I’ve been meaning to comment on Matt’s skeptical post about public reason. In a nutshell, Matt worries that folks are offering arguments in publicly acceptable terms in “bad faith.” That is, they are motivated by their comprehensive views, which they know not everyone shares, and so they give an argument that is more broadly acceptable, even if they don’t really believe it.
Sez Matt:
. . . I am totally unconvinced that the “public reason” arguments against gay marriage are being offered in good faith. I know perfectly well that people who oppose gay marriage do so overwhelmingly either out of religious conviction or simple prejudice. I also know that people understand that such arguments cannot be presented in elite media contexts and so forth and that, as Beinart writes, it’s considered (even by people who haven’t studied Political Liberalism) to be a kind of ‘debate foul’ to just pound the Bible. So they gone out into the world, searching around for a tolerable public reason argument that will reach their favored conclusion. But the motivating issue for (the vast majority of) these people isn’t demographic shifts in Scandinavia, it’s the religion stupid. As a result, I have little incentive to take the empirical arguments offered by the anti-gay folks, and as a result of that, they have little reason to bother to make their arguments convincing (since they know no one will be convinced no matter what) rather than simply providing a kind of “public reason” cover for their real agenda.
I think Matt’s largely right as a matter of fact, but the relevance of Matt’s observation isn’t clear. Rawls is doing a bit of what he calls “ideal theory,” and although I don’t think Rawls conceives of ideal theory in the right way, it remains that norms of public reason are offered by Rawls as part of an ideal normative conception of a well-ordered society, and not as a description of actual norms of public discourse. The observation that people, as a matter of descriptive fact, offer public reasons in “bad faith” has the same standing as the observation that people, as a matter of descriptive fact, only grudgingly pay their taxes under the threat of sanction. That, of course, does not mean that it is okay for people to pay their taxes only grudgingly. It may be that they ought to recognize and be motivated by a duty of justice.
Rawls at one point talks about the way a society might move from a mere modus vivendi (a kind of truce or detente) to an order that is stable “for the right reasons,” i.e., because enough people have come to affirm a public conception of justice. Relatedly, we don’t just begin with full-fledged norms of public reason. These must develop over time. The fact that many folks recognize that some “arguments cannot be presented in elite media contexts and so forth and that, as Beinart writes, it’s considered (even by people who haven’t studied Political Liberalism) to be a kind of ‘debate foul’ to just pound the Bible” is a very important step on the path toward more widespread and robust norms of public reason.
I think we should consider it important to reinforce these norms, to make sure that people know what is an is not a debate foul. This is not something worth doing just for its own sake. For one thing, we need to do it so that we can have a debate at all, and not just the assertion and counter-assertion of incommensurable considerations. But mainly, we need to do it to reinforce the ideal of a pluralistic liberal order. We have to remind people, and keep reminding them, and keep reminding them, that we do not all agree on certain fundamental matters, and that therefore we should agree to refrain from using politics to impose our vision on others.
Now, I agree with Matt that the ideal of public reason is “in a great deal of tension with human nature.” I therefore don’t think that we can realize an order that is stable for the “right” Rawlsian reasons. The best we can hope for is some kind of modus vivendi. But this kind of stability need not be fragile. It can be fairly robust and self-equilibrating, and is quite worth having. It is unlikely that even most people will ever internalize norms of public reason. But if enough of the right kind of people do so, that can have a deeply positive effect on the neutrality and stability of our social order. So keep the faith.
“But if enough of the right kind of people do so, that can have a deeply positive effect on the neutrality and stability of our social order.”
Ah yes, the Right Kind of People, no it just won’t do if those horrid Jesusland people are allowed to participate, we can’t have that can we?
Note to Sportsmen: If you have pick between a team that has internalized the norms of public reason and one that knows how to field strip and clean its rifles, go with the riflemen. As always, we like to play a team that has a chip on its shoulder and a belief that it is disrespected for the over.
What makes you imagine that I had any intention whatsoever of excluding Jesuslanders from my idea of “the right kind of people?” I meant by that: public commentators and opinion-leaders.
I think “bad faith” is often in the eye of the beholder.
