On Faith: Buber, Rosenweig, Levinas, Putnam

been thinking about this alot lately...

Putnam’s Experiential Philosophy: A New Use for Faith
Throughout the history of religion, philosophers and theologians interpret the act of faith as a kind of metaphysical reflection. From this view, the concept of faith pertains to a divine connection: by committing ourselves to a higher being, we pursue an ultimate meaning beyond the scope of human reality. In his recent collection of essays entitled Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life, Hillary Putnam identifies commonalties between this traditional conception of faith and its use in what he calls experiential philosophy. Although the new approach retains a commitment or devotion to a religious ideal, it avoids theorizing a mode of operation outside the way it is expressed in human relations. From his own encounter with Judaism and reconciliation of the Jewish philosophers, Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, and Wittgenstein, Putnam discovers that the value of faith comes from its expression in human experience and the justification of its meaning through communal practice.
To convey the essentiality of an “experiential philosophy,” Putnam must first argue why we cannot utilize the act of faith as a bridge to the metaphysical realm. This requires adopting Ludwig Wittgenstein’s stance as an “anti-philosopher” and relating the discussion of religion to Wittgenstein’s remarks about the possibility of language. According to Wittgenstein, words only gain their meaning in the context of some human activity; or the expression of their use in what he terms a “language game”. To summarize the connection Putnam sees between language games and faith: the “stream of life” is the language game where our words come to gain meaning and the attribution of meaning to words is determined by a community’s agreement on the correct practices of their use (29). Therefore, to take an “imaginary [metaphysical] position outside the demands of life and flow of time” would be nonsense; it would be analogous to taking a position that exists outside the grammatical rules of language (29). Therefore, the language of faith must exist in a realm we can experience; its grammatical form develops from its practical use.
Additionally, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language calls for an abandonment of the traditional philosophical belief that there is an “essence,” or internal truth to the words we use; that these words are true by ostensible definition or “name” alone (21). This is the mistake Putnam believes philosophers make in rationalizing a theory of faith. Some examples of failed proofs of Gods existence include Descartes’ radical theory of mind, Maimonides’ speculative reason, and the phenomenology of either a Husserlian or a Heidegerrian. The concept of God cannot picture a truth outside the expression of its meaning in the language game of metaphysical speculation (or in some larger language game such as religious practice) (107). Putnam connects Rosenweig’s “new thinking” to Wittgestein’s anti-philosophy as a way to usher in what it means to experience faith, rather than use it to access the metaphysical realm. Rosenzweig believes that although we cannot “know” god; we are always in his presence. Thus, what matters is that the actual experience of God gives meaning to the activity we partake in the context of living.
After learning where other philosophies go wrong and where Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein go right, we now enter a transition stage in trying to grasp what Putnam means by “experiential philosophy.” For Putnam, the philosophies of Buber and Levinas aid us through the transition. By associating the experience of faith with “the lived problems of human interlocutors” their philosophies begin to orientate the value of faith to the real. From my understanding of Putnam’s reading, previous conceptions of faith would only account for what Buber classifies as “I-It relations” (62). If I am to interact with another being (even God) in this manner, our relationship is reducible to a series of representational objects in my mind, and nothing of more palpable meaning. Only I have knowledge of the meaning of these objects: they constitute some kind of internal truth in themselves that is not available to the other I encounter. Buber’s “I-You” relationship allows for a different kind of reciprocal experience, where two entities can actually meet in an “organic” existence. Each entity must place more value on the other, than itself. This represents an ideal and naturalistic conception of faith, whereas the divine meeting between two akin and equitable souls has a