Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend Alex. Where are you? Are you Alex?
I'm doing well David. You're going to go under the weather. You're right? Yeah.
I'm sorry I'm tired. Everybody in the family is sick and the children are upset already upset. How are you? I'm great.
I'm fit as a fiddle. I have to be here. I don't have any family. So you know everybody that my prayer household is rare and you go.
Well, you don't you have five AM fellowship with your Christian buddies? Yeah, starting tomorrow. Every day. Yeah, every day.
You are fit. Fiddle. Yeah. I don't know why you put that part out.
It's not it's just not a kind of phrasing that I would use correct. But okay, fair enough. Did he even use that in Georgia? I don't know.
I live in Ohio now. Well, you grew up all over the world and including Germany. That's right. How long were you there?
Four years in Dusseldorf? No, I was in Berlin. West Berlin at the time. How old were you?
That was very old. He was the the mop away at the local section. How old was he? This was pre-element.
I was 6 to 10. I grew up in a frow with us. M-R-S-S. We're excited to have Anna Schmidt as a guest tonight to discuss my Monety's letter on astrology.
Anna was born and raised in Germany. And when she was a little girl, her oma told her never ever venture into the Black Forest. And so she remained playing with sticks and rocks in her little village. But one day she found a trail of gumdrops leading into the forest.
And she followed the trail like a foolish peasant girl. The tree's dark as night enveloped her and suddenly a ghost named Martin appeared and gave her a copy of Aristotle's Metaphysics at which point she knew she was destined for the theoretical life. After high school, Anna spent a year in America where she learned about armorys and developed a crush and grew quite close to a scholar named Markie Mark. And she frequented the gap in war.
Does that include a funky bunch or no? No, no, she wasn't a fan of theirs. Okay. Yes, she's Markie Mark.
And people don't know this. And I hope not telling any tales out of Gullianna but she's a descendant of Gerta. And as she wrote on his elective opinions for her MA. And again, the ghost of Martin appeared to her behind an Erika Supermarket and reminded her of the philosophic life.
So she switched to focus to political philosophy and took a doctor under Heinrich Meyer. She later met Harvey Mansfield, who had instructed her in many delightful things. And one day, while Anna was studying an unpublished article on Machiavelli following the numerology, she discovered that Harvey had proposed, which is a really nice story people don't know. And while she becomes each day more Americanized, she still retains key aspects of her German heritage, most notably the acquisition of a Porsche SUV, analytic philosophers at Harvard are now said to run, not walk crossing the street.
And for that, I think we can all thank her. So welcome Anna, how are you doing? I'm very well. Thank you very much David.
I took corrections. So I wasn't the premonities that I first got from Martin in the black forest. Okay. He did so many things.
The doctor's equipment have moved me. Yeah, right. And he has my marriage. I think you slightly mischaracterized it.
It's more like, la quierades, oncieridimoderna, that's how I would characterize it. And so one question I did have, what did you write your doctorate on? Was it, I know you switched your... I'm not going to tell you not to talk about this because I never finished my PhD, David Darr.
I promise you, I didn't... Hey, you guys have something in common? Yeah. Yeah.
And a smarter book. But Anna, what were you going to write it on? That's why I never finished. I started it on the letter to Down Bear on Rousseau.
I don't know. I'm a very late bloomer. Maybe I'm not still blooming. Maybe I'm just wilting.
But yeah, I never quite... My... I never quite found what I wanted to write. That's not his fault.
No, no, no. Right. But today, so is my monadies kind of a pet interest or how did you... What did we...
I don't have a dog. I don't have a kid. So my pet is the Ramban. I think...
Well, I'm a little bit... I'm not entirely down, I think, with what all my friends tend to work on most of the time, which is the challenge of revelation. And when I came across my monadies, I really liked the very rationalist approach of it, that you didn't have to twist your head into a pet soul every single time. And it's a very good introduction to Aristotle, too, I think.
So I don't know. I was gripped by it because you could just start to think about things in a more straightforward manner. I know this sounds preposterous because my monadies is obviously very complicated. But in many ways, he's also much more straightforward than say Plato is.
And so... This way, I like to call him Ramban. Thank you, man. He's right down to business.
You know, I learned all I know about the angels from him, just sort of like an audio. But that's a topic for a different show, I think. So what's the letter of astrology on Alex? What is...
First of all, how long is it? Well, for those interested in it, there's a translation by Ralph Lerner. He found in two places, the sort of medieval philosophy source book that everybody loves. But also, he is a wonderful book out of Prince, Lord knows why.
My monadies Empire of Light, which is on his more sort of popular or public facing writings. And organized in poorly, there's translations as well as interesting essays by Lerner. It's only about 10 pages in this translation. Very short.
For me, at least it's appealing because I look at the guide and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's huge. It's like 400 pages. And then I look at the mission. Who's the translator of that you're looking at?
That's... That's not how I grew up understanding how it's like. Yeah, that's not what I heard in Germany either. No.
I don't know. I'm not sure, man, it's too much for you. It's too big. I can't easily digest all that cholera penis.
Take it slow. Yeah. That's why I can move on. That's huge.
And then you have the mission... That's like what? 15 volumes, 14 volumes and like that. Humongous.
