Post on 30-Jan-2023
1
Is a Nonfoundationalist Jewish Philosophy Possible?
The Thought of Tamar Ross and Peter Ochs as Case Study
Student Number: 7299365
Supervisor: Prof. Alex Samely
This dissertation is submitted as partial requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with
Honours in Religion and Theology (Theological Attitudes to Philosophy and Ethics)
Religions and Theology Department
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester
Tuesday April 23rd, 2013
2
Abstract. Nonfoundationalism is the view that there is no premise from which
our beliefs can be deduced as certain. Though this might appear to present a
challenge to Jewish thought, a convincing nonfoundationalist Jewish
philosophy is possible. There has been little scholarly discussion of the recent
work by Tamar Ross and Peter Ochs, but it is there that a
nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophy can be found. Moreover, until now it
has not been noticed that their theological appropriations of
nonfoundationalism are the same, albeit expressed in different idioms with
different emphases. For both, Judaism is an anthology of words whose purpose
is not to refer to any particular truths, but to provide a rich way of thinking
about and experiencing the world for those who commit to living by them. The
actual meaning of the words is dependent entirely on each context. When the
old meanings cause suffering for those committed to them, Judaism demands
their re-interpretation so that the suffering can be repaired through the texts
themselves, and can continue in their function as a framework for perceiving the
world. As such, it can be called Reparative Contextualism.
Word Count: 11,999
3
Abbreviations
Peter Ochs
RR ‘Reparative Reasoning’
AR Another Reformation: Postliberalism and the Jews
RAR Reasoning after Revelation
BM ‘Behind the Mechitsa: Reflections on the Rules of Textual
Reasoning’
PW ‘Philosophical Warrant for Scriptural Reasoning’
SL ‘Scriptural Logic’
CP ‘Compassionate Postmodernism’
Tamar Ross
EPT Expanding the Palace of Torah
RBPA Religious Belief in a Postmodern Age
CVR ‘Cognitive Value of Religious Truth Statements:
Rabbi A. I. Kook and Postmodernism’
RF ‘Response to Finkelman’
GT ‘Guarding the Treasure and Guarding the Torah’
4
Contents
Introduction: Is a Nonfoundationalist Jewish Philosophy Possible?
5
Chapter 1: The Conflict Between Jewish Philosophy and
Nonfoundationalism 9
i. Anti-Foundationalism in Analytic Philosophy 10
ii. The Postmodern Incredulity Towards Metanarratives 13
iii. The Challenge of Nonfoundationalism 16
Chapter 2: ‘Reparative Contextualism’ as Nonfoundationalist:
Tamar Ross and Peter Ochs 19
i. Tamar Ross as Contextualist Theologian 20
ii. Peter Ochs as Reparative Theologian 23
iii. Ross, Ochs and Nonfoundationalism 25
iv. The Opportunity of Nonfoundationalism 28
v. The Vision of Reparative Contextualism 31
Chapter 3: A Reparative Critique of Reparative Contextualism 37
i. The Challenge of Self-Refutation 38
ii. The Jewish Form of Life 40
iii. New Contexts, New Repair 43
Conclusion: The Rock of Horeb 48
Bibliography 51
5
Introduction
Is a Nonfoundationalist Jewish Philosophy Possible?
The path of the Jewish philosopher is determined by one element that is variable and another that is constant. The variable is the intellectual, scholarly equipment that each thinker uses in building his own philosophy… Judaism contains the element of constancy because it is founded not on ideas but on certain facts and events.
Eliezer Berkovits1 Much of Jewish philosophy can be seen as the attempt to justify a commitment to
Judaism in terms not internal to Judaism. If so, a Jewish philosophy will have two
aspects: first, it will relate to beliefs, texts and practices that are seen as relevantly
Jewish, and which need justifying in order to commit to them; and second, it will
presuppose a certain mode of reasoning with respect to which the justification
will occur. A convincing Jewish philosophy will show how a particular
philosophical standpoint is compatible with – or better, necessitates – Jewish
belief and practice. Seen from this angle, this dissertation is a critical investigation
into one branch of contemporary Jewish philosophy; its subject is whether Jewish
engagement can be justified with recourse to a particular idea prominent in
current philosophical discourse - nonfoundationalism.
Before introducing nonfoundationalism and its advocates, let me mention
Hermann Cohen (1842 – 1918) and Eliyahu Dessler (1892 – 1953) as two
illustrations of my model of Jewish philosophy as an integration between a mode
of reasoning and a conception of Judaism. Cohen, a Liberal Jewish thinker,
adopted a mode of reasoning deeply influenced by Kant. On their view, though 1 Eliezer Berkovits, ‘What is Jewish Philosophy?’, Tradition 3:2 (1963), 120
6
pure reason cannot teach us any truths about reality as it is in itself, we can use
practical reason to articulate universal, rational truths about ethics. From here,
Cohen can justify his conception of Judaism as a ‘religion of reason’,2 whose
prophets were the first to articulate the universality of ethics. He calls this
prophetic contribution ‘ethical monotheism’,3 which, for him, is the essence of
Judaism. Dessler, by contrast, was an influential Orthodox thinker. Though not
indebted to a particular philosopher, he still presupposes a mode of reasoning
that (as I will defend in Chapter 1) is reminiscent of Descartes. For him, when
‘the heart is cleansed of bias’ we can ‘rely on our intellect to give us true
conclusions’.4 From here, he claims that only the rabbis are free from this bias,
and thus can justify his conception of Judaism, which focuses on the importance
of trusting the rabbinic understanding of halakha (Jewish law) and faith.
Cohen and Dessler, despite having very different modes of reasoning and
conceptions of Judaism, fit into my model. However, there is already one
assumption their modes of reasoning share, what I call the foundationalist
tendency in Jewish philosophy. Foundationalists claim that a worldview can be
justified by showing how all its beliefs can be deduced from a ground of certain
knowledge. For Cohen, the universal truths of Reason are justified in this way,
and for Dessler, there can be access to ‘absolute knowledge’ through rational
thinking (at least for the rabbis!).5
In the second half of the twentieth century in particular, the foundationalist
model came under severe attack in several ways. In Chapter 1, I will 2 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason (trans. Simon Kaplan), (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) 3 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 242 4 Eliyahu Dessler, Strive for Truth! (trans. Aryeh Carmell), (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1978) (Vol. 1), 172 5 Dessler, Strive for Truth! (vol. 3), 221
7
contextualize this debate and clarify the main issues involved. I will suggest that
the position of anti-foundationalism in analytic philosophy and the rejection of
metanarratives in postmodern thought share a rejection of any beliefs which are
treated as certain and immune to re-evaluation, and from which the status of all
others can be judged. This is the idea I will call ‘nonfoundationalism’. I will then
make it clear how changing our conception of justification has implications
beyond epistemology. After noting how Cohen’s and Dessler’s philosophy would
be incompatible with this position, I will conclude the chapter by raising the
central question of this dissertation: is there a conception of Judaism that the
nonfoundationalist mode of reasoning can serve to justify? Or, put differently, is a
nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophy possible?
In Chapter 2, I will introduce two attempts to build a nonfoundationalist Jewish
philosophy. First, Tamar Ross has argued that the meaning of Judaism depends
entirely on its context, and has tried to show how understanding Jewish sources
from within an egalitarian context will encourage halakhic development that is
mandated by divine revelation. Second, Peter Ochs has argued for a way of
reading Jewish texts that he calls ‘reparative reasoning’.6 This encourages people
committed to Judaism to read Jewish texts in such a way that they repair the
suffering of their readers, and Ochs is involved in such a reading for postmodern
academics. I will show how both of these attempts assume nonfoundationalism,
and how they welcome it as an authentic Judaism. I will conclude that their
theologies share a fundamental project, albeit expressed in very different idioms,
which I will call ‘Reparative Contextualism’.
6 Ochs, RR, passim
8
In Chapter 3, I will challenge and defend these attempts. I will examine the
objections that they neither live up to the nonfoundationalism they aspire to, nor
the concern for the tradition’s inner workings that they claim. I will suggest that
on both accounts reparative contextualists are internally consistent, and as such
affirm that a Jewish philosophy within the nonfoundationalist paradigm is indeed
possible. However, I conclude the chapter by suggesting that, inherent in the idea
of nonfoundationalist philosophy is the idea that it itself may be repaired if there
is reason to, and I will suggest that there may already be reason to do so in our
time.
I have chosen Ross’ and Ochs’ work because they are amongst the more prolific
and creative contemporary thinkers writing with the question of
nonfoundationalism in mind, and moreover, I have found them interesting,
challenging and provocative. The work I will focus on is from the past fifteen
years, though I will also refer to some of their earlier writings. The newness of
their work means there is little secondary literature on it. As such, in contrast to
the broad overviews of the first chapter, the second will be my own close-reading
and interpretation of their work, and the third will offer an original and critical
response.
9
Chapter 1
The Conflict Between Jewish Philosophy and Nonfoundationalism
With a chilling clarity Descartes leads us with an apparent and ineluctable necessity to a grand and seductive Either/Or. Either there is some support for our being, a fixed foundation for our knowledge, or we cannot escape the forces of darkness that envelop us with madness, with intellectual and moral chaos.
Richard J Bernstein7
A familiar theme in recent philosophy has been the rejection of foundations.
Defenders of this idea claim that our worldviews cannot be given stable grounds
that justify our belief in them. In this chapter, I trace this notion through the
second half of the twentieth century. I suggest that it has appeared in several
guises, from the ‘anti-foundationalism’ of analytic philosophy (section 1) to the
‘incredulity towards metanarratives’8 of postmodern thought (section 2), and
show how broad its implications are for religious thought (section 3). In each
section, I contextualize these nonfoundationalist ideas before showing how they
threaten the philosophies of Cohen and Dessler mentioned in the Introduction.
