Reasons Rehabilitated

Abstract

Abstract This section summarizes part I and points forward to part II of Critique of Halakhic Reason. The twentieth-century philosophers of halakhah—Joseph Soloveitchik, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Eliezer Berkovits—attempt to find a foundation for the normativity of the commandments. Yet they all claim that reason is motivationally and normatively inert, and so each identifies an alternative, non-rational source of normativity. The section also describes the dialectical relation among their views: they move from the world (Soloveitchik) to the self (Leibowitz) and then on to God (Berkovits) in search of a foundation. There is a development in this dialectic: Berkovits advances beyond Soloveitchik and Leibowitz by realizing the sociality of obligation. Sociality is a key component of subsequent chapters, which develop a constructivist theory of practical reason, examine the concepts of authority, norms, and obligations, apply them to theology, and then offer an analytic of the commandments.