Let’s suppose I think abortion is wrong, and my religious views inform that opinion. When it comes time to argue the point in public, I can get with the program and argue my point in strictly non-religious terms. Would Matt say I’m arguing in bad faith just because I also espouse comprehensive religious views? Would my public arguments become valid (to Matt) if I later repudiated my religious beliefs but not my opposition to abortion?
What about those “bad faith” arguments that Matt might find more tolerable, like religiously-rooted opposition to the death penalty? Presumably, Matt also has “little incentive” to listen to any empirical or secular arguments from that quarter, since their benighted comprehensive views disqualify them from discourse.
Somebody tell Matt that if you don’t want to listen to what the other side says because you think they are a bunch of atavistic, witch-burning troglodytes, you can just ignore them. No need for all the sophistry.
Matt said:
‘But the motivating issue for (the vast majority of) these people isn’t demographic shifts in Scandinavia, it’s the religion stupid. As a result, I have little incentive to take the empirical arguments offered by the anti-gay folks, and as a result of that, they have little reason to bother to make their arguments convincing (since they know no one will be convinced no matter what) rather than simply providing a kind of “public reason” cover for their real agenda.’
~
As Matt (above comment) pointed out, this reasoning could be used to dismiss any claim made by a particular group without considering the merits of that claim. Isn’t that normally called ad hominem?
“I meant by that: public commentators and opinion-leaders.”
Gol Durn Dewayne, you hear that talkin head over there on thet television . . .
Hush up Merle, an pass me thet cleanin rag, if you dont mind.
Ah, the Talking Heads, the Editorial Board of the NYTimes, the Faculty Club of Harvard.
SSDD.
Kerry blamed his debacle on Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and talk radio. I wonder if Mikhail Gorbachev blames the samizdata. for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Its the same problem. When you condecend to people, for whatever reason, they will notice it, they will resent it and they will act on their resentment.
The problem of the chattering classes is that they always think that chattering (“public reason” herein) is the most important thing there is, as it is the thing they do the best, and they condecend readily to the non-chatters, because chatters always confuse inarticulateness with stupidity.
We see no reason (NPI) to change our betting strategy before the Thanksgiving day games.
I am not sure why it did not ad my name to the above Robert Schwartz.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Robert, I also meant preachers, radio hosts, and so forth. I don’t understand why insist on being hostile to the idea that we’re all better off if there is a broadly accessible public language rather than Babel.
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you!
The more I look at the “bad faith” argument, the more I hate it. I have, however, managed to find one saving grace in it: it means that from now on we get to ignore any statement of Matt’s touching on incomes policy unless it bases itself on his professed dislike of the very idea of desert– that being his authentic motive for disliking things like tax cuts. (You only get to have one authentic motive, right?)
“we’re all better off if there is a broadly accessible public language rather than Babel.”
Ah Babel, the second fall, I thought public reason banned such atavistic and, shudder, religious references. But since you brought it up I shall recommend After Babel: Aspects of language and translation, by George Steiner. Particularly Chapter 2 where he discusses the mystical desire to recover the language of Gan Eden and so be able to reverse those falls.
So here is the nub of the problem, each of us, in this shattered world, is an unredeemed creature who has his eyes firmly planted in his head and his ears attached to its sides, and what is more his heart in the middle of his body. Each of us speaks many different languages, depending on who we are speaking to and what their distance from us and relation to us is. One language we speak to our families and one to our friends, another to strangers and yet another in Court. Each of us speaks in tongues, only one of which is heard in our hearts and that one is hazy and indistinct. Matt may think that makes us inauthentic, but like most young men he is simply unobservant.
The most difficult art is not speaking different languages. Con men and cab drivers the world over manage that. The chattering classes are wont to assume that they deserve honor and precedence for mastering the art of speaking and manipulating some language or another. They often confuse it with wisdom and understanding. That is an error.
The most difficult art is understanding languages, particularly, the languages that are not your own, whether they are foreign public languages or the private language of another man’s heart (ask a good psychotherapist about the time and effort it took to master his art). Although for most of us it is a sufficiently difficult task to hear our own language and ken its meaning. Another example of course is the utter inability of the liberal elite to understand the language of the non-elite masses of the “red states” of this country. The post-election discombobulation of the liberal elite is a corollary to that deafness.
