Novak, Post-Secularism and the Transcendental Turn

• In Event: The Moral Hermeneutics of David Novak

Abstract

It has been nearly twenty years since Peter Berger published his recantation of the secularization thesis. We live in a post-secular age. Within contemporary Jewish thought, David Novak’s work stands out as a key example of this post-secular moment in its long-standing defense of Judaism’s role in the public square.
Nonetheless, it is not enough for a thinker simply to argue that religion plays a role in the public square. To adequately challenge the secularization thesis, the thinker needs to demonstrate ‘how’ this activity is possible. At the core of the secularization thesis is the charge that religious claims cannot be rationally asserted or intelligible in light of the rise of scientific knowledge. Among the key implications of the secularization thesis is the expectation that religious beliefs or normative claims will wax irrelevant or utopian on the one hand or be held dogmatically and fanatically on the other hand. So understood, the secularization thesis challenges religious thinkers to demonstrate the intelligibility of their claims and/or their rational purchase on those who attest to and live by them. It challenges them to articulate the transcendental conditions of the objective rationality of the claims and norms of their tradition.
It is the central argument of this paper that David Novak’s account of the function of inferential reflection within Talmudic reasoning, offers a promising example of this transcendental reasoning. More specifically, this paper will argue that Novak’s attention to analysis of the “ta-amei mitzvoth” can be understood as an exercise of transcendental reasoning when appreciated as a non-deductive analysis of the conditions of the intelligibility of halakha or revelation as what he calls the primary “datum” of rabbinic knowledge. Jewish philosophy, Novak argues, is always ‘method’ or an exercise in the reflection upon the manner or rules by means of which we ‘think’ the intelligibility or ratio of the contents of revelation. While scholarship on Novak’s account of Jewish philosophy focuses almost exclusively on his view of natural law, this paper will attend to Novak’s exegetical thought as the centerpiece of his post-secular position.

Author

• Randi Lynn Rashkover, George Mason University