Insofar as Cohen and Dessler are typical of two dominant trends within
contemporary Judaism - liberal and orthodox – it would seem likely that
nonfoundationalism is problematic for current Jewish philosophy.
7 Richard J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (University of Pennsylvania Press), 20 8 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), xxiv.
10
i. Anti-foundationalism in Analytic Philosophy
The foundationalism/anti-foundationalism debate occupies a central place in
recent analytic philosophy, the dominant school in the contemporary Anglo-
American world. It begins with the epistemological question, ‘how can we justify
our beliefs?’ If I ask you why you believe x is true, you will give me a reason, y. If
I then ask you why you believe y is true, you will offer z. This can go on and on;
but is there any way to stop this process going on forever?
The dominant answer in the history of philosophy has been foundationalism, for
which Descartes is the clearest model. Descartes expressed his philosophical aim,
‘to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted up to then, and to begin afresh
from the foundations'.9 For him, we can have ‘clear and distinct ideas’ that are
self-evident truths. Most famous is the existence of the self: ‘I think therefore I
am’. This belief then stands as the foundation from which all other beliefs, such
as the existence of God and the truth of science, can be deduced. Locke initiated
an alternative, empirical (as opposed to rational) approach to foundationalism. It
is our sense-experience that provides self-evident knowledge, and from which
further beliefs can be deduced. According to foundationalists, then, we may
justify any x by y, and y by z, but z must ultimately be derived from the self-
evident, foundational belief, a.
Anti-foundationalism, which has become influential in recent analytic
philosophy, challenges this picture. It claims that there can be no foundation. That is,
there is no belief that is self-evident such that it can be either certain in itself, or
9 Quoted in William Placher, Unapologetic Theology (Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1989), 25.
11
the basis for deducing equally certain propositions. Richard Rorty, one of its
clearest and most influential proponents, claimed Sellars and Quine as its
philosophical fathers. Sellars ‘helped destroy the empiricist [eg. Lockean] form of
foundationalism by attacking the distinction between what is “given to the mind”
and what is “added by the mind”.’10 In other words, he claimed there is no pure
sense-experience, because all our experience is mediated through our language
and culture. As such, no sense-experience can be foundational, because sense-
experience always already presupposes other mediating categories. By contrast,
Rorty claims Quine ‘helped destroy the rationalist [Cartesian] form of
foundationalism by attacking the distinction between analytic and synthetic
truths’.11 In his essay ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Quine challenges a long-
standing assumption of philosophy, that certain truths – analytic truths - have
‘meanings independently of matters of fact’.12 Even ‘all bachelors are unmarried’
is not, Quine believes, an analytic truth. For him, then, no truth is true in and of
itself such that it could stand at the foundation of a system of thought deduced
from it.
Anti-foundationalism proposes a new answer to the question of justification:
beliefs are justified if they are coherent with all other beliefs a person has. As
beliefs about some things change, others may become incoherent, and so some
have to be removed or changed. The question then becomes: which beliefs
should be changed? The foundationalist would insist that there are certain beliefs
that can never be changed by their very nature. Quine, however, argues that ‘no
10 Richard Rorty, ‘Introduction’ in Wilfred Sellars, Empiricism & The Philosophy of Mind, (London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 5. 11 Ibid. 12 W.V.O. Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ in From a Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press: 1980), 20.
12
statement is immune to revision’, and equally that ‘any statement can be held
true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the
system’.13 Whether a person’s belief is rational depends on whether it can defend
its own coherence. As Quine put it, ‘our statements about the external world face
the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body’.14
Put differently, since there are no beliefs like a, our belief in x, y and z is justified
only if they cohere with each other.
Insofar as many Jewish thinkers are foundationalists, anti-foundationalism
challenges the way Jewish philosophers have justified their beliefs. Dessler, for
example, presupposes a model of knowledge that is comparable to Descartes.
Human rationality has access to clear rational truths:
…our awareness of our self, our ego, is direct and immediate. It depends
neither on the mediation of the sense nor on that of the intellect. We may
call this “absolute knowledge”.15
Likewise, ‘every human being… has the faculty of determining in his own heart
where the real truth lies’.16 From here, Dessler takes a surprising turn. Though
every human being can have access to truth, most in practice do not because of
the bias induced by poor ethical standards. ‘Many years of devoted and selfless
labor are needed before one can hope to strengthen the yearning for truth to
such an extent that one can free oneself from the bias’.17 It is the rabbis, Dessler
13 Op. cit., 43 14 Op. cit., 41. 15 Dessler, Strive for Truth! (vol. 3), 221 16 Op. cit., (vol. 1), 180 17 Op. cit., 171.
13
claims, who achieve this level of perfection through which intellectual clarity is
achieved, and they have access to the bias-free rational truth about the divinity of
Torah. From here, Dessler impresses the need to trust these rabbis, in order to
‘make use of their clear vision and see the world through their eyes’.18 Dessler is
not unusual in being a religious foundationalist. On the one hand, Burrell notes
‘the parallels between the modernist Cartesian desire for certitude and the
propensity of fundamentalism’.19 And in the Jewish context, Rynhold shows that
Maimonides has a ‘strong foundationalism’ in which ‘there is a single principle
that cannot be further analyzed and that serves as the basis for the rational
assessment of all ethical and religious practices’.20 Anti-foundationalism, then,
undermines much mainstream Jewish philosophy.
ii. The Postmodern Incredulity Towards Metanarratives
Anti-foundationalism is a significant claim, but quite limited in its scope. It sees
foundations in conceptual terms: either reason or experience. Postmodern
theorists, I argue in this section, have made a parallel claim to analytic
philosophers, but broaden the definition of foundations to include narratives that
are given too much authority.
Lyotard defined postmodernism as an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives.21 A
metanarrative is a narrative that is taken as the source of justification for
everything else. He gives as examples ‘the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of
18 Op. cit., 177. 19 Quoted in James K A Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, 37n25. Many would describe Dessler as a fundamentalist, though I do not like the use of the term. 20 Daniel Rynhold, Two Models of Jewish Philosophy: Justifying One’s Practices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 113. 21 Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, xxiv
14
meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of
wealth.’ Their proponents – Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kant, Marx and Adam
Smith respectively22 – claim that all knowledge must fit into their metanarratives.
Lyotard rejects these metanarratives because he thinks that humans can only
speak from within particular modes of discourse that are not universally valid. He
is influenced here by Wittgenstein who emphasized that all our language and
ideas make sense only within particular ‘language games’. 23 In Lyotard’s
language for there to be a metanarrative its ‘narrator must be a metasubject’.24
His alternative model is that we accept that we are situated between many ‘little
narratives’.25 Different aspects of our life belong to mutually incommensurable
narratives, none of which is free from the need for legitimization, and none of
which is the source of legitimization of all others.
Lyotard’s position, we can now see, is fundamentally similar to anti-
foundationalism. Though analytic philosophy talks of rational justification and
postmodernism of legitimization, both are rejecting sources of knowledge
(foundations and metanarratives) that are self-justified and all-justifying. In doing
this, neither are denying the importance of rationality, but redefining it. Lyotard
still sees narratives as ‘the quintessential form of imaginative invention’.26 And
Sellars, for example, claims an empirical belief is rational ‘not because it has a
foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in
jeopardy, though not all at once’.27 For convenience, I will group the ideas of
thinkers like Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Rorty and Lyotard under the name
22 See James K A Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? (Baker Academics, 2006), 65. 23 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 7 and passim. 24 Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 34 25 Op. cit., 60 26 Ibid. 27 Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, 79.
15
‘nonfoundationalism’, which is also its common term in theological literature. It
might be defined as follows:
Nonfoundationalism is the belief that no belief is unrevisable or the source
of all justification.
This, however, comes up against the immediate specter of self-refutation, because
it sounds as though nonfoundationalism is itself an unrevisable belief that will be
used as the judge of all justification. I will therefore use this more nuanced
definition, which accepts that, if there was reason to, it should give up its own
nonfoundationalism:
Nonfoundationalism is the revisable belief that no belief is unrevisable or
the source of all justification.
Expanding nonfoundationalism to include the rejection of metanarratives makes
it even more problematic to Jewish philosophy. Wyschogrod has claimed that
‘the leitmotif of liberal modern Jewish theology has been what is perhaps the
grandest of Enlightenment modernity’s metanarratives, that of Kantian and post-
Kantian philosophy’.28 Though there is some discussion about whether Cohen
should be seen as a foundationalist,29 it is easier to claim that his thought is
guided by a metanarrative of Reason. For Cohen, man is ‘not merely life, but
reason’.30 It is this basic faculty of Reason from which we gain our concepts, and
‘all possible knowledge have in the concepts their entire content and in reason
28 Edith Wyschogrod, ‘Trends in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy’, Soundings 76:1 (1993), 129. 29 See Steven Kepnes, Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 45 30 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 88
16
their common source’.31 Notice the claims of universality here (‘all’, ‘entire’). Not
surprisingly, then, he applies this to religion too: ‘Reason… has to be
presupposed and set up as a foundation for the concept of religion and for the
concept of Judaism’.32 Like Dessler, he ‘protests against all the alleged powers of
the self… which are rooted in pleasure and pain’.33 That is, he cannot accept a
pragmatic view of ethics, but is concerned to subsume it in a metanarrative of
Reason. It is precisely this that Lyotard opposes. As Smith puts it: ‘metanarratives
are distinctively modern systems of legitimation that appeal to (illusory) universal
human reason as the ground of their legitimation.’34
iii. The Challenge of Nonfoundationalism
Bernstein, in the passage quoted at the head of this chapter, attributes the desire
for foundations to a ‘Cartesian anxiety’ that lies ‘at the center of our being in the
world’. Part of this is a ‘religious, metaphysical, epistemological or moral
anxiety’,35 and in this section I suggest what, in the context of Jewish philosophy,
might be the main objects of this anxiety. It is these, in particular, that make the
nonfoundationalist position especially problematic for Jewish philosophers.
