(Vico 3) Jose Faur, "Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Vico and Rabbinic Tradition"
David Shasha
Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Vico and Rabbinic Tradition
By: Jose Faur
...et Deum esse, et mentem unam infinitam esse, et auctoris nobis aeternorum verorum esse.
G. B. Vico, Opere giuridiche (Firenze, Sansoni, 1974). p. 43
1. Preliminary Note
In his masterful work, Jerusalem and Athens (1997), Professor Jacob Neusner studied the parallel between the dialectic developed in the Babylonian Talmud (3rd – 4th c.) and the dialectic of the teachers of the ancient Greek academies. Since it is difficult to establish direct or indirect links between these two, Neusner indicates that he only tries to study the "congruencies", that is, the similarities between both systems, not the historical links.[1] The purpose of the present study is also to examine some congruencies between the rabbinic tradition – specifically that in the Babylonian Talmud – and Vico’s vision. It is obvious that there were not or possibly could have been direct links between the Talmud and Vico. One must point that the congruencies we here intend to examine rise in their own historical circumstances, and become defined within spaces that impose their own patterns and dynamics: Yet, they both coincide in displaying certain key ideas and institutions. To our understanding these parallels become more meaningful, precisely because these are mere congruencies: They belong purely to the human spirit more than presumed influences – an astrological term that particularly dominates modern historiography.
In previous studies we have examined some common elements in Vico and Hebrew tradition.[2] Rabbinic tradition is the only intellectual movement from ancient times that rejects Greek rational-idealism, and one that develops an alternative system.[3] Vico also rejects rational-idealism and proposes a "scienza nuova". In working towards discovering “ancient Roman wisdom,” Vico proposes models that coincide with key aspects of Hebrew tradition. Is it perhaps that those congruencies are due to the fact that “ancient Roman wisdom,” as rabbinic thinking, is part of an “ancient Mediterranean wisdom,” having their own cultural patterns that are neither metaphysical or theological, both disengaged by rational-idealism, and which Vico tried to recover?
2. The Rupture of Logos and the Triumph of Rational-Idealism
In its primordial state, the ideal constituted also the articulation of that idea: Meaning and its articulating word were indistinguishable. As Vico observes, originally the Greek logos, as the Hebrew dabar, meant “word / thing”.[4] Rational-idealism emerges from the rupture of the logos. The inaugural debate between Gorgias and Socrates (which still reverberates to our days) proceeds to break the link of word from thing. Both attempt to fissure the logos in two, "rhetoric / philosophy", and maintain a hierarchical opposition between them. This rupture marks the development of Greek thinking through the centuries. Once the unity of the logos has been violated, rhetoric breaks the link with aletheia (truth) and becomes part of metis (clevernes), not sofia (intelligence). In Gorgias’ mind, rhetoric is similar to magic. Its purpose is to allow the speaker manipulate the audience, control its emotions as a skillful magician would do, creating illusions and lies in the mind of a public void of rational judgment. This rhetoric functions as an instrument for the irrational: It teaches the technique that will allow the speaker to spell the audience and have dominion over its emotions. It would be convenient to point out that for Gorgias this control is not immoral but something necessary for directing and motivating human society.[5] On the other hand, rational-idealism breaks the link between philosophy and word: The articulation of this idea is marginal to meaning. The idea is represented by an absolute truth governed by universal thought categories, independent of any particular language.[6] From here departs not only a monolingualism peculiar to idealist culture and thinking – only one language reflects the pure and absolute truth – but that this truth does not admit variations: It has categorical value in all historical periods and in all cultures.[7] Such truth rejects the verisimilar and reduces the study of the humanities to marginal and inconsequential ambits. Also from this posture, we get the anti-humanist stance that characterizes modernity’s idealist philosophy.[8]
One of the consequences from the triumph of philosophy over rhetoric, and its subsequent displacement of the word in favor of pure thought, is what Ortega y Gasset describes as the “practice for the disarticulation of knowledge.”[9] The humanist movement of the Renaissance comes to repair this rupture. As Ernesto Grassi has pointed out, the purpose of Humanism is “the unity of res and verba.”[10] The work of the poet, thus confirmed by Juan Ramón Jiménez, is to repair the rupture “word / thing:” “Que mi palabra sea, la cosa misma, creada por mi alma nuevamente / Let my word be the same thing, newly created by my soul.”[11] For Vico also, "res, verba et rerum" are linked linguistically.[12] As clearly demonstrated by Professor Hidalgo-Serna, this basic aspect of Vichian thought differs from the traditional philosophy of ratio.”[13] Its purpose is to repair the fissure of the logos. The unity of sciences proceeds from the just mentioned; Vichian curriculum, its opposition to academic specialization[14] and his anticartesian criticism demand it.[15]
Developing since ancient times, Rabbinic tradition is the only intellectual movement in the West that continued postulating the integrity of “word / thing,” thus rejecting the hierarchical opposition “philosophy / rhetoric” and its subsequent unfolding. In a more profound sense, the integrity of the logos is corollary to Hebrew monotheism. If we suppose, as the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic tradition maintain, that the Cosmos is no more than a “Book” written by the hand of only one author, all the elements of this book must be organically linked, like the “Tree of Life” (Prov. 3: 1.8) – a symbol of Hebrew wisdom.[16] Translated into modern terminology, the integrity of “word / thing” postulates a Humboldt-like theory of language. As it has been noted, for Humboldt language is “More than a simple instrument of communication.” Quoting Humboldt, language is “the medium through which man simultaneously forms himself and the world.” The thing that the individual perceives outside himself allows him to give context to the word, at the same time that the word allows him to place the thing outside himself and recognize it as such. “Without language, objects would not be even such for men.” Again quoting Humboldt: “And thus, the world that is reflected on man is born between the language that links man with the world and fertilizes the former through the latter.”[17] From here we obtain that language establishes the unity and diversity of humanity at the same time. Rabbinic tradition maintains that God pronounced the “Torá,” or revealed Law, in “seventy languages,” the totality of languages and nations that are part of humanity. As a consequence, the “Torá” has “seventy faces” or modalities of interpretation – each face representing one of the languages and nations of humankind[18] – similar to the Humboldt’s “innere Sprachform”.[19] This postulates, as Vico proposes, “a common mental language to all nations,” capable to give articulation within a variety of linguistic modalities.[20] To reject the rupture of logos means, among other things, to negate the intellectual basis for the division of academic specialties,[21] even the division of ethics / eloquence.[22] It also means to negate a hierarchical relationship between rhetoric and philosophy, where one is either superior or marginal to the other. In this key point resides the difference with Valla, who supposes that “philosophy, the same way as a soldier or an orator, is under the command of oratory.”[23]
