Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors

CHAPTER 1. The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the Philosophy of Judaism: Notes on Julius Guttmann, The Philosophy of Judaism

CHAPTER 1 The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the Philosophy of Judaism: Notes on Julius Guttmann, The Philosophy ofJudaism I There is no inquiry into the history of philosophy that is not at the same time a philosophical inquiry. Without question there is a longstanding need in scholarship for a handbook of the history of the philosophy of Judaism resting throughout on the most thorough knowledge both of the sources and ofprevious studies of them; and when this need is met so completely as it is by Julius Guttmann's work, The Philosophy ofJudaism, 1 the intelligent reader will first of all be very glad to be instructed in general and in detail by this prominent expert, and grateful to have the use of this long-lacking and henceforth indispensable handbook. The same intelligent reader will certainly soon realize, if he does not know or assume it from the outset, that Guttmann would scarcely have been induced to write his Philosophy of Judaism by the previously mentioned need of scholarship alone, even combined with the additional need of collecting the results of his own researches, hitherto scattered in many separate studies and lecture notes: Guttmann's project is the historical exposition of the philosophical problem that most engages his interest, viz. the problem of the "methodological value of religion" (10). 41 42 Philosophy and Law So as not to misunderstand Guttmann's posing of the problem, one does well to recall his earlier work, "Religion and Science in Medieval and Modern Thought." At the end of this work, in express reference to Kant on the one hand and Schleiermacher on the other, he identifies as the task of "philosophy of religion" "the analysis of the religious consciousness " in its "automony ... over against knowledge and morality" (66f.), or more precisely, "the definition of religion as against all other areas of subject matter and consciousness, the elaboration of the specifically religious world and its truth" (R69). Since he defines the problem of "philosophy of religion" in this way, he seems to view the task of philosophy in general as the understanding of "culture " articulated into its various "domains." Now it is striking , however, that in spite of his unmistakable inclination towards philosophy of culture, he very assiduously avoids the expressions "culture" or "cultural field," and prefers the more formal and hence less prejudicial expressions "field of validity," "field of truth," "domain of subject matter ," "domain ofconsciousness." In this way he already suggests the suspicion that religion cannot be rightly understood in the framework of the concept of "culture." For philosophy ofculture understands by "culture" the "spontaneous product" of the human spirit-but religion in its proper sense does not have this character (R65); and besides , the other "domains of validity" allow of being conceived as "partial domains of truth"-but religion raises the claim to universality (R70). The claim to universality on the part of "culture," which in its own view rests on spontaneous production, seems to be opposed by the claim to universality on the part ofreligion, which in its own view is not produced by man but given to him. Now Guttmann admittedly does not go so far: as we have already noted, he believes that "sphere of validity" is the genus that comprehends both "culture" and religion. But in any case he finds himself driven to a remarkable distancing from philosophy of culture by the fact of religion as such, which thereby proves to be one crux of philosophy of culture.2 The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns 43 Guttmann leaves us in no doubt that the problem ofthe "methodological value of religion" is not a primary problem . One can say outright that his entire history of the philosophy ofJudaism has no other intention, or at least no other result, than to demonstrate that the "methodological" formulation of the question, in spite ofor because of its lack of primariness, offers the only guarantee of an adequate scientific understanding of the Bible. First of all, concerning its lack of primariness: neither does it emerge directly from religion (whether Biblical or Talmudic), nor is it a direct consequence of the conflict between (Biblical) religion and (Greek) philosophy. Out of this conflict the only question that arises directly is the question of whether the teachings of the revelation or the teachings of philosophy are true, and specifically the questions, inter alia, whether the world is...