I'm introduced to Yitzchok by a friend who is an accomplished scholar in his own right. I'm given a phone number, and after a quick chat, an address and a time.
I arrive and we make some small talk and introductions. I ask about Yitzchok’s background, which he immediately informs me is of minimal importance.
Yitzchok: So what brings you here?
Me: I was told this is a place I can come to learn philosophy.
Yitzchok: What got you interested in philosophy?
Me: Many things. My religious upbringing I felt left much untaught, and I have a general interest in deep questions.
Yitzchok: Where has that interest led you?
I go on to describe the names of all sorts of well-known authors and their ideas. I go on to briefly discuss Descartes and the Cogito, the idea that one can question anything but their own internal existence.
Me: … and I came here to further my knowledge of these things.
Yitzchok: What makes you so sure you exist?
I become a bit frustrated. This is the basic foundation of a host of philosophical ideas.
Me: This is an obvious element of existence.
Yitzchok: Can you explain it?
Me: I just did. Your own subjective mind is not something you can doubt.
Yitzchok: Subjective? What do you mean by that?
I go rattling on about subjectivity, language, etc. many more names of famous people, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Hume…
Yitzchok: I don’t care about what they think right now. I care about what you think. What do you think?
Me: I’m not sure, I’m still gathering the facts.
Yitzchok: Not what you decided, what you think. When you approach the world, how do you make sense of it? What makes you sure your existence cannot be doubted? What makes you sure this is a good place to start from? That this is an interesting question?
I start to raise my voice a little, and become annoyed. Who cares what I think, let’s focus on what I know - I know all kinds of interesting ideas! This feels like a game to me. But something about our conversation feels important. It feels different than other kinds of learning.
Yitzchok: I’m starting a class on Wednesday night to discuss the soul. I hope you will come.
* * * * *
Comparative analysis, information gathering, experimentation, etc. are what we typically answer to the question of “How does one learn?”. This definition assumes that to have learned something means to have added to one’s existing knowledge of the world; To know that a stork behaves in such and such way in the summer, that the pythagorean theorem will yield the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle, that there was once a man named Napoleon who set out to conquer the world. There’s another definition, one prudent to the world of philosophy. Philosophy should be reflective; its practitioner thinks not only about the world, but also about how she or he is thinking about it. Even successful philosophers vary in their strength of doing so.
I attend the following Wednesday night. A few other students are gathered around a small table. I glance at the books on the wall. Some I recognize, others I don't. Some are bizarre (Faces of people in New York City).
Me: I see some familiar books here.
Yitzchok: You should read everything. I haven’t read a lot of these books though.
The class begins.
Yitzchok: I want to talk about the soul. Not just what it is, but what it explains. You associate the soul with all kinds of ideas. You probably doubt whether or not it exists. Try to set aside the assumptions you derived from any prior context. For now we will talk about what the soul addresses, and how it came to be discussed.
I have a hard time with how the question is being reframed. I’m fishing for familiar terms with meanings I’m well acquainted with.
Yitzchok: Your understanding of the soul is a result of a conclusion. An answer to a question. The question is: “What is life?”
Me: Life has nothing to do with the subjective quality of our minds.
Yitzchok: You’re putting words in my mouth that I never said. Mind, subjective - you’re using your own concepts and ideas. In the environment in which the concept of soul was born, these terms and their meanings did not exist. Again, you’re forcing a foreign language into your own. First understand the idea completely, and then you can judge if it’s worth something, not worth anything, and what there is to learn from it.
* * * * *
Further classes delve into the meaning of the soul. Yitzchok teaches us that if we assume life is something real in the world, the soul is the concept that explains it. Therefore, all life, including those of plants and animals, are explained by them “having a soul”. “Having” is a difficult word here. It implies that the soul is something in the living thing, or separate from it, when it’s not (necessarily) either of those things.
Link: Soul is the kind of form living things have
Me: This still seems like a leap. Why are you assuming a soul is needed to explain life?
Yitzchok: By implying that the soul is a thing, you’re misunderstanding the concept, and reinserting the question back into the answer. I’ve said nothing about the soul, not what it does, nor what it is. Present yourself with the question again, “What is life?”. The definition of what life is, what living things are doing, and what they’re doing it for, are what the soul addresses.
Whether the soul is something independent of the body of whose life it is the form of, if it survives death, has parts - all must follow the line of reasoning from which the soul aims to explain in the first place. If some aspects of life cannot be understood to disappear with the death of the body, we need an account of what happened.
Much like learning a foreign language; patience, listening, and osmosis allow one to understand the native meaning of a term within its unique context. The division of categories is different. The primary assumptions are different. Attitudes toward certainty and truth are different. Some assumptions are too deeply lodged in our most basic perspectives, and can’t easily be recognised by the one doing the thinking. The example Socrates gives is that one cannot see the pupil of their own eye, what is doing the seeing. To be a student is to have your pupil examined.
This requires an exemplary teacher. A teacher who is a guiding light, who pursues the truth and shepherds his students towards it. A teacher who is the rock one can lean on whilst letting go of everything they think they know, to embrace a new truth that will go on to sustain them. A teacher must love the truth enough to be and do these things.
I’ve been blessed to have a teacher and a friend. A freind whose example of what it means to value and seek truth is a lived one. A teacher who has allowed me to see behind and beyond my own thoughts, and asked me questions I did not know how to ask myself.
To be taught by him, and think alongside him, is a privilege I’m grateful for.