When negating the integrity of the logos, on one side rational-idealism exposes itself to the dangers of a sleepwalking logic that spills over a rational injury, which is sometimes delirious. These are the “philosophies” that Vico informs us about, which lead to “intellectual” corruption and “descend to skepticism.” On the other hand, once dispossessed of the ratio, “eloquence becomes abused.” Rhetoric at this stage will depend more and more of emotiveness (as exemplified by Cicero y Quintilianus), which will spellbind the audience with “false eloquence.”[24]
3. Mental Law and Sensus Communis
The peshat of Talmudic literature, erroneously translated as “literal sense,” actually means a possible interpretation of the text, which emerges from “what is commonly accepted.”[25] The peshat is possible thanks to logical and psychological factors, as well as to historical processes, which synchronically link the linguistic community, thus allowing the establishment of the obvious sense in a written text. For Maimonides the peshat is the linking sense of the Torá (=de-oraita) and as a consequence something that counts with the unanimous consent of the community of Israel. A synonymous expression of peshat prior to the Common Era is dabar she-ha-Tsadoqim modim bo, “something on which the Tsadoqites concur with;” in other words, that which is accepted by all, even the sectarians (Tsadoqites).[26] In this precise sense, the peshat is a universal phenomenon: The sensus communis of all the linguistic community. This is essentially oral: It can never become a written text. Rabbinic tradition maintains that together with the written law or the text of the Torá, the people of Israel received an oral law – the psychological-linguistic apparatus that allows the interpretation of the written text. Spanish-speaking Sephardim translate oral law as ley mental [mental law][27]. This ley mental constitutes the mental apparatus of the linguistic community, through which a text of the written law is processed (allowing certain syntactic connections and rejecting others). In this manner one establishes a semiologic relationship between the written text – or that which is interpreted – and the mental law, or the interpreter system. This relationship cannot become inverted: The interpreting system cannot be interpreted by any other system. Otherwise, mental law would be an interpreted object and not an interpreting system.[28]
From the latter, two fundamental parallels spring forth between rabbinic tradition and Vichian thinking. The peshat or sensus communis represents the primordial psychological-linguistic system that allows a community to articulate its own values: Then, any other cannot articulate this system. The oral aspect of the mental law does not only elude the reduction of the sensus communis to a written text, but it must precede a written text. According to Geonic tradition (teachers of Talmudic Academies in Babylonia, 8th - 11th c.) and that of Maimonides, the oral law of Israel preceded the written one.[29] This is a universal phenomenon: All written text presupposes a sensus communis or mental law that will allow it to be interpreted by the linguistic community. In this manner, the linguistic community projects meaning onto the written text and reads into it.[30] Vico postulates this as following:
free peoples must be lords of their own laws, since these are the ones that give those laws the meanings that conduct the powerful to observe them, and who [. . .], would not like to have them.[31]
Second, as Vico shows, the sensus communis processes “a judgment without any reflection.”[32] This is not the effect of a verbal communication but of “divine providence” that forms all nations. In the same way as the berit or the bond of the Hebrew nation,
It is the criteria taught to the nations by divine providence to define what is certain in respect to the natural law of peoples; from which the nations pinpoint to understand correctly the substantial subjects of such law, through which all convene with certain modifications.[33]
In a lesser voice, such agreement is sacred, something that is transcendentally binding, and emanates from archaic intuitions originating from a preverbal state (and as a result pre-voluntary) from all the linguistic community.[34] As we have indicated somewhere else, this type of intuition forms from collective trances that will affect the linguistic community’s imagination and the perimeter of semantic possibilities.[35]
4. Rhetoric
In the Andalusian-Jewish tradition, the Bible is considered as the paradigm of melitsa – Hebrew word that translates into rhetoric – in the sense of “art of eloquence.”[36] The Sevillian Shelomó ibn Verga (d. ca. 1520), author of the famous work Shebet Yehudá, asserts that “the Jews are the masters of rhetoric (melitsa)”, due to the fact “that their children are raised on the lap of the (Hebrew) Bible, which is the essence of rhetoric (melitsa).”[37] David Nieto too (1654-1728) – Venetian who lived in the same age as Vico, and who was Rabbi in Liorna, then of the Sepharadi community of London – maintains that the Hebrew Bible is the paradigm of the melitsa-rhetoric.[38] The melitsa-rhetoric tradition, as told by ibn Verga, continued to be cultivated in the Talmud.[39] In effect, the teachers of the Talmudic Academies in Israel and Babylonia (3rd – 4th c.) are called Amora’im (singular of 'amora), of the root ‘MR “to speak,” “to articulate,” “to expose.” The ‘amora is the orator, or master of eloquence who develops the topics of the ancient masters of the Mishná, key work for rabbinic tradition compiled circa at the end of the 2nd century. The Mishná contains (depending of how it is counted) sixty or seventy treatises, divided in six sedarim, “orders.”[40] This is not a legal code (analogous to Roman codes), as some modern researchers think it is.[41] Better yet, its treatises contain the common loci – what Vico calls legal “oratory themes.”[42] – that will be developed in the Academies by the masters of eloquence or ‘amora’im.
