willow: "try reconstructionist judaism"

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willow @dreary.dev

try reconstructionist judaism

raymond geuss, who needs a world view?, pg. 23-24
Sidney had had rabbinical training at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and had at one time been attracted by a movement called “Reconstructionist Judaism” (after the title of Dewey’s “Reconstruction in Philosophy”). This movement, which Sidney described as “50 percent Moses and 50 percent Dewey,” tried to apply pragmatism to traditional Jewish life. Allegorical or metaphorical readings of religious views are always possible, and they have historically flourished. They are also, by their very nature, difficult to control or evaluate. However, many traditional Jewish beliefs presented themselves as if they were true statements of fact, but were clearly false, if you took them that way. To say that they were “true statements of facts” was to claim that they were not just “warrantedly assertable relative to our best existing standards of enquiry,” but more than that (although the nature of the surplus [“more than”] was unclear). However, what was "warrantedly assertable” was that god did not really exist, had not made the world, had not chosen and made a covenant with the Jewish people, had not split the Red Sea, had not given Moses any commandments and so forth. However, the Reconstructionist claimed that even to ask the question whether such beliefs were “true or false” was to miss the point. What was important was that there was a body of traditional beliefs, values, and practices that “worked” for a certain community, gave meaning to their lives, contributed to social cohesion, and fostered progress in human well-being. One didn’t even have to commit oneself to saying that these beliefs were “metaphors”; it was just that they had shown themselves to be valuable and to “work” for Jews. To obsess about whether these beliefs were “true” was to remain inappropriately attached to the traditional programme of “true belief.” The continued actual flourishing of the Jewish community was all the proof one needed of their value

November 23, 2024 at 9:46 PM

willowNov 23, 2024

(no one tell her about this part)

raymond geuss, who needs a world view?, pg. 26
It turned out not to be so, as Sidney discovered. The practices, rituals, observances, and values did give coherence, order, structure, and meaning to life, but they did so only provided that they were not explicitly seen as things to be cultivated because they gave meaning and coherence to life. In fact, if you stopped thinking they were embedded in a network of “true” beliefs (in something like the traditional sense of “true”), they lost their power to create or even retain meaning. The practices couldn’t maintain themselves autonomously, without appeal to Truth, but that is what pragmatism would have required. If the congregation did not believe in the Truth of some claims, the practices simply failed to function/work effectively as cement for solidarity and meaningfulness, and as lubricant for smooth interaction. So the more that Sidney explained that Jewish beliefs about Moses, Sinai, the Parting of the Red Sea, and so forth were not true (in the traditional sense)—although they were “pragmatically valuable”—and that to expect more was a mistake, the smaller his congregation got. William James spoke of the “will to believe” as operating in cases of religious belief, but here there seems to be something even more archaic, like a “need” of the kind discussed by Feuerbach and Marx:26 It is as if the members of Sidney’s congregation “needed” traditional truth. This, of course, leaves open the question whether they “needed” it in the way in which all humans need water in order to survive or in the way in which a drug addict “needs” his next dose.