First, what rational justifications can be given for believing in or practicing
Judaism if there are no universally acceptable beliefs on which to ground them?
David Novak claims that a key task of Jewish philosophy in the modern era was
finding ways of justifying Jewish involvement in accordance with universal, as
31 Op. cit., 5 32 Ibid. 33 Op. cit., 6 34 James K A Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy (Michigan: Baker Academics, 2006), 60 35 Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 19
17
opposed to revealed, criteria. From this perpsective, ‘being philosophical seems to
mean being foundational, that is, proceeding from a rationally constituted
ontological foundation… taken from outside the Jewish tradition’.36 This concern
remains today. For example, Shubert Spero claims:
The demand for justification is within each of us. And the knowledge of
what to answer must be built into our educational agencies if Judaism is
to have a future.37
Nonfoundationalists, however, cannot offer such grounds for belief in Judaism,
for there are no universally acceptable foundations from which to build up the
justification.
Second, if religion is a mere language game, then it seems that we cannot claim
that God actually exists, for that is outside of that game; or if ethics is a mere
language game, we cannot claim that certain things are absolutely immoral. Yet
these are clearly central to religious thought. For example, Cohen writes
‘humanity is the subject of universal morality’,38 and for Dessler, we have
‘absolute knowledge of moral categories, such as justice and injustice’.39 For this
reason, nonfoundationalism is often seen as leading to relativism. As Stanley Fish
puts it, there is a ‘fear that those who have been persuaded by such arguments
36 David Novak, ‘Textual Reasoning’, Journal for Textual Reasoning 1:1 (2002) [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/volume1/novakTR1.html, accessed 02/04/2013] 37 Shubert Spero, Aspects of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Judaism (New Jesrsey: Ktav, 2009), 32 38 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 20 39 Dessler, Strive for Truth! (vol. 3), 221
18
will abandon principled inquiry and go their unconstrained way in response to
the dictates of fashion, opinion, or whim.’40
Third, if we apply Quine’s idea of the web of knowledge, in which anything can
be revised, to religion itself, it would appear that there is no claim of religion that
is immune to revision. However, Jewish philosophers often point to what seems
to be an essential teaching of religion. For Dessler, it is ‘devotion to Hashem
[God] alone, making His Torah and His service our sole interest and aim in
life’. 41 For Cohen, ‘reason is meant to make religion independent of the
descriptions supplied by the history of religion’.42 That is, there is a rational
essence of religion independent of its practical manifestations.
Nonfoundationalism thus seems to preclude the possibility of rational
justification, of making claims about moral and theological truths, and claiming
that there is an essential religious truth. As such, if a nonfoundationalist Jewish
philosophy is possible, it will have to look very different from Cohen’s and
Dessler’s; and insofar as Cohen and Dessler are typical of the two ends of the
Jewish spectrum, Liberal and Orthodox, there should be, prima facie, some doubt
about the possibility of the whole project. If so, the question at the heart of the
next two chapters is a significant one: is a nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophy possible?
40 Stanley Fish, ‘Consequences’, Critical Inquiry 11:3, 439. 41 Dessler, Strive for Truth! (vol. 2), 234 42 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 2-3
19
Chapter 2
‘Reparative Contextualism’ as Nonfoundationalist:
Tamar Ross and Peter Ochs
And in general, this is an important rule in the struggle of ideas: we should not immediately feel obliged to refute any idea that comes to contradict something in the Torah, but rather we should build the palace of Torah above it.
Abraham Isaac Kook43 Tamar Ross (b. 1938) and Peter Ochs (b. 1950) are contemporary Jewish thinkers
who have accepted nonfoundationalism as I presented it in Chapter 1. In this
chapter, I introduce their Jewish theologies, and show how they not only accept
the nonfoundationalist critique, but also actively use it as a source of insights and
ideas for a new interpretation of Judaism. I begin by presenting the general
theological ideas that are given by Ross (Section 1) and Ochs (Section 2),
exploring in particular their implications for Jewish practice and theology. I then
show that they accept nonfoundationalism (Section 3), and discuss how they build
upon its broader implications (Section 4). Finally, I suggest that Ross and Ochs
are in fact saying the same thing, albeit in different ways, for different people, and
with different emphases (Section 5). I call the ideas they share ‘Reparative
Contextualism’ because it captures their two central claims: that the meaning of
Judaism depends on its context, and that through realizing this, the suffering of
its adherents can be repaired.
43 Abraham Isaac Kook, Iggerot Hareayah I, 163-4, quoted in Tamar Ross, EPT, v.
20
i. Tamar Ross as Contextualist Theologian
There are two central components of Ross’ theology: a philosophy of halakha
and a theory of divine revelation. Both accounts begin with contextualism.
According to contextualists, the meaning of any statement, action, or belief is
relative to its context; there can be no stand-alone meaning. From this premise,
as I will show, she understands Jewish law as ‘halakhah contextualized’44 and
revelation as ‘the Word of God contextualized’.45
The central question of Ross’ philosophy of halakha is: what are the internal
mechanisms by which Jewish law changes? She rejects a traditional view in which
there is an ideal system of halakha that simply needs expert application to
different scenarios. Using hermeneutic theory, she claims that this is invalid:
‘Because we can never be neutral at any stage, there is no sense in speaking of a
virgin meaning embedded in the text, simply waiting to be revealed’. Rather, we
already find ourselves ‘in the beliefs and opinions that enable discovery of a text’s
meaning as something that derives from the general sociopolitical context in
which he[/we] and the words take part’. 46 This idea has an important corollary.
If the meaning of halakha depends on what its adherents bring to it, then halakha
is inherently dynamic. Halakha, by its very nature, develops not by applying
unchanging internal mechanisms, but by ‘transforming [the] narrative’ of its
adherents, and only then applying its mechanisms as they are understood.47
44 Ross, EPT, 184 45 Op. cit., 165 46 Op. cit., 169 47 Op. cit., 173
21
Yet, to be true to the internal mechanism of the halakha, there must be a
‘commitment to the interpretive tradition’s divine authority’.48 The challenge
here is to affirm that ‘the Torah is divinely revealed, without denying human
involvement’. 49 Human involvement cannot be denied because historical
scholarship and changes in moral, philosophical and scientific beliefs make it
clear how much the Torah, as much as anything else, is a product of its human
context. Ross’ solution is that ‘the Torah can be all human and all divine’.50 This
is because God is revealed anew in each context through human activity, for
example, in ‘rabbinical interpretation of the texts’ or ‘through the mouthpiece of
history’.51 What is given in revelation is not a ‘fixed and rigidly stable message that
is passed on intact from generation to generation’, that is, a list of ahistorical
truths.52 Rather, revelation is ‘a series of ongoing “hearings” of the voice at Sinai
throughout Jewish history’.53 In other words, in each context something new is
revealed - yet never completely new because it is always perceived through the
medium of already-given revelations: ‘His original message… always remains as
the primary cultural-linguistic filter through which these new deviations are
heard and understood’.54 But over time, the body of revealed Torah expands. As
such, she calls her view ‘cumulative revelation’.55
Ross’ theology is, then, deeply contextualist, and could aptly be called
‘contextualist Judaism’. Her best-known work is an application of this to the
feminism of our contemporary context. Her claim is that contextualism gives us
48 Op. cit., 183 49 Op. cit., 197 50 Op. cit., 208 51 Op. cit., 198 52 Op. cit., 164 53 Op. cit., 197-8 54 Op. cit., 198 55 Op. cit., 198
22
strong reasons, internal to tradition, to welcome feminist developments. If the
meaning of law depends on the framework its adherents bring, then Jewish
women who are committed both to halakha and an egalitarian narrative are ‘the
ideal formulators of new legal meaning’.56 By changing the narrative of law, the
patriarchal connotations of some practices will be transformed, and there will be
new opportunities for the law itself to change. These feminist developments, she
claims, would constitute ‘the emergence of feminism as a new revelation of divine
will’.57 In other words, if these new interpretations are accumulated in the body
of Torah, it becomes a new “hearing”.
The full extent of Ross’ contextualism becomes clear when she claims that, in its
time, patriarchy was also divinely mandated: ‘the cumulativist will say that
patriarchy may not be a societal ideal today, but such was not always the case…
the patriarchal model for centuries served the interests of society in general’.58 It
is because the words of Torah are interpreted in, and for, their context that
‘although successive hearings of God’s Torah sometimes appear to contradict His
original message, that message is never replaced’.59 Put differently, patriarchy
and egalitarianism do not contradict, because they can be appropriate for
different contexts.
56 Op. cit., 172 57 Op. cit., 210 58 Op. cit., 216 59 Op. cit., 198
23
ii. Peter Ochs as Reparative Theologian
Building on the rabbinic scholarship of Max Kadushin and the philosophical
thought of Charles Peirce, Ochs develops an understanding of Judaism as what
could be called a ‘Religion of Repair’. On this view, Jewish communities, when
faced with internal suffering, should not seek to give up their Jewish heritage, but
should use that very tradition as a source of repair.
Kadushin saw Jews as inheriting certain terms from their ancestors. These terms
he called ‘value concepts’.60 The Talmudic rabbis, for example, received from
the biblical era value concepts like ‘Torah’, ‘teshuva’ (repentance), and ‘tzedaka’
(charity). However, these words do not have a given meaning: ‘Value concepts
resists definition; they are concretized in situated actions, not in reified
thoughts’.61 Ochs claims that as contemporary Jews we similarly receive value
concepts from previous Jewish eras, yet their specific meaning depends on the
contexts we bring to them.
