THE SOPHISTICATED RELIGIONISTS: BUBER AND POLANYI

The new religious positivist, the self-reliant believer, has certain dog­mas about the value of self-reliance which should be taken as tentative opinions to be criticized. Self-reliance must be taken as a fundamental point of departure, as a primary principle; however, not the optimistic (and thus questionable) principle of the old rationalist, but rather the desperate one (rooted in admitted failure, not in questionable success), akin to that of the new religious positivist.

A. Again, we see how clouded simple issues may become. What is self-reliance, commitment, metaphysics? In science? In religion? His­torically, much of the study of philosophy has centered on the truth and falsity of certain philosophical propositions, which, indeed, enter reliance and commitment in a large way; but, consequently, the studies of attitudes, programs, and ways of life, have regrettably suffered too much neglect. Thus speaks the modern enlightened theologian.

There is here a quaint mixture of something apologetic, almost dis­honorable, and something noble and admirable. The apologetic aspect is to minimize the various doctrinal differences between various sects and to see these as mere reflections of a variety of ways of life. This is religious positivism pure and simple, and no enlightened theologian is free of it; not even writers who, like Martin Buber, frankly reject parts of their traditions, doctrinal or ritualistic, which they view as superstitious and magical.

I wish to quote here one of the more popular introductions to the philosophy of religion, Frederick Ferre’s Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion (1967). The thesis of the volume is summed up on page 371, at the introduction to the discussion of “the cognitive possibilities of theistic language,” which simply adumbrates the author’s worry that unless his theology is empirical it may be arbitrary and thus irrational.

The obvious criticism of Ferre’s thesis is that what is “hard to come to grips with” is not enlightenment to be led by, but ignorance to be tackled. It is here, however, that most rationalistically or scientifically oriented critics are slightly in error, attacking the religious not head-on, but off-tangent - a tangent which leads straight to old-fashioned or clas­sical or positivistic or uncritical rationalism. The two “primary images” of Ferre are not to be rejected, since they are quite correct; also they are indeed “hard to come to grips with”; but they are not “theistic” in the least, especially not when “theistic” is a euphenism for Ferre’s own denomination. Rather, “the two primary images” are religious in the skeptical sense in which Einstein and even Russell must be regarded as religious. The ideas of “life style” and of “ways of seeing” are ad­mittedly religious in some traditional sense, but they are not identical with traditional religion, much less with that of a given traditional sect.

B. The best defenders of religion as the new enlightenment, as a “style of life,” are Martin Buber and Michael Polanyi. Both are Jews by descent. The one advocates a refined version of Hassidism (which is the way of life of a neo-Cabbalistic Jewish sect) but is opposed to all mandatory tradi­tional Jewish ritual; the other advocates a refined version of Catholicism. The one draws his analogies from the social sciences and the humanities and the finest of the fine arts; the other from the natural sciences and their philosophy and history. Both advocate the new ideas of intensified or heightened mode of cultured and civilized “way of life” - gracious living if you wish, but not of isolated individuals as much as of prefectionists in interpersonal relations, I-Thou relations - and both advocate the connois­seurship of the style of life; both see here a commitment and a refinement of education, both see here a new lease of life for the best in traditional religion on condition that the worst in it be frankly jettisoned.

The works of Martin Buber do not yield to summary, even a brief and superficial one, within the limits available here. Indeed, much of his contribution is part of a process of reviving a lost past and a lost education which is both religious and meaningful for modern Jews. I shall not discuss all this. Two points of his work should suffice. First, his Two Types of Faith, which is a brilliant piece of linguistic analysis in the wake of Georg Simmel but supporting an existentialist philosophy, and a strange piece of pseudohistory supporting a quaint pseudo­Judaism. We can believe, or have faith, or the like, says Buber, in two different senses, one indicated in the preposition “in x” the other “that y” or “concerning y”₉ etc., where x is a person, and y is a proposition. The Jew, the Psalmist, has faith in the Lord - not in his existence; rather, the Jew trusts that the Lord will not let him down, not the proposition that he exists. Saint Paul required that the Christian have faith in the Greek sense, in the sense of accepting the truth fo a propo­sition, so as to be saved - thus mixing Greek and Jewish elements of his religion.

Of course, considering the first two of the Ten Commandments in the light of Buber’s analysis will lead to blasphemy, since these no longer declare, respectively, the existence of the one deity and the non-existence of any other deities, but rather the trustworthiness of him and the untrust­worthiness of the others. Interestingly, historians of biblical theology may very well be so blasphemous and read the Ten Commandments this way: originally, some say, Israel’s deity was “jealous” and this led him to be­come overdeity, and only still later did he become the one and only.

Be this so; nevertheless, traditional Judaism obviously and most em­phatically opposes this reading. Hence, traditional Judaism has strong fundamental articles of faith in the very sense which Buber declares very Greek and very un-Jewish. This Buber’s piece of arbitrary apolo­getics has to be jettisoned. What remains is the advocacy of a way of life of trusting, of faith, and of hope.

