Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
260Extract 4: L Goodman, ‘Judaism’
Taken from: A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edit ed by C T aliaferro,
P Draper and P Quinn (John Wiley and sons, 1999), Chapter 5, pp. 43-55.
In the heyday of posit ivism philosophy was oft en a kind of met adisc ourse. T here
were philosophy of sc ienc e, philosophy of law, philosophy of language, and, of
c ourse, philosophy of religion. T hese met adisc iplines sought t o c larify t he various
modes of discourse and untangle the c onc eptual c onfusions that might arise within
them. Sometimes the function was propaedeutic, sometimes apologetic, but the
bracketing of the object language was decisive: philosophers of science were not
doing sc ienc e when they put on their philosophic al hat s, but c larifying c onc ept ual
foundat ions, just ifying, somet imes, almost , ac t ing as c heerleaders. Philosophy of
law or et hic s did not indulge in normat ive disc ourse but explained it , or exposed it s
pret ensions. Philosophy of religion was not about the sacred but about the modes
of speec h and judgment that religious persons might use... Users of the “objec t
language” were thought of as somewhat unselfc onsc ious naifs or naturals.
Philosophy might awaken them to the inner problems of the language they were
using, and then, it was assumed, they would no longer speak or ac t in the same
way. Philosophy would make t hem c aut ious or skept ic al or t olerant. Perhaps it
would t eac h t hem t he deep inner t rut h of relat ivism, symbolism, or posit ivism it self.
Certainly their thinking would never be the same. Philosophy of Judaism was about
the problems of being Jewish – just as philosophy of religion was about the
problems of being religious, or metaethics was about the problems of speaking or
t hinking et hic ally.
Today, happily, the tide has come in, or the catwalk has collapsed, and
philosophers now find themselves swimming in the same water as those other
human beings whose thoughts they seek to understand. We have religious and
ethic al philosophy, rather than just philosophy of...; normative ethic s has resumed
with gusto, and religious philosophy c an speak of God, or ritual, or the nexus
bet ween divinit y and obligat ion, and not just about t he problems of religious
discourse. The quest for a peculiar mode of religious speec h or thought has all but
ended, exc ept in so rat her projec t ively romant ic forms of armc hair ant hropology.
We c an speak of Jewish philosophy rather than just philosophy of Judaism. The
c hange is liberating, not least bec ause it returns this anc ient disc ipline t o it s root s
and broadens it s sc ope t o mat c h it s widest hist oric al range. Jewish philosophy will
inc lude a universe of problems that have exerc ised thoughtful exponents of the
Jewish t radit ion – problems of cosmology and theology, social history,
hermeneutic s, philosophic al anthropology, jurisprudenc e, and indeed aesthetic s.
If philosophy is an open inquiry t hat seeks c rit ic al sc rut iny of it s own
assumpt ions, Jewish philosophy will involve t he informing of t hat inquiry by t he
resources of the Jewish tradition. Jewish philosophy so defined subsumes the
narrower quest ion, “what does it mean to be a Jew?” in the larger universe of
Jewish c onc erns – from t he problem of evil t o divine t ransc endenc e, immort alit y,
human freedom, justic e, history and destiny, nature and ec onomy, the value and
meaning of life, and of human life in part ic ular.
What unit es prac t it ioners of Jewish philosophy is not some exot ic logic t hat we
c an label c hauvinist ic ally or pat ronizingly as “T almudic ,” nor a common store of
doctrines, but a c hain of disc ourse and problematic s, an ongoing c onversation that
is jarred but not halted by shifts of language, external c ulture, or epistemic