You propose that there be a “broadly accessible public language.” Formally or informally, mastery of that language would be a prerequisite to being one of the “public commentators and opinion-leaders” or “preachers, radio hosts, and so forth.” Chattering classes omni vincent.
Am I hostile to this idea. Yes, extremely. Civitas Americanus Sum. I am not a First Amendment absolutist, but when it comes to political issues, I think every American has the God given right to speak his piece, even if Matt doesn’t like it, even if it makes three people who write into the NYTimes sad, and even if someone calling to NPR thinks its phobic. Further, I don’t think there should be any prerequisite to being a pundit or a talking head (not even a decent hair piece) or a talk show host or (heaven forfend) a preacher (the call being a matter of divine intervention Is. 6, Ez. 2-3).
But I would go farther and argue that not only is a “broadly accessible public language,” contrary to our national spirit and laws, but it is contrary to the nature of language. Each of us has as at least as many languages as the number of communities we live in. For some of us there may be many, others few. The chattering classes are of course marked by their fluency with languages and their ability to transition from one to another. Telling them that only one language may be used in the public square is not a tremendous burden.
Other groups, less articulate by nature or nurture, and perhaps with fewer resources to hire mouthpieces, would find themselves sidelined or even excluded completely from the political process. Now Matt might be happy. Shut them up, no yapping from the peanut gallery. All quiet in Jesusland. But, there is a dark side to this quiet. The most afflicted people in our land who usually have the greatest claim on our sympathy would have no way to communicate with the generality other than through acts of violence. This cannot be a result we want.
That is it. Your idea can’t work, won’t work and shouldn’t work. Tommorrow. I do something useful with my time.
Bon Appetite.
That is my Post even if Type Key doesn’t want to say so:
After Babel: Aspects of language and translation, by George Steiner
Robert Schwartz
Will’s proposal- that we should “..refrain from using politics to impose our vision on others..”- kind of misses the point of “a body politic”, don’t it? Certainly, if those abolitionists had just kept it to themselves, ‘we’ might all have been spared the negativity of a civil war; but, would that have ultimately provided a more reasonable and inclusive Union, thereby? hmmm…
To Bob Schwartz’ allegation of our de facto multi-linguality I can only hope that, at some point, when our common circle of morality has expanded to a general human inclusiveness, ‘we’ will need only speak that language which our heart understands; and the hierarchical nature of a system of concentric realms of moral engagement of diminishing degrees of importance will be blurred to oblivion in recognition of our underlying commonality and mutual respect, ie ‘we’ love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. C’mon- let’s be ideal, here, keemo sabe. ^..^
Herbert: It has all been explained long ago.
Deut.10: 10-19
And now,O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, Only this: to revere the LORD, to walk only in His ways, to love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, keeping the LORD’s commandments and laws, which I taught you this day for your own good. Behold, the heavens to their farthest reaches belong to the LORD, and the earth with all that is in it; yet the LORD loved your fathers and chose their children after them, including you, whom I speak to today; therefore, cut away the thickening about your hearts, and bow your necks no longer; for the LORD your God is the supreme God and the greatest of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe; but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, giving him food and clothing — love the stranger therefore; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Ezek.36: 22-28
Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name; and the nations will know that I am the LORD. For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and all your uncleaness and all your idols shall be washed away. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my ways and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Jer.4:3-4; 31:33-34
For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Open your hearts to the LORD, cut away the thickening about your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with no water to quench it, because of your wicked ways.”
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my Torah within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Mal.4:23
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awsome day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that, when I come, I will not strike the whole land with utter desrtuction.
http://religion.rutgers.edu/iho/messiah.html
— Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a
#229
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi met Elijah who was standing at the the door of Rabbi Simeon be Yohai’s tomb, and asked the Prophet: “Will I have a place in the world to come?”
Elijah said: “If the Lord is willing”
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi then asked Elijah: “When will the Messiah come?”
Elijah said to the Rabbi: “Go, ask him yourself!”
b’ Levi asked: “And where does he sit?”