Peirce’s semiotics allows Ochs to articulate this from a philosophical standpoint
by moving us from ‘binary thinking’ to ‘triadic thinking’. According to binary
thinking, a statement or a text means x or not-x. This implies that things can have
a single, essential, or objective meaning. But Peirce rejects this mode of thinking
by developing a semiotic theory in which there are three parties involved: a) the
signifier (eg. the physical scribble ‘computer’), b) the object (eg. a computer), c)
the interpretant (the context of interpretation). Meaning is a result of the
interplay of these three. Thus: a) the scribble ‘computer’ refers to the b) object
60 Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 2 and passim. 61 Peter Ochs, BM
24
computer c) for us. Applied more generally, the meaning of a whole text depends
on their interpretants, and as such is dynamic.
For Ochs, the inherent vagueness of texts leads to a contextualist approach like
Ross’. He emphasizes much more the need for us to actively use this idea in
practice. There needs to be a ‘reparative philosophy’62 that actively attempts to
re-read texts on behalf of those contexts that need it. To do this, readers of texts
need to be in relation to those sufferers, and thus texts need to be read with them,
forming a community of readers. Contexts are repaired through the reading: ‘the
repair binds together sufferer, agent of repair, and source of repair’.63 However,
God is ‘the ultimate source of repair’.64 This is because, ultimately, it is God that
calls the philosophers who otherwise ignore suffering ‘back to their reparative
task’.65
In the particular Jewish context, the texts that are read for repair are scriptural,
as well as Talmudic. Ochs sees his reparative hermeneutics as ‘the logic of
scripture’: 66 Torah has been received by Jews over time as a source that Jews
should re-read as the way to make pragmatic repairs of the community built
around it. Much of his work is for one particular interpretant: postmodern Jewish
philosophers who, in their intellectual confusion, he sees as suffering(!). He is thus
in relation ‘to the anguish of philosophers who don’t know where they belong.
62 Ochs, AR, 11 63 Op. cit., 17 64 Op. cit., 13 65 Op. cit, 12 66 Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998)
25
We are homeless individuals’.67 Together, they form a new interpretant for the
Jewish tradition, which he calls Textual Reasoning.
It is only by re-reading the texts together, in practice, that they can become
meaningful, and a source of repair: ‘it is only as member of an everyday
community that any member of TR [Textual Reasoning] learns the three-part
relation among a text or sign and its meaning-in-use for some community of
practitioners’.68 This process allows postmodern Jews to retain the grammar of
Jewish tradition, whilst leaving the precise meaning open to interpretation:
These thinkers share commitment to Jewish value concepts. For example,
‘they share a fidelity to what they call “Torah”. Even if they understand
“fidelity” and “Torah” differently…69
iii. Ross, Ochs and Nonfoundationalism
In this section, I make it clear that Ross’ contextualist theology and Ochs’
reparative theology are both indebted to the nonfoundationalist ideas I discussed
in Chapter 1. My claim here is that it is right to see their projects as
nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophies, and will discuss whether they are
successful later.
67 Ochs, RAR, 14 68 Ochs, ‘BM’ 69 Ochs, RAR , 1
26
Ross sees nonfoundationalism as part of ‘the theoretical background’ of her
contextualism.70 She defines it as follows:
There is no firm “foundation” that serves as the basis for our knowledge. In
other words, there are no “raw chunks of reality” to which our notions of
truth correspond.71
This claim, familiar from Chapter 1, says that in epistemology no idea is true in
and of itself, and in language no statement has meaning merely by its own
referring to something. Her contextualism is simply an extension of this to
theology, morality and halakha: no message is revealed with its own eternal,
time-independent meaning, no act is moral regardless of its context, no law has
meaning in and of itself. In all these disciplines, there is no ‘one universal truth,
"out there", simply waiting to be discovered, and unaffected by our perceptions
of it’.72
Rather, she sees the way in which justification occurs as ‘internal to the activity
or “form of life” concerned and tak[ing]… place in a web like manner’.73 Two
nonfoundationalist influences are clear in this statement: first, Quine’s image of
knowledge as a web in which statements can be revised one by one; and second,
Wittgenstein’s idea of language only making sense within a particular ‘form of
life’, that is, within a particular matrix of factors that exist at any point in time.
This leads directly to contextualism: an idea or reading is taken to be true at any
70 Ross, EPT, 165 71 Ross, EPT, 165 72 Ross, ‘GP’. 73 Ross, ‘Religious Belief in a Postmodern Age’, 13
27
particular time only if there is ‘a coherence with other beliefs and opinions drawn
from the traditions of the wider community’.74
Ochs, based on his study of Peirce, argues that foundationalism’s mistake is the
‘misrepresentation of a set of reparative claims as if they were a set of constative
claims’.75 To understand this, recall the Peircian semiotic I introduced in the
previous section, where meaning is created through a signifier, an object and an
interpretant. A ‘constative claim’ is a normal statement in its general context (eg.
“this is a computer”), such that the interpretant (“in twenty-first century English”)
does not have to be made explicit. Such constative claims assume certain rules of
inquiry (eg. this is what people call “computer”) that may in time have to be
changed (such as if the meaning of “computer” changes). A ‘reparative claim’ is
one that seeks to enact such a rule-change (“Herschel, this is no longer called
‘computer’”).
According to Ochs, foundationalism is what happened when Descartes sought to
make a significant ‘reparative claim’ to medieval scholasticism, but made it in the
form of a ‘constative claim’, such that its interpretant was ignored. In other
words, Descartes mistake was phrasing his repair as a context-independent truth.
If ignoring the interpretant of reparative claims is the mistake of foundationalism,
Ochs’ effort is to engage in a nonfoundationalism at whose heart is ‘reparative
reasoning’.76 This is repair that is very aware of its interpretant, in other words,
its context-specificity. In practice, this means finding a context in need of repair,
and repairing it by repairing its basic texts for that particular context.
74 Ross, EPT, 166 75 Ochs, RR, 193 76 Peter Ochs, RR, passim.
28
iv. The Opportunity of Nonfoundationalism
Both Ross and Ochs, then, accept nonfoundationalism, and indeed place it as
one of the presuppositions of their work. Some might challenge their views by
raising the issues I mentioned at the end of Chapter 1 as reasons why modern
Jewish philosophy would not be able to accept nonfoundationalism: that it would
mean there is no essence of religion, that there is no moral objectivity or
theological truths, and that there can be no rational justification of one’s belief.
Ross’ and Ochs’ response shows two things: that these challenges already
presuppose foundationalism, and thus are invalid as philosophical objections; and
that the acceptance of nonfoundationalism and its wider implications is a fruitful
source of theological insight.
Ross and Ochs welcome the lack of essentialism. Judaism, Ross claims, is open to
any belief: ‘any development is logically possible’.77 Like planks in a raft, any
belief could become part of Judaism, any could be taken out. Even the title of her
book, Expanding the Palace of Torah, expresses this idea. It alludes to Kook’s claim,
quoted at the head of this chapter, that perceived contradictions to Torah should
become the basis for a new interpretation of it. Ochs, relating this same point to
his critique of binaries, claims that there is no context in which Judaism could not
flourish:
‘what I really object to is the dichotomous form of thinking we see in
these philosophies: tradition/modernity, Zion/Diaspora,
Holocaust/Israel, theism/atheism. These forms of thinking offer
77 Ross, EPT, 182
29
either/or choices and attempt to establish universal truths and final
solutions for modern Jewish life’.78
However, they both hold that, though there is no philosophical idea that Judaism
must affirm, there are certain words that Jews must find context-dependent ways
to use: for Ross, the accumulated texts, and for Ochs, the inherited value-
concepts. Ochs puts it like this:
we are prepared to receive the words as behaviorally and
epistemologically authoritative and, at the same time, as vague (or
indefinite) and multivalent, and in that sense, as incomplete – that is, as
achieving their correct meaning and force only by ways of context-specific
readings.79
These words are not prescribing an essence of Judaism, but describing the
mechanism by which Judaism in fact functions, that is, as retaining words more
than ideas. From this perspective, foundationalist thinkers are in fact untrue to
historical Judaism. Dessler, for example, claims that ‘the Torah is high above all
human prejudice and its judgments represent the absolute truth’.80 Yet, the
nonfoundationalist would claim, all words are human and thus prejudiced, and
there is no absolute truth, so to be true to Judaism must simply mean retaining its
words.
78 Ochs, RAR, 15 79 Ochs, RAR, 20 80 Dessler, Strive for Truth! (Vol 2.), 192
30
However, Ross and Ochs do not accept that only being able to speak from a
particular context, or language game, entails that we cannot believe God exists
beyond it. Ochs insists that ‘there are, indeed, non-foundationalist ways of
conceiving of both logic and metaphysical inquiry’. 81 Ross claims that ‘the
alleged “flight from metaphysics” attributed to Continental thought and post-
analytic philosophy may have been overdone; there may be room in a
constructivist position for a metaphysics that refers to something beyond the
linguistic scheme’.82 This, she claims, is not an untraditional view of God. She is
following ‘several of our great Jewish mystics and philosophers [who]
recognize[s] the limitations of our ability to grasp and portray the object of our
spiritual striving’.83
Neither do they see themselves as relativists by virtue of their contextualism. Not
just anything is right or wrong; their rightness or wrongness too depends on the
context. To know whether something is right or wrong means justifying a
position coherently with respect to all other beliefs at a particular time. The same is
true for interpreting texts: different contexts will only support certain readings. It
is important to note that Ross’ line quoted earlier – ‘any development is logically
possible’ - is immediately followed by the qualification ‘but not equally
plausible’.84
This leads to a more nuanced challenge of relativism. There often seem to be
multiple coherent worldviews, yet how do you choose between them? For
example, if both political liberalism and conservatism, or both Judaism and 81 Ochs, SL, 66 82 Ross, ‘RBPA’, 29 83 Ross, ‘RF’, 23 84 Ross, EPT, 182
31
Christianity, are coherent, what reasons can you have to choose one over the
other? Where the foundationalist could refer to universal principles that show
that one worldview is more morally, philosophically or theologically preferable,
nonfoundationalists do not have these. This then leads to the question of
justification: why choose to belong to one worldview as opposed to any other?