normative meaning that cannot be reduced to a subjective, empirical composition. Putnam notes that by engaging in this kind of relation (which is not only applicable to an encounter with God, but all aspects of life) I am actually “transforming life in the world” (64); rather than picture the meaning of an entity through some kind of objectification; I come to understand its meaning through its expression, alone. Similarly, Levinas prescribes a “fundamental obligation to the neediness of another person” that grounds the same kind of non-reducible relation. The fundamental obligation is “asymmetrical;” I cannot succeed in grasping the “alteriority” or the fundamental otherness of another (105). Therefore, there is no metaphysical sameness between myself and anything else in relation to me and I cannot know whether a divine commandment from God is true (105). It follows that ethical judgments supplant ontology as the real philosophy at work in our experience; ontology cannot describe either the “Infinite or the others alteriority” (105). The act of faith requires that I help others and fulfill a role their language game, or else they will not be able to recognize me, in solidarity, as a participant. I must value my relationship with the people of my life in the terrestrial realm, more than anything else in the cosmos; this premise instantiates the omnipotence of human ethics.
If we incorporate the ideas of Buber and Levinas into a pragmatics (corresponding to the Dewey interpretation), we can finally identify Putnam’s position on faith. Faith is a kind of deliberative democracy; in other words, it’s an ethical connection with a standard of correctness that “seems to be the most intelligent way to solve problems” (Pragmatism and Realism, 42). As the pragmatist Jurgen Habermas would argue, language contains innate and universal concepts that necessitate the existence of an ethical common ground. The learning of commonalities in the quotidian life endeavors of communicative interlocutors allows for the eradication of nihilism and the buttressing of an essential belief system for the community. The “experience” of God is only valuable if the community adopts God as an objective ideal (free from any kind of metaphysical meaning) from which we can form the basis of our ethical judgments. Because the standard of correctness constantly evolves through our discursive and religious practice, it will continue to reflect the accepted norms of the community. Faith is helpful in determining an acceptable way for us to act; in practicing Judaism, Putnam is able to engage in meaningful relations with other human beings. For this reason, I believe Putnam can make stronger claims about the pragmatic value of “praying, meditating, putting [himself] in touch with the ideals,” than he could if he relied on some kind abstract “philosophical” conception of normativity.
In evaluating Putnam’s “experiential philosophy,” I ask, why Judaism? Can one understand a new conception of faith through other religious practices? Perhaps in comparison, Christianity places greater emphasis on the afterlife and thus misses out on the “lived problems” identified in the book (106)? Furthermore, do Putnam’s essays stand as a validation of Judaism as more practical than other religions? Does he even want to make an attribution of value, here? Rather than answer these questions, I believe Putnam would sidestep them all together. He may remark that Judaism is no more valid a discourse than any other method for examining the “new way” of thinking. Rather, Putnam wants to relate how his encounter with Judaism had a personal affect on him, how it allowed for him to question and change his views on life, and nothing more dogmatic. It seems that any religious ideal can do the same, as long it exists in a stable, unified language game, where its meaning can be expressed at the public level. Although Judaism allowed Putnam to understand what it means to partake in experiential philosophy, there are other ways to do so and we do not necessarily have to go about it in the same manner that he did. Therefore, to ask if there is a specific reason for his choosing to focus on Judaism in his discussion, is missing the point all together. This digression makes the same mistake as traditional philosophers who try to extricate one kind of epistemological knowledge or metaphysical meaning for faith, rather than a multiplicity of meanings clarified through the everyday practice of living. Faith has no value outside of its expression or use in the grammatical rules of language. We can develop our own meaning for faith based on our own communal practice; after all, all meaning is grounded in the reality of human relationships.

