with Asperger syndrome until after I came to Ohio State.) When I came Dr. Goldish told me point blank that the other students do not have my text skills; he did this in order to soften the culture shock for me coming to a secular university and, for the first time in my life, having to deal, on a daily basis, with people not trained on Talmud. What Dr. Goldish then went to work on me was narrative, telling a larger story.
At the end of the day, narrative does have an important role to play in history. If narrative is necessary in order to show some higher relevancy and get a job it is because it is important to do something that is actually relevant. Kenneth Miller has a line: “biology without evolution is stamp collecting.” Evolution serves to take all the bits of information that we have about organic life and puts it together in one coherent “narrative.” Similarly with history; the Civil War buff, like my adolescent self, who can throw out lots of random facts about the Civil War, is not engaging in history. First, he needs to be able to analyze primary and secondary source material through the lens of the historical method. Next, he needs to be able to put everything together into some narrative. Without this, all that we have is a cute factoid machine that is of no practical use to anyone.
(To be continued …)
Friday, January 9, 2009
History 112: More on Giordano Bruno and the Challenge of Skeptical Relativisim
To continue with our discussion from the other day, you remember our friend Giordano Bruno, the renegade Dominican. If you were paying attention to your reading you may have noticed that he was mentioned in the section about Rudolph II. Rudolph II and his circle are an example of what Frances Yates argued, mainly that the Scientific Revolution had its origins in Renaissance magic. Rudolph II was into the occult and he gathered around him magicians, alchemists and astrologers from around Europe, one of them being Giordano Bruno. You might think that all this magic and occult has nothing to do with “science.” Except that one of the characters hanging around Rudolph II’s court is a man by the name of Johannes Kepler, one of the founding figures of modern physics.
Yesterday, in class, Dr. Breyfogle talked about Martin Luther and the Reformation. Having someone like Giordano Bruno offers an interesting perspective on the Reformation and the origins of modern secularism. One of the million dollar questions of early modern history is where does modern secularism come from. In the United States today only a third of all Americans go to a religious service on a weekly basis. Now America, by Western standards, is a very religious country. We have the second highest per capita level of church attendance of any Western country. Ireland is first. We tend to think of medieval Europe as being dominated by religion and people living in the Middle Ages as being very religious. Accepting this assumption, and it is actually not so simple, one is left with the question as to how and why things changed; if people were once very religious during the Middle Ages how and why did they become secular in modern times. Giordano Bruno is interesting in that he serves as a half way point. He rejected Christianity, as we are used to thinking about it, creating his own religion based on hermetic magic and Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, yet he viewed himself as a Christian trying to restore “true” Christianity, as practiced by Jesus and the Apostles, from the corruptions of the Middle Ages. In this he was like Luther. So when does someone stop being a Christian? When you deny the authority of the Pope, of Church councils and most of the sacraments, like Luther did? What about if you deny transubstantiation, like John Calvin? What if you deny the Trinity, like Isaac Newton and John Locke? Luther saw himself as restoring Christianity to the way things were in the Bible. The Bible says nothing about a pope so let us get rid of popes. Of course the Bible says nothing about transubstantiation so you have Calvin getting rid of that; no more Fourth Lateran Council. At the end of the day, though, the Bible says nothing about a Trinity so if you are Newton you can go and dump Nicaea overboard. From this perspective a Giordano Bruno makes perfect sense; you can believe in nothing and still call yourself a Christian.
As we talked about last time, in this class you will be learning about the historical method. History is a lot more than just names and dates, though you do need to have some knowledge of these things. History is a method of thinking, one that is useful beyond the narrow confines of history. Just as the scientific method is a means of thinking that goes beyond “science.” As a method of rational inquiry, the historical method, as with the scientific method, is premised on the notion that the human mind is capable of coming to know certain truths. This is the counter of what I like to refer to as the skeptical relativist position. Scientists have done a better job at presenting their method to the public. They have not had the luxury of other fields not to do so. As a historian I will never have to get up in front of a school board in Kansas or any other place and defend the proposition that the existence of a Napoleon Bonaparte is historical fact and that anyone who thinks otherwise deserves a straightjacket, a padded cell and a lifetime supply of happy pills.