Ross and Ochs respond to this through their pragmatism. For Ross, there can
only be ‘an educated guess as to the best option in light of background factors
and pragmatic considerations’.85 Ochs, in the absence of universal principles,
suggests ‘the ancient virtue of compassion as a rule for philosophic practice’.86 In
terms of choosing between religious worldviews, it is simply a question of
personal identity. As Ochs puts it, ‘Our Jewish praxis defines our particular
identity. It defines us not as superior, but as what we are’.87 In other words, the
ground of Jewish identity is not a rational truth but a personal commitment, at
best based on a deep identification with one particular community. The nature of
this commitment will become clearer in Chapter 3.
v. The Vision of Reparative Contextualism
So far, I have claimed that Ross and Ochs welcome nonfoundationalism as a
resource for new theology, and even a return to some neglected Jewish ideas.
With this alone, I can draw the first conclusion of this chapter: that a
nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophy is possible (or that it at least seems to be). I
will critically examine this claim in the next chapter. Before, though, I want to
make a second claim: that in fact Ross and Ochs, despite using very different 85 Ross, EPT, 183 86 Ochs, ‘CP’, 78 87 Ochs, RAR, 12
32
language and speaking to very different readerships, are proposing basically the
same positions. Though Ross emphasizes contextualism, and Ochs emphasizes
repair, each affirms both. As such, I will call their shared response to
nonfoundationalism ‘Reparative Contextualism’, which can be defined as
follows:
Reparative Contextualism: The belief that contexts can be repaired by their
basic texts as long as the meaning of those texts is repaired for their
contexts.
This definition makes it clear that reparative contextualism is compatible with
any tradition whatsoever. Yet, it is the Torah, Talmud and later canonical texts
that are the source of repair in Judaism. As such, there are both very radical and
very traditional aspects of Reparative Contextualism. The radical side is clearer
in Ross’ work, which is encouraging a contextual understanding of halakha to her
traditional peers, whereas the traditional side is clearer for Ochs, who is
encouraging a text-based, traditionalist pragmatism for liberal Jewish thinkers.
By way of clarifying what Ross and Ochs share, and summing up their claims I
have presented them in this chapter, several ‘principles’ of Reparative
Contextualism, as applied to Judaism, can be distilled:
• Judaism does not need foundations to justify committing to it.
• There is no essence of Judaism, rational, theological, moral or otherwise.
• The meaning of Jewish beliefs, texts and practices changes fundamentally
according to context.
33
• Jews receive the words of earlier texts/practices as givens, and fill them
with meaning.
• God is a metaphysical reality, though religious language does not seek to
articulate its details.
• Communities that suffer on account of existing meaning of Jewish beliefs,
texts and practices can re-interpret them as a source of repair.
• God is the source/revealer of this process of re-interpretation.
It might be challenged that there are in fact two major differences between Ross
and Ochs. The first is seen in the way they articulate their premises, with
different precedents and as part of different philosophical discourses. Put over-
simplistically, Ochs speaks the language of postmodern academia and liberal
Judaism, and sets Peirce and Kadushin and, more broadly, the rabbinic method,
as precedents; whereas Ross speaks the language of analytic philosophy and
Orthodox Judaism, and sees herself as following Wittgenstein, Kook, and the
kabbalists more generally. The second is their conceptions of repaired Judaism
are different. For Ross, repair means interpreting Jewish texts more freely. Ochs,
by contrast, sees repair as necessitating a return to tradition.
However, I believe that neither of these differences indicate disagreements. Even
if Ross and Ochs speak within different philosophical idioms, it should be clear
by now that their substantive points are the same. And the fact that they have
different understandings is simply because they are repairing for different people:
Ross for Modern Orthodox women, Ochs for people who think in a postmodern
trend. The differences are a result of what needs to be emphasised. For example,
both affirm the contextual and reparative role of Judaism. Nevertheless, Ross,
34
speaking to a traditional audience that already accepts Judaism’s reparative
power, needs to emphasise contextualism, whereas Ochs, speaking to an
audience familiar with contextualist claims, needs to emphasise the reparative
nature of Judaism. Each, I think, would affirm the others’ approach as largely
appropriate for their context. That is, Ochs would say that Ross’ concern for
traditional halakha was broadly justified for the context of Modern Orthodoxy,
and Ross would say that Ochs’ text-based Judaism was broadly justified for the
academic setting.
It should be noted, though, that in grouping Ross and Ochs together, I do not
intend to reduce all potential disagreements to context alone. There could, for
example, be particular disagreements between them, such as about what is,
pragmatically, best for a particular context. Nor do I intend to imply that there
are areas that both achieve equally well. For example, Ochs has a more
sophisticated account of how texts can function as themselves a source of repair;
whereas Ross has a bolder attempt to actually repair, showing how this
understanding can be useful not just for people who accept postmodernism, but
for broader social communities too.
Until now, my account of Reparative Contextualism, through Ross and Ochs,
can be seen as an answer to the question: how does nonfoundationalism impact
the way we understand the change that Judaism undergoes over time? But I
would like to ask a final question to get to the heart of Reparative
Contextualism’s perspective: what, seen from their context, is Judaism? In the past,
Judaism has been seen as religion, community, nation, civilization. I think Ross
35
and Ochs, without denying that in our context it has aspects of all those, would
see it more as a practice, or as an exercise in seeing the world as a certain way.
Being Jewish does not mean accepting a set of theoretical positions, but a
practical and performative tradition.
This can be made clearer by making explicit an important shared influence on
them: postliberal Christianity. Arising in the 1980s, postliberal Christianity is an
important school of nonfoundationalist Christian theology. In one of its founding
books, George Lindbeck described religion as a ‘cultural-linguistic framework’.88
For him, the doctrines of Christianity are not important because of any
philosophical content, but because of the words it uses. ‘It is the text, so to speak,
which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text’, he wrote.89 Ross
imitates this exactly when she claims ‘it is the Torah which must absorb the
world rather than the world the Torah’,90 as does Ochs when he writes ‘you
might speak of the Bible’s ‘absorbing’ the world,’ rather than being absorbed by
it’.91 For Ross and Ochs, then, texts absorb the meaning that is brought to it. But
in turn, it constitutes the communal rules of a particular community, defining
what can be thought, and what it makes sense to say, within that community at
any particular time. According to this idea, being Jewish means seeing the world
through the lens of Jewish tradition, even if in doing so that tradition is re-
interpreted. As Ross puts it, religious truth claims do not express philosophical
truths, but ‘much stronger claim[s] that will regulate her entire life’.92 And as
88 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1984), 18 89 Ibid., 118 90 Ross, EPT, 171 91 Ochs, ‘SL’, 69 92 Ross, EPT, 194
36
Ochs put it, ‘postmodern Jewish thinking is fundamentally a “thinking with” –
with the signs of the Torah about God and the world’.93
Even this has roots in the nonfoundationalist project. Parallel with the turn away
from foundationalism was what Rorty called ‘the linguistic turn’.94 Sellars, for
example, writes that ‘all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all
awareness of abstract entities – indeed, all awareness even of particulars – is a
linguistic affair’.95 Ross and Ochs can be seen as responding: Yes, all awareness is a
linguistic affair, but if so, we must make sure that the language that underlies our awareness of
the world is that which we inherit from tradition. If we do this, regardless of our philosophical
beliefs, our entire outlook on life will be a Jewish one.
93 Ochs, RAR, 5 94 Richard Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn, (University of Chicago Press, 1992) 64 95 Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, 63
37
Chapter 3
A Reparative Critique of
Reparative Contextualism
…if you go with Wittgenstein so far as to say “no more metastories,” then you had better
not tell me a metastory – not even a metametastory!
Hilary Putnam96
In Chapter 1, I asked whether a nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophy is possible.
In Chapter 2, I claimed that it is, and demonstrated this by proposing a model,
Reparative Contextualism, as exemplified by Ross and Ochs. I have already
shown that some objections, such as from the lack of justification and the danger
of relativism, already presuppose the foundationalism that Ross and Ochs reject
as philosophically false and theologically unnecessary. In this chapter, I consider
several other concerns. Ross and Ochs are committed to the rejection of
foundations, but does their perspective not display a foundationalism of its own
(Section 1)? And if Judaism is primarily a ‘form of life’, does their understanding
of Judaism not undermine this (Section 2)? On both these accounts, I defend
their approach. However, in my final remarks I suggest that trends in
contemporary society might necessitate a repair of the presuppositions of
Reparative Contextualism, one which Reparative Contextualists should
themselves want to accept if they keep to their own principles (Section 3).
96 Hilary Putnam, ‘A Comparison of Something with Something Else’, New Literary History 17:1, 74
38
i. The Challenge of Self-Refutation
Ross and Ochs often make claims that seem to contradict their own positions.