-Mike Kober 11/26/2008

Repressive Sentimentalism

Kierkegaard's Either/Or, as you know, is divided into two parts, the first written by a Seducer, who approaches the problem of human relations aesthetically, and the second by a Judge, who approaches it ethically. Neither approach proves satisfactory; a better title for the book would be Neither/Nor. To the surprise of those of us who know you personally, your essay has caused some in the blogosphere to mistake you for a figure like Kierkegaard's Seducer. In disagreeing with you, I suppose I run the parallel risk of sounding like the Judge, who is, I believe, in somewhat greater danger of losing his soul, because in order to preserve decorum, he seems willing to smother the spark that makes human relations possible at all. Keeping the danger in mind, I will risk answering you.

I dissent from many of the claims in your essay, but I feel my resistance most strongly to the following sentence: "Opposing gay marriage is like denying the wishes of people who want to feed your pets or take out your garbage".

If you believe that gays who marry resemble people offering to take out the trash, then you believe that gays who marry are offering a service. I presume you mean that they are surrendering their sexual wildness for the sake of social approbation and tin the process are making a gift of sexual orderliness to the common weal. If that is all marriage is- a bargain wherein autonomy is traded for status- then it is indeed a ridiculous bargain for any sexually potent adult to make. (Lurking behind the cartoon figure of the promiscuous gay man, whom your essay eulogizes, is his inevitable twin, the gay eunuch). But surely it's possible to imagine marriage as something else, something that our Kierkegaard reading group tried to investigate, as did the reading group that followed it, which tackled Stanley Cavell's Pursuits of Happiness. Would it be mere rhetoric to suggest that marriage is itself a form of wildness?

Your claim in the sentence quoted above, which is a sort of joke, has two lemmas. First, you imply that marriage is a surrender of sexual liberty. I don't think that's accurate. Marriage is Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell standing side by side in the closing scene of His GIrl Friday, nattering on with the same jollity when handcuffed to each other as when not handcuffed. Marriage is indifference to handcuffs. THere are always opportunities to escape. THe strange discovery that makes marriage possible is that one has the liberty not to- the liberty to make the same choice, day after day- and that one happens to want to make a consistent choice. It is a pradox, at least. Will one happen to want to make the same choice forever? Maybe not. Separation and divorce are always possible, in our world, and maybe they give marriage its poignancy. The possibility of separation proves that no two people stay chained to each other unless they want to. IT even seems to be the case that people who want to stay chained to each other can't manage to. It is at any rate an error to think that marriage is a surrender of liberty. It is an exercise of it.

The second lemma of your joke is less seemly. It is mockery of anyone- in this case, gays- who wants the general social approbation implied by marriage. I suspect that you yourself will find this indigestible if you stop and think about it. Do you really intend to mock homosexuals, who have long been considered and in some circles still are considered pariahs for wishing to have proof that they are no longer so thought of, at least as a matter of law? Your joke will only seem funny to readers who have taken social approbation for granted for so long that they now see only its conformist aspect and no longer its psychological and social benefits. Yes. yes, society bestows its approval conservatively; do you really think that people who have gone without it for most of their adult lives are unaware of that? You are somewhat in the position, here, of a millionaire who styles himself a radical and makes fun of the lengths that other people will go to in order to become rich. The radical thing would be to share the wealth, or to campaign for a more equitable economic system.

I'm not denying, by the way, that people in a marriage customarily agree to forgo sexual opportunities outside it. I'm saying merely that they agree to because they realize that they want to forgo them. Such a realization cannot happen to a Foucauldian motley of pleasure and bodies. Bodies have no free will; left to their own devices, they say yes to every pleasure they can obtain. Such a realization can only happen to a self, or to something you might even denominate a soul. Selves and souls, you might reply, are fictions, and I agree that they are not a given but are something people make in the course of living. I believe, nonetheless, that they are worth making. Keats called the world a "vale of soul-making," and on that understanding, a refusal to make a soul is a denial of incarnation- a refusal of one of the world's highest pleasures and deepest experiences. I am not of course saying that only married poeple have souls. I am saying that it's worthwhile to have a soul, in part so as to have the capacity to make a choice like marriage, but mostly because it would be a shame to go through life without ever thinking about what Hopkins would call the sakes of it. This is diving rather deep in order to answer a relatively shallow question, I admit, but this way of arguing about marriage seems to require it.

I dissent from any deprecation of the self, and a fortiori of the soul, in the name of liberating the body. A liberated body is merely an animal and there are stark limits to the liberty that an animal is capable of. HUman liberty goes further- it involves something else- and toe exclude that something else from a human life is sort of to miss the whole point, frankly.

What exactly that something else is, in a marriage or in a life, is hard to say without misrepresenting it. Emerson recommends modestly on the subject, and I wonder if your error has been to show such an excessive modesty that in your essay you pretend, as a conceit, that this something else does not even exist. But it does, I believe, even if it has to be invented.

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