Elijah replied: “At the gate of the City [of Rome].”
b’ Levi asked: “And what sign will reveal him to me?”
Elijah replied: “He sits among the sick, poor and wounded and all of them loosen and bind their bandages together. But he loosens one and rebinds it, saying: ‘If I am wanted, I will not be delayed’”
So Rabbi Joshua journeyed to the City gate, found the Messiah and said to him: “Peace be upon you, my Lord and Master”
The Messiah said to him: “Peace be upon you, son of Levi!”
Joshua said to him: “When will you come, my Lord and Master?” He said to the Messiah:
The Messiah said: “Today!”
Rabbi Joshua returned to Elijah who asked him: “What did the Messiah say to you?”
Rabbi Joshua said to Elijah: “(the Messiah said) ‘Peace be upon you, son of Levi’”
Elijah said: “He promised you and your father a place in the world to come’
Rabbi Joshua said to Elijah: But the Messiah told me a lie! For he said he would come today but he did not come!”
Elijah said to Rabbi Joshua: “He told you thus: ‘Today, if you will hear his voice’” (Ps 95:7)
re Elijah of the Talmud: a most becoming koan! Thanks… ^..^
I had forgotten about Umberto Eco until I read a review of his new book this morning in the WSJ. He wrote a book a few years ago:
Eco, Umberto. The Search for the Perfect Language; Fentress, James, tr. Blackwell, Oxford, 1995.
ISBN 0-631-17465-6 [note: if you want to search the ISBN at Amazon delete the "-"s]
Discusses Babel, Torah, Kabbalah, Dante, Raymond Lull, Kircher and Heieroglyphics, John Dee down to modern philosophers. All of them engaged in a mythological pursuit.
Pingback: קורסים קצרים
Pingback: Flash Games
“But if enough of the right kind of people do so, that can have a deeply positive effect on the neutrality and stability of our social order.”
Ah yes, the Right Kind of People, no it just won’t do if those horrid Jesusland people are allowed to participate, we can’t have that can we?
Note to Sportsmen: If you have pick between a team that has internalized the norms of public reason and one that knows how to field strip and clean its rifles, go with the riflemen. As always, we like to play a team that has a chip on its shoulder and a belief that it is disrespected for the over.
What makes you imagine that I had any intention whatsoever of excluding Jesuslanders from my idea of “the right kind of people?” I meant by that: public commentators and opinion-leaders.
I think “bad faith” is often in the eye of the beholder.
Let’s suppose I think abortion is wrong, and my religious views inform that opinion. When it comes time to argue the point in public, I can get with the program and argue my point in strictly non-religious terms. Would Matt say I’m arguing in bad faith just because I also espouse comprehensive religious views? Would my public arguments become valid (to Matt) if I later repudiated my religious beliefs but not my opposition to abortion?
What about those “bad faith” arguments that Matt might find more tolerable, like religiously-rooted opposition to the death penalty? Presumably, Matt also has “little incentive” to listen to any empirical or secular arguments from that quarter, since their benighted comprehensive views disqualify them from discourse.
Somebody tell Matt that if you don’t want to listen to what the other side says because you think they are a bunch of atavistic, witch-burning troglodytes, you can just ignore them. No need for all the sophistry.
Matt said:
‘But the motivating issue for (the vast majority of) these people isn’t demographic shifts in Scandinavia, it’s the religion stupid. As a result, I have little incentive to take the empirical arguments offered by the anti-gay folks, and as a result of that, they have little reason to bother to make their arguments convincing (since they know no one will be convinced no matter what) rather than simply providing a kind of “public reason” cover for their real agenda.’
~
As Matt (above comment) pointed out, this reasoning could be used to dismiss any claim made by a particular group without considering the merits of that claim. Isn’t that normally called ad hominem?
“I meant by that: public commentators and opinion-leaders.”
Gol Durn Dewayne, you hear that talkin head over there on thet television . . .
Hush up Merle, an pass me thet cleanin rag, if you dont mind.
Ah, the Talking Heads, the Editorial Board of the NYTimes, the Faculty Club of Harvard.
SSDD.
