Doubt
Gordon Tucker
Gordon Tucker is Vice Chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement and Assistant Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
Credit: Kurt Hoffman, Open AI
The unspeakable events of October 7 in Israel, and the ongoing horrors that have ensued during the war to root out Hamas, have left us with so many doubts. We shall have some things to say about them, both implicitly and explicitly, in what follows. But it is good to begin by building up some reflections on the general phenomenon and role of doubt in human affairs.
Doubt assumes a variety of guises that plague us—as a species, we seem wired to desire certainty. Nine centuries ago, the Jewish philosopher Abraham ibn Daud set forth two of these species of uncertainty. The first is the doubt that results from our ignorance of facts that, in principle, could be discovered. Interestingly, the mishnah that has so often been chosen to introduce young students to rabbinic literature (Bava Metzia 1:1) deals with a doubt of that nature. It tells of two people clutching a cloak, each claiming to have found it and picked it up first. There must have been a discoverable fact of the matter, but the court—in the absence of other evidence—could not know it, and possibly even the litigants did not know the truth. Thus do countless generations of young students of Talmud begin their studies with the question of how to reach a fair and acceptable accommodation with doubt. The resolution is, in one respect, almost certainly suboptimal: the cloak is to be divided between them. Yet had the judges been there to observe the scene, they would have known for sure who found the cloak first and was the rightful owner of 100% of it. The Mishnah’s decision, then, is a means of living in a civilized way with the unresolved doubt. Elsewhere in the Talmud (bShabbat 69b), we are asked to consider the case of a person who has been trekking through an uninhabited area for some days, but in the absence of any human contact, has forgotten what day of the week it is. How shall he fulfill his wish to observe Shabbat? Again, the resolution is suboptimal. The traveler is to count six days and designate the seventh as (his) Shabbat. He is permitted to find and prepare food for himself—but do no more work other than continuing to travel—on every day, including his designated Shabbat. This instruction cannot possibly produce a correct observance of the actual Shabbat. It is nevertheless a way of adapting to the (perhaps temporarily) incorrigible doubt, while maintaining, through thought and liturgy, a presence of the holiness of time in one’s life.
Ibn Daud then notes that there is a second species of doubt that arises because God has so made the world that uncertainty is in some cases guaranteed. The author’s intent was to suggest that the furnishing of free will to human beings meant that even God had agreed to have uncertainty about how God’s creatures would act. But for our purposes, we need not get into those theological matters. It is enough to consider the matter of other minds. Here is a simple example of a doubt that we could not, even in principle, resolve. First consider a simple statement from Wittgenstein:
It means nothing to doubt whether I am in pain. That means: If anyone said, “I do not know if what I have got is a pain or something else,” we should think something like, he does not know what the English word “pain” means, and we should explain it to him. (Philosophical Investigations I:288)
So, one’s own pain may be indubitable, but what about someone else’s pain? Even if they tell us they are in pain, how can we know whether they are being truthful? All schoolchildren know that if they want to stay home from school, they do not claim to have a fever; that can be checked and verified. They claim to have a stomachache. For that presents the parent with a doubt that cannot be resolved.
Related to this kind of doubt is what results from an analogue to the parallax phenomenon, i.e., that the very same scene viewed from even the slightest change of perspective results in images that are different; even, at times, mutually contradictory. The analogue is this: the very same event can, in the perceptions of distinct actors with different histories and world views, be understood in significantly divergent ways. And a recognition that such divergences reside in other minds can only raise for us measures of doubt: are mine the complete and accurate perceptions of what has occurred?
John Patrick Shanley’s play, Doubt (it later became a motion picture and has had a revival this year on Broadway), explores exactly this issue in human interactions, and it does so in a religious (Catholic) setting. We will return to the plot of the play a bit further on. But Shanley wrote a preface to the play in which he said:
I still long for a shared certainty, an assumption of safety, the reassurance of believing that others know better than me [sic] what’s for the best. But I have been led by the bitter necessities of an interesting life to value that age-old practice of the wise: Doubt… Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite—it is a passionate exercise.