This is 10 pages and he indicates that he's in a way, sort of situating the works next relative to each other by virtue of the fact that he's gotten this inquiry from these French rabbis. Of course, they're French and they're a little bit misguided. They have all these questions. We don't really hear what the questions are.
because my monodies, he sort of greets them and he says, look, all the things you're asking me, they all boil down to one thing, all branches of the same tree, and that tree is astrology. Now, he sort of reduces them, he talks about the different grounds for trusting something or believing something, either it's given from the prophets or proven or some of your senses, none of these fit astrology. That they're entirely empty books as he says, and not only are they just sort of meaningless and devoid of any sort of instruction, is also quite dangerous. In fact, he credits the destruction of the temple, loss of the kingdom, to the study of astrology, into the neglect of other things, as we'll see.
He then reveals actually that he has studied astrology in depth, really gone through the works, and he gives his judgment, why specifically it's a worthless study. He offers in its place, astronomy, as the genuine science of the stars, which can prove all sorts of interesting things, but not exactly the things that the people who study astrology want from him. From there, he goes into some of the controversies among the men of science as he puts it. All I think with at least the rhetorical point, I was saying that though they disagree on very large questions, they all agree on the same question, or they always the same conclusion rather as regards astrology, it's bunk, it's no good.
He goes a little further and describes the controversy between the philosophers and the true religionists. I think there's an important aspect here about freedom that I hope we'll talk to a little bit later, talking about it a little bit later. Finally, after going through this dispute for quite a bit, he concludes again that this is sort of worth a study, if there's been a few sort of odd closing paragraphs that are sort of beside, apparently beside the initial, he agree one concerns the sort of purported Messiah, and he refers them to his letter to Yemen, which again, you can get in the Ralph Lerner book, my Mount of these Empire of Light. He then exhorts them actually to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is very funny.
He notes the date, he apologizes for being so brief, indicating he was forced to write this and he might not have written it otherwise. That's kind of the gist of the letter. From what I've said, it might not seem all together remarkable, but the most important thing that you get at least along the way is the sort of very interesting condensed account of the disagreements among philosophers and then the disagreements between philosophers and astrologers with true religious. And it's a very kind of neat overview of the desec disagreements along the way.
So that's my account of the whole thing. You guys wanna, what do we jump in from here? Yeah, that's very nice. I wouldn't say that he greets them and is kind of friendly to these rabbis.
It's a mix he exalts them, right? He calls them my masters in most of the opening paragraphs. But my thought when I was reading this is that upon receiving the letter from them, his first thought must have been, Jesus Christ. This was like so outrageous.
What they were asking him, and I read this in an article by I think Alexander Marx. So they were asking about all sorts of things on sending astrology, which was very much, it's a universal phenomenon and has always been, but it was still in the Middle Ages, something that educated people considered the science and uneducated people and were trying to find science for their lives and for the future and all these things. But it was everywhere. And I wasn't aware of this, just how everybody was trying to fight it.
Calvin was fighting it. So, yes, David, do you want to say something? Oh, I was just putting Greg down about people that still looked at horoscopes. I apologize.
And Anna, you sent me your horoscope. That's such a, I think you were joking Anna. Greg sets his clock by these things. So.
You know, I was talking about this letter with actually Richard Valkin, we were just discussing before, but he notes that in thoughts on Machiavelli's Strauss twice refers to work, again, refuting the sputes of judicial astrology. There's a real, I think, perennial attraction to this sort of thing. I think because it's on the one hand, it seems to be a science, right? So it really does predict, on the other, it does more than any science could, it predicts particulars, right?
And you can be in control, you know, religion offers prediction of particulars, but you just have to be like pious and hope to cut, you know, it's going to answer your prayers. But astrology says, no, I can figure out what's going to happen to me and all that sort of stuff. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. Go on. Yeah, maybe we should talk a little bit about the, you know, these different forms of astrology. I don't know.
There's, you know, it's a very messy situation, but you could say there is, you know, that was the same word for astrology and astronomy for a long time, right? The Babylonians actually did know a lot about the movements of the stars, but they call it astrology, or at least there was no special, no separate words. And my monadies has come for astrology in all its forms, but what he really ends up talking about is judicial astrology, right? And that is the application of the influence of the stars constellations on individual feet, like right the second.
So the rabbis were, for instance, asking him a funny question, which is, can you time the conception of a child in a way to the minute by the stars that you would protect this child from all time? This is something that they were asking him. And I don't think they were asking that because they were so attracted by it. It was just that everybody who was, you know, who was a scientist or so many people were talking about this and thinking in this way.
I think they genuinely had no way of distinguishing what sciences or what you, from what's wrong. That's, that's, apart from the attraction, that's another real problem. Yeah, it was confusing for me to understand probably because we laugh about astrology just out of hand these days, but on a dude, I guess what's confusing about these rabbis putting those sorts of questions to my monadies is I thought the whole rejection of Egypt was in a way a rejection of this kind of pseudoscience. Right.
I mean, that's what my monadies tells them, right? That by studying all these books of the astrologers, which he says, I've done this for you and I can tell you it's all bunk. Don't go there. And also, I now know that all the laws in the Torah that we couldn't otherwise explain have as their reason that they were directed against adultery or against the astrologers, right?