The rational-idealism imposes itself; as a result there is no need for eloquence. The absolute is necessary. As the root vir suggests, truth (verdad) means “might / force” and as its end, it means violence. This [truth] must impose itself ipso facto: Due to the fact that it is absolute. This affects our concepts of ethics and morality. The truth that the moral philosophers deal with is an objective category.[43] Hence, the “quantum jump” is realized from the metaphysical (to be) to the ethical (to make): Violence is the function of ethics.[44] With Vico, “common sense springs forth from the verisimilar.”[45] The mathematical model that the Cartesian system proposes excludes the aspect of opinion and the verisimilar. From the rational-idealist perspective, when two individuals arrive at two opposite conclusions, one should necessarily conclude that at least one is wrong. The other expresses an erroneous view that does not agree with the rational. Applied to the legal ambit, this model leads to the absurd conclusion that a great number of the most distinguished jurists are either irrational or dishonest. As Ch. Perelman has observed in his criticism of the Cartesian model:
If the important decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States are rarely unanimous, one should accuse at least one of these respected jurists of being irrational or dishonest. Or should one perhaps conclude that disagreements in (matters of) law should be explained with specific reasons?[46]
The intellectual space of the teachers of the Mishná and the Talmud moves within the ambit of the verisimilar. The Talmud does not recognize any specific metaphysical system. One will not find in the Talmud formal and analytical proofs, proceeding as in scholastics, of syllogisms accompanied by axioms, premises and conclusions. Its proofs are not “demonstrative,” structured from formal deductions and inductions.[47] The object of Talmudic dialectics are equiprobable and inequiprobable alternatives, inferences and analog constructs, undetermined and statistical knowledge, variables and quantitative differences.[48] In the Talmudic lexicon the word “rational” (muskal) does not appear. Its dialectic is expository: It proposes the “reasonable” (sebara), not the “rational” (muskal). The divergent and contradictory opinions that the ‘amora’im study and propose are not classified into “true” (emet) and “false” (sheqer). One of the fundamental doctrines of rabbinic dialectic was established by the ‘Amora Samuel (circa 2nd to the end of the 3rd c.) Referring to the numerous controversies between the schools of Hillel and Shammai, he postulates the following doctrine: “These [of the school of Shammai] and those [of the school of Hillel] [express] the words of the Living God, but the halakha [legal norm] is according to the school of Hillel.[49] From here two fundamental points depart. First, the dialectic must postulate an absolute horizontality among the disputing parties: Each one expresses “the words of the Living God.” Second (and as a consequence of the former), controversies are not to be resolved metaphysically, according to a certain supreme hierarchical proof, but through the process of halakha (legal norm), where the judicial authorities adopt a position instead of the other: The “other” is not necessarily false, but specific reasons and situations leads to take one decision over the other. This is why rabbinic literature also includes the dissident or rejected minority opinion.
This suggests, the same way Vico does, that the foundations for the preeminence of one opinion over the other is due to particular and concrete terms, products of a rational modality that is essentially historic.[50] It is important to remember that the noun halakha (legal norm) comes from the verb halakh, “to walk:” The magistrates, teachers, and society, choose to conduct themselves through one path and walk according to one of the opinions instead of the other. Considering its historic context, judicial decisions cannot be categorical. Rabbinic tradition teaches, “the Torá that God revealed to Israel was revealed in [terms that express] forty nine faces of impurity and forty nine faces of purity.[51] Alluding to that doctrine, R. Yom Tob as-Sibili (“the Sevillian) (ca. 1250-1330) teaches, in the name of the “French rabbis of blessed memory,” that when Moses ascended to the heavens to receive the Torá, “forty nine faces were indicated for prohibition and forty nine for permission” on each of the commandments. He asks God how could this be possible. He answers: “in each generation the Sages of Israel must determine [one of the faces, and that law will be] according to what they [decide].”[52]
The rational-idealist intellectual space rejects the probable. Similarly, the space of what is probable does not tolerate absolutist idealism. Already in his De nostri (1709) and Institutiones Oratoriae (1711, 1738), Vico answers to the Cartesian challenge by developing a theory of rhetoric that will allow an explanation for the philosophic basis for elocutio, which operates in the ambit of the probable.[53] Once elocutio is not conceived in terms of scientific models, Vichian and Talmudic rhetoric develop a dialectic where, particularly in the forensic ambit, the opposed opinion is not necessarily wrong. Referring to the Talmud’s legal dialectic, Perelman observes:
Jewish tradition, which never intended to conceive the law through a scientific model, offers a meaningful history on this point. In the Talmud two schools of biblical interpretation are in constant struggle, the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai. . . One Voice from above replied that both theses expressed the word of the Living God. This lesson is clear: Two opposed interpretations can be equally respected, and it is not necessary to mark as unreasonable at least one of these interpretations.[54]
The same can be said about forensic Vichian eloquence.