So, following the playwright, let’s remind ourselves why doubt is productive, and protective of society. Doubt first and foremost engenders a certain humility (recall Oliver Cromwell’s oft-quoted plea to the Church of Scotland, “think it possible you may be mistaken”). And thus, it has played, and continues to play, a crucial role in the advancement of knowledge, and of science in particular. The point was made forcefully by the great physicist, Richard Feynman, in his article, “What is and What Should Be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society”:
As evidence grows it increases the probability perhaps that some idea is right, or decreases it. But it never makes absolutely certain one way or the other. Now we have found that this is of paramount importance in order to progress. We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.…People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified—how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it’s all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know. (Emphasis added.)
But it is not only in science that doubt plays a critical role. It does so in religion as well. Here is Abraham Joshua Heschel’s statement on the matter in God in Search of Man:
Superstition, pride, self-righteousness, bias, and vulgarity may defile the finest traditions…. The criticism of reason, the challenge, and the doubts of the unbeliever may, therefore, be more helpful to the integrity of faith than the simple reliance on one’s own faith.
Heschel was speaking up for the value of doubts that may persist despite the best efforts of reason (he had pointedly written in “The Quest for Certainty in Saadia’s Philosophy” that “not all that is evident is capable of being demonstrated,” where “evident” meant intuitively compelling to an individual). And that the value of doubt is the subject of an astute modern commentary on a familiar biblical passage. Exodus 33 depicts for us the aftermath of the Golden Calf episode, when nothing seemed certain. Moses’ yearning for that elusive certainty is recorded in verses 18-23:
He [Moses] said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”
And [God] answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name YHVH, and the grace that I grant and the compassion that I show,” [continuing, ]“But you cannot see My face, for a human being may not see Me and live.”
And YHVH said, “See, there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face shall not be seen.”
Many are the traditional commentators on this pivotal passage concerning the limits of human knowledge, and we will presently consider one of them. But first, we turn to what Arnold Ehrlich (19th-20th centuries) wrote on this section in his Hebrew Bible commentary, titled Mikra Kifshuto:
“You will see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” [Ex. 33:23] What I see in this reflects the words of a German sage [Gotthold Lessing], who wrote the following: “Were I to have stood in the presence of God, whose right hand was holding Truth, and whose left hand was holding The Search for Truth, and were I to have been given the choice of one or the other, I would choose The Search for Truth.” A similar thing was said in the Mishnah [Avot 4:22]: “A single hour spent in repentance and good deeds in this world is more delightful than an entire lifetime spent in the World to Come.” They said this because one who arrives at Truth, and thus to the life of the World to Come, is now at rest from all striving, having arrived at the desired destination; and when one works toward something of supreme value, the striving itself is a greater good than the reward yielded…. Therefore, a human cannot see the face of God; only God’s back is shown to the God-fearing, so that they will study, search out, and infer things about God’s face from that back. Thus, they will strive all their days to know God with a full and clear knowledge, and that striving is their reward.
The biblical text seems to be saying that God is withholding from humans a knowledge that could be available to them, if only God would allow it. It is about God’s prerogatives. Ehrlich, however, directs our attention in the opposite direction, to what is essential about the human quest for knowledge and certainty: that we are in an unending condition of doubt, not because truth is being withheld from us, but rather because the true human vocation is to live in doubt and yet strive. The contemporary philosopher Michael Gelven homed in on exactly this point, as he considered Lessing’s fable in Truth and Existence: A Philosophical Inquiry:
The story is deeply paradoxical. For if Lessing genuinely desires to seek the truth, then is he not disingenuous in turning down the offer of truth itself? If I desire gold and someone offers me gold or a stake in a possible gold claim, I would take the gold. By denying God’s offer of truth Lessing seems to be denying any meaningful sense of a search for truth. Why search for truth if, when offered it, one turns it down?
