Although he was a scholar of the Talmud and studied extensively with some of the best in the field, he was basically self-taught in philosophy. He was also convinced that the Yiddish public needed to understand the importance of philosophy to both religion and science. In this effort Agushewitz broke new ground and did what no rabbi since Maimonides had done. Steiner (philosophy, Hebrew U., Jerusalem) provides an elegant translation of this remarkable text, which demystifies the trajectory of philosophy up to nearly the middle of the twentieth century and reconciles it with both science and religion. Agushewitz argues that philosophy is the basis for all existence, that the same principles that organize matter organize human beings, and that studying philosophy leads to the humility and altruism necessary to true knowledge of science and religion. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Principles of Philosophy

By Reuven Agushewitz

YESHIVA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2008 Yeshiva University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60280-024-3

Contents

Preface Dr. Norman Lamm.................................ixTranslator's Introduction................................xiA Word to the Reader.....................................xviiiPrologue.................................................xxxAcknowledgements.........................................xxxvi1 What is Philosophy?...................................12 The Influence of Unity................................153 The Influence of Diversity............................454 Progress..............................................83Index....................................................190Index of Biblical & Rabbinic Sources.....................194

Chapter One

What is Philosophy?

A.

Never mind [meyle], I won't dispute [shparn] concerning what was. Certainly philosophy once had its function. In the times when the chieftain ruled with the help of his dark advisors, the magician, the astrologer, and the alchemist, certainly the torch of philosophy served to dispel somewhat the dark shadow of brutality and superstition. But those times are past. Today we have the electric light of modern science. Why should we still make use of the same obsolete torch-"How does a candle benefit us during the day?" (Talmud, Pesahim [the concept is in Pesahim; the actual phrase is in Hullin 60b-Tr.]) And if you like, I'll tell you a secret, today there is no longer any philosophy. Like a mature spore, the old philosophy has been divided into the various modern sciences, which, being better trained and equipped, perform its functions more perfectly.

-You err, my friend. There is even today a philosophy, and we must even today make use of it ...

I am not going to go with you into deep investigations concerning the essence of philosophy and science. I will here only dwell upon your own words. You first compared philosophy to a ripened spore which is then divided into various modern sciences. This means, that you yourself admit that the modern sciences have their origin in philosophy or that philosophy is the mother of the modern sciences and if not for philosophy, it is possible that the modern sciences would never have existed. It appears that for this reason alone philosophy deserves much more credit than you were willing to give it, and for this reason alone you should not have complained about the negligible profit extracted from philosophy. But I am not here seeking redress [monen di krivde] for philosophy, concerning its service in the past. Your words speak also about the importance of philosophy in the present and the future. Because if philosophy is the mother of the sciences, it must certainly have some particular characteristic [epes an aygnshaft] to be the mother of the sciences. It must be endowed with some kind of special power to give birth to the sciences; in other words, philosophy must surely have a power to initiate sciences, to create scientific principles.

And since philosophy has such creative power, it can of course never be dispensable [iberig], it continues to have an important function to fulfill. Because certainly you yourself will admit that science has no ground floor, that however scientific we might be, there remains in the end enough darkness about us and there always remains, therefore, enough place for the new birth of sciences.

I see that this particular answer has not made you completely happy. To be sure [take], you cannot deny the connection of philosophy to the birth of science, because you know too well the history of science. You know too well, that the first scientists were all philosophers and that the highest principles of science-conservation of matter, atomism, universal motion, the effect of positive and negative forces, organic evolution {Organic evolution is found in the writings of Axanimander, a philosopher who lived 2,500 years ago. Universal motion gets its pedigree [yikhes] from Herakleitos. The effect of positive and negative forces used to be called sympathy and antipathy.}, etc., were discovered by them without the help of scientific instruments. You therefore come, for no good reason [glat azoy], with demands and complaints [taynes]:

First, you would like to know exactly [genoi] what is the object of philosophy-what is the philosopher searching for and what does he ponder when he philosophizes. True, in our discourse a little earlier about the great service that philosophy does, you already heard in passing [agav urkhedik] that philosophers try to get to know the essential being of things-but what does "essential being" mean? And why can't we get to know it with the help of the sciences?

Second, you would like to know how philosophy goes about [zukht] achieving its object, what instrument does it employ to this end-is it the same as used in the sciences, or is there a peculiarly [ayngenartiger] philosophical instrument? And if the latter is true, you would still want me to explain exactly the nature of that instrument, how it works.

Third, you don't understand why there are so many definitions of philosophy. Just [aderabe] open up [an efen ton] the encyclopedia, we find there definitions of philosophy by Plato, by Aristotle, by Kant, by [Friedrich] Ueberweg [1826-1871], by Spencer, by James, and more-does philosophy really [nit shoyn zhe] have so many essences?

Well [iz], to answer these complaints directly, I fear, would lead to abstract discourse, which would probably bore you [farnudzen=farnudyen]. Therefore I will try to rely on an appropriate concrete example. Let us take an essence that we know through and through and we know therefore, of it, what precisely is essential and what contingent. We can find easily such an example among our own artifacts [shafungen]-chess, for example.

Let us take the game of chess as our example. As any other thing, chess has a contingent aspect and an essential aspect: the particular matter, proportions, and colors of the chess board and the pieces belong to the contingent part, and changes in these things will make no difference in the essential being of chess. On the other hand, the design of the chess board, the square of 64 boxes of two different colors, one next to the other, belong to the essential part, and a change in this would destroy the essential being of chess.

Now let us imagine that a group of very tiny, short-lived, but intelligent creatures examine the nature of chess. Among this group of small fry [khevre kleynvarg], can be found all kinds of scientists: chemists, physicists, mathematicians, historians, biologists, psychologists, etc. Each group of scientists tries to investigate according to their manner [shteyger] the essence of chess.

The chemists find out the correct formula for the elements and the matter of the chess board, of the pieces, and of the players. The physicists examine the forces to which the movements of the pieces are subjected. The mathematicians calculate the amount of space and time in all this. The historian discovers very interesting facts, that everything here is cyclical [galgalhakhoyzer], when it seems to be approaching the end, it begins once again. And the biologists and psychologists, probably, take to elaborating scientifically the players themselves,...