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Joseph Soloveitchik and Immanuel Kant's Mitzvah-Aesthetic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2010

Zachary Braiterman
Zachary Braiterman
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
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Extract

In the following pages, I will address the relationship between Jewish thought and aesthetics by bringing Joseph Soloveitchik into conversation with Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Judgment remains an imposing monument in the history of philosophical aesthetics. While Buber and Rosenzweig may have been more accomplished aesthetes, Soloveitchik's aesthetic proves closer to Kant's own. In particular, I draw upon the latter's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime and the notion of a form of indeterminate purposiveness without determinate purpose. I will relate these three figures to Soloveitcchik's understanding of halakhah and to the ideal of performing commandments for their own sake (li-shemah). The model of mitzvah advanced by this comparison is quintessentially modern: an autonomous, self-contained, formal system that does not (immediately) point to extraneous goods, such as spiritual enlightenment, personal morality, or social ethics. The good presupposed by this system proves first and foremost “aesthetic.” That is, immanent to the system. Supererogatory goods enter into the picture only afterward as second-order effects.

Type
Articles
Information
AJS Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , April 2001 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2001

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References

1. Soloveitchik, Joseph, “U-viqashtem mi-sham,” in Ish ha-halakhah, galui ve-nistar (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979), p. 204.Google Scholar See Rivka Horwitz, “Yaḥaso shel ha-Rav Solovaits'ik laḥavayah ha-datit u-le-mistorin,” and Kaplan, Lawrence, “Motivim qabbaliyyim be-haguto shel ha-rav Solovaits'ik: mashma'utiyim o ‘ituriyim?” in 'Emunah bi-zemanim mishtanim: ‘al mishnato shel ha-rav Yosef Dov Solovaits'ik, ed. Sagi, Avi (Jerusalem: Sifriyyat Elinur), 1996.Google Scholar

2. Ravitzky, Aviezer, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge: Between Maimonidean and Neo-Kantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism 6, no. 2 (May 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Singer, David and Sokol, Moshe, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Modern Judaism 2 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shalom Carmy, “Pluralism and the Category of the Ethical,” in Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. Marc D. Angel; Kaplan, Lawrence, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Philosophy of Halakhah,” Jewish Law Annual 7 (1988).Google Scholar

3. I stake this argument with and against Singer and Sokol. On one hand, Soloveitchik's own explicit claims about halakhah sit at odds with modern philosophy. On the other hand, the modernism underlying Soloveitchik's implicit aesthetic runs deeper than Singer and Sokol allow or even Soloveitchik himself may have recognized.

4. Cf. Ravitzky, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge,” p. 186, n. 85. According to Ravitzky, the aesthetic realm may include the entire world of “majestic man,” the entire world of human culture, not excluding political and judicial leadership. On the other hand, according to Ravitzky, the aesthetic is also seen by Soloveitchik as constituting a primary, precognitive natural stage that precedes majesty. Cf. Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik,” pp. 251–52. Singer and Sokol note Soloveitchik's affirmation and rejection of aesthetics, but not the indifference.

5. Soloveitchik, Joseph, The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modem Thought (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 40–41.

7. Cf. Soloveitchik, Joseph, “Mah dodekh mi-dod,” in Divre hagut ve-ha'arakhah, ed. Shmidt, Shlomo (Jerusalem: ha-Histadrut ha-Ṣiyyonit ha-'olamit, 1981), pp. 74–75.Google Scholar In this description of halakhic cognition, the halakhist begins aesthetically, dimly “sensing” halakhic ideas as if they were “contents of sound, sight, and smell.” These fragmentary insights are then linked by the halakhist into a clear chain of cognitive knowledge.

8. Soloveitchik, Joseph, “Confrontation,” Tradition 6, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 1964): 7–8.Google Scholar

9. Soloveitchik, “U-viqashtem mi-sham,” p. 153. Cf. p. 162.

10. Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment, translated by Pluhar, Werner S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 75.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 47.

13. Ibid., p. 55.

14. Soloveitchik, Joseph, ḥamesh derashot (Jerusalem: Makhon Tal Orot, 1982–1983), p. 61.Google Scholar

15. Soloveitchik, Joseph, Halakhic Man, translated by Kaplan, Lawrence (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983), pp. 82–84.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 95.

17. Ibid., p. 38.

18. Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 76–77.

19. Ibid., p. 93.

20. Ibid., p. 95.

21. See Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 65; “U-viqashtem mi-sham,” p. 222; Halakhic Mind, p. 98. Singer and Sokol seem to miss the aspect of pleasure underlying Soloveitchik's understanding of mitzvah. They argue that Soloveitchik never integrates intellect and affect in his understanding of Jewish life, an argument that I find unpersuasive. Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik,” pp. 256–63.

22. Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 122–123.

23. Ibid., pp. 119–120.

24. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 81–82.

25. Ibid., p. 82.

26. Ibid., pp. 82–88. To be sure, section XIV does not lack for aesthetic descriptions of its own. See pp. 83–84. That's where Soloveitchik insists that from the midst of mathematical-scientific law issues “a cosmos more [sublime] and beautiful than all the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.”

27. Ibid., pp. 89–95.

28. Ibid., p. 87.

29. Ibid., p. 88.

30. Ibid., pp. 59–60.

31. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 49.

32. Ibid., p. 52.

33. Ibid., pp. 48–49.

34. Carmy, “Pluralism and the Category of the Ethical,” p. 331.

35. Ibid., p. 333.

36. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Mind, p. 93. Soloveitchik's interest in autonomy shifts from text to text. In The Halakhic Mind, he compares halakhah with the autonomy of science. In the essay “Confrontation,” he defends Judaism as a “totally independent faith community” over against the common cultural ethos of what he calls a “Judeo-Hellenistic-Christian tradition.”

37. Ibid. Note too the peculiar phraseology in “Confrontation,” pp. 20–21. Soloveitchik caps off a discussion of the Jew's commitment to “the general welfare and progress of mankind” with the distinctly nonchalant “et cetera.”

38. Soloveitchik, “U-viqashtem mi-sham,” p. 222.

39. Cf. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 64–65.

40. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 61.

41. Ibid., p. 65.

42. Ibid., p. 68.

43. Ibid., p. 163.

44. Ibid., p. 165.

45. Soloveitchik, “U-viqashtem mi-sham,” pp. 187, 194–95.

46. Rosenzweig, Franz, “The Builders,” in On Jewish Learning, ed. Glatzer, Nahum N. (New York: Schocken Books, 1955), pp. 78–80.Google Scholar