Yet this fable of Lessing’s suggests a deeper insight than mere frustration with someone who does not know what he wants. There is the suggestion in this little story that only an infinite being can possess truth, and that to accept the right-handed offer is to forfeit one’s humanity.
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This brings us back to the 12th century and the Tosafist and Bible commentator Joseph Bekhor Shor, and his commentary on Exodus 33:20:
“A human being may not see Me and live.” Some interpret this to mean “for if people were to see Me, they would live forever (she-im yir’ani, vachai l’olam).”
That is: a human being cannot see God—reach certain truth—and still be said to be living a mortal human life. It is just as ibn Daud said: there are things that God has ordained to be shrouded in doubt. And among those are the creatures created at the end of the sixth day.
As part of their destiny, those human creatures must struggle not only with doubts about facts and perceptions of events. They are, and always will be, faced with what are perhaps the most stubbornly persistent doubts: the moral uncertainties.
Let’s go back to Shanley’s play, titled “Doubt,” and consider a thumbnail sketch of the plot: An obstinately conservative nun harbors and nurtures suspicions about the relationship between the parish priest and the student in her school to whom he has given special attention and support. In a tense confrontation between the nun and the priest, he says, “You have not the slightest proof of anything,” to which she responds, “But I have my certainty.” As the tale unfolds, that imagined certainty deeply affects several lives quite negatively. When the play ends, the readers/audience are still left with the facts unresolved (did the priest cross a line or not?). But much more poignantly, the nun, having driven the priest from the parish, comes to realize that the much more recalcitrant moral issues are, in fact, not certain at all. The last line of the play, delivered amid her pathetic sobbing to a younger Sister, is, “I have such doubts!” The clear sense one gets is that she is tormented not only by the recognition that the facts remain uncertain, but also, and principally, by the question of whether her previously held certainty entitled her to act as she did. And she knows that she might never know the answer.
These unavoidable moral doubts, which are an inseparable part of being human in a world that God populated with elusive facts and with other minds, are the doubts that followed September 11, and they are the same kinds of doubts that we now have, or at least should have, following October 7:
In the war against Hamas, has the military objective been well enough defined so that it is both just and attainable? Given that two objectives have been put forward (elimination of Hamas and freeing the live hostages), are they jointly attainable? Attainability is crucial because the suffering and deaths of non-combatants is judged by their proportionality to military objectives. If those objectives live on an indefinite horizon, then the limits on collateral civilian casualties may become indefinite as well.
Were all possible alternatives for eliminating the Hamas threat without the massive destruction in Gaza explored and found to be dead ends? One might think here of the possibilities of financial and other pressures that the Abraham Accords might have opened up. Were such alternatives sufficiently tested? It is no secret that doubts about alternatives have arisen precisely because of the apparent interest the current government has in maximum bellicosity.
Even if we assume that the military objective is attainable and that there is only one path to it, might we have doubts about whether it is ethically acceptable to take any road automatically, simply because it is the only alternative? The Talmud is clear that when the only possible alternative to saving my life is to take the life of another person, it is unethical and sinful to choose that option. Some (e.g., Yoram Hazony) have said and written that this ethical imperative, which applies to individuals, cannot be extended to an entire nation. But that is simply asserted with no textual proof. Might we not have grave doubts about that?
It is true that classical Jewish texts (and events!) set forth strict limits on what could, in the public interest, be given up for the release of hostages. But might we not question whether a justifiable and protective policy in the milieu of the Mishnah and the European Middle Ages can simply be applied in the then-unforeseen circumstance of a sovereign and effectively armed Jewish state?
Perhaps the biggest doubt that forces itself on us is the nun’s “metaquestion” in Shanley’s play: given that we must have a variety of doubts about what is right, are we entitled to act in massively death-dealing ways, even while the desire for certainty eludes and frustrates us?
That I can delineate all the uncertainties above (and there are surely even more in this unsettling time) does not suggest that I have clear answers to them. But the doubts linger, in the incorrigible way of moral uncertainties.
