“So much human tension and conflict are
bound up with what I often call the hubris of exclusivity. Too many of us are
ensconced in our own truth, unable to tolerate any other view of reality, or
morality, or justice. To give a real hearing to the other side feels traitorous
as if we are turning our backs on the most basic principles of truth and
decency. This polarization is tearing American society apart at the seam, and
on my side of the ocean in Israel, it is contributing to the perpetuation of
the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In this reflection
my Orthodox Rabbi friend Hanan, living and writing in the context of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, asks whether there is a way of looking at
truth that might allow peaceful coexistence and a positive pluralism, rather
than causing polarization and conflict.
Rabbi
Hanan suggests that there is a way to pursue and understand truth that can
encompass different perspectives, and (at least) enable those with different
perspectives on what is true live together peacefully rather than fighting and
polarizing.
He draws
on the teachings of Rabbi Kook, a religious mystic, who suggests that God “is
the master of all the different truths; He contains them all and combines them
all,” and is “the kaleidoscope of the myriad partial and contradictory truths
that make up reality.” He suggests that there is a “divine spark of light” in
everything, and that “We must study and listen, collect, and absorb more
and more approaches and understandings, as strange and offensive as they
sometimes appear.” Not that everything must be accepted as true (he measures
truth against the Torah), but “We must struggle with ourselves to always
endeavor not to refute but to find some spark in all that we encounter that can
enrich our ever-expanding purview of truth.” With this view, Rabbi Hanan
advocates that
“we must go forth and listen and then listen again, not
because the other might be right and we might be wrong, but rather because the
other might be right just as we are right. We must know that when only we are
right, we are certainly wrong. We must strive to hold this truth and that truth
instead of this truth or that truth. We must be zealous for the whole and
not for any one part of it. That according to Rabbi Kook is the meaning of
being zealous for God.”
This
reflection demonstrates again, I think, a movement from an ethnocentric perspective of others (and what they believe to be
true), to one which is more global or
ethnorelative (seeing my perspectives
in the context of the existence of other perspectives).
One of the
broader questions which this suggests to me is, does a move toward accepting
and adapting to different others (a move into a global or ethnorelative
perspective), necessitate a move away from the idea of “truth” (or the pursuit
of or holding to “truth”)?
Rabbi
Hanan, following Rabbi Kook, suggests not. He does not suggest giving up the
pursuit or valuing of “truth,” but rather, finding a different
(non-ethnocentric, non-exclusive) way of seeing what I think (or “know”) to be
true, in relation to what others (differently) see to be true.
This idea,
that people have partial truths (“sparks” of truth), and that no one (but God)
has all truth, or a full perspective on truth, is one way of approaching the
pursuit of truth in light of the fact that there are in this world many
different perspectives on truth.
It fits,
too, with a perspective that we should differentiate between “truth” / reality
as it exists, and our human perception of / understanding of / perspectives on truth.
For us, as human beings, truth is mediated – through our senses, through our
language, through our thought categories, through our cultural ways of looking
at and defining the world, through our minds. A “modernist” (and ethnocentric) perspective on reality (truth)
is that we simply “know” the truth; a “postmodern” (and global / ethnorelative)
perspective on reality is that our knowledge of truth is mediated.
People of
faith may be a bit unnerved by this perspective on truth/reality. But I return to
the saying in 1 Corinthians 13, “we see through a glass darkly.” That realization
reflects the intercultural trait of humility, and enables us (as does Rabbi
Hanan’s approach) to be open to others, to what we might learn from them, and to
the greater complexity we might gain in our view of reality and of truth. In
other words, holding our understanding of truth more lightly has the benefit,
beyond enabling us to live in peace with others, of expanding our understanding
of truth.
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