Whether that's true or not, or whether that's a bit of connection or not is another thing. But it's, you know, there are things in the Talmud and the monadies mentions that there are even that refer to astrology. There are other, I don't know, these obscure Jewish texts, but you know, they talk about eclipses and that being assigned for, for instance, the destruction of the second temple after the fact. These kinds of things, they were also there in Jewish life.
So it's not something that you can easily extinguish even in or by the Torah, I think. And there are also commentaries on the law that prescribe certain times of day to do some of the activities you were just talking about, right? And so there seems to be this overlap even between some of the prescriptions. Right.
I mean, good to right. He calls us, I mean, he says you shouldn't even call it a superstition because it is so universally human to want to, you know, you know, the sun provides light. You know, the moon has whatever effects on your sleep. You know that things grow from rain and so on.
And it just takes a little bit of the imagination. That's how good it explains it. That you want the extent to which the stars have some influence and you to go further. And it seems so very natural.
I mean, our concerns are good and are trying to word of evil is crucial, but there is this natural source that you somehow think, yeah, they do have. I mean, to be fair, the moon does have an effect on people, right? We talk about the, you know, the right, when it's a full moon or not, people are like, I'm not joking. Like, I mean, menopause even, right?
What does this mean? Like, what are you laughing at? Alex, what are you grinning at? I don't know.
I don't know. The moon. The moon. The moon?
The menopause, doesn't it? Sorry. Menopause, sorry. Menopause means the, it means the monthly they're stopping.
So a woman's cycle is presumably tied in some ways. I mean, what does it mean? What does it mean? I'm not saying menopause.
I don't know. The month was a month. The sleeping of the month. Yeah.
I thought it was a moon pass. Okay. I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
It won't have to be gray. I know Greg is about to go into this whole thing about werewolves and full moons. That's actually quite serious. People like different when there's a full moon out.
There's all kinds of evidence that shows this is the case. No, man. That's not our parents would say. It's a full moon.
You're going to get drunk tonight or something. I mean, I think it could be actually naturally just in terms of it meant, I mean, you know, up until a hundred or two years ago, light was not ubiquitous. So a full moon was in fact the only time of the month when you actually could stay up later. So I think there might be a different explanation.
But yeah, there are anyway, historically, I do think there's something to it. I think back on the farm, Grand Pappy the Grey, or we get a little ornery after a full moon. You were going to have a thank you. But you know, there was such a thing called medical astrology, for instance.
And I don't think that that's entirely that's what you're talking about a little bit. That's not entirely like if somebody gets consumption, you send them into the mountains because the climate in the mountains is different due to whatever the influence of the spheres and the Protestants. So there are more legitimate ways of thinking about, you know, I think they're called it climatology about how the climate influences human character, well-being and so on. But then this particular form of judicial astrology is that, you know, you can predict why Iraq is going to hit this child and this was planned from the beginning at his birth.
And that's the kind that is dangerous and ridiculous in for which there's no scientific evidence. So maybe we can, I know, there's a lot here that we could sort of jump right into. But maybe we can start with, do you want to start with the three things that can be trusted? Just talk about that division because I think there's some interesting implications there, right?
So he says there's three things you can trust, right? The senses, reason, or what the prophets have said. And he, I mean, the most striking thing, I think, is kind of obvious point though, is that he ends up saying that the things you trust from the prophets and the righteous, that has to do, he kind of reduces that tradition, right? Or things that are old in a way, which is a problem because, well, the books of these rologers are quite old and famous.
There's already a kind of tendency for it to have that sort of same appeal. I don't know if you guys want to go in other directions with this, but I thought that was an interesting sort of first point that it's not... The appeal of astrology is not entirely... We don't want to reduce one to the other, but there are overlaps between the appeal of astrology and the appeal of reveal law, right?
It's venerable. It's old. Yes, we can go there. Yeah, we can go there anyway.
I was thinking, you know, this praise of the rabbis is really in very sharp contrast to him absolutely dismissing astrology. And Maimonides is really the first one to do this in the Jewish tradition. There were no other, you know, from Josephus to Gersonides, all these people, they did not come out and just dunked on it, like Maimonides did. So there's a funny...
On the one hand, it's for entirely stupid people, on the other hand, he has to be respectful to these rabbis who ask him these questions in all sincerity. So there's a bit of an irony there, I would say that. He can't just come out and say, look, you're even stupid for asking these questions. Even if I'm explaining to the Talmud, he says towards the end, right?
He's like, look, we've just proven... There's still some vestiges, but this is just a bad part of the tradition. This is deeply better. Right.
So I think what he does is he knows he has like 10 pages. He doesn't have much time to do this. He's looking over his shoulder while he's fighting this. He has other stuff to do.
So how do I very quickly cut to the chase? I say, this is stupid. Here's what you... I'm going to give you a crash course and a scientific thinking and logic.
And here are three things you can trust. Sense perception and proof from reason and tradition. And tradition becomes problematic. So but the sense perception and the proof from reason, that is as old as the Aristotelian logic.
That's in the organ. And those are things you don't need to take on anybody's word. Right? So that's how you get to the monster of science by these things.
So Greg, did you want to say something about this? I can jump in just to amplify what Alex was saying. The first two, as you mentioned, I don't know if Alex wants to jump in and discuss this, but the first two are Aristotelian, as you say, but the third one is clearly not. This deference to tradition as being something that you can rely on.
