The Talmudic lesson Following our chosen path we can arrive at tradition. Searching for original and trustworthy

embodiments primarily among religions, the Jewish his-torical tradition and the eastern Byzantine orthodoxy is

as we see ourselves in him

Tradition is something more than mere irrationality

[As godly creature, natural and simple]

84 MAGDASZABÓ—‘Az idô doktora: Szent Ágoston’ [The doctor of time:

Saint Augustine] Nagyvilág XXV (1980) 4, pp. 577–590—writes as a personal confession: “Here stands man, dust in AUGUSTINE’s magic circle, naked, with God leaning on a more plain, transparent and natural canopy of heaven than ever, and looks down at him, so self-evidently as the sun shines and the birds sing; and the dust man just stands there, and everything he starts, reaches his hand after or actually reaches is just dust, foolishness, vanity, and hardly any of his steps are firm or sound; but he knows that God created him to be just like this, He accepted him and loves him just as he is, and maybe He loves him only because of being like this, because He can love him like this; well, he still dares to look up at Him to these plain and natural and heady heights from the magic circle.”

particularly interesting from our perspective of the method-ology of thinking. Starting from these grounds we might even arrive at modern traditions.

Of course, it might also occur that the persistent want for rationalism would lead to the narrowing down of thinking and emotional capacities to such an extent that anything which does not fit into the patterns of conceptual language built upon abstractly defined meanings could be perceived as the breeding ground of irrationalism. GEORGELUKÁCS⁸⁵

also stuffed everything he did not understand, or the involvement with what he rejected, into the pool of irrationalism, thereby bequeathing a noble example to those later labellers who were to come out of his school.

Taken all the above surveyed, we should notice how the way of thinking characteristic of the New Testament becomes step by step organised into a system. Well, as is known, the people portrayed in the New Testament were doomed to dispersion, launching the Diaspora-epoch in the life of the Jewish community. Needless to say, their religious life continued along the path familiar from various parts of the Bible, thus from the narrations in the Gospels as well.

This meant discussions held inside and outside the temples, and with time, the wisdom reflected by debates becomes synthesised into the rabbinical traditions. As we know, the Jewish community did not have its own independent state or a central organisation for over two millennia; therefore, the local rabbis became—nolens volens—the actual leaders and cementing moral forces of their respective community, and even the representatives thereof. Interestingly enough, the role they actually filled in the community was after all not so much of a priest’s—i.e., of a consecrated personality—, but rather of the sage’s. They were the scribes and rhetors who could prove the strongest in debates due to their learned skills and to their life dedicated to meditation.

Moral force of debates born from meditation

85 Georg Lukács Die Zerstörung der Vernunft [The Destruction of Reason] (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag 1954) 692 pp. & (Neuwied am Rhein &

Berlin-Spandau: Luchterhand 1962) 757 pp. [Werke 9].

The most particular about the tradition incorporated by the Talmudis that neither its setting, nor its message can be ascribed simply to a book of laws, or some collection of precedents.⁸⁶The result is specific in that it cannot prove formal or formalisable because it does not even bear actual decisions. Instead, what it rather includes is philosophies and argumentations, which mostly cannot even be conceived of as genuinely legal in character. Loose interrela-tions, highly scattered references, perhaps not even understandable at first glance. What we are expected is just to reflect on ponderable aspects: what it meant by what, what it wanted to influence in what direction, if at all. And one begins to guess only after having taken everything into account what its loose reference may have been related to: a point of view, a comparable situation, or, on the contrary, a frightening counterpoint. What can be unravelled from it appears to a reader brought up in a different culture some-what like a collection of the Jewish sagesse, or rather some particular versions of the narratives known from the New Testament: the p a r a b l e s . As to its essence, it is nothing other than the recollection of certain situations, their comparison with other situations, their individual and comparative evaluation, and, finally, their re-confirmation—

as contrasted with freshly recalled control-situations.

Searching for ponderable considerations, instead of logical derivation

[the will of God contrasted to a liveable life]

86 “The source of the Law and of its authority is the will of God as expressed in Scripture. From the standpoint of rabbinism there is no code, and none can exist, which can supersede the Torah.” Louis Ginzberg ‘The Codification of Jewish Law’ in his On Jewish Law and LoreEssays (Phila-delphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America 1955) 262 pp. on p.

