Autonomy and Judaism: The Individual and Community in Jewish Philosophical Thought

Introduction

Introduction Philosophical reflection on autonomy is modern. The problem of autonomy as manifested in the tension between individual rights and the correlative duties entailed by membership in a civic community arises with the development of the natural rights tradition in European thought in the seventeenth century, a tradition associated with the writings of Grotius, Hobbes, Locke and others. As such, this problem enters Jewish thought at a later date, with emancipation and deghettoization at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Simply put, before Jews became citizens of modern states, reflection on autonomy in this political sense did not, indeed could not, arise among them. Associated with this political debate is the epistemic and, ultimately, religious worry of whether autonomous human reason, reason by itself, can (or cannot) provide the grounding or foundation for morality and religion. This discussion , most prominently associated with Kant at the end of the eighteenth century, entered Judaism almost simultaneously. As both the political and the religious side of the modern discussion concerning autonomy make clear, the entire issue focuses upon the relation of the individual to the community. To what extent does the individual have rights which no civic society can abrogate? To what degree is the individual the ultimate authority or judge in matters of morality and religion? When, if ever, can the individual delegate decision making in such spheres to others? Although such questions have a decidedly modern ring, one would be wrong to think that analogues cannot be found in earlier ages. Cognate issues are indeed to be found in ancient and medieval times, both within the Jewish world and outside it. Plato and Aristotle , for example, address themselves to the worry of whether the human being is by nature a political animal or whether the human good is to be found outside the political arena. In Jewish thought this core issue is little different. Thinkers throughout the ages, from bibli- 2 Autonomy and Judaism cal through rabbinic and medieval to modern times, are preoccupied with the relation of the individual Jew to the community and to the world at large. One way the philosophers of Judaism characterized the issue was in asking whether knowledge of God, ex hypothesi the highest good and a cognitive attainment of a particular individual, is to be understood as a sort of contemplative activity which distances the thinker from the social and political realm or as an activity which motivates moral and political action; and if it is the latter, then how? Further, while premodern philosophers, Maimonides and Aquinas, for example, do not concern themselves with Kant's problem of whether morality and the moral law can be grounded in the nature of practical reason, they do worry about the general intelligibility of the law, about the linkage between reason and virtue, and about the capacity of human reason to secure, unaided, the good. They ask: What is the relationship between (divine) law and human reason? between law and morality? What is the ultimate source of obedience to the law? This overview should at least make clear that philosophical reflection on the relation of the individual to the community is both perennial and universal. And as such, it is part of the tradition of Jewish philosophy. No one philosophizes in a vacuum, and as, I think, this volume makes amply clear, Jewish philosophy flourishes by engaging in lively dialogue with the entire Western philosophical tradition . This dialogue presents itself both systematically and historically , and this volume consists of essays which emphasize one or the other aspect. Each of the essays in the first part sets out the general problem which confronts every modern Jew: How can the individual Jew retain a rich sense of self, while also remaining squarely within the historically covenanted community? Again, how can the individual Jew square a sense of autonomous selfhood with the ongoing reality of the tradition, however the latter is interpreted? In response to this problematic, the first two essays complement each other by virtue of their opposing philosophical affiliations. Eugene Borowitz, in "Autonomy and Community," takes up the issue of the individual and the community from the standpoint of an anti-Kantian religious existentialism. For Borowitz, arguing against both Hermann Cohen and Mordecai Kaplan, the crucial issue for the liberal, non-Orthodox Jew is how to develop a robust sense of a Jewish self, such that the Introduction 3 (liberal...