And so I don't know. Maybe this is... I think Alex's point about how astrology is like revelation in some way. And so it seems to be believed because it's old or something like this.
I think that Aristotle sometimes starts with generally accepted opinions also, something that at least... Oh sure. ... rely on to some extent.
And then the status of those becomes less clear in here. This I think is taken, the place is taken by tradition. So what do you think my motties is speaking about tradition, saying by the aerosol, speaking about generally received opinions? That's really interesting, then.
Something like a starting point. Yes, I think so. Yeah. Okay.
And part of them are very strange, and others are much more common to human beings. Some are more specific to the law. But yeah. So maybe another point I think to just sort of build off of what you're Greg are saying.
One of the things that comes out of this, I think, is there's this sort of appeal of astrology. It has quasi-philosophical looking elements. It seems to be a demonstrative science on the one hand. It's quasi-religious elements.
It promises sort of assurance about particulars and also it's a kind of venerable tradition. Yet for maimonides, it is both a horrible practice, both for true believers and for people who are attracted to science. And in addressing these rabbis, tell me if you think this is right or wrong, but I got the sense that he's kind of... And he bounces back between his two major works, right?
The Missionatora and then the Guy Fippa Flex. One more philosophic. One more religious, right? And he kind of says, look, if you're interested in the scientific aspects, really, I've got this book, The Guy.
I lay out all the arguments. If you're interested in having sort of security about particular instances in your life, here's this more religious book that I've got here. And one of the things that I think comes out is that he in a way is able to defend philosophy a little bit more strongly because religion doesn't get rid, doesn't have the arguments for astrology, philosophy does. All the works of Aristotle have to do with the sub-lunar sphere, all the meteorological and all the sort of natural science works.
Those are the ones that will show you that astrology is BS. So if you want to save the Kingdom and the Temple of the future, be sure to keep their soul by your side, right? But you can't keep them too close, right, Alex? Because that could be too disruptive, right?
Like if you champion some too hard. Yeah, the whole letter is to stands, right? So if in this paragraph that we were talking about where he gives the three sources of things that you can trust, he moves on to say, you know, why was the temple destroyed? And he claims the temple was destroyed because people got led astray by astrology.
And that, but what they didn't do instead was to prepare for war and for conquest, right? And that's not what the prophets tell you because the prophets tell you, or Jeremiah says, they lost the temple because they didn't keep the law. So already here you have, you know, from the very beginning, you have my monodies taking a somewhat different tack from what the prophets say. Yes, astrology is bad, but it's not because of astrology itself that you lost the temple, it's because you didn't do what politically was necessary.
It wasn't sin. So you have this kind of political necessity versus sin from the very beginning here, I think, which is something that you were bringing on. And the rabbis without my monodies are completely lost. They have no standard by which to judge this.
It's really striking, I think, from the beginning too. Without my monodies as their guide, they would be lost in this matter. So yes, you need the philosophers as you said, Alan. I mean, that's such a fascinating point where you think, oh, yeah, you study astrology and so it's sin and he's like, he shouldn't spend any time.
It's like you've been wasting your time reading comic books, guys, like get out of business. This is how the sausage gets made. It's a little bit academia today, right? A little bit academia.
It's like an elite thing where people get into all sorts of bullsh** signs instead of doing things that would actually benefit both themselves and other people. But how would study, I mean, to be a little bit of a country here, how it's studying the law making better prepared, studying military and war things. I don't think they would be better prepared. That's why he says don't study the law, but practice more fair, right?
He does not say this is, that's the funny thing. He says they wasted their time studying the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the dollar just books, but he doesn't say instead he should have been studying the Torah said instead you should have been preparing for war. This reminds me of something that our friend, Josh parents once said he thinks that the mission of Torah was written, I know you said it was 14 or 15 volumes, but strangely he says that it may have been written in part to sort of relieve people from the necessity of spending so much time studying the law that this would actually expedite it in some way. I don't see how 14 or 15 volumes does that.
But I think that, I mean, he does something similar here when he says I think and care of it for you guys, you don't need to look at those books. I've done it for you, right? And we don't need to study that out. There were people who wanted to, I don't know it, I think because it seemed like it should, it wasn't attempt to usurp the authority of all peoples rabbis and the time.
Oh, yes. Yeah. Whenever I read that, I'm like, I wish my view value read this letter and I feel like he was smart to think that point about, about me who studied war instead of studying the law. Yeah.
There are some remarks on the old books in the guide to, because he mentioned this, Alex said, he said, you know, there's one sickness that human beings have, is that they trust books and especially old books. And it seems to refer only to the books of the astrologers, but of course, there's other old books too. And in the guide, he does mention, you know, that there are obstacles to agreeing with. And one modern obstacle that the ancient state faces that there have arisen texts which are considered by habit to be authoritative.
And that seems a much clearer reference to the Torah and this reference here. It's kind of open, you know, it's old books, old traditions of all kinds. And in the guide, it's much more specific. And it's the Torah.
One point that struck me about this up and we've got this out there, but it seems like the philosophers in understanding how the stars actually work through astronomy, right? They are able to refute the astrologers, right? And therefore prove that to their satisfaction that human life and the world around us is to some degree governed by chance, right? That creates room for human freedom, right?