5. Hermeneutics
Rabbinic rhetorical epistemology emerges from hermeneutics (derasha or “exposition”) of the Biblical text. Differently from Christian hermeneutics, the purpose of the derasha is not to discover the original sense of the Biblical text, but to generate a new meaning independent from the author’s intention.[55] In specific terms, its purpose is to amplify and modify the semantic sense of the word contained in the peshat or sensus communis of the text, utilizing hermeneutic norms that compare, link, and differentiate.[56] Eloquence is the art of presenting to the public this new meaning. In this manner, the derasha penetrates the mind of the community; eventually it will become part of its sensus communis and it will be the peshat or “obvious sense” of the sacred text. In this manner, the derasha, as Vichian eloquence, is intimately linked with “virtue” and “wisdom.” In precise terms: “Eloquence is nothing more than the wisdom of speech,”[57] as in Vichian ingenuity.[58] The orator focuses on those topics that will “make the mind ingenious.”[59] In Rabbinic tradition, the distinctive aspect of the “sage” (hakham) is the faculty to compose its own derasha; a “disciple” (talmid) could capture its meaning, but he will not know how to compose it.[60]
Historically, the derasha filled the vacuum created by the destruction of the political (the monarchy), religious (Jerusalem’s Temple) and judicial (the Sanhedrin or Supreme Court) institutions in the year 70. The derasha emerges for the first time at the end of the first century (before the common era) when Israel’s civil and political institutions were coming to an end. It reaches its apogee at the end of the 2nd c., after having suffered its worst military catastrophe with the defeat of Bar Kokhba (135). Through the derasha the people’s sensus communis is transformed, thus allowing it to capture the Biblical text in the context of their new situation. In concrete terms, the derasha replaces government institutions and bureaucracies.[61] All dialectic technique, and as a result rhetorical, presupposes that a sensus communis allows to persuade in the name of “reason,” “equity,” “equality,” “liberty,” “religion,” or any of the basic values that unite the community and promote social action. Without the sensus communis accompanied by rhetoric, one could impose but not convince.[62] Thus, the derasha continues developing through all the rabbinic period (at the end of the 7th c.), until to relatively modern times. Without derasha, Israel could not have survived two thousand years of exile.
Hermeneutics is the effect of historical situations, not of philosophical theories.[63] Its context is the tension between the “ideal” that emerges from the sensus communis of the text and the “reality” that confronts the community. Hermeneutics does not harmonize between these two domains; better yet, it builds bridges that will allow new strategies of social action and spiritual formation. This suggests, that in the same manner of Vives’ ingenious-inventiveness, the frame of the derasha is the concrete situation – just as demanded by the Hebrew concept of dabar, “word-thing” – not the abstract meaning of a verbum disengaged from res.[64] The following example is paradigmatic. In Jerusalem’s Temple, as in the rest of the ancient world, “service” to God meant an offering of sacramental sacrifices. With the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the people of Israel, the offering of sacramental sacrifices was impossible to fulfill. Without derasha one had two alternatives. One was to transgress the Biblical prohibition of establishing a Temple outside Jerusalem, as some Jews did in Alexandria and the Elephantine colony of Egypt. Another option would be to eliminate all sacramental services. Both alternatives would have constituted the end of the Jewish people and their religion. The dilemma is resolved through derasha. In Hebrew ‘aboda (“service”) means offerings of sacramental sacrifices. Now, in the Pentateuch there is a passage that exhorts to “serve” God “with thy hearts” (Deut. 11:13). Linking both terms, the derasha questions: “What service can be achieved only within the heart?” And it proposes: “It is prayer! (tefilá).” From here springs forth one the most revolutionary doctrines in the history of religious ideas: “Prayers (tefilot) were instituted in consideration of (keneged) daily sacrifices.” This doctrine establishes not only that prayer constitutes the true “service of the heart,” but also as a consequence the sage (hakham) replaces the priest, and the Synagogue the Temple. One must point out that the model of the Church and the Mosque was not the Temple of Jerusalem, but the Synagogue, then dispersed throughout the Diaspora of Israel.[65]
In a more general domain, the hermeneutic experience is the function of the doctrine that stipulates that the “Torá speaks in the language of Adam’s children (bene Adam).”[66] Translated into Vichian terminology, this means that God expresses Himself according to the “sapienza volgare.” Now then, the semantics of vernacular language contain prejudices that prevent to capture the divine message in all of its aspects and content. This means that the Adamic language must be object of perpetual purification. Through the derasha the orator purifies the archaic intuition of vernacular semantics, elevating the “sapienza volgare,” thus creating a new sensus communis and a new peshat. Without this process of semantic refinement all “nuova scienza” is impossible to take into effect. If the semantics are compromised, “ancient man” will end up perverting the “new language” assimilating it in terms of his “ancient semantic.”[67] The semantic purification effected through hermeneutics allows God to “newly” speak to the linguistic community through their sensus communis.[68]
While the purpose of philosophy (and as a result of philosophic hermeneutics) is the “closure” of problems by resolving them permanently, the hermeneutics founded on the sensus communis “inaugurates” radical apertures of problems that will be resolved not metaphysically, but through a historical process of social action that radically affects the sensus communis.[69] The curvature that hermeneutics imposes to the text transforms it from a self-referencing system to a self-critical system.[70] This type of hermeneutics is self-subversive: All criticism must direct itself to the community’s sensus communis, never in third person.[71]
Three aspects of rabbinic hermeneutics will help to capture the just mentioned. First, the derasha functions as a pedagogical instrument, in the classroom, in the weekly reading at the Synagogue and community assemblies. The purpose of derasha, as the ideal of Vichian education, is to “put wisdom at the service of the human species.”[72] Second, it is an instrument of ethics. “Because sciences,” as Vico teaches, are “of the same nature as virtues.”[73] Specifically, its function is to develop the archaic sensus communis. When hermeneutics teaches that the Biblical proverbial saying “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Lev 24:20) means monetary indemnification, this is what is intended because otherwise there would not be true justice.[74] Ultimately, all derasha is a criticism to a prior sensus communis. We shall illustrate this point with the last example. When hermeneutics transforms the semantic “eye for eye” into indemnification, it is also directing criticism to a prior interpretation of the law of retribution. The same happens with the derasha that teaches the commandment “respect your father and mother” (Ex. 20: 12), thus including the “step-father and the step-mother”[75]: This is simultaneously criticizing a prior sensus communis that limited this rule to blood-related parents.