183.The dilemma of law is exactly how to still arrive from such a fixed and unchanged manifestation of will at a practical solution that in addition to implementing the divine intention, would also allow a liveable life. Cf., e.g., D[avid] Daube ‘Texts and Interpretation in Roman and Jewish Law’Jewish Journal of Sociology3 (1961) 1, pp. 3–28. As to the practical modification of the unchangeable commandment, see Haim H. Cohn ‘The Lesson of Jewish Law for Legal Change’ and Norman Solomon ‘Extensive and Restrictive Interpretation’ in Jewish Law and Current Legal Problemsed.

Nahum Rakover (Jerusalem: The Library of Jewish Law 1984), pp. 15–28, resp. 37–45.

A text such as the above may support and guide our thinking inasmuch as it helps us clarify that if we give this or that evaluation of a given situation, which arguments c o u l d be wielded for and against it. And we can also observe the faint outlines of a value-choice in the back-ground. By this we unavoidably come closer to the realisation that, after all, we should rather make a decision in a certain initially given direction, and if we eventually make this decision, what arguments could support our choice.

Looking for any kind of systemicity in the textual embod-iments or summary of such and similar traditions would be in vain. In terms of any logical standard, neither of the ‘cases’

refer to others; and neither of the ‘situations’ compare to others. The components are not even as organised as—

bringing a distant example—the various types of Hungarian folk tales,⁸⁷or as BÉLABARTÓKand ZOLTÁNKODÁLYcould be in possession of an established thesaurus of Hungarian folk songs to be able to start their systematisation. Returning to the Talmudic example, in such textual environment it is simply not conceivable for anybody to start a reasonable systematisation, if any kind of systematisation is imaginable at all. For the idea of systematisation itself would amount to denaturalising the underlying tradition. Even the mere fact of formulating the idea of system in relation to this tradition is alien to its underlying nature.⁸⁸As soon as systematisation is started, tradition would immediately be deprived of precisely its most distinct character and bloom. By denatu-ralising it we would peel off everything that makes it traditional, thus the way situations follow one another in r e a l l i f e .

Availability of some choice among values, with pondering arguments for/against it

As tradition and life lived through, alien to any systemicity

87 Cf. János Berze Nagy Magyar népmesetípusok[Hungarian folk tale types] I–II (Pécs: Baranya Megye Tanácsa 1957).

88 “It is precisely the wealth of contradictions, of differing views, which is encompassed and unqualifiedly affirmed by tradition.” Gershom Scholem ‘Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism’ in his Messianic Idea in Judaism& Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality (London:

Allen & Unwin 1971), pp. 282ff.

A scribe may be right when noting that in its practice of interpretation there are numerous Talmuds—their number supposedly corresponds to the number of rabbinical communities displaying historically indepen-dent features. Over the centuries, these communities could have organised into a loose hierarchy at the most in lack of a central organisa-tion. Behind the loose network of the Jewish community in the Diaspora often stood the bare fact that where there was a rabbi with a stronger personality, his life, fame and professing power induced a spontaneous hierarchisation.Whereas, according to their corpus, we can distinguish as many Talmudic traditions as we inherited. Among these a number stand out by their value radiating a universal example, and this is most natu-rally so.We just ought to remember that rabbis often conferred with each other, and for most of their lives they did nothing but read, contemplate and debate. They were also able to learn from one another, and their most outstanding teachings grew to be known.

There was a political power very influential up to the nearest past (and we ought to understand that it still may have a lot of surprises for the future in the actual role it fills), which provided political support through its own force for the desire of the historical community of orthodox Jews:

the law of the State of Israel (or at least some of its layers) to become the embodiment, and to survive as a branch-off, of this classical tradition.⁸⁹ It is an open question, however, whether the law of a modern state—with its relevant aspects secularised—could be organised from a deeply reli-gious tradition crystallised in various historical eras and under different conditions. This was questionable already several decades ago and it remained to be so. The arguments may have changed with time, but the dilemma is mostly still the same.⁹⁰

Talmudas rabbinical tradition:

89 This has already occurred in some areas of family law, in matrimonial law, and, moreover, in their judicial assessment as well. Chaim I. Goldwater

‘Religious Tribunals with a Dual Capacity’Israel Law Review12 (1977) 1, pp. 114–119. Cf. also Guido Tedeschi ‘On the Choice between Religious and Secular Law in the Legal System of Israel’ in his Studies in Israel Law (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Students’ Press 1960), pp. 238–288.

90 Cf., by the author,Codification..., p. 202, note 64 as well as Jogi elméletek, jogi kultúrákKritikák, ismertetések a jogfilozófia és az összehason-lító jog körébôl [Theories of law, legal cultures: critical essays and reviews in legal philosophy and comparative law] (Budapest: ELTE “Comparative Legal Cultures” Project 1994), pp. 448–450 [Jogfilozófiák].