Which that freedom is then by the religion is really important, right? Because the freedom says you're free to follow the law or not to follow the law and bear the consequences of that that God might give to you, right? And so it's almost like the philosophers not only get rid of the astrologers, they provide this sort of a proof of a kind of indeterminacy in nature, to which human beings may act, but also God may act as well. And so it was interesting because it was almost like my monadies is again, to some extent, defending philosophy, but it's by presenting it as able to prove that even according to the recent God can do what he does, right?
Whereas the astrologers, one of the things that's really bad about it is it cuts God off for the past, right? Don't worry about what's going on above the moon and the stars, what's going on with God. There's a kind of necessity below that that's all you need to study. And so you don't need to study the law at all.
So in presenting this sort of part of Aristotle's teaching as sort of showing that that's not actually happening, he actually also creates the room for God to judge, right? And to determine things one way or the other, right? They agree on this point of freedom. Are we getting there already?
I'm not sure. We can go back and go back. But I mean, there's a lot on Providence also in the guy, right? And how to understand what's happening in the sub-lunars here.
And then the guy he talks about, you know, the opinion of the philosophers that things are up to chance. And there's other opinions. There's also one of religious people that believe, you know, it's all determined every second, every split second by divine omnipotence, which would also do away with the law, right? Because there's no human freedom.
Everything is determined. So it does away with the law. This is actually some of the kind of moon who actually believe this or go that far. And they are the closest to the astrologers.
But I would say, you seem to say that Aristotelian science creates the freedom for divine judgment. And that to me seems not right. All right. Let me try to explain this a little better.
Let's just, you know, tell me my head. Where's the part where he says, yeah, it's not this is in the learner volume on page 183. I forget the exact paragraph. I mean, the long paragraph now in the long big meeting one and all the time.
I don't know. I think that is a paragraph any same. I might know them or too long. When he goes into the three sects of the Gentiles scholars along the way, he says this, all three of these sects of the philosophers who contain that everything is made by means of the spheres and the stars also maintain that whatever happens to each and every being is due to chance is not due to any cause coming from above divine or astrological, right?
And neither the constellation under which one is born nor nature can avail against it, right? So showing that the constellations aren't doing anything and that nature isn't sort of determining things, they kind of create a room for freedom, right? I was struck, I maybe want to put this, I was struck by the fact that the astrologers on one side and the philosophers and the religionists are on the other as regards to the room for human freedom, right? And the philosophers to a certain extent prove that that room exists, right?
Now the religionist then says, well, if you walk with me in the way of chance, then I will walk you in the fury of chance. You actually think things are chance. You're making a mistake. But if philosophers nevertheless prove to somebody who might think I can do it, go with the constellations, there is freedom.
Now what you do with that freedom is vastly different, right? So I don't want to collapse each one of them. I'm not sure, I mean freedom, there is choice, right? We human beings are not determined by external, are not fully determined by external things or by external natures.
But you know, the limitation of individual natures is a big theme in minorities, just not in the guide. Because here I think he does make a very strategic alliance in many ways with the philosophers, because we can see how much the rabbis actually rely on philosophy in order to protect themselves and the law, right? So he presents philosophy in a way as much more on the side of the law in this letter, or we can get to the real disagreements. But his general take is, for instance, here he says, you know, every man is after every man to become wise.
That's basically what he says here, right? You just have to make this choice. The guide is a book that very much stresses all the obstacles of human beings to wisdom. And there are many internal ones, and it's not up to you to simply become a different human being.
And here it seems, when we were talking about moral, good or evil, that's something that the religionists are keen on, or that's important for them. But I think the philosophic freedom is a different one. And it's not up to you to either commit evil, but it's also not up to you to become wise, for instance, that has many preconditions. That's the idea.
I was just saying, yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's right. I know, Greg, did you want to jump in here? You just have all these books all over yourself.
I'm wondering if I'm just, I can't, I'm trying to keep up with you guys, it's impossible. There are, there are religions that we learn, the guy who deny what you're calling freedom, right? I mean, the ashirites think that God ordains everything. And so there is this weird, it's not so neat as to say that the philosophers and the believers are on one side and the astrologers are on the other.
There are some sects of the religious believers who are perfectly on the side of the astrologers who think that things are perfectly driven by some kind of necessity, if you're God of the stars. But of course, now, my mind is the guy says that the ashirite position is somehow mistaken. These religious believers who believe that God is their date, everything, because then you have to attribute all sorts of nasty things to God, which we'd rather not do. Well, in another way with the law, right?
We have these three roots of the law, right? That's something that he makes sure to repeat in this letter. And what are the, what are the three roots of the law? One is the creation of the world from nothing.
You still have to get there. And then the second one is that everything happens by just decree. And the third one is that human beings are free. And if you are a religionist that believes that everything is, you know, that God is omnipotent and it makes you do whatever you do at every moment.
You might have the first element of ex-nital, but you don't have just judgment and you don't have free will. So these are the things that he says are important for the Torah to uphold. It was interesting that he suppresses the ashirites here, right? I mean, as he presents it, he says, and know my masters that it is one of the roots of religion of Moses, our master, and one that all the philosophers also acknowledge that every action of human beings is left to them, and that there's nothing to constrain or draw them.
