what i'm reading
"Some moderates regard the rather amorphous and unpredictable character of halakhah as its most admirable feature. Those who seek integrity and credibility by flattening out the halakhah into some uniform mode of artificial neatness trivialize its vibrancy as a living organism and run the risk of encouraging mediocre thinking where imagination is called for."
I think I said something like that elsewhere once. Anyway, guess the book (unless you know already), win a prize.
posted by miriam @ 7:09 PM
5 Comments:
Sounds alot like Legal Realism! Anyway, I have alot of problems with that paragraph.
1. Who are they talking about and what do they mean by flattening out halacha?
2. What do you mean by imagination?
3. Who says imagiantion is called for?
4. since when is "mediocre" the opposite of imaginative? It might be more "advanced" (I cant think of a better word) and difficult to "flatten" halakha than to do whatever it is those moderates do with halacha.
5. Does imagination ever not equal "make conform with whatever trandy leftist fad is in vogue"?
I will stop here for now.
quickly, i will respond to me of your questions:
#5
this critique would be (actually, in its original context, is) directed equally at those who try to show that halachh is really liberal in disguise as much as at those who try to show that it is conservative. hte point is that one shouldn't nec. try and show that halachah is "fundamentally" any one ideological thing.
since neither context was given, though, i wonder why you assume it's in support of a leftist fad?
working backlwards,
#4
good point. i don't want to say anything rash here (or regarding the rest of your comments) so i'll come back when i have more time (beli neder), but i do think there's something valuable here (you need not agree) even if its stated a bit too categorically.
oh, and i have no idea what legal realism is. so if you explain (and expalin what values it is associated with for you) that would be helpful.
i would guess that this whole line of argument goes in the scepticism of "radson" as the arbiter of everything category. further, not just scepticism, but the category of people who actively believe that what we should be going for as human beings is ultimately ill-defined (because it's too big for us) and therefore best 'defined' for the sake of using it with a good deal of fluidity. 'imagination' is then the kind of thing that allows you to say things that are relevant and meaningful but dn't necesarily follow from an analytical sequence of logical steps. so imagination is called for because lack of imagination makes you miss things.
it may require at least as much creativity to "flatten" (halacha, or anything else of substance), but its creativity of a different sort. (can't quite put my finger on teh distinction right noew.)
but you are right that this one sentence doesn't justify calling the alternatives "mediocre" or anything like that. a bit strident, perhaps, yes.
that was "reason" in the first sentence...
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