Last time we considered a skeptical relativist position, that my blog, Wikipedia and the scholarship of Frances Yates are all the flawed products of the human mind and human biases and therefore are all equal; one is not really better than the other. Who would support such a position? We are used to thinking of relativism as product of liberal secularism. We are used to hearing from secularists that all values are relative and there are even those who would apply this relativism to science. Now there is another group that has the same interest, religious fundamentalists. In my opinion one of the major misunderstandings of religion in the modern world is the equation of skepticism and relativism with secularism; religious fundamentalism is also built around extreme skepticism and relativism. What is left standing if all human knowledge collapses and no longer can claim any authority? (In a Southern drawl) “The Bible! The Bible is word of God. All those so called scientists and scholars they do not really know anything. You need the Bible to set you straight.” If you have ever been around campus come summer time, you will hear people like this, standing around on the oval. Now I grew up dealing with Jewish fundamentalism, it sounds a bit different. (Yiddish accent) “Mimelah all the scientists are bunch of apikorsim (heretics) and what you need is to have emunah pshuta (simple faith) in the Torah hakodosha (the holy Bible).” This is an example of Yeshivish. Think of it as a sort of Jewbonics.
So all of you here! You are my deputy historians. We stand against skeptical relativism in both of its forms. We believe in the power of human reason and over the course of this coming quarter we are going to see the historical method in action as it takes apart texts.
Yesterday, in class, Dr. Breyfogle talked about Martin Luther and the Reformation. Having someone like Giordano Bruno offers an interesting perspective on the Reformation and the origins of modern secularism. One of the million dollar questions of early modern history is where does modern secularism come from. In the United States today only a third of all Americans go to a religious service on a weekly basis. Now America, by Western standards, is a very religious country. We have the second highest per capita level of church attendance of any Western country. Ireland is first. We tend to think of medieval Europe as being dominated by religion and people living in the Middle Ages as being very religious. Accepting this assumption, and it is actually not so simple, one is left with the question as to how and why things changed; if people were once very religious during the Middle Ages how and why did they become secular in modern times. Giordano Bruno is interesting in that he serves as a half way point. He rejected Christianity, as we are used to thinking about it, creating his own religion based on hermetic magic and Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, yet he viewed himself as a Christian trying to restore “true” Christianity, as practiced by Jesus and the Apostles, from the corruptions of the Middle Ages. In this he was like Luther. So when does someone stop being a Christian? When you deny the authority of the Pope, of Church councils and most of the sacraments, like Luther did? What about if you deny transubstantiation, like John Calvin? What if you deny the Trinity, like Isaac Newton and John Locke? Luther saw himself as restoring Christianity to the way things were in the Bible. The Bible says nothing about a pope so let us get rid of popes. Of course the Bible says nothing about transubstantiation so you have Calvin getting rid of that; no more Fourth Lateran Council. At the end of the day, though, the Bible says nothing about a Trinity so if you are Newton you can go and dump Nicaea overboard. From this perspective a Giordano Bruno makes perfect sense; you can believe in nothing and still call yourself a Christian.
As we talked about last time, in this class you will be learning about the historical method. History is a lot more than just names and dates, though you do need to have some knowledge of these things. History is a method of thinking, one that is useful beyond the narrow confines of history. Just as the scientific method is a means of thinking that goes beyond “science.” As a method of rational inquiry, the historical method, as with the scientific method, is premised on the notion that the human mind is capable of coming to know certain truths. This is the counter of what I like to refer to as the skeptical relativist position. Scientists have done a better job at presenting their method to the public. They have not had the luxury of other fields not to do so. As a historian I will never have to get up in front of a school board in Kansas or any other place and defend the proposition that the existence of a Napoleon Bonaparte is historical fact and that anyone who thinks otherwise deserves a straightjacket, a padded cell and a lifetime supply of happy pills.
Last time we considered a skeptical relativist position, that my blog, Wikipedia and the scholarship of Frances Yates are all the flawed products of the human mind and human biases and therefore are all equal; one is not really better than the other. Who would support such a position? We are used to thinking of relativism as product of liberal secularism. We are used to hearing from secularists that all values are relative and there are even those who would apply this relativism to science. Now there is another group that has the same interest, religious fundamentalists. In my opinion one of the major misunderstandings of religion in the modern world is the equation of skepticism and relativism with secularism; religious fundamentalism is also built around extreme skepticism and relativism. What is left standing if all human knowledge collapses and no longer can claim any authority? (In a Southern drawl) “The Bible! The Bible is word of God. All those so called scientists and scholars they do not really know anything. You need the Bible to set you straight.” If you have ever been around campus come summer time, you will hear people like this, standing around on the oval. Now I grew up dealing with Jewish fundamentalism, it sounds a bit different. (Yiddish accent) “Mimelah all the scientists are bunch of apikorsim (heretics) and what you need is to have emunah pshuta (simple faith) in the Torah hakodosha (the holy Bible).” This is an example of Yeshivish. Think of it as a sort of Jewbonics.
So all of you here! You are my deputy historians. We stand against skeptical relativism in both of its forms. We believe in the power of human reason and over the course of this coming quarter we are going to see the historical method in action as it takes apart texts.
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