The arbitrary apologetic streak in Buber’s philosophy need not con­cern us overmuch. Buber himself was willing to see in traditional Judaism much that he rejected as distasteful. In his “Reply to Critics,” in Schilpp’s volume The Philosophy of Martin Buber (Library of Living Philosophers), (1963), 1967, in a section published in Commentary and elsewhere in 1964, Buber ends on this point: that the Hassidim proposed to intensify religiosity, to intensify life, but by a magical formula; that we should try to avoid the formula, yet to go on pursuing the same end, said Buber, was his chief message. However, Buber never really liked to admit that he had a message. Again and again he said he was pointing the way and no more (something, one might add, an art critic has to do, or a good educator), he only wished to help people find their own way, not prescribe (art critics cannot prescribe taste or proclamations of taste).

What Buber’s philosophy amounts to in terms of religion in the strict and traditional sense is not clear to experts, let alone laymen. There are two or three biographies of him and innumerable studies, all inconclusive. It seems clear, however, that Buber shifts emphasis from doctrine to prayer. Prayer enriches life, especially when done in a way somewhat more sophisticated than going to the synagogue to recite some dead words just to fulfill a duty. If one wishes to pray, says Buber, one need not raise problems and enter discussions about the existence of the deity; when one really has to pray, one just prays.

There are two obvious criticisms of Buber, the one hostile and shallow, the other sympathetic and serious.

Buber has a baffling point here. Once we equated reasonableness with proof and became antireligious. Now we gave up this idea of reason­ableness, and Buber at least challenges us to reconsider all our ideas: Perhaps we should invent a new criterion of reasonableness and apply it to religion; perhaps we should act intuitively and simply pray, both when we feel like praying and when we feel that it is reasonable to pray; and perhaps we should simply become irrational. These are the alternatives and this is Buber’s challenge. Buber is not alone in challenging us, but his challenge, particularly, appeals to the religious scientific avant-garde, the subject of the present study. And the particularly appeals, I think, because of his attitude to the above alternatives.

To consolidate all this and to be somewhat more convincing, Buber has undertaken to perform two tasks, both of which he has executed. The first is to argue that the limit of self-reliance is the reliance of the individual on his specific background - social, cultural, religious, and even scientific. The second is to sift the reasonable from the unreasonable in religion.

I shall not discuss his execution of these two tasks, especially since I am studying here the phenomenon from the viewpoint of one more interested in science than in any specific religious commitment. But I have to state one outcome of these labors. The resulting philosophy will not be irrationalist, though decidedly not rationalist in the sense of classical uncritical rationalism. It will be a philosophy of commitment - of commitment as a precondition of rationality, not as the outcome of a rational decision. Yet the commitment is not arbitrary either - at least not as arbitrary as the average existentialist would have it. For the choice is not between a set of possible commitments but between a set of existing and living commitments of communities which tradi­tionally practice them.

Buber’s refusal to fit any categorization is systematic and stubborn. I have opened this chapter by dividing men not into scientists and priests but into knowers and seekers, and I view the religion of the knower as essentially different from that of the seeker. Buber fits neither category. His is not a knower, and preaches no doctrine; but he seeks not a doctrine, not the truth, but the community of those who seek communion in God. It is very hard to say, for those who demand that quest be a component of religion, whether Buber qualifies this way or not. He suggests getting rid of magic, but no new rationality; he suggests intensifying life and the quest for God, but says nothing on the quest for enlightenment. He is against excessive self-refiance but does not say to what degree one should allow, indeed strive for, integration in one’s community, without thereby losing one’s independence and self-reliance.

Here we see how important it is to view religion, as well as science, as a living tradition. And this is why here Polanyi comes to complement Buber: Prayer or any other religious conduct is part and parcel of the religious way of life, which is utterly parallel to the scientific way of life. Banish one, and you may just as easily banish the other; it all is a matter of initial and frankly arbitrary choice of an existing tradition practicing a given way of life. One chooses science, one religion, and Polanyi chooses (The Logic of Liberty) both: They both enrich his life.

Polanyi attacks the traditional rationalist philosophy of science as enlightenment. There is no rationality in the old sense; there is no proof in science; complete objectivity is impossible. Yet there is some objectivity within, and - as a matter of brute fact, if you will - to, a given scientific society (Science, Faith, and Society),

Comprehension, says Polanyi in the preface to his Personal Knowledge, “is neither an arbitrary act not a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity.” This sounds surprisingly Popperian, until one remembers that Polanyi, in the same volume, flatly rejects the correspondence or absolutist theory of truth. “Y is true,” he says, really means, “I believe X to be true.” And to see what belief means is to see what it entails in actual life, in praxis. Thus, Polanyi advocates a version of Duhem’s instrumentalist philosophy of science; but he shows that Duhem’s own statement of his view is too old-fashionedly rationalistic. It is less than Duhem had claimed it to be: within the Duhemian rules of science some alternatives are excluded, but the rules do not narrow the alternatives in each case to precisely one. Hence, moves in the history of science often had to be made by individuals prominent within the scientific tradition - moves not fully characterizable according to any articulated set of known rules (The Tacit Dimension), Here an element of authority enters the philosophy of science.