One has pointed out that the Vichian orator functions as an educational character.[76] When one includes the literary elements of the community to the sensus communis, “eloquence” plays an important hermeneutical role.[77] Thus affirming the intimate relationship among “virtue, wisdom and eloquence,”[78] and “whoever is not just cannot truly be wise.”[79] Consequently, neither rabbinic or Vichian eloquence are pathetic; both exclude emotiveness.[80]
6. Congruencies
Rabbinic tradition and Vichian thinking assume a certain primordial system (sensus communis, peshat) that allows the linguistic community to process its texts in an “obvious” manner, and recognize certain key-concepts that mutually allow a constant dialogue and persuasion. The ambit of this dialogue is the verisimilar, and its exposed opinions represent the reasonable, not the absolute or necessary. Rhetoric defines the intellectual, social and psychological space of this dialogue,[81] helping to choose one of its opinions. Eloquence functions as an alternative to “violence” – political, metaphysical, psychological, etc. – and serves as a unique ground for the solution of human conflicts. Both presuppose a legal system in the role of supreme referee regarding conflict of interests. One should point out that in rabbinic tradition, Moses is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, not the incarnation of a logos. Both conceive this system as something conditioned by historic factors and experiences that result in certain plurality, marking the variation and modalities, of human societies. This system is not static and it unfolds according to its own historical context proper to the community. The purpose of hermeneutics is to assimilate the historical context, thus directly affecting the community’s sensus communis. As Grassi confirms:
The interpretation of the being, that is the res, can only be taken into effect departing from the ambit of the response that must be given to that inter-appeal through the use of the pronounced word “here” and “now,” in other words, through the art of rhetoric.[82]
Then, contrary to Grassi, one must conclude that this response must be essentially historical. Hermeneutics do not give closure to problems, but it traces “paths” – in the precise sense of halakha – cultural routes and strategies, conforming to the proper pattern of the community. It is obvious in this manner that the sensus communis will not – it cannot – manifest in a homogenous form in all societies and in all historical periods. As Arnaldo Momigliano notes, this vision constitutes a manifesto “in favor of cultural plurality and respect for minorities,” whether it be Hebrew or Neapolitan.[83]
The rhetoric of which we have spoken, and the sprit of tolerance that it generates, encounter a peculiar voice in the “New Rhetoric” developed by Professor Chaim Perelman. One of its purposes, and perhaps the most meaningful, would be to free humanity of persecuting ideologies:
We are profoundly convinced that happiness and tolerance require that no political power should be deposited in the hands of a fanatic or ideologist that pretend to know the highest and more absolute truths, and who want to save humanity, without being concerned that those to be saved thus wish it or not.[84]
This essay appeared in Pensar para el nuevo siglo: Giambattista Vico y la cultura europea; vol. III, La Città del Sole, 2001; pp. 917-938.
[1] Jacob Neusner, Jerusalem and Athens, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1997, p. XIII.
[2] Cfr. Sephardism in the XIX Century: New Directions and Old Values, in “Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research,” 1977, 44, pp. 29-52; La Teoría del Conocimiento de Francisco Sánchez and verum / factum de Vico, in "Cuadernos Sobre Vico", 1994, 4, pp. 83-99; Vico, Humanismo Religioso y la Tradicion Sefardita, in "Cuadernos sobre Vico-, 1997, 7-8, pp. 255-264; La Ruptura del 1ógos: Algunas Observaciones sobre Vico y la Tradición Rabínica, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997, 7-8, pp. 265-278; Imagination and Religious Pluralism: Maimonides, ibn Verga, and Vico, in “New Vico Studies,” 1992, 10, pp. 36-51.
[3] Refer to Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986, pp. xxvi - xxvii; Homo Mysticus: A Guide to Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1999, pp. ix-x.
[4] SN § 401.