At the same time, the Jewish people recognise the rabbinical legal tradition truly as their own. So far, they have firmly resisted even the mere idea of its systematisation.

They know that the sacred t r a d i t i o n lies exactly in such apparently chaotic and incidental juxtaposition:

namely, tradition itself stands behind the way and into what all of this has evolved.Thus, the question justifiably arises (as it has arisen in English law as well): is it conceivable and feasible at all to credibly codify this tradition into a law (book)—as it happened with the English and American laws? Should we just recall that in the continental legal development of Europe the recording, compilation and finally the re-enactment (as new and independent laws) served for the basic systematisation of the normative legal material, whereas in case of the Anglo–American legal devel-opment this job was performed by textbook-writing, that is, an attempt to systematically expound the legal material in the form of a ‘textbook’.⁹¹

Again, the source and medium of Jewish law is the tradi-tion within which it has ever developed. Each of the components is part of this tradition in its very given form and no other, even if appearing to be c h a o t i c , and can remain the original part of tradition only as long as it keeps its originally given form.Why is this so? Well, because in the moment when it ceases to be the same as it has originally been—that is, in the moment when its historically evolved random casuality is transcended by some re-enacted systemicity resulting in a new quality⁹²—, then e x t r a message would necessarily be added to the corpus (and, thereby, also to tradition): something that has never been an inherent part of it. For we know that nothing can be sys-tematised in one single and exclusive way. In terms of logic,

can it be codified?

It can only remain a tradition until it is not given a new message through

systematisation

91 Cf., by the author,Codification..., ch. III, para. 3–4, on the one hand, and pp. 164 and 325, on the other.

92 Maimonides Mishneh Torah. Cf., e.g.,The Jewish Law AnnualI (1978), pp. 1–176.

the number of equally conceivable and feasible systematisa-tions is infinite. In consequence, by the fact of embodying tradition (through transforming and thereby also rigidifying it into certain—and not other—notions through re-positing it in a conceptualised way) as classified and organised into notional sets, we also acknowledge that we have already imposed our own points of view—external, conceptual, and logical, i.e., all bound to our own culture—upon it.

The rabbinical tradition—together with the sum of inherent examples, arguments and paradoxes—can continue to prevail, expand and make itself liveable, providing—its chaotic nature notwithstanding—for its renewal guided by its own spirituality, embodied in and actualised by newer and newer decisions, in the same way that we could learn from the example of English law. On the other hand, in case we systematised tradition into a set of codified concepts—although, for obvious reasons, when searching for the ratio decidendi, in each case we can start looking for a point of reference and launch the analogical reasoning only at some given notion—, we would be practi-cally bound all the way through by the conceptual c l a s s i f i c a t i o n we initially adopted when processing tradition through its conceptualising systematisation. In the same way—and this is a recurrent experience of all acts of legal transplantation—, if we implant a codified set of concepts into a community with different conceptual tradi-tions, this will necessarily generate a (somewhat) different and independent jurisprudence, in any case of a deforming effect on the original environment. The bare fact of system-atisation somehow precodifies those future situations of which this or that conceptually systematised normative solu-tion can be the case—thereby d e l i m i t i n g our problem-sensitivity from the very beginning to this or that previously codified field. Yet, in principle, each locus expressed by diverse linguistic means so much as each concept bears infinite possibilities and potentialities of connection, and by far no systematisation can comprehend them exhaustively simply because of technical limitations.

So, if the systematisation introduces a different (conceptual)

Classification would destroy openness

tradition, there are serious chances that the tradition will at last prove stronger and break through systemic boundaries.⁹³

2.3.1.5. Orthodox CHRIStianity According to its theology, Orthodox CHRISTianity—as to its literary manifestations,⁹⁴ may we think either of DOSTOEVSKY(his horrific torments of conscience)⁹⁵ or T^OLSTOY (his spiritual struggles)⁹⁶

Dramatic uniqueness of life situations at D^OSTOEVSKYand T^OLSTOY:

[taxonomy does not find but creates its subjects]

93 However objective it may seem, t a x o n o m y —the systematisation of either real entities (e.g., elements, minerals, flora and fauna) or traditions, human behavioural forms and ideas—always means a creative systematisation. Actually, it does not “find” its subjects but “creates”

them—according to interests, conventions and cognitive traditions, external to the subject itself. Cf., e.g., John Dean ‘Controversy over Classification: A Case Study from the History of Botany’ in Natural Order Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, ed. Barry Barnes & Steven Shapin (Beverly Hills, Ca. & London: Sage 1979), pp. 211–230 [Sage Focus] espe-cially at pp. 212 and 226, and, by the author, ‘Theatrum legale mundiavagy a jogrendszerek osztályozása [On the classification of legal systems]’ in Ius unum, lex multiplexLiber Amicorum: Studia Z. Péteri dedicata (Studies in Comparative Law, Theory of State and Legal Philosophy) ed. István H.