Kerry blamed his debacle on Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and talk radio. I wonder if Mikhail Gorbachev blames the samizdata. for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Its the same problem. When you condecend to people, for whatever reason, they will notice it, they will resent it and they will act on their resentment.
The problem of the chattering classes is that they always think that chattering (“public reason” herein) is the most important thing there is, as it is the thing they do the best, and they condecend readily to the non-chatters, because chatters always confuse inarticulateness with stupidity.
We see no reason (NPI) to change our betting strategy before the Thanksgiving day games.
I am not sure why it did not ad my name to the above Robert Schwartz.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Robert, I also meant preachers, radio hosts, and so forth. I don’t understand why insist on being hostile to the idea that we’re all better off if there is a broadly accessible public language rather than Babel.
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you!
The more I look at the “bad faith” argument, the more I hate it. I have, however, managed to find one saving grace in it: it means that from now on we get to ignore any statement of Matt’s touching on incomes policy unless it bases itself on his professed dislike of the very idea of desert– that being his authentic motive for disliking things like tax cuts. (You only get to have one authentic motive, right?)
“we’re all better off if there is a broadly accessible public language rather than Babel.”
Ah Babel, the second fall, I thought public reason banned such atavistic and, shudder, religious references. But since you brought it up I shall recommend After Babel: Aspects of language and translation, by George Steiner. Particularly Chapter 2 where he discusses the mystical desire to recover the language of Gan Eden and so be able to reverse those falls.
So here is the nub of the problem, each of us, in this shattered world, is an unredeemed creature who has his eyes firmly planted in his head and his ears attached to its sides, and what is more his heart in the middle of his body. Each of us speaks many different languages, depending on who we are speaking to and what their distance from us and relation to us is. One language we speak to our families and one to our friends, another to strangers and yet another in Court. Each of us speaks in tongues, only one of which is heard in our hearts and that one is hazy and indistinct. Matt may think that makes us inauthentic, but like most young men he is simply unobservant.
The most difficult art is not speaking different languages. Con men and cab drivers the world over manage that. The chattering classes are wont to assume that they deserve honor and precedence for mastering the art of speaking and manipulating some language or another. They often confuse it with wisdom and understanding. That is an error.
The most difficult art is understanding languages, particularly, the languages that are not your own, whether they are foreign public languages or the private language of another man’s heart (ask a good psychotherapist about the time and effort it took to master his art). Although for most of us it is a sufficiently difficult task to hear our own language and ken its meaning. Another example of course is the utter inability of the liberal elite to understand the language of the non-elite masses of the “red states” of this country. The post-election discombobulation of the liberal elite is a corollary to that deafness.
You propose that there be a “broadly accessible public language.” Formally or informally, mastery of that language would be a prerequisite to being one of the “public commentators and opinion-leaders” or “preachers, radio hosts, and so forth.” Chattering classes omni vincent.
Am I hostile to this idea. Yes, extremely. Civitas Americanus Sum. I am not a First Amendment absolutist, but when it comes to political issues, I think every American has the God given right to speak his piece, even if Matt doesn’t like it, even if it makes three people who write into the NYTimes sad, and even if someone calling to NPR thinks its phobic. Further, I don’t think there should be any prerequisite to being a pundit or a talking head (not even a decent hair piece) or a talk show host or (heaven forfend) a preacher (the call being a matter of divine intervention Is. 6, Ez. 2-3).
But I would go farther and argue that not only is a “broadly accessible public language,” contrary to our national spirit and laws, but it is contrary to the nature of language. Each of us has as at least as many languages as the number of communities we live in. For some of us there may be many, others few. The chattering classes are of course marked by their fluency with languages and their ability to transition from one to another. Telling them that only one language may be used in the public square is not a tremendous burden.
Other groups, less articulate by nature or nurture, and perhaps with fewer resources to hire mouthpieces, would find themselves sidelined or even excluded completely from the political process. Now Matt might be happy. Shut them up, no yapping from the peanut gallery. All quiet in Jesusland. But, there is a dark side to this quiet. The most afflicted people in our land who usually have the greatest claim on our sympathy would have no way to communicate with the generality other than through acts of violence. This cannot be a result we want.
That is it. Your idea can’t work, won’t work and shouldn’t work. Tommorrow. I do something useful with my time.