I guess the risk is if he spills the beans on the stool, they might just become ashirites, right? And go the wrong way. But let's go to the roots of the law. Let's start dealing around the branches.
What's going on with these roots? Let's talk about creation out of nothing. I mean, I'm not sure he suppresses the ashirites. It's just that this whole letter, right?
I think you mentioned it. It's a defense of the law on the one hand, and we can talk about why it is so important to defend the law. And it's a defense of science that comes to the aid of the law that otherwise couldn't defend itself. And on the other hand, it's a defense of science to it, qualified one, but it's a real defense of philosophy, both by showing what it's capable of doing and how the law needs velocity.
And he never calls the philosophers or stupid or ignoramuses or unwise never. He attacks the astrologers, but when the philosophers go wrong in the name and the eyes of the law, he never attacks them, never. And so I don't think he suppresses the ashirites. It's just that as a short text that defends the law, for reasons we have to talk about, it's not a sect that's relevant or helpful.
I mean, I don't think that people would go there and want everything to be predetermined, because even in astrology, you don't want things to be predetermined. You want to know what might happen so that you can change it. It's not that people just say, okay, so I'm going to be hit by a rocket and how we're fine. Not leave the house.
That's right. Now let's get the station. And yeah, so we go to the, how he presents the effects of the philosophers. Yeah, let's do it.
So he claims that the philosophers and the religious people agree on one thing, and that is that the world has a governor of whatever character that governor is. He doesn't go into details, but there are three different sects among the philosophers. One sect believes that the governor and in the world are so to speak, related in the way that the sun is related to the light of the sun. They are not, they're not separable in a way that's, you know, the governor doesn't proceed or is not separable from the world in the way that in the second position he is, which would be, there's a governor that has created the world out of eternal matter.
So in that sense, there's a greater separation between the governor and the things he makes that the matter is eternal. The third position of the philosophers, that is the surprising one, is that he says some philosophers hold that the world is created out of nothing. This governor has the world created out of nothing. That is very different from the guide where the third position of philosophy would be the philosophers who do not believe that the world has a governor of the Epicurean, such as me.
And here, these are replaced by philosophers who think that creation of nothing is possible. And the guide he says they all consider this absurd, and he gives different reasons for why that would be absurd. For one thing is that they would have to predicate, you know, opposite things of the same being at the same time, and these things are not possible. And it's interesting because, quick, I'm wrong, as he's going through this, it seems like the only example of the third group he gives, remotely, is the guide, right?
I think that's right. So which is interesting because the first, the sort of, when you expect them to go along with the religionists in the later sort of classification that it goes into, but here, he presents it as a work of philosophy, right? And I think I shattered all those proofs that the philosophers advanced, is proving that the world was not created, and therefore set it on a kind of stronger footstep. In a way, here, it seems like, look, if you have to choose one thing to rely on, look, you can rely on reason.
I've set it up so that I can sort of unify the two, essentially. You guys have any idea who this third group might be, or if this is just a flat out, claim to smooth over the differences, that's very stark difference. The third group, that's a philosopher's that would claim that the world has been created out of nothing. There's a, in metaphysics, beta, of all the problems that he goes through, the problems of metaphysics, he talks about one problem that he says, everybody, you know, underestimates, he says it comes from he said in all the theologians, and the view they have, is it possible for perishable things to come from and imperishable things?
And that would be something like the gods having children or something like that, but this sort of generation in that way. But that's the only, but he makes it sound like literally nobody believes this except for the theologians. Right, it is a little strange. I mean, my take is that it is just made up here.
I was wondering for a moment whether this might be Moses, because Moses, my mind of these take on prophecy is that the prophets are all first philosophers to begin with, or they are therefore, they're all perfected, they're all perfected, they're intellects, and then in order to be prophets and speak to many who haven't philosophized, they have also perfected their imagination. So I was thinking, okay, is this the philosopher then speaks to the many? Would that mean somebody like Moses? But I don't think so, because I mean, Moses is obviously the one who is in the second position, the religious position.
So I don't know what this is, what this is about. Yeah, I don't know at all. It struck me as very strange. I just assumed that the only person was playing on it is himself.
Yeah, that's not the least. I don't know. I mean, that's just, I can't think of anybody. So he mentions Abraham to your point about Moses in that passage.
So you're writing a guide how he talks about the prophets having to be philosophers first, but yeah, I don't, I have no idea. And then he says 1000, what does he say 1000 books have been written on this point? So yeah, I don't, I can't think of any philosophers. I take his, I think, or no, that it is a both a rhetorical strategy to not make the difference so stark or to say, you know, philosophers have different opinions, they're not this lock that they are in the guide.
And another maybe, and one important point could be that this is very speculative, that we actually know very little about, you know, the first things and first principles. But it doesn't matter for our knowledge of what happens down here. So I know this is a very strange thing to say, because you could say, well, if the world's created out of nothing, you know, obviously that has huge effects for it down here. I'm wondering whether he's saying the principle of the world being created of nothing is so, so much an incoherent non premise that literally nothing follows from that whatsoever.
It's not that things necessarily follow from that. It's that it's something that you can see it as a claim. It's incoherent, it doesn't make any sense. And so, you know, the way you think about the world down here or the world nature is unrelated to this thing.