This point has been repeated by Thomas S. Kuhn, who is thus far utterly neutral in the debate concerning religion, in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and elsewhere. And he acknowledges his debt to Polanyi. The exact timing of a scientific revolution, says Kuhn, is not determined by any rules; the rules only prescribe a vague feeling of the approaching revolution. The exact timing is declared by the acknowledged leadership of the scientific community. So much for Kuhn’s position.

Again we come to an important element in all this, Polanyi’s doctrine of connoisseurship {Personal Knowledge). If you want to be a scientist - or an artist, or a theologian - you start neither a priori (by thinking) nor a posteriori (by observing); you start by going to the best available master and becoming his apprentice. The method, the style of life, is tacit and inarticulate; you learn it by apprenticeship. You cannot criticize religion or science from the outside, not do you become an insider by merely endorsing a doctrine; commitment is an existential affair; one learns the meaning of a commitment by practicing it.

C. Both Bubber and Polanyi become slightly authoritarian in places - out of the inner logic of their situation. As the limit of self-reliance is social, so transcending self-reliance lands one on the reliance on the authority of one’s leader. The task of sifting the reasonable from the unreasonable in any given religion is left to the leader to perform; and the outcome of that performance has to be accepted. A crucial instance is Buber’s Moses, which includes a critical introduction and an uncritical text. In his intro­duction, Buber rejects both the literal acceptance of the Bible as a historical document and its total overcritical rejection. The Bible, he says, should be treated as a distorted racial memory. If one can ascribe this idea to any single author, one may well accept R. G. Collingwood’s (The Idea of History) attribution of it to F. H. Bradley. This idea is admirable, and should be appreciated even though it has been practiced before (say, by Schweitzer), and even though its explicit formulation is by now com­monplace. But how do we rectify such memory? Buber does not say; he illustrates. He simply retells Moses’s story as he sees it. Willy-nilly he thus plays the role of a leader.

The admitted ineffability of the essential and vital and valuable elements of tradition is an enormous source of strength here. One cannot specify the tradition as well as one can convey the feel for it. On almost any significant question Buber or Polanyi offers an elusive, refined answer. Sociology should follow neither individualism nor traditionalism, but a sort of middle course. Social and political innovations must take place, but fall on fertile grounds. Religion is not merely a private faith and not merely a social and cultural way of life, but a sort of blend of the two. Sicence is neither inductive nor deductive, but a blend.

This, then, is the Buber-Polanyi intriguing doctrine of self-reliance which stands behind their religious doctrines. A self-reliant person develops his sensibilities to the utmost, even to a point beyond his ability to articulate them. He may learn to be critical on the way, but he must evolve to the postcritical level of intuitive expert judgments. These are not final: Sooner or later criticism may shake them; but they are above and beyond criticism when they rule the day. The classical rationalistic idea was that one must prove, and of course, thereby articulate, one’s views. Proof is too much to expect. We have, then, daring based on intuitive feelings, on expert touch. This is not only un- provable but even not articulated.

Now, what is not articulated can hardly be criticized, it seems. And so the new philosophy seems to land in blatant irrationalism. Yet this is an error. Strange as it may sound, the differences between the views of Buber and Polanyi and those of Popper and Bartley are secondary.

There are two important ingredients to judge, intuition and criticism. Now, readily or reluctantly, all major thinkers today agree about in­tuition, its value, the difficulty of articulating it, etc. Similarly, those who do not appreciate criticism are dismissed as irrationalists.

There are two secondary ingredients to judge: connoisseurship and the choice of a style of life. Now, the Popperian will say, it is preferable to attempt to articulate one’s intuitions in order to open them to crit­ical examination and evaluation. Even the connoisseurs and artists may benefit from attempts to articulate, though they cannot ever be entirely successful. The Buberite, however, will defend the working ineffable residue which may be destroyed by overarticulation. This, however, can be studied empirically - like the many tenets of positivist commitment. Buber and Polanyi are, when all is said and done, religious positivists: Whatever body of religious doctrine is articulated, they will relegate to a secondary position; it is the living working practice which they stress. Martin Buber was immensely consistent here and, where he could more easily point the way to the perplexed, regularly and repeatedly debunked his written words as poor substitutes for teaching, for live conversation. And, true enough, there is some distance between this and the old religious positivism, which in the works of some disciples of Malinowski identifies religion - including the affirmation of the faith - with mere ritual. Buberite positivism evades the intellectual question: How much of the doctrine of any religion is acceptable? This evasion, however, is not enough of a novelty to make a difference, even when Buber adds myriads of sophisticated and exquisite cultural and historical studies to his philos­ophical works.

The difference between the two avant-garde groups, the critical ration­alists and the sophisticated religionists, becomes even smaller; yet the religionists are not rationalists; ever so often they skate dangerously close to authoritarianism and hence to irrationalism, because they advocate the connoisseur’s intuition as best and hence binding - even though it keeps changing (improving?).

XI.