Bon Appetite.
That is my Post even if Type Key doesn’t want to say so:
After Babel: Aspects of language and translation, by George Steiner
Robert Schwartz
Will’s proposal- that we should “..refrain from using politics to impose our vision on others..”- kind of misses the point of “a body politic”, don’t it? Certainly, if those abolitionists had just kept it to themselves, ‘we’ might all have been spared the negativity of a civil war; but, would that have ultimately provided a more reasonable and inclusive Union, thereby? hmmm…
To Bob Schwartz’ allegation of our de facto multi-linguality I can only hope that, at some point, when our common circle of morality has expanded to a general human inclusiveness, ‘we’ will need only speak that language which our heart understands; and the hierarchical nature of a system of concentric realms of moral engagement of diminishing degrees of importance will be blurred to oblivion in recognition of our underlying commonality and mutual respect, ie ‘we’ love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. C’mon- let’s be ideal, here, keemo sabe. ^..^
Herbert: It has all been explained long ago.
Deut.10: 10-19
And now,O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, Only this: to revere the LORD, to walk only in His ways, to love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, keeping the LORD’s commandments and laws, which I taught you this day for your own good. Behold, the heavens to their farthest reaches belong to the LORD, and the earth with all that is in it; yet the LORD loved your fathers and chose their children after them, including you, whom I speak to today; therefore, cut away the thickening about your hearts, and bow your necks no longer; for the LORD your God is the supreme God and the greatest of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe; but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, giving him food and clothing — love the stranger therefore; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Ezek.36: 22-28
Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name; and the nations will know that I am the LORD. For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and all your uncleaness and all your idols shall be washed away. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my ways and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Jer.4:3-4; 31:33-34
For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Open your hearts to the LORD, cut away the thickening about your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with no water to quench it, because of your wicked ways.”
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my Torah within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Mal.4:23
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awsome day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that, when I come, I will not strike the whole land with utter desrtuction.
http://religion.rutgers.edu/iho/messiah.html
— Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a
#229
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi met Elijah who was standing at the the door of Rabbi Simeon be Yohai’s tomb, and asked the Prophet: “Will I have a place in the world to come?”
Elijah said: “If the Lord is willing”
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi then asked Elijah: “When will the Messiah come?”
Elijah said to the Rabbi: “Go, ask him yourself!”
b’ Levi asked: “And where does he sit?”
Elijah replied: “At the gate of the City [of Rome].”
b’ Levi asked: “And what sign will reveal him to me?”
Elijah replied: “He sits among the sick, poor and wounded and all of them loosen and bind their bandages together. But he loosens one and rebinds it, saying: ‘If I am wanted, I will not be delayed’”
So Rabbi Joshua journeyed to the City gate, found the Messiah and said to him: “Peace be upon you, my Lord and Master”
The Messiah said to him: “Peace be upon you, son of Levi!”
Joshua said to him: “When will you come, my Lord and Master?” He said to the Messiah:
The Messiah said: “Today!”
Rabbi Joshua returned to Elijah who asked him: “What did the Messiah say to you?”
Rabbi Joshua said to Elijah: “(the Messiah said) ‘Peace be upon you, son of Levi’”
Elijah said: “He promised you and your father a place in the world to come’
Rabbi Joshua said to Elijah: But the Messiah told me a lie! For he said he would come today but he did not come!”
Elijah said to Rabbi Joshua: “He told you thus: ‘Today, if you will hear his voice’” (Ps 95:7)
re Elijah of the Talmud: a most becoming koan! Thanks… ^..^
I had forgotten about Umberto Eco until I read a review of his new book this morning in the WSJ. He wrote a book a few years ago:
Eco, Umberto. The Search for the Perfect Language; Fentress, James, tr. Blackwell, Oxford, 1995.
ISBN 0-631-17465-6 [note: if you want to search the ISBN at Amazon delete the "-"s]
Discusses Babel, Torah, Kabbalah, Dante, Raymond Lull, Kircher and Heieroglyphics, John Dee down to modern philosophers. All of them engaged in a mythological pursuit.
http://www.xytfy.com
http://www.xytfy.com