This is not very clear, probably what I'm saying. Let me try to see that back. I think that's interesting. So that the main thing that's really at issue here, and about which there's broad agreement, is just what's happening in proximity to us, cause that causally and spatial temporally, right?
And all that sort of what's around us. Look, we can debate till our faces turn blue about what happened at the very beginning of things. And then we can go into the very wistitution and talk about whether it's metaphor or whatever it is. But don't worry about that.
There are real pressing problems now. We're wasting time on astrology. We're not studying war. Go study the law.
Go to the Aristotle and just worry about getting clear maybe a little bit about the things that you can do around your life, both as a religionist but as a philosopher. Is that in a way you're saying? Well, yes and no, because he presented as more of a practical solution to a theoretical problem. I was trying to say, if there's something to this, and I'm not sure there is, it could just be a straight up lie, right?
That he says there's philosophers who hold this. If there's something to this, it could be something like, there can be philosophers who hold this, but it doesn't change. It theoretically, nothing follows from it. They will still hold the same Aristotelian natural science that they otherwise would.
I don't know if this makes any sense. Maybe it's completely absurd because in Aristotle, obviously, the eternity of the world is a necessary feature of having natural science. But I'm just wondering that we can go on. That is the premise.
So he raises that problem in data that was talking about where he finally disposes of it in Kappa, I think. He doesn't evoke that premise, the eternity of the world. So it is kind of like, you can sell it that way. Literally changes nothing, I think you're right, in his natural science.
I think he's got miracles on the line. It was here. Yeah, I guess I just didn't. I don't know.
I think if there is creation out of nothing, then it really isn't. Maybe this isn't saying much at all. This is a deep problem versus the Australian science, then what room is there for necessity at that point? Because things could be undone in any given moment as well.
Miracles. Right. Well, miracles, I don't know. I mean, if you want to spend a slightly more philosophic, if this is a philosophic position, again, I'm not sure it is at all.
I don't think it is. But there's always something eternal. My money says nobody has ever claimed that nothing comes out of nothing through nothing. So here, there would always be an eternal thing, which would be this governor.
So there's something that's always there. So the question is how you understand the whatever the expression of all the beings or of being, is this thing already being or is it not being? But I think all this can be cut because I really don't know. But my money, these does say nobody believes creation out of nothing on a count of nothing to nothing.
There's always an eternal thing there. And I just circle back to a question that we raised near the beginning that I think is, you guys have any thoughts, David, on a Alexan, why astrology? I mean, we could ask why it was attracted to Jews at this particular historic moment. I think we could probably answer that.
But why does it seem for any way to be attracted to human beings? I mean, what is it in the human soul that longs for some kind of cosmic dictating of how our lives are really? Because Alex pointed to the fact that if it doesn't work, then there's room for human freedom, maybe just being a bit American, I sort of want to not be dictated by the heavenly bodies. Like, why do people want that?
And maybe I'm sorry, just keep correcting myself. Maybe it's honest point that we want to know so that we then can correct it. So we actually don't want to know that our lives are dictated by the stars. So maybe it's actually a sort of psychological terror that's driving us.
I also thought that he says at the end of the letter that that they're explicit passages in the Talmud and the mission of Torah, where people make claims, their astrological claims, explicitly. And so the confusion is totally understandable. Now, he says at the end, don't pay any attention to that. Which is kind of like easy way to dispense with it.
And he concludes in a bizarre way, I think, by citing Judges 16, which is about Samson's hair getting cut. So it's at the bottom of page 186, or sorry, at the top. He says, now I told you everything in my heart as if he's been duped into doing so. It's a really weird way to conclude.
Sorry, I didn't need to ram. One, I think just on Greg's question, I feel like I just keep going back to Hesiod here. But in Hesiod, in the works and days, the stars, when certain constellations are rising, are a really good guy, but went to plant and went to do X, Y, and C. The other thing.
And it offers a handy guide for how to live your life. This is before you really have like predicting the weather and all sorts of stuff. And from science, you have to take these sort of positions. And I think there's a kind of attraction when you're faced with unpredictability of the world.
Say, well, it's handy for this. It's handy for that. Maybe it'll tell me whether my son will be born with a third leg or something. I'll also just add, for a non-educated, unordinary, thoughtful human being, it almost strikes me that the idea that the heavenly bodies have some effect on our life strikes me as more plausible, at least at first blush, than the idea that some old book has can tell me how to live my life.
Like, if the idea is the books are authoritative because they're older, but what's older than these books, right? These heavenly bodies, then they seem to be guided by some motion that's orderly and discernible to the mind. I don't know. I mean, it's a verminifously, first things you could say.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Maybe this is why the natural gods are the heavenly beings. These are the things that people worship or something like this. Maybe there's some overlap there, too. I don't know.
I mean, I would say that both the position of the Bible and the astrological position are both, they both want to have their cake and eat it. And they're kind of picking and choosing going on, right? Because when astrology, it's not that you simply want to know what happens and not be able to do anything about it. You want to know causes for bad things, right?
Why am I so lazy? Why didn't I get this done? Or how can I avoid this? Or how am I going to get this job?
Or how can I protect my children? So there's all sorts of things you want to know, both things that you have found out you can't change, maybe about yourself or about other things you want. It dispenses you with having to deal with an unjust God, right? On it.
