Two Models of Jewish Philosophy: Justifying One's Practices (review)

Rynhold's book applies contemporary analytic philosophy, in particular theory of interpretation and theory of scientific explanation, first to Maimonides's doctrine of taamei ha-mitzvot and then, in greater detail, to the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. In the opening chapter he outlines a teleological view in Maimonides and provides a perspicuous and original account of three strands in Rabbi Soloveitchik's critique of Maimonides: that Maimonides's view tends to historical reductionism or divine psychologism, and the deeper criticism, in Rynhold's opinion, that Maimonides's attempt to rationalize the commandments under universalist rubrics undermines the methodological autonomy of Halakha.

The second chapter distinguishes two approaches to rationalizing the Halakha. A "rationalistic" view is found in Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man: it entails the search for an exhaustive conceptual description of the laws, subsuming them under general principles. The second, more tentative method, developed in Soloveitchik's Halakhic Mind, recognizes that any such explanatory exhaustiveness is illusory. Here Rynhold stresses, more than other interpreters, the influence of Dilthey, which places Rabbi Soloveitchik one step removed from Gadamer.

The second half of the book contrasts priority of theory (PoT) theories with priority of practice (PoP) approaches. Rynhold claims that both Maimonides and the rationalistic Soloveitchikian philosophy share PoT. This means that they justify the content of religious practice by appealing to a theory—a set of propositions—from which the practices can be deduced or otherwise derived. Against this view Rynhold argues, on theological and technical philosophical grounds, for the impossibility of codifying practice exhaustively. Instead Rynhold argues for PoP. This philosophy of Halakha begins with the legitimacy of Jewish practice rather than deducing it from a prior theory, whether this be a universal theory of the ta'amei ha-mitzvot, à la Maimonides, or the autonomous PoT view in Halakhic Man. Rynhold believes that even R. Soloveitchik's alternative approach in Halakhic Mind, despite its affinities with PoP, does not amount to the position championed by Rynhold.

Because one hopes that this book will provoke further discussion, it is necessary to point out a few areas where Reynhold's account is open to question. One may disagree occasionally with his assumptions about his authors and with his textual exegesis. At some points he implies that Maimonides's ta'amei ha-mitzvot offer a justification of Jewish practice; it seems rather that Maimonides is interested in demonstrating the rationality of God in commanding them, not human rationality in performing them. He also speaks of R. Soloveitchik's methods as providing an account of why normative Judaism should be accepted, though he is aware that Soloveitchik's avowed goal is description, not proof. In both cases one may say that the two thinkers, through their accounts of the mitzvot, argue for adherence to religion, but only indirectly.

Rynhold's reading of R. Soloveitchik sometimes finds the first theory where it is not. For example, when a text from the early 1960s asserts that halakhic man cannot rest as long as one detail, however insignificant, escapes his theoretical formulation, Rynhold takes this to mean that a completely satisfactory conceptual formulation exists. According to an alternative reading, the statement describes the retrospective effort of the student to articulate a thorough conceptual framework in full knowledge that this may be undoable and that the very achievement of a convincing formulation will engender the modifications and the dialectic adumbrated in Halakhic Mind.

Ultimately these uncertainties are connected to an unclarity about the nature of the Torah study and analysis depicted by R. Soloveitchik. In the first chapters of the book Rynhold often refers to the intimate relation between Soloveitchik's philosophy of Halakha and the Brisker methodology of Talmudic study that he practiced. He relies on some of R. Soloveitchik's own writings and on Mosheh Lichtenstein's work on the nature and prospects of the Brisker method. Unfortunately the method has defeated attempts by outsiders to grasp its essential nature: as with the proverbial elephant, both outsiders and...