Szilágyi & Máté Paksy (Budapest: Szent István Társulat 2005), pp. 219–244 [Jogfilozófiák / Philosophiae Iuris // Bibliotheca Iuridica: Libri amicorum 13]. It is to be noted that at the beginning the projection of statuses defined by social dependence and life conditions served for the formulation of logical relations, especially of hierarchy and various sub- and co-ordinative relations. Cf. Emile Durkheim & Marcel Mauss Primitive Classification [1903] trans. Rodney Needham (London: Cohen & West 1963) xlviii + 96 pp. and in particular at pp. 82–84.

94 For a sensitive treatment from our perspective, see George Steiner Tolstoy or DostoevskyAn Essay in Contrast (London: Faber and Faber 1959) 355 + xiv pp. and especially Lev Shestov Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche introd. Bernard Martin, trans. S. Roberts (Athens, Ga.: Ohio University Press 1969) xxx + 322 pp.

95 On DOSTOEVSKY’s underlying social philosophy, see Jean Dronilly La pensée politique et réligieuse de F. M. Dostoievski(Paris: Librairie des cinq continents 1971) 501 pp. [Etudes russes 2] and Stephen K. Carter The Political and Social Thought of F. M. Dostoevsky(New York, etc.: Garland 1991) 300 pp. [Political Theory and Political Philosophy]; for his circle of ideas, ?hbq Uhbujhtdbx Relhzdwtd [Yuri G. Kud’ravtsev] Nhb Rheuf LjcnjtdcrjujCj,snbqyjt> Cjwbfkmyjt> Abkjcjacrjt[Dostoevsky’s three circles: Mental, social, and philosophical] (Vjcrdf% Bpl-dj VUE1979) 342 pp.; on his criticism of the Western life-ideal and on his detachment from the Western way of thinking, Bruce K.Ward Dostoyevsky’s Critique of the West The Quest for the Earthly Paradise (Waterloo, Ont.: Laurier University

equally—displays a CHRISTand His setting as wrapped into some sort of Slavic features. Taken its best known forms of expression, what happens here is not the logical treatment or reconsideration of some eternal truth or axiomatic principle—its conceptual analysis and logical breaking down—but the continuously recurrent re-asking of an ulti-mate question, the question of questions: what can I, a hopelessly self-reliant and unique being, do under condi-tions which always are hopelessly u n i q u e , since not showing resemblance to anything else? And if I have eventu-ally killed a man, can I possibly forgive myself? With such expectations given, the intensity of the drama is afforded by the conscious uniqueness of situations and players.

Our most evident example might be DOSTOEVSKY.⁹⁷The situation itself, as always given, is irresolvable⁹⁸—and first

their unreparability cannot be expressed conceptually

Press 1986) xiv + 202 pp., Barbara Wett »Neuer Mensch« und »Goldene Mittelmässigkeit«F. M. Dostoevskijs Kritik am rationalische-utopistischen Menschenbild (München: Sagner 1986) 238 pp. [Slavistische Beiträge 194], Ina Fuchs »Homo apostate«, die Entfremdung des Menschen Philosophi-sche Analysen zur Geistmetaphysik F. M. Dostoevskijs (München 1987) 800 pp. [Hochschule für Philosophie Diss.], Wayne Dowler Dostoevsky, Grigor’ev, and the Native Soil Conservatism(Toronto & London: University of Toronto Press 1982) 235 pp.; on his two excluding but still complemen-tary ways of elaborating contradictory reality, Geoffrey C. Kabat Ideology and ImaginationThe Image of Society in Dostoevsky (New York Guildford:

Columbia University Press 1978) xiii + 201 pp.

96 On TOLSTOY, see Richard F. Gustafson Leo Tolstoy Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press 1986) xvi + 480 pp. [Sources and Translations Series of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University], especially ch. V: »The Ways to Know«, pp. 217ff; Jörg Thaeter Die Beziehung des Individuums Zur

96 On TOLSTOY, see Richard F. Gustafson Leo Tolstoy Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press 1986) xvi + 480 pp. [Sources and Translations Series of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University], especially ch. V: »The Ways to Know«, pp. 217ff; Jörg Thaeter Die Beziehung des Individuums Zur