November 25, 2008
Hilary Putnam’s Roadmap to God
David Kaufmann in nextbook:
Hilary Putnam’s Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life is not
disappointing. In a short series of equally short lectures on four
important religious philosophers of the 20th century (Franz Rosenzweig,
Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Ludwig Wittgenstein), Putnam
outlines a rigorous and yet livable approach to Judaism. He writes for
a general audience. He doesn’t indulge in parsing. There are no nits.
Instead, Putnam asks us to confront some fundamental issues. What is the essence of the divine? How do we account for evil? What are the ethical demands that religion makes on us? He suggests that we need to pose these questions differently. We should not ask what God is, but how we should experience Him. We should not explain evil but confront it. We should find our way to God through our relations with our fellow humans and not the other way around. According to Putnam, the big problems aren’t so big. In fact they aren’t even problems.
Putnam’s book is recognizably and in a certain way also traditionally Jewish. It presents its own coherent argument in the guise of a commentary on other texts. It speaks through them as well as about them. This approach allows Putnam, who has been one of the leading American philosophers of science for over four decades, to begin with Wittgenstein’s insight that faith is different from science because it does not depend on proof. You can abide by the tenets of the Torah even if you don’t strictly believe that they were handed down at Sinai. You can balance the story of Adam and Eve and the theory of evolution because religious truths are not necessarily damaged by contradictory evidence.
Religion can withstand secular science because religion is more than a series of dogmas. It represents a way of life. It expresses an attitude toward the world and is deeply entwined with a set of everyday activities and commitments. Religion cannot be outfoxed by science or logic. Try as they might, cosmologists cannot prove that the heavens do not proclaim the glory of God.
Instead, Putnam asks us to confront some fundamental issues. What is the essence of the divine? How do we account for evil? What are the ethical demands that religion makes on us? He suggests that we need to pose these questions differently. We should not ask what God is, but how we should experience Him. We should not explain evil but confront it. We should find our way to God through our relations with our fellow humans and not the other way around. According to Putnam, the big problems aren’t so big. In fact they aren’t even problems.
Putnam’s book is recognizably and in a certain way also traditionally Jewish. It presents its own coherent argument in the guise of a commentary on other texts. It speaks through them as well as about them. This approach allows Putnam, who has been one of the leading American philosophers of science for over four decades, to begin with Wittgenstein’s insight that faith is different from science because it does not depend on proof. You can abide by the tenets of the Torah even if you don’t strictly believe that they were handed down at Sinai. You can balance the story of Adam and Eve and the theory of evolution because religious truths are not necessarily damaged by contradictory evidence.
Religion can withstand secular science because religion is more than a series of dogmas. It represents a way of life. It expresses an attitude toward the world and is deeply entwined with a set of everyday activities and commitments. Religion cannot be outfoxed by science or logic. Try as they might, cosmologists cannot prove that the heavens do not proclaim the glory of God.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 02:09 PM | Permalink
Comments
And so it goes. A philosopher who did much to elucidate the physicalist ontology becomes at the end of his life a proponent of religion.
Posted by: Jonathan | Nov 25, 2008 2:53:41 PM
@Jonathan - And why not? Religion appears to be, after all, an integral part of the human experience, and does not depend on supernatural events for its importance. I see no inconsistency.
Posted by: David | Nov 25, 2008 4:11:15 PM
I have a great deal of respect for Hilary Putnam as a philosopher. He's a very elegant and inspiring writer. In the face of Rorty's strange, strange interpretation of the pragmatist tradition, Putnam offered a sober and level-headed counter-interpretation that helped give pragmatism the credibility and respectability it rightly deserves. His work on semantics, ethics, and truth theory have also been--and will remain--invaluable.
However, his work on religion is just disappointing. Putnam was non-religious for the greater part of his life. He decided to start practicing Judaism when he was well into his 60s. Why Judaism? Why not Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism? It just so happens that Judaism is part of his ethnic heritage (I believe Putnam is half-Jewish).
And what about all the objectionable factual and moral content of traditional Jewish beliefs? What about the horrifying misogyny, draconian laws, and false cosmology enshrined in the Torah? Putnam, from what I understand, is "progressive". That is, he rejects much of the objectionable factual and moral content of the Jewish faith. However, he has never once made it clear how and on what basis he's managed so nicely and cleanly to separate the objectionable content from Judaism while retaining its supposedly essential spiritual content. There's something very arbitrary about it.
If he wants to say, along with William James, that religion provides certain profound experiences that cannot be negated by science or some other secular system of belief, that's all fine and well. However, it would be nice if he could acknowledge that Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, makes substantive claims to truth and that his decision to endorse Judaism as a system of beliefs is in the end entirely arbitrary; that there is no rational reason to privilege Judaism, or indeed any religion, over and above rival and competing systems of belief.
Just so it's clear, anyone looking for proof for the existence of a god will not find one in Putnam's book. What he supposedly offers is a way to experience and practice Judaism that is intellectually and morally respectable and responsible. I will give him credit, though: if anyone actually feels the need to practice Judaism, what Putnam offers is perhaps the least offensive model of faith and practice.
Posted by: Sign of Saturn | Nov 26, 2008 12:11:58 AM
blah, blah, blah..... more human-hours wasted on wishful thinking.
"Try as they might, cosmologists cannot prove that the heavens do not proclaim the glory of God".
And none ever claimed they did. When will people learn where the burden of proof lies and that you can't conclusively prove a negative. What rubbish.
Posted by: MattInOz | Nov 26, 2008 2:03:27 AM
What the reviewer seems to have forgotten is that "religion" whatever that piece of stone he thinks it is- they are not.
There are many religions- and one interpretation per person. So what we are referring to here is Putnam's understanding of Judaism. Same is true for everybody else.
"According to Putnam, the big problems aren’t so big. In fact they aren’t even problems. "
I see a big problem there.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Nov 26, 2008 5:15:16 AM
To continue on that idea, while I may not agree with Putnam's interpretation, I do agree that it is wrong to try to prove religion. At least I had tremendous amount of trouble trying to prove or disprove religion.
I remained an unbeliever until I experienced religion. Until this day, I when I try to prove the existance of God, it bewilders me, as the proofs for non-existance of God did when I was an unbeliever.
So I have come to this stage when religion- the core of it- are a set of statements from which the rest of the laws are to follow. I have never had trouble with either religion or science from that approach.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Nov 26, 2008 5:23:17 AM
hmmm, so let me see. He 'confronted' the big questions of religion by changing them into different ones....
Doesn't sound like confronting them to me
Posted by: Keri | Nov 26, 2008 6:39:04 AM
Wittgenstein, though part Jewish, was baptized and brought up Catholic, and in any case this is beside the point; he is many things before he is a "religious philosopher".
Posted by: Mary | Nov 26, 2008 1:56:08 PM
Oy.
Posted by: Michael Drake | Nov 26, 2008 6:14:52 PM
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