For example, Ross writes that ‘for the non-foundationalist… all knowledge is
context-related’, but this principle is presented as true for all contexts.97 And
Ochs writes ‘universals may be universal only within some finite domain of
reference’, yet this statement is phrased in a universal form.98 These statements
are not merely self-contradictory, but undercut nonfoundationalism itself. If
propositions such as these are meant absolutely, there must be a foundation of
knowledge from which they can be demonstrated. Put differently, these claims
are part of a nonfoundationalist metanarrative: that knowledge is always
necessarily contextual.
One plausible response is to give up the concern for absolute nonfoundationalism
or contextualism in favour of affirming something like ‘all non-trivial beliefs are
contextual’, and claiming that contextualism is itself a trivial claim. If so,
contextualism would be a legitimate non-contextual truth. Ochs in particular
distances himself from such approaches, though, because he is concerned not to
repeat the foundationalist errors that he is seeking to challenge. He is aiming at
an absolute nonfoundationalism. This, for example, is why he uses Peircian
semiotics. He sees it as a way of reasoning ‘that repairs, rather than re-
instantiate[s], the foundationalist practices of modernity’.99 In Ochs’ idiom, ‘all
knowledge is contextual’ cannot be construed constatively. It must be understood
reparatively, such that it acknowledges its interpretant – ‘for us postmodern
97 Ross, ‘RBPA’, 23n56. 98 Ochs, ‘PW’, 480n5 99 Ochs, ‘RR’, 187
39
thinkers’. Put more simply, Ochs and Ross must accept that ‘all knowledge is
contextual’ is a contextual claim itself. This important nuance parallels my
definition of nonfoundationalism, in Chapter 1, as the revisable belief that there
are no unrevisable beliefs.
This perspective has a significant implication: that there might have been
contexts in which the belief ‘all knowledge is contextual’ was not a justified belief.
Realizing this, Ochs can look back at previous philosophies as appropriate for
their period. Thus, for example, ‘the modern paradigms had their sphere and
time of usefulness’. 100 As Thiel puts it ‘the metaphors of foundation and
foundationlessness specify neither a context-free error nor a context-free
epistemic norm respectively’.101 More importantly, it means that there could be
future contexts in which it is not reasonable to believe in contextualism. Ross
accepts this: ‘knowing the surprising twists and turns of theological and scientific
thought over the centuries, I do not even foster any certainty that this
[nonfoundationalist] type of resolution will last forever.’102 What neither of them
discuss is the actual developments in contemporary society that might make it
improper to hold by their nonfoundationalism, and I will sketch some of these in
the final section.
100 Ochs, AR, 6 101 Thiel, Nonfoundationalism, 87 102 Ross, ‘GP’
40
I want to conclude by emphasizing that Ross and Ochs do believe that
nonfoundationalism is actually true; the fact that a belief may be revised by no
means implies that they expect it to be. Placher presents a clear statement of this
view in a postliberal Christian context:
I would not be a serious conversation partner if I said (and meant),
“Nothing anyone could say or show me could conceivably alter my
Christian faith.” Yet it does not follow that I expect that my faith will be
undercut; such an expectation, in fact, seems contrary to the nature of
faith.103
ii. The Jewish Form of Life
After discussing the coherence of Reparative Contextualism’s
nonfoundationalism, I want to question whether it is coherent in its interpretation
of Judaism. At the heart of religion, for Ross (echoing Wittgenstein), is a
particular form of life, and she believes that a form of life is constructed by the
language it uses. As such, Ross believes that the primary purpose of religious
language ‘does not lie in the beliefs and opinions that it expresses but rather in
the form of life that it engenders’.104 It is the particular (accumulating) language-
norms of any given community that creates its distinctive form of life: ‘these
paradigms establish the basic grammar of the religious tradition’.105 Examples of
this ‘basic grammar’ might include reference to characters such as Abraham and
Moses, concepts such as ‘teshuva’ (repentance) and ‘halakha’ (Law), and events
103 Placher, Unapologetic Theology (Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1989), 148 104 Ross, ‘RBPA’, 13 105 Ibid., 12
41
such as ‘the hurban’ (the destruction of the temple) and ‘the shoah’ (the
Holocaust). Living a Jewish form of life means ordering one’s reality with such
words, whatever particular meaning they are given. This is why re-interpretation
of existing texts and practices is so important to Ross: if a particular religious
statement appears ‘untenable’ to a person or community it might ‘render the
doctrines ineffective in accomplishing the regulative function for which they are
meant: to compose the “picture” that stands behind the religious form of life’.106
The problem is that this view of religious language might in fact prevent people
from achieving the Jewish form of life. One reason for this is that, thinking that
there is no true and cognitive meaning of religious language, people might simply
take it less seriously, and give up that language-system altogether. Another is that
being aware of the context-specific nature of religious language might make it less
able to engender a strong religious experience. Along these lines, Hashkes’
remark on Ochs’ work could be applied to Ross:
…the complete freedom of the interpreter and his reparative reading
described in Ochs’ work creates a picture of religious practice that does
not mirror the religious-existentialist phenomenology that Jean-Luc
Marion describes and the experiences of those who actually practice the
religious way of life.107
106 Ross, EPT, 197 107 Hashkes, ‘Religious Faith In Light of Postliberal Theology’, Zehuyot 2, 145. (Hebrew, my translation)
42
Ross is deeply concerned about this point, because she does want to sustain the
‘religious-existential phenomenology’ prevalent in Orthodox communities.
However, she does not take it as a given that her view of religious language will
preclude this, but rather as a challenge to make it work:
It is obvious that developing the means for disseminating a theology
which takes the relative nature of any truth-claim into account with
complete intellectual integrity, while leaving religious fervor intact and
undiluted, may turn out to be the greatest religious challenge of our
age.108
Hashkes’ comment, though, seems less problematic for Ochs himself, simply
because he is less concerned about the phenomenology of religious experience,
and more about the social role that Jewish texts can play in repairing Jewish
communities.
I would like to add a second, greater concern. Ross understands the importance
of Jewish continuity in terms of the Jewish form of life:
Their [particular religious paradigms’] value lies in virtues that are unique
precisely to these models, in their ability to engender distinctive ways of
being and experience which would otherwise be lost.109
The suggestion presupposes that, insofar as a particular anthology of words are
used, a distinctive Jewish ‘way of being’ will be perpetuated. However, it seems
unlikely that ways of being are purely linguistic. Why could it not be that beliefs
also contribute to distinctive forms of life? For example, surely the idea of God
108 Ross, ‘CVR’, 528 109 Ross, ‘RBPA’, 15
43
existing as a father and king has a stronger impact on the Jewish form of life than
the mere words from the prayer, ‘Our Father, Our King’.110 The issue is more
pressing still for Ochs. Unlike Ross who also considers the relation between
halakha and contextualism, he focuses entirely on the reading of Jewish texts.
Missing is an account of the importance of Jewish action - that is, not just learning
Torah but observing it – in Judaism, and as a potential source of repair. In other
words, Ross and Ochs privilege language at the expense of other dimensions of a
Jewish form of life, belief and practice.
Moreover, if it is true that keeping language the same is what a form of life
depends on, then the dynamism of a reparative Judaism, with its continued
acceptance of new words into the corpus, makes it difficult to imagine that there
is any single Jewish form of life over time. Indeed, surely the best way to
‘engender distinctive ways of being which would otherwise be lost’ would be to
adopt a traditionalist, foundationalist framework, and to refuse admitting
anything new into the revealed corpus of Judaism.
iii. New Contexts, New Repair
Is it true that Judaism could flourish in any context, regardless of its philosophical
presuppositions? Consider two prevalent philosophical contexts in the world
today, atheism and humanism. Atheists would have trouble accepting the Jewish
sources as they tend to be understood in our culture because they imply the
existence of God; humanists would have trouble accepting just the Jewish sources
because they would want to accept texts from all cultures and sources of human
productivity. Now, it would be possible to repair Judaism for these contexts. For
110 Jewish prayer book (my translation).
44
the atheist, it would involve re-interpreting all talk of God as, for example,
expressing feelings of deep existential import. For the humanist, it would involve
reading the language of Jewish particularity as including all humanity, and seeing
it as the product of all human cultures.
Ross’ and Ochs’ view thus allows for rejecting two elements of Jewish thought
that some might consider foundational – God and particularity – in the name of
an understanding of the reparative mechanism of Jewish change-over-time. This
would lead to new humanist and atheist additions to the body of Torah, which
Reparative Contextualists should actively welcome as new accumulations. After
all, for Ochs, these new interpretations would be demanded by the reparative
logic of Judaism itself; and for Ross, they would be revealed by God. The claim
here, then, is parallel to the one in the first section, that nonfoundationalism has
to be willing to give up its own nonfoundationalism.
Yet even if Judaism can be repaired for every context, should it? The suggestion
that it should seems to display a political passivity, where a community’s texts
should never be replaced but only re-interpreted. Ross, for example, is reluctant
to give up any of the statements of Judaism, whether statements of unintuitive
belief or affirmations of patriarchy, and the like. For example, ‘paradoxically,
rejection of the traditional rhetoric of appeal to an objective context-free truth…
would be regarded as a violation of the ground rules of religious discourse’.111
Ochs, similarly, emphasizes reparative philosophy as opposed to replacement
philosophy, which would advocate working within a tradition to re-interpret it as
opposed to trying to replace it with something that appears to be better suited.112
Yet a more pragmatic approach would say that there are many contexts – such as 111 Ross, ‘RBPA’, 13 112 Eg. Ochs, ‘RR’, 194
45
the humanist and atheist one I considered – in which it might be better to ignore
the old textual paradigms altogether in favour of more intuitive ones. Put
differently, repair too should only be a solution for particular contexts.
