I would like to thank Alexander Zhang for his assistance in crafting this post.
When my paper was accepted at the Rutgers Analytic Theology Seminar (RATS), which took place this March, I had some assumptions about the content of the conference. Perhaps cynically, I figured that the conference’s topics would include the standard sorts of debates that one would expect to find at a philosophy of religion conference: Debates about the nature of God, free-will, the problem of evil, and so forth, from a generally Christian lens. It wasn’t.
The keynote was presented by Sam Lebens and concerned a new project of his that is currently in the works. For those not familiar with Sam, he is one of the few philosophers attempting to examine Jewish theological commitments from an analytic lens. Sam’s presentation was the impetus behind my submission to the conference. As he and I later discussed, there are not that many of us working on analytic philosophy of Judaism. Knowing this, I figured there would be at least one person there with whom I could commiserate.
At one presentation I encountered an investigation into the nature of God, as predicted. What I could never have predicted was that this investigation consisted of novel insights gained from Kabbalistic philosophy. Many books have been written about what Kabbalah is, if it even is a singular thing, or a thing at all, but what’s relevant for this post is that Kabbalah is esoteric—so esoteric that it is the origin of our English word cabal. Philology aside, the esoteric nature of Kabbalah and Kabbalistic philosophy means that it was the last model I was expecting to see analyzed at this particular conference. Additionally, the presenter’s ability to connect elements from the Kabbalistic philosophical tradition with the null item in mereology (a concept perhaps even more abstruse) had piqued my interests.
At the various Q&As throughout the seminar, the hits just kept on coming. “Perhaps the Deity must hide in order to make himself known, like a man who must clothe himself in order to appear in public?,” one participant asked, quoting from a famous Hasidic rebbe. But this assertion may have been too obtuse for some to handle. It is, as I proffered, better to understand “revealing” as the Diety’s choice of certain contingent facts during a revelation. Since there are an infinite number of ways the Deity could reveal itself, but only one way in which the Deity does reveal itself. Thus, the deity “conceals” the other possiblia by engaging in a specific type of revelation. This response was satisfactory for many. Those left unsatisfied were certainly concealed from me. At this point I had totally disregarded my previous assumptions. Analytic theology breathes new life, the breath of Jewish philosophy.
Beyond Kabbalistic thought, other elements of Jewish philosophy were front-and-center at RATS. The rationality of thanksgiving prayers was put through the gauntlet. For those unfamiliar with the basic contours of the issue, agents perform some actions that are not deserving of praise or thanksgiving. God performs these very same actions, yet we find it necessary to thank and praise God. Why? Perhaps a solution is (the presenter argued, springboarding from the biblical commentary of Rashi) that we ought to be the type of people who show gratitude to inanimate objects as much as we show gratitude to animate objects, and only via a fortiori reasoning should we show gratitude to agents. Thus, the presenter adequately solved the problem by their incorporation of centuries old Rabbinic commentary. Rashi, who commented on nearly every verse in the Torah and almost all of the Talmud, might never have expected his ideas to find their way outside of Talmudic study halls and into academic philosophy.
My presentation was the only other paper that I had originally predicted to be about the philosophy of Judaism. I expected that my paper’s theme would be in the conference minority as far as philosophical subdisciplines. My presentation focused on a particular avenue of inquiry with regards to what miracle occurrences entitle us to believe. I argued that, given the biblical data, genuine miracles are not good evidence of the Diety’s authority, since the Deity appears to sanction non-authoritative individuals by giving them the ability to perform miracles. Of course, this answer to the question “what is the is the purpose of a miracle” draws from Maimonides view of miracles as well as the general attitude of the rabbinic tradition. The response from the Q&A was inquisitive, and the attendees showed a general interest in the topic and my solution. Post-talk discussions of the presentation took up much more time than I had originally envisioned.
Three areas of Jewish philosophy (Kabbalistic, commentary traditions, and Maimonidean traditions) were each represented in their own right. Thus, not only was Jewish philosophy well-represented at RATS, but different streams, philosophies of Judaism were interspersed throughout the conference. One expects some native familiarity with these topics in order to manage their intellectual contours. I had thought that this familiarity was limited to a certain few. Up until this conference I had assumed that the interest in these topics and the ability to manage them was spread very thin across the planet, a few people in each country. I am grateful to report that nothing could be farther from the truth.
I have, at many points in this post, described these topics and the discussions that come with them as “novel.” But I must now qualify how I’ve used that word. Given my educational background in yeshivos, these topics were not novel to me. I wrestled with them before. I grew up spending countless hours debating these issues. The novelty is their application in analytic philosophy, outside of their usual home in rabbinic institutions.
When I began to pursue philosophy academically, I had assumed that, unless necessary, the broader philosophical community was uninterested in the theological and philosophical tradition that I had come from. I took the fact that very little work had been done on the analytic philosophy of Judaism as evidence of this. I had long thought these two worlds were separate, and that to merge them was a task fraught with disappointment. As I hope to have shown, this is decidedly not the case. Not only is the broader community interested in these topics, but the level of discussion and engagement with them reminded of my yeshiva education. These topics are certainly esoteric, but I have come to realize that this esoteric community includes analytic philosophers as well as stalwart Talmudists!
Attending this conference reminded me of one thing in particular. I had forgotten that the tradition which birthed my interest in philosophy was itself interesting philosophically. I had forgotten that the philosophical tradition I came from has merit outside of its normally sequestered arena. This conference reminded me of this in two ways: interest and inclusion. That people were interested in these topics was enough to show me that they matter and that these ideas are important and relevant. That people wanted to include these topics in their further academic research made me feel represented and respected. I came to feel that my own interests were not odd, or outside the pale of “traditional analytic philosophy.”
My final hopes are, at the least, continued philosophical interest around these topics. I hope that this trend continues. At the most, I would hope that other philosophical traditions make an appearance at this type of conference. RATS II (as I am affectionately calling it) is already in the works. I’m not on the conference organizing committee, just a presenter at the conference’s previous incarnation. However, I hope that as this conference, and conferences of its ilk, grow in popularity. That growth is commensurate with an interest in and inclusion of the many philosophical traditions on offer. I, obviously, think these are promising directions for the field. A new trend is occurring in the philosophy of religion, a trend that ought to be continued.
Menashe Chaim Roberts
Menashe Chaim Roberts is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Saint Louis University. His areas of interest are: metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of Judaism, and philosophy of language. Thus far, Menashe has written about the philosophy of textual interpretation as it pertains to Originalism.