[5] See Golden Doves with Silver Dots, cit., pp. 63-64.
[6] This illusion is the result of confusing certain aspects of Greek language and grammar with canons of human thinking; look Golden Doves with Silver Dots, cit., pp. 7-8.
[7] One has treated this subject more extensively in La ruptura del logos, cit., pp. 265-278. About Greek monolingualism, see Golden Doves with Silver Dots, cit., pp. 7-8, 155-156, and the study Monolingualism and Judaism, in "Cardozo Law Review", 1993, 14, pp. 1713-1744.
[8] See Ernesto Grassi, La rehabilitación del humanismo retórico. Considerando el antihumanismo de Heidegger, en “Cuadernos sabre Vico,” 1992,2, pp. 21-34.
[9] José Ortega y Gasset, La rebelión de las masas, in Obras Completas de José Ortega y Gasset, Madrid, Alianza, 1994, vol. 4, p. 218. A comparison between Ortega and Vico in “Cuadernos Sobre Vico,” 1991, 1.
[10] Ernesto Grassi, Vico y el humanismo, Barcelona, Anthropos, 1999, p. 15.
[11] “Inteligencia,” in Segunda Antología Poética, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1920.
[12] Giambattista Vico, lnstitutiones oratariae, 35, en Opera Omnia, Bari,
Laterza, vol. VII, p. 183; quoted by Hidalgo-Serna in the next footnote.
[13] Emilio Hidalgo-Serna, Víves, Calderón, y Vico, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1992, 2, pp. 75-88.
[14] See Giorgio Tagliacozzo, La Unidad del Conocimiento, presentation, footnotes and translation by José M. Sevilla, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997,7-8, pp. 209-236. Cfr. Giuseppe Patella, Giambattista Vico, la Universidad y el Saber, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997, 7-8, pp. 101-112.
[15] About this subject look Gemma Muñóz-Alonso López, La crítica de Vico a Descartes, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1992, 2, pp. 51-63.
[16] I have expanded this subject in God as a Writer: Omnipresence and the Art of Dissimulation, in “Religion and Intellectual Life,” 1989, 6, pp. 31-34. Cfr., Golden Doves, cit., pp. xxi-xxii, 23-6, 59-60, 138-142, 167.
[17] Donatella Di Cesare, Wilhelm von Humbold y el estudio filosófico de las lenguas, Barcelona, Anthropos, 1999, p. 33.
[18] See Golden Doves, cit., p. 120. This is the primary thesis of Professor Neusner, who defends that one should speak of “Judaisms” in the plural, particularly when one studies ancient Judaism.
[19] See Golden Doves, p. xii; y D. di Cesare, Wilhelm von Humbold y el estudio filosófico de las lenguas, cit., pp. 85-89.
[20] SN § 161, cfr. S 162.
[21] See John D. Schaeffer, Sensus Communis, Durham, Duke University Press, 1990, p. 152. Cfr. supra footnote 14.
[22] See Sensus Communis, cit., p. 156.
[23] Quoted by E. Grassi, La filosofía del Humanismo, Barcelona, Anthropos, 1993, p. 133. Cfr. Nancy S. Struever, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Vichian Inquiry, in "New Vico Studies", 1985, III, p. 140.
[24] SN § 1102. Cfr. Gustavo Costa, Vico's Political Thought in His Time and Ours, in Giorgio Tagliacozzo (ed.), Vico and Contemporary Thought, Atlantic Highlands –N.J., Humanities Press, 1976, part I, p. 232-234; and I. D. Schaeffer, Sensus Communis, cit., p. 153.
[25] I have elaborated on this subject in my study Texte et societé: histoire du texte révelé, in ed. Shmuel Trigano, La societé juive a travers l'histoire, Paris, Arthème Fayard, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 66-69; and in my article Basic Concepts in Rabbinic Hermenutics, in “Shofar,” 1997, 16, pp. 1-12.
[26] See Basic Concepts in Rabbinic Hermeneutics, cit., pp. 1-12.
[27] It is important to note that this voice in the Latin form lex mens penetrates Italian judicial thinking. This becomes evident from the brilliant exposition of Dr. Fabrizio Lomonaco, presented in the same Congreso lnternacional sobre Vico celebrated in Seville, where he examined the meaning of this term in Gravina. The text can be compared with the work Diritto naturale e storia. Note su Gravina e Vico.
[28] See Golden Doves, cit., pp. xvii, 54, 111-112; cfr. ibidem, pp. 12, 136. There is a very erudite discussion of the terms “mind” and “reason,” in Santino Cavaciuti’s In margine alla dottrina vichiana di “mente” e “ragione”: assolutezza e concretezza della “mens”; strumentalittà e astrattezza della “ratio,” in Antoni Quarta e Paolo Pellegrino (eds.), Humanitas: Studi in Memoria di Atttonio Verri, Lecce, Mario Congedo Editore, vol. 1, pp. 93-102. Nonetheless, in my view, mind / mens is only an interpreting system, in the precise sense of “ley mental” within the Spanish Sephardic tradition, while reason / ratio is not more than the application of a method that allows to calculate or evaluate something.
[29] This fundamental aspect has been documented in my Studies in the Mishne Tora (heb.), Jerusalem, Mossad Harav Kook, 1978, pp. 95-96.
[30] See Texte et societé, cit., pp. 68-69; Basic Concepts in Rabbinic Hermeneutics, cit., pp. 6-7.
