DOUBTING AND QUESTIONING

I heard the line from an Orthodox rabbi 25 years ago. It sounded great, but I couldn’t believe that his community took it literally: “The Jew is supposed to wake up every morning questioning the existence of God.”

“Yeah right,” I said to myself. “I’m sure these people, whose entire culture, community and lives are predicated on the existence of the Biblical God are seriously going to start each day wondering if they should throw their God away.” For them, it would be like starting each day contemplating suicide. But for me, who at the time was still deciding whether to become a religious Jew, or just another Jew-by-culture, the rabbi’s principle was beautiful. It was an affirmation that religious Judaism and intellectuality are not mutually exclusive. No wait, let me make a stronger point – it was an affirmation that Judaism so venerates the search for truth for its own sake that even the Orthodox -- the Fundamentalists -- are in some respect disciples of Socrates as well as Moses.

With the help of such principles, I decided to become religious – not Orthodox, mind you, but religious in my own way. Do I question that choice? Heck yes. For what do I know about such things as the eternality of life, the immortality of the “soul,” the existence of fundamental unity in the cosmos, and other such matters? The first principle of philosophy is Socrates’s greatest truth: the world’s wisest man attains that status precisely because he knows that he knows nothing profound with complete certainty. OK. So perhaps that’s an exaggeration. As Descartes so eloquently discovered: we “think,” therefore we exist. I’ll grant that knowledge, but that’s as far as we can go … if what we seek is certainty.

As a skeptic, I go way past the great Spinoza. For it was he who uttered the following words to a former pupil named Albert Burgh:

“You seem to wish to employ reason, and ask me, ‘How I know that my philosophy is the best among all that have ever been taught, or ever will be taught?’ a question which I might with much greater right ask you; for I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy. If you ask in what way I know it, I answer: In the same way as you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: that this is sufficient, will be denied by no one whose brain is sound, and who does not go dreaming of evil spirits inspiring us with false ideas like the true. For the truth is the index of itself and of what is false.”

That passage is near the top of the most regrettable passages that Spinoza ever wrote – right up there with his argument that women are not suitable to serve as government officials. Of course he didn’t “know” that his was “the true philosophy.” And I’ll show you the courtesy of not waste your time trying to spin that passage so as to distort its intended meaning, much like a rabbi would spin some antiquated provision of the Torah. Thankfully, Lady Philosophy doesn’t demand that all statements made by her disciples be deemed as “truth.”

So let us question early and let us question often. Let us question our friends – civilly, of course – and let us question ourselves. Most of all, let us question anyone who claims to know that they are right and you are wrong with certainty. But it is one thing to question, and yet another to doubt. As strongly as I affirm questioning, that’s how strongly I oppose doubting.

Yes, of course I know what you’re thinking. In the case of a student of philosophy, “to question” and “to doubt” are synonyms. So why is one so grand, and the other so dangerous? The answer depends on a semantic distinction, perhaps, but it’s one that carries tremendous power. Besides, isn’t that largely what philosophy is: the art of creating semantic distinctions, some of which can be very powerful for those who have taken the time to parse away.

It was the Jewish writer and maggid, Yitzhak Buxbaum, who inserted in my head the distinction between questioning and doubting. He claimed that it was understood and appreciated by the early Hasids, who I’ve always viewed as among the wisest people in Jewish history. Doubting, according to this distinction, refers to what some of us do when it’s time to focus on our own beliefs. As Spinoza recognized, “doubt” is but a softer word for vacillation, meaning a state of conflicting emotions. When we doubt a belief, we don’t simply question its veracity and raise the possibility that some day we will dislodge it from our minds. Instead, our emotional conflict saps us of holding a belief with passion and vigor. Indeed, such “doubt” can also immobilize us – just ask General George McClellan, who almost single handedly gave away the Civil War. \

Nothing is more enervating than doubt. Nothing else can so deter your willingness to fight hard for your chosen principles. Questioning, by contrast, merely makes you stronger. When you question, you consider additional arguments for and against your beliefs, and better arm yourselves to battle your ideological opponents. Who knows? You might even convince yourself that they were right all along.

When you’re consumed with doubt, it hardly matters what your beliefs are. I can almost guarantee that your actions – such as they are -- will be limited and ineffective.

Doubting, of course, is a natural human emotion. Perhaps it’s inevitable when our questioning tells us that an earlier belief was mistaken that we will go through an interim period of doubt. But let’s please not make that our customary state of being. As Marx taught, we followers of reason are needed not merely to interpret the world, but also to change it. That requires us to muster all our passion in support of our principles, whatever they may be. If it turns out that we were mistaken, so be it. Remember, it’s not like anyone else really knows the truth either.