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    © 2009 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.

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    B Rhie

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    © 2009 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.

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    B Rhie
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    © 2009 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.

    PUTNAM ON METAPHYSICS, RELIGION, AND ETHICS:


    CRITICAL NOTICE OF JEWISH PHILOSOPHY AS A GUIDE
    TO LIFE: ROSENZWEIG, BUBER, LEVINAS, WITTGENSTEIN phil_337 425..434

    MARK ZELCER

    For what can be more characteristic of a Jewish thinker than to use the Jewish experience as a
    conduit to universality?—Rebecca Goldstein1

    I. INTRODUCTION

    In 1991, perhaps somewhat prophetically, before Hilary Putnam published


    anything about Jewish topics, Kenneth Seeskin recommended looking to Put-
    nam’s writing for insight into how Jews (yes, qua Jews) practice Jewish philoso-
    phy.2 Putnam tells us though that up until the past few years he saw nothing
    particularly Jewish about his philosophy and it is only recently that he has started
    to see the philosophical side of his life in relation to the Jewish side (4);3 but he
    does not see himself as a “Jewish philosopher”. In his most recent book, Jewish
    Philosophy as a Guide to Life (henceforth JPGL), Putnam now claims to join
    his philosophical side with his life as a practicing Jew.4 Ostensibly the book is
    a brief discussion of a theme addressed by three modern Jewish philosophers:
    Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. What follows is an

    1
    Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave us Modernity (New York:
    Schocken Books, 2006) 178.
    2
    Kenneth Seeskin, “Jewish Philosophy in the 1980’s,” Modern Judaism 11 (1991): 168.
    3
    References in the text are all to Hilary Putnam, Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig,
    Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (Bloomington, IN, Indiana UP, 2008) [henceforth JPGL]. Note also that
    the first chapter on Rosenzweig is essentially the same as his “Introduction” to Rosenzweig’s
    Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A view of World, Man, and God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
    UP, 1999). The chapter on Levinas is essentially the same as the entry on “Levinas and Judaism” in
    the Cambridge Companion to Levinas (New York: Cambridge UP, 2002).
    4
    Putnam repeatedly characterizes himself as a practicing Jew. See his introduction to JPGL,
    “Thoughts Addressed to an Analytical Thomist” The Monist 80:4 (1997a): 487, and “God and the
    Philosophers” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXI (1997b): 175.

    425
    MARK ZELCER

    explication of that theme woven together with other aspects of Putnam’s thinking,
    specifically his ethics. We also pick up some questions that Putnam leaves out-
    standing and ultimately elaborate on what he must mean in taking Jewish phi-
    losophy as a guide to life.

    II. WITTGENSTEIN

    Putnam understands the three Jewish philosophers he discusses as having


    one view in common with Wittgenstein’s5 philosophy of religion (6). Though
    Wittgenstein’s ideas on the philosophy of religion are known to us only via a
    few second-handnotes of lectures and conversations6 they have had a dispropor-
    tionate influence on the philosophy of religion,7 and Putnam is arguably the most
    prominent thinker to explore them.8
    To understand Wittgenstein’s approach consider first a rather traditional philo-
    sophical stance toward religious discourse that goes something like the following:
    Religious statements often appear to take stands on historical or ontological
    matters. We would ordinarily suppose that a historical or ontological fact-of-the-
    matter under dispute is true if and only if it corresponds to the way things are, and
    false otherwise. If one were nonetheless to believe the false or dubious statements,
    she does so non-rationally or irrationally; perhaps she believes on faith. There is
    considerable reason to believe that many ethical, historical, and ontological claims
    made by religions are false and can be easily shown to be highly implausible
    (consider, say, that the Bible endorses genocide as sometimes justified, claims that
    those on the ark with Noah were the only living creatures at one time or that the

    5
    Putnam treats Wittgenstein as “1/4” of a Jewish philosopher, mostly because Wittgenstein never
    wrote about Judaism philosophically and was only partially Jewish by descent.
    6
    We have fewer than 30 printed pages of notes that have been collected as “Remarks on Frazers’
    Golden Bough” (Reprinted in Michael Lambek, A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion [New
    York: Blackwell, 2008]) and “Lectures on Religious Belief ” (in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and
    Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett [Berkeley, CA: U of
    California P] 53–72).
    7
    Wittgenstein’s impact on the philosophy of religion was initially discussed in terms of what was
    labeled “Wittgensteinian Fideism.” More recently it can be seen in discussions in introductory and
    advanced works in the philosophy of religion. See, for example, Richard Messer’s Does God’s
    Existence Need Proof? (New York: Oxford UP, 1993); Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce
    Reichenbach, and David Basinger’s Reason and Religious belief: An introduction to the philosophy
    of religion (New York: Oxford, 2003); and Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Robert
    L. Arrington and Mark Addis (New York: Routledge, 2001). Some of these works deal with the
    Lectures and Conversations, while others explore the concept of religious discourse as a type of
    Wittgenstinian language game. Norman Malcolm’s Wittgenstein: A religious Point of View? (Ithaca,
    NY: Cornell UP, 1993) is a general discussion of Wittgenstein’s view of religion.
    8
    See his Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992), ch. 7 and (2008) ch 1.

    426

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