[31] SN § 936 (cfr. Ciencia Nueva, Tecnos, Madrid, 1995, Spanish tnsl. by R. de la Villa). About oral aspect of “sensus communis” in Vico, see Sensus Communis, cit., pp. 68-79; cfr. ibidem, p. 125.
[32] SN § 142.
[33] SN § 145. (Cfr. op. cit., Spanish trnsl.)
[34] See Sensus Communis, cit., pp. 152-153.
[35] See Homo Mysticus, cit., pp. 63-84, 131-134.
[36] See the Spanish-Hebrew bilingual edition of David Nieto, Matte Dan. Londres, 5474-1714, IV, Indice. fo1. 97a; IV, 8, fo1. 103a. With this term Yehuda al-Harizi translates the title of Aristotele’s Rhetoric.
[37] Shelomo ibn Verga. Shebet Yehuda, Azreil Schochet and Y. Beer (eds.), Jerusalem. Mossad Bialik, 5707-1947, XXXII, p. 80. Cfr. Our book In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity. Albany, SUNY, 1992. pp. 180-181; Imagination and Religious Humanism, cit., p. 36-52.
[38] Matte Dan, Londre5, 5474-1714. IV, 8. fo1. 103a ff.
[39] Shebet Yehuda, XXXII. p. 89 (II. 3-4).
[40] Sedarim is usually translated as “divisions.” Without a doubt, Imanuel Aboab’s translation “orders” or “classes” is more correct, Nomologías, 5389- 1649, p. 250; in other words, “the organization” of subjects that should need to be elaborated by the masters of eloquence. The root of this term, SDR appears in SiDduR or the “ordering” of liturgical themes that will be developed by the precedentor at the Synaogue; in SeDeR as “ordering” the themes celebrating the Exodus from Egypt that the participants will develop. SiDRa indicates the portion of the Hebrew Bible that will be paraphrased into Aramean or the one that the class teacher intends to develop in the classroom, but never the Hebrew text by itself. In this manner, one will not find the root of this term accompanied by the verb “to read” (qara).
[41] See Golden Doves, cit., p. 99.
[42] Della instituzione oratoria, cit., p. 20. Cfr. Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, Notre Dame, Notre Dame Press, 1971, pp. 84-85; y cfr. E. Grassi, Vico y el humanismo, cit., pp. 9-16. It is important to note that the loci of the Mishná are not classified metaphysically, in accidents, properties, etc., as in Atistotelian Rhetoric. About topics on the Mishná and its organization, see Jacob Neusner, The Philosophical Mishnah, Atlanta . Georgia, Scholars Press, 1988, vol. 1.
[43] Cfr. Ch. Perleman, Justice, Law, and Argument, Dodrech - Holand, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980, p. 113.
[44] About the function of violence in pagan political-judicial systems, see our article Law and Hermeneutics in Rabbinic Jurisprudence: A Maimonidean Perspective, in "Cardozo Law Review,” 1993, 14, pp. 1662-1663, 1669, 1671, footnote 74; cfr. Our article One-Dimentional Jew, Zero-Dimensional Judaism, in “Annual of Rabbinic Judaism,” 1999, 2, pp. 31-50.
[45] See E. Grassi, Vico y el humanismo, cit., pp. 7-9.
[46] Ch. Perelman, Justice, Law, and Argument, cit., p. 165.
[47] There is an excellent analysis of Talmudic dialectics in Jerusalem and Athens, cit., chapter 4.
[48] See Homo Mysticus, cit., p. 112; cfr. ibidem, pp. 102, 113-115, 118- One should note that Maimónides rejects Aristotle's concept of “need,” cfr. ibidem, pp. 113.
[49] Talmud ‘Erubin 13b.
[50] This is one of the fundamental doctrines of ibn Verga, see Imagination and Religious Pluralism: Maimonides, ibn Verga, and Vico, cit., pp. 43- 47. I study this type of rationality in In the Shadow of History, cit., pp. 176- 178. About Vichian historical consciousness and its relationship with his theory of rhetoric, see the important article by Umberto Galeazzi, Vico e la conscenza storica. Sui Sapere ermeneutico della Scienzo Nuova, found in Antonio Quarta e Paolo Pellegrino (eds.), Humanitas: Studi in Memoria di Antonio Verri, Lecce, Mario Congedo Editore, vol. 1, pp. 321-343. Cfr. Fabrizio Lomonaco, Critica storica e pirronismo: il modello olondese nell’età di Vico, in “Bollettino Filosofico,” 1999, 15, pp. 213-238.
[51] Massekhet Soferim, XVI, 6; see the bibliographic review in Midrasch Echa Rabbati, edic. Salomon Buber, Vilna, Wittwe & Gebruder Romm., 1899, p. 20, footnote 28. The reason why forty nine faces are revealed is because according to rabbinic tradition there are fifty different grades of intelligence. Grade number fifty represents absolute wisdom that does not permit any interpretation or variation.
[52] Hiddushe ha-Ritba apud Talmud ‘Erubin 13b. Cfr. my article The Legal Thinking of the Tosafot, in “Dine Israel”, 1975, VI, pp. L-LI, and noted references ibidem, footnote 6.
[53] This fundamental point has been examined in Sensus Communis, cit., chp. 3. Some technical aspects of this dispute are analyzed by Linda Gardiner Janik, A Renaissance Quarrel: The Origin of Vico's Anti-Cartessianism, in “New Vico Studies,” 1983, 1, pp. 39-50.