I want finally to return to nonfoundationalism itself. I suggested at the beginning
of this chapter that reparative contextualists should be ready to reject
nonfoundationalism if there is a reason to do so. It appears to me that there is
already a reason to do so, at least to a certain degree. The
foundationalism/nonfoundationalism debate assumes that, reflecting on the
evidence we have, each of us as rational individuals can work out which of the
two it is justified for us believe in. However, a recent philosophical development,
called social epistemology, might suggest otherwise. It says that we have to pay
attention to how what others believe should impact our own beliefs. One of the
main areas within this is known as the epistemology of disagreement. Machuca
introduces it as follows:
Classical epistemology has recently been criticized for being too
individualistic… [This] is clearly not sufficient for a full appreciation of the
epistemic significance of disagreement, since it does not take into account
the impact that the opinions of one’s dissenters may have upon one’s
beliefs.113
The prevalent stance in the epistemology of disagreement is that, as Feldman
puts it, ‘the cases that seem to be cases of reasonable disagreement are cases in
which the reasonable attitude is really suspension of judgment’.114 In other words,
113 Diego Machuca, Disagreement and Skepticism (Taylor & Francis, 2013), 2 114 Richard Feldman, ‘Epistemological Puzzles About Disagreement’ http://www.philosophy-dev.stir.ac.uk/postgraduate/documents/FeldmanPaper.pdf [Accessed 18/04/2013]
46
two people of equal intelligence, both of whom have good arguments for what
they believe and yet are unable to fault the others, should rationally not commit
to either. With this in mind, it is important to remember that there are many
people in the contemporary world who are still foundationalists. Some accept the
arguments against classical foundationalism (eg. Descartes, Locke, etc.), but
believe that a form of foundationalism can be upheld. For example, Reformed
Epistemologists, such as Alvin Plantinga, talk of ‘basic beliefs’. 115 Though they
are not proven, these beliefs can act as rational foundations for the rest of our
beliefs. More controversially, I might suggest (though it is against contemporary
prejudices), that so-called fundamentalists who are more in the model of classical
foundationalists, could, in some contexts, be considered epistemic peers too. If
so, according to the epistemology of disagreement, we might want to suspend
judgment about whether nonfoundationalism is true or not.
Suspending judgment about nonfoundationalism would not undercut the
reparative contextualist project as I have presented it. It would, however, involve
rejecting Placher’s claim that I mentioned earlier, that we can believe
controversial things until we are persuaded otherwise. Instead, reparative
contextualism might prefer a useful distinction between justification and truth.
On this account, nonfoundationalism is justified as a position to live by, but in the
face of fundamental disagreement, it would not commit to its truth. Indeed, this
suspension of judgment seems truer both to the contextualism and to the
pragmatism of reparative contextualism than the committed and sure (though
still open-minded) nonfoundationalism that Ochs and Ross prefer. It is truer to
the contextualism because it not only recognizes the fact that our contexts affect
115 Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, eg. 94
47
our interpretations of Judaism, but also, as it were, the way we interpret our
interpretations of Judaism. It is truer to pragmatism because it does not lead to
the troubling claim of irrationality on the part of contemporary foundationalists,
which could lead to practical and moral tensions that Ross and Ochs want to
avoid.
48
Conclusion
The Rock of Horeb
The Lord answered Moses, “…I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” Exodus 17:6116
If asked to tell a brief and broad narrative of the history of Jewish philosophy, a
Reparative Contextualist might offer something like the following:
In the beginning, Jews lived in accordance with their beliefs. As time went on,
they encountered new ways of living and new ways of believing. Their
philosophers were faced with a choice: to argue for sustaining the old ways of life,
or to sustain the old core beliefs. The dominant approach in the history of Jewish
philosophy has been the latter: Judaism must guard certain truths, no matter
what. In the Introduction, I called this the foundationalist tendency in Jewish
philosophy, and gave Dessler and Cohen as examples. For them, the Jewish truth
comes first; the Jewish practice – ethical (Cohen) or rabbinic-halakhic (Dessler) -
follows. It has taken the philosophical trends I described in Chapter 1 as
nonfoundationalist to remind us of the path not taken. Thinkers like
Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Rorty and Lyotard reject the idea that particular
truths – whether rational, empirical or narrative-based – have independent
meaning, such that they can act as foundations. As such, it becomes problematic
to see Judaism as founded on guarding truths like this.
116 New International Version (trans.)
49
Recently, some Jewish philosophers have begun to use these nonfoundationalist
developments to conceive their task differently: to explain why and how the
Jewish life must be sustained. The Jewish life is not constituted by assent to
rational truths or general ethical acts, but by accepting a comprehensive tradition
as a medium through which to think about and experience the world. But as Jews
accept yet new ways of believing, the texts and practices as previously interpreted
cause them suffering. To heal the suffering, they must not abandon the practices,
but reinterpret them, and use those reinterpretations to build yet new practices.
Judaism itself thus heals the suffering of Jewish lives. In Chapter 2, I showed two
examples of this conception of Jewish philosophy, by Ross and Ochs. Ross shows
how seeing the meaning of halakha and revelation as contextualized can help
Modern Orthodox women; Ochs shows how seeing Jewish texts as a source of
repair can help postmodern Jewish academics. Despite differences in idiom and
emphases, I showed that Ross and Ochs are arguing for the same position.
On this view, the Jewish life comes first; philosophy follows.117 The purpose of
philosophy is not to chart in advance what a Jewish life must look like. Rather, it
is to model, post facto, how the Jewish life looks and how it repairs itself, and then
to find ways of contributing to this process of repair. As I argued in Chapter 3, if
Jewish life in the future necessitates abandoning any belief - even
nonfoundationalism, contextualism or the focus on internal repair themselves -
this can and must be done. Already today, I suggested, Reparative Contextualists
117 Phrasing it like this makes clear another Christian parallel to their thought, though never explicitly recognized: recent political and liberation theologies. For them, praxis is always prior to theory. Gustavo Gutierrez, for example, writes ‘Theology is not first; the commitment is first. Theology is the understanding of the commitment, and the commitment is action’, in Gutierrez, ‘Toward a Theology of Liberation’ in Alfred Hennelly (ed.) Liberation Theology: A Documentary History (NY: Orbis, 1990), 63
50
must not see themselves as committed to the truth of nonfoundationalism as a
philosophical position, and should be happy for Jews to commit to other ways of
life if they so wish.
It is worth mentioning several connected topics that, for reasons of space, I have
not been able to discuss. First, there are many other contexts that Reparative
Contextualism has sought to repair, and in the future should seek to repair. Ross
has already written about the question of homosexuality within Orthodoxy,118
and Ochs on the nature of interfaith work,119 and in reality there can be as many
reparative theologies as there are groups in need of repair.
Second, it is worth considering other recent Jewish theologies that might be
considered nonfoundationalist. For example, Avi Sagi and Gili Zivan propose
what Feldman-Kaye calls a ‘neo-pragmatist theology’, which focuses on Jewish
practice and ignores Jewish belief altogether.120 On the other hand, there could
be a Jewish equivalent of what Murphy calls ‘post-conservative theology’, more
influenced by Alisdair Macintyre than Lindbeck,121 which try to retain traditional
notions of truth. A strong possibility here is the work of Jonathan Sacks.122
Moreover, there could be Jewish equivalents of Reformed Epistemology; they
would begin with foundations, yet seek to avoid the problems of classical
foundationalists like Descartes and Locke.
118 See Tamar Ross, ‘Halakhic Reasoning and Context: Homosexuality as a Test Case’ [Unpublished] 119 See, for example, Peter Ochs, ‘The Rules of Scriptural Reasoning’, The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 2.1 [Accessed 16/04/2013 http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/issues/volume2/number1/ssr02-01-e01.html] 120 Miriam Feldman-Kaye, Provisional Jewish Theology in a Postmodern Age: A Comparative Study of Professor Tamar Ross and Harav Shagar, (Unpublished PhD: University of Haifa, 2012), 32 121 See Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity (Westview Press, 1997), 113 - 131. 122 For example, Jonathan Sacks, ‘Exorcizing Plato’s Ghost’ in The Dignity of Difference (Continuum, 2003), 45 - 67
51
In the Introduction, I claimed that Jewish philosophy is the attempt to justify a
commitment to Judaism through the use of a certain mode of philosophical
reasoning. Though clearly more need to be written on this subject, I feel well
justified in concluding not only that a Jewish philosophy in the
nonfoundationalist mode is possible, but that a coherent, creative and caring
nonfoundationalist Jewish philosophy, Reparative Contextualism, has already
been developed by Ross and Ochs.
* * *
It seems appropriate to conclude a study of Ross and Ochs, who are so dedicated
to seeing the world through the lens of Jewish words, with a suggestion of how
my claims in this dissertation can be expressed as scripture.
The Hebrew Bible is full of suffering. In Exodus 17, we find the Israelites
complaining of thirst. God tells Moses to go to the rock (zur) at Horeb and strike it.
He does, and water comes out. Forty years later, in Numbers 20, the Israelites
are again thirsty. God tells Moses to speak to the rock (sela), but Moses strikes it.
Because of this act, he is prevented from entering the Holy Land.
52
The rock (zur): this is the source of revelation. We thus first encounter the
rock at Horeb, the mountain of revelation.
The water: this is Torah – as the rabbis say, ‘water is nothing but Torah’.123
Thirst: this is the suffering that is part of our Jewish journeys.
The Israelites: this is the Jews.
The texts ask us: when Israelites (Jews) are thirsty (suffer), how do they
access the water (Torah) from the rock (source of revelation)?
Exodus 17: this is the beginning of the journeys in the desert - this is the
context of isolation.
Numbers 20: this is the beginning of the preparations for entry into the holy
land - this is the context of multi-culturalism.
Strike the rock (zur): this is foundationalism, for the staff is upright, firm,
ordered.