Don't you think that this is okay? So, okay, but isn't it similar to trying to peritiate a God? I mean, this reminds me of Caffa Lesson Book, One of the Republic, where you'd like, okay, we know the rules, either the stars have dictated X or the gods have dictated X, but I can figure out some way to get around it in some way. So it's the similar kind of, I don't know.
I think it is similar. And you know, you both want causes and you want to get around them. They're from causes and you want to get around them, exactly. And I think that's a very, very human thing to want.
And I think I'm in. So the sources are this confused or inculcate human longing that's intentional with itself. I mean, that is an interesting question, right? Because nobody has to love the stars, the moral demands from astrology are much lower, right?
You have to learn to read signs, you can propitiate, you can, it's so to speak on a, it's a lesser emotional and moral investment than a more fully blown, you know, like religion, like Judaism, I would say. So I don't know whether it doesn't speak to different human types to some extent than the strict ones who want to go all in and, you know, give their, give their lives over to deep moral life. But you know, the position of the Torah, I think, or it's also a mixed position, right? Because on the one hand, you have to hold that everything that happens to you is somehow the just reward or punishment by God, right?
This is what my manatee's explicitly says. This is what we have to believe. We don't know how this comes about. We have no, we can't prove it.
We, but this is what we have to be. But on the other hand, you're also free at every given moment to, to follow the Lord to behave in the right way. So you're both, you know, at every second, there is something being done to you, sort of speed, you're living in, and you pick and choose this moment, I'm free to do something and then I get punished. And, but that's not, that's not a coherent way to think about, you know, the state that you're in, you're not sometimes free and then you're under God's control and then you're free again and then you're, that's a very, yeah, that's also very strange way to think about it.
I think it's not just a astrology. And I think, you know, he goes all in attacking astrology, and Dix is heels in and says we can scientifically disprove it, but he would never ever do this. So this other position, it also has to, you know, contradict real elements in it. Yeah.
Well, I think we've, we've been going out a little while here and maybe it's time to wrap up. So I think what we'll do is, I understand that our co-hosts might have actually our guests first. Well, I was going to do that after, but okay. Thank her, Alex.
Thank her. There they go. So I was thinking our co-hosts have a couple of horoscopes and then I was hoping that maybe we could turn to what we usually do on the show, lightning round, where we ask our guests some nice questions about herself. But first, I think Alex Priu, he found in the paper today a horoscope for a famous philosopher.
Is that right, Alex? Oh, yeah. I've got one over the other horoscope. You tell me the philosophers.
Oh, okay. Oh, fun, fun. For your sins against man and reason, you will be punished with a granddaughter marrying an American Machiavelli. Arvi Mantell.
Well, no, no, that's the American Machiavelli. He was the philosopher. Oh, a granddaughter will marry. Oh, okay.
Yeah, caution it. Yeah. You want to know this? I'm going to do that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was good. Oh, that's very good. Very good.
Very good. Estability and DT. Yeah, we should be very good. You changed the spelling.
So it's for people off the scent. We know what's going on. Why are we sent you to send it from Gerta? So, yeah, yeah.
David, you have one for us. I'll read you the horoscope. This philosopher was born on May 7th and you can tell me what it sounds like. So, it's a tourist.
Taurus is our quote, highly principal people whose concern for others nearly always outweighs concern for themselves. They are uncritical in the extreme. Yet, despite their seeming mildness, there's nothing weak or unreliable about them. The boss, where I think you know, is extremely overweight.
He likes to act like he's principled and talk about causation and a nice anodyne language. But for those who know the true history, David Hume tried to cook Roussel and pot and eat his flesh. And yet there are still political theorists, and notably a guy at American University who's okay to name it. That's okay to name it.
Okay, that's okay to name it. We don't even know what's going on. Okay. No, it's okay.
Yeah. But you know, it's only stick goes right on David Hume. Canibals only stick goes. Well, I don't support that Greg.
You support that. Not even a little bit. I thought you were talking about Thomas II blindness. That's good too.
He was a big man. He was a big man. But, but, Gorge, Gorge not on human flesh. I did correct.
Right. I've got one. This is a Pisces. This philosopher was actually born in the month of Gamelion and it says, you're great with children, even those who aren't your own.
Maybe you should try a different wardrobe, though. You should have something to drink today. Celebrate yourself with a stiff drink. You've earned it.
But don't forget to offer up a little thanks to that God who has healed you. That's what we've got. We have some, and that's our old friend Socrates Socrates there. You know, when you made the joke about children, I immediately thought of Rousseau, but there are so few philosophers that are good fathers.
Yeah, he's a family man. Yeah. That's right. Right.
I can't. He never didn't have to approve my philosophic bona fides. I'm already neglecting my daughter. Yeah.
I'm talking about that thinking time outside. I don't have any children. So I assume that that's a good sign in my favor, right? Yeah.
You're even more superior. Just start beating your chihuahas, Greg. I do. I'm a 12 philosopher, Horoscope.
Want to give us? No, I did not prepare one, but I did check my own Cosmo Horoscope, which I think I'll do it. Well, I think the essential part was you mock me and I will hunt you down because Capricorns will not stand for being mocked. Yeah.