[54] Justice, Law, and Argument, cit., p. 165.
[55] See my article Law and Hermeneutics in Rabbinic Jurisprudence, in “Cardozo Law Review,” 1993, 14, pp. 1674-1677; and Texte et societé, cit., pp. 60-66; cfr. Golden Doves,cit., pp. xviii-xix, 122-123.
[56] About the technique of derasha and some basic examples, see Golden Doves, cit., pp. XVIII-XIX.
[57] Giambattista Vico, Las Academias y las relaciones entre filosofia y elocuencia,. Spanish trnsl. and footnotes by José M. Sevilla, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997, 7-8, p. 476; Autobiography, English version, Part A, 172, p. 144; SN § 1112. About this subject, see Michael Mooney, The Primacy of Language in Vico, in the edition of Giorgio Tagliacozzo, Vico and Contemporary Thought, Atlantic Highlands – N.J., Humanities Press, 1976, parte I, pp. 194-197.
[58] About the roots of Vichian ingenuity in Spanish Thinking, see the eminent study of Emilio Hidalgo-Serna, Vives, Calderón, y Vico, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1992, 2, pgs, 75-88. To my view, this ingenious-inventiveness is nothing more than the hiddush or “new mode” of Talmudic textual focusing that all hermeneutic genuinely “creative” proposes; cfr. Homo Mysticus, cit., pp. xi-xii. One should note that Vives, Gracián and Calderón are of converso origin.
[59] SN § 498. Cfr. E. Grassi, Vico y el humanismo, cit., pp. 23-30.
[60] See Golden Doves, cit., p. xviii. Cfr. Homo Mysticus, cit., pp. 46-47.
[61] See Texte et societé, cit., pp. 74-82.
[62] See Ch. Perelman, Justice, Law, and Argument, cit., pp. 120-132. About the character of Vico’s rhetorical persuasion, see Paolo Fabiani, La Persuasuación desde las Institutiones Oratoriae a la Scienza Nuova, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997, 7-8, pp. 59-72.
[63] This is contrary to Humbolt’s position, cfr. D. di Cesare, Wilhelm von Humholdt y el estudio filosójico de las lenguas, cit., chp. XVI. Consequently, it is more correct to speak of metaphysical hermeneutics rather than hermeneutical metaphysics; on this very important Vichian distinction, see the seminal article by Leon Pompa, Hermeneutica Metafísica y Metafísica Hermenéutica, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997, 7-8, pp. 141-166.
[64] Cfr. E. Grassi, La filosofía del Humanismo, cit., pp. 115-120.
[65] See Law and Hermeneutics in Rabbinic Jurisprudence, cit., pp. 1673- 1674; Monolingualism, cit., pp. 1737-1739.
[66] See Golden Doves, cit., p. 151 and quoted references ibidem. footnote 54.
[67] This is the criticism launched by Yehudá ha-Levi about the christianizing and islamizing of pagan societies; see El Cuzari, 4:11, 13,. Spanish trnsl. by R. Jacob Abendana, Madrid, Librería Victoriano Suárez, 1910, pp. 245-249. Cfr. Homo Mysticus, cit., pp. 134-135.
[68] See Talmud Berakhot 63b; cfr. Sifre, § 33, ed. L. Finkdstein, New York, The Jewish Theological Seminary, 1969, p. 59. In the same way as in any classic text, La Celestina, Don Quijote, etc., speak again to the modern reader through the semantic transformation of language; cfr. Basic Concepts in Rabbinic Hermeneutics, cit., pp. 11-12.
[69] As a result, Sephardic Jewish authorities, among them Maimonides, stipulate that a law promulgated on hermeneutic grounds can be abrogated even by an inferior judicial authority. See our Studies in the Mishne Tora (heb), cit., pp. 31-32.
[70] Cfr. Texte et societé, cit., pp. 60-66.
[71] Cfr. Nancy S. Struever, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Vichian Inquiry, in "New Vico Studies,” 1985, 3, pp. 140-142.
[72] Giambattista Vico, Sobre la Mente Heroica, trnsl. to Spanish by Francisco J. Navarro Gómez, in “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997, 7-8, p. 462.
[73] Ibidem, pp. 463-464.
[74] See Talmud Baba Qamma 84a; Law and Hermeneutics in Rabbinic Jurisprudence, cit., pp. 1672-1673; Monolingualism, cit., pp. 1736-1737.
[75] Talmud Ketubot 103a; cfr. Maimonides, Mishne Tora, Mamrim VI, 15.
[76] See María José Rebollo Espinosa, El Educador Vichiano, en “Cuadernos sobre Vico,” 1997,7-8, pp. 181-190.
[77] See SN §§ 429, 438,779, 935, etc.; cfr. Sensus Communis, cit., chapters 4-5, and pp. 158-159.
[78] Autobiography [Part A, 1725), English version, p. 144.
[79] SN§ 1112.
[80] Cfr. E. Grassi, Vico y el humanirmo, cit., pp. 1-4.
[81] Cfr. Rhetoric and Philosophy in Vichian Inquiry, cit., p. 141
[82] E. Grassi, Vico y el humanismo, cit., p. 133.
[83] The New York Review of Books, Nov. 11, 1976, p. 33.
[84] Mieczyslaw Maneli, Perelamn’s New Rhetoric, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic publishers, 1993, p. 133.