Speak to the rock (sela): this is nonfoundationalism, for all we have is words.
The texts teach us: Moses, teacher of the Torah in one context, did not
understand God’s truth, that we access different Torahs (zur, sela) that are
still yet Torah (rocks).
THE ROCK OF HOREB GIVES FORTH TORAH TO ITS SUFFERERS
ACCORDING TO THEIR CONTEXTS
123 Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kama 82a
53
Bibliography Ochs and Ross Ochs, Peter, ‘A Rabbinic Pragmatism’ in Bruce D Marshall (ed.), Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 213 - 248
- (CP) ‘Compassionate Postmodernism: An Introduction to Postmodern Jewish Philosophy’, The European Legacy 2:1 (1993), 74 – 79
- (SL) ‘Scriptural Logic: Diagrams for a Postcritical Metaphysics’, Modern Theology 11:1 (1995), 65 – 92
- Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge: CUP, 1996) - (RAR) (with Gibbs, Robert, Steven Kepnes, (eds.)), Reasoning after
Revelation, (Oxford; Westview Press, 1998) - (BM) ‘Behind the Mechitsa: Reflections on the Rules of Textual
Reasoning’, Journal of Textual Reasoning (New Series) 1:1, (University of Virginia Electronic Book Center: Spring 2002). [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/volume1/peterTR1.html, Accessed 22/04/2013]
- ‘Morning Prayer as Redemptive Thinking’ in Chad Pecknold and Randi Rashkover (eds.), Liturgy, Time and the Politics of Redemption (Eerdmans Pub: 2006), 50 – 90
- (PW) ‘Philosophic Warrants for Scriptural Reasoning’, Modern Theology 22:3 (2006), 465 – 482
- ‘Response: Reflections on Binarism’, Modern Theology 24:3 (2008), 487 – 496
- (RR) ‘Reparative Reasoning: From Peirce’s Pragmatism to Augustine’s Scriptural Semiotic’, Modern Theology 25:2 (2009), 187 – 215
- (AR) Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Brazos Press, 2011)
Ross, Tamar, (CVR) ‘The Cognitive Value of Religious Truth Statements: Rabbi A I Kook and Postmodernism’, in Yaakov Ellman (ed.), Hazon Nahum: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought, and History Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Ktav, 1998), 479 – 528 -‐ ‘Reflections on the Possibility of Interfaith Communication in our Day’,
Edah 1:1, (2001) [http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/ross.pdf. Accessed 06/04/2013]
-‐ (EPT) Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (London: Brandeis University Press, 2004)
-‐ (RBPA) ‘Religious Belief in a Postmodern Age’ (trans. Miriam Feldman Kaye) [Unpublished article].
-‐ (RF) ‘Response to Yoel Finkelman, “A Critique of Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism by Tamar Ross”’, Edah 4:2 (2004) [Accessed
54
http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/4_2_Finkelman.pdf, 06/04/2013]
-‐ (GP) ‘Guarding the Treasure and Guarding the Tongue’, [Accessed 6th April 2013, http://www.lookstein.org/articles/response_to_frimer.pdf]
-‐ ‘Slightly Premature Bell-ringing? Response to the article of Baruch Cahana ‘Where are the Winds Blowing?’ (Hebrew), Akdamot 21 (2008), 178 – 183.
-‐ Tamar Ross, ‘Halakhic Reasoning and Context: Homosexuality as a Test Case’ [Forthcoming]
General Literature Adams, Nicholas, ‘Reparative Reasoning’, Modern Theology 24:3 (2008), 447 – 457 Aylesworth, Gary, ‘Postmodernism’ on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/, Accessed 18/04/2013] Berkovits, Eliezer, ‘What is Jewish Philosophy?’, Tradition 3:2 (1961), 117 – 130 Bernstein, Richard J., Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983) Cohen, Hermann, Religion of Reason (trans. Simon Kaplan), (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) Dessler, Eliyahu, Strive for Truth! (vols. 1, 2, 3) (trans. Aryeh Carmell), (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1978) Feldman, Richard, ‘Epistemological puzzles about disagreement’ [http://www.philosophy- dev.stir.ac.uk/postgraduate/documents/FeldmanPaper.pdf, Accessed 18/04/2013] Feldman-Kaye, Miriam, Provisional Jewish Theology in a Postmodern Age: A Comparative Study of Professor Tamar Ross and Harav Shagar, (Unpublished PhD: University of Haifa, 2012) Finkelman, Yoel, ‘A Critique of Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism by Tamar Ross’, Edah 4:2 (2004) [Accessed http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/4_2_Finkelman.pdf, 06/03/2013] Fish, Stanley, ‘Consequences’, Critical Theory 11:3 (1985), 433 – 458 Gutierrez, Gustavo, ‘Toward a Theology of Liberation’ in Alfred Hennelly (ed.) Liberation Theology: A Documentary History (NY: Orbis, 1990), 62 - 76 Harrison, Victoria, ‘Postmodern Thought and Religion: Open-Traditionalism and Radical Orthodoxy on Religious Belief and Experience’, Heythrop Journal (2010), 962 - 974 Hunsinger, George, ‘Postliberal Theology’, in Kevin Vanhoozer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 2003) Kadushin, Max, The Rabbinic Mind (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1972)
55
Kehana, Baruch, Where are the Winds Blowing? Current Religious Thought in the Face of Postmodernism: A Critical Overview (Hebrew), Akdamot 20 (2008), 9 - 38 Kepnes, Steven (ed.), Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age (USA: New York University Press, 1996)
- ‘Revelation as Torah: From an Existential To a Postliberal Judaism’ , The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 10:1 (2001), 205 – 237
- Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (Oxford: OUP, 2007) - ‘Peter Ochs: Philosophy in the Service of God and the World’, Modern
Theology 24:3 (2008), 499 – 502 Lambert, David, ‘Assessing Peter Ochs through Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture, Modern Theology 24:3 (2008), 459 – 467 Levene, Nancy and Peter Ochs (eds.), Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002) Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1984) Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi), (Manchester University Press, 1979) Machuca, Diego, Disagreement and Skepticism (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Marsh, William, Nothingness, Metanarrative, and Possibility (AuthorHouse, 2009) Murphy, Nancey, Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion and Ethics (Westview Press, 1997) Myers, David N., ‘Hermann Cohen and the Question for Protestant Judaism’, Leo Baeck Institute: Year Book XLVI (2001), 195 - 214 Novak, David, ‘Textual Reasoning’, The Journal of the Society for Textual Reasoning 1:1 (2002) [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/volume1/novakTR1.html, accessed 02/04/2013] Ochs, Peter (ed.), Reviewing the Covenant: Eugene B Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Jewish Theology (SUNY, 2000) Placher, William, Unapologetic Theology, (Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1989) Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: OUP, 2000) Putnam, Hilary, ‘A Comparison of Something with Something Else’, New Literary History 17:1 (1985), 61 – 79 - ‘There Is at Least One a priori Truth’, Erkenntnis 13:1 (1978), 153 – 170. Quine, W.V.O., ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ in From a Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press, 1980) Rashkover, Randi, ‘Introducing the Work of Peter Ochs’ 24:3 (2008), Modern Theology, 439 - 445 Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Narrative Identity’ in Philosophy Today 35:1 (1991), 73 – 80 Rorty, Richard, ‘What Can You Expect From Anti-Foundationalist Philosophers?’, Virginia Law Review 78:3 (1992), 719 - 727
- ‘Introduction’ in Wilfred Sellars, Empiricism & The Philosophy of Mind, (see below), 1 – 24
- Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009)
56
- (ed.) The Linguistic Turn (University of Chicago Press, 1992) Rynhold, Daniel, Two Models of Jewish Philosophy: Justifying One’s Practices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Schwarzchild, Steven, ‘The Title of Hermann Cohen’s “Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism’, in Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason (see above), 7 - 20 Scott, Edgar, ‘Hermann Cohen’ on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Accessed February 2013] Seeskin, Kenneth, ‘How to Read Religion of Reason’, in Hermann Cohen, ‘Religion of Reason’ (see above), 21 – 42
- ‘Moses Maimonides’ on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Accessed February 2013]
Sellars, Wilfred, Empiricism & The Philosophy of Mind, (London: Harvard University Press, 1997) Smith, James K A, ‘A Little Story About Metanarratives’, Faith and Philosophy 18:3 (2001), 353 – 368 -‐ Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Michigan: Baker
Academics, 2004) -‐ Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucalt to Church
(Baker Academic, 2006) -‐ ‘How Religious Practices Matter: Peter Ochs’ “Alternative Nurturance”
Of Philosophy of Religion’, Modern Theology 24:3 (2008), 469 – 478 Spero, Shubert, Aspects of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Judaism (New Jersey: Ktav, 2009) Stiver, Dan, ‘Theological Method’ in Kevin Vanhoozer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 2003) Sosa, Ernest, ‘The Raft and the Pyramid’ in Sosa, Kim, etc (eds.), Epistemology: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2008), 145 – 164 Taylor, Charles, Philosophical Arguments (Harvard University Press, 1997) Thiel, John, Nonfoundationalism, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1991) West, Cornel, ‘Afterword: The Politics of American Neo-Pragmatism’ in John Rajchman and Cornel West (eds.), Post-Analytic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) Williams, James, Lyotard: Towards a Postmodern Philosophy, (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972) Wyschogrod, Edith, ‘Trends in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy, Soundings 76:1 (1993), 129 – 137 -‐ ‘Afterword’, Soundings 76:1 (1993), 191 – 196
Zank, Michael, ‘Reverberations of Hermann Cohen in Contemporary Jewish Philosophy’[http://www.bu.edu/mzank/Michael_Zank/mjth.html, Accessed, 02/04/2013]