And thus arises the crucial question of how we live with doubt. Feynman (cited above) asserted that “it is possible to live and not know.” How do we do that? How can we act in the midst of doubt, and not be paralyzed by it, especially in the face of horrendous evil?
That sought-after modus vivendi was the overall conceit of Moshe Halbertal’s recent book about the treatment of uncertainty in rabbinic halakhah, titled The Birth of Doubt. In the first few pages, the author notes: “I hope it will become clear that the rules of uncertainty are aimed not at avoiding uncertainty but at dwelling in its midst” (emphasis added).
He goes on throughout the book to describe what he calls a “sectarian premise” that only certainty can serve as a foundation for a religious and ethical life, and that all doubt must be avoided. Of course, the desire to eliminate the possibility of ethical doubt would surely entail the avoidance (perhaps going as far as abhorrence) of sovereignty in the real world. Living with and struggling with ethical doubt is, in other words, part of the bargain of Zionism, as it is with any movement for national self-determination. Never have the Jewish people faced more ethical doubts than they have since 1948. It is, of course, an open question whether trading purity for sovereignty was a bargain worth making. But Zionism made exactly that bargain.
Given that Halbertal’s principal focus is the halakhic subject matter, he can say that “the Mishnah [e.g., Bava Metzia 1:1] and Tosefta provide… rulings that allow [one] to chart [a] course through an uncertainty-laced world.” But what Israel and the Jewish people need to navigate the ethical conundra and doubts surrounding the use of violence for just ends cannot be so easily found in a finished canon. Yet, there are helpful resources in the work of some recent thinkers. Among them is the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who addressed this very problem as follows in The View from Nowhere:
It is evident that we are at a primitive stage of moral development. Even the most civilized human beings have only a haphazard understanding of how to live, how to treat others, how to organize their societies. The idea that the basic principles of morality are known, and that the problems all come in their interpretation and application, is one of the most fantastic conceits to which our conceited species has been drawn. (The idea that if we cannot easily know it, there is no truth here is no less conceited). Not all of our ignorance in these areas is ethical, but a lot of it is. And the idea of the possibility of moral progress is an essential condition of moral progress. None of it is inevitable.
Confronting moral uncertainties, which are disheartening on their face, Nagel gives us two crucial bits of encouragement (not a guarantee!). One is that belief in the possibility of moral progress is sine qua non for getting closer to moral rectitude. And the other, buried in his parenthetical, is that the extraordinary difficulty in pinpointing any given correct moral position must not lead us to disbelieve in a higher and clearer moral consciousness toward which we can and should strive.
But what tools do we have to do that? Here, a brief essay by Stanley Fish, written in the wake of the uncertainties following the 9/11 attacks, gives us an important lesson:
Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn't be effective…because our adversaries lay claim to the same language…. Instead, we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend.
At times like these, the nation rightly falls back on the record of aspiration and accomplishment that makes up our collective understanding of what we live for. That understanding [and] we have grounds enough for action and justified condemnation in the democratic ideals we embrace, without grasping for the empty rhetoric of universal absolutes to which all subscribe but which all define differently. (“Condemnation Without Absolutes,” The New York Times 10/15/01)
“The particular lived values” and “the record of aspiration and accomplishment… that we live for” are hardly throwaway phrases. They are the essentials of what is hard, but not futile work. Honesty and scrupulousness are demanded when we act forcefully without absolute certainty. Is what we do consistent with the values for which we have stood, the values that have sustained us and strengthened us as an upright society always seeking higher moral ground? In the case of post-10/7 Israel, we should certainly have doubts concerning the various ways that Hamas and other practitioners of vicious terrorism can be fought. But in determining which paths should be taken and which ought to be discarded, it is critical that each be evaluated exactly as Fish urges. Does it follow, and is it consistent with, the lived values that have characterized the aspirations for Zionism and the Jewish state that we recognize, and that we dare not discard or discredit?
