Friday, June 3rd, 10.45 – 13.00, at Università di Verona, Room 1.3
Abstract:
Each and every life is valuable and each life is a unique opportunity. "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”, declare the verses of the Talmud. This profound awareness permeates all Jewish thought and is perfectly represented in the well-known concept of Tikkun ha Olam. To repair the world and to heal the fracture between God and cosmos, it is sufficient to perform one single act of kindness. One single positive act is enough to start up an overall process of redemption and to evoke the presence of the Good, here and now. Several meanings can be assigned to the expression Tikkun ha Olam, meanings that differ depending on the different historical period they refer to. However, the assessment of the expression provided in Gershom Scholem’s works is the one which has most influenced its understanding and dissemination during the 20th Century.
Reading his investigation, we learn that this concept, although closely linked to the environment in which it emerges, i.e. that of the Rabbis, proves, in its evolution, to possess an extraordinary flexibility: from a mystical act in the Lurianic Kabbalah, to a progressive action that perfects the world in the Jewish Enlightenment, to a theory that sets the foundations for a new ethics of responsibility in contemporary thought. According to Nathan Rotenstreich and Moshe Idel, German culture and philosophy play a central role in the way this concept is developed and emerges in Scholem. More specifically, the logical foundations of the notion of Tikkun can be traced down to the conceptual bases of Hegel’s philosophy. It is quite a paradox that Hegel, an author who is apparently the furthest removed from the themes of Rabbinic speculation, provides the essential tools to study in greater depth a concept that, still today, emerges as fundamental in Jewish thought.
By analysing the notion of Good according to the traditional terms of Hegel’s philosophy, it clearly emerges that “repairing the world” through a limited act of goodness does not merely mean to “improve it a little”: each good act is considered as such not because it merely includes “some good”. Whoever saves a life does not simply save the small world of relationships and ties which that life keeps together. Whoever saves a life also saves the entire humanity embodied in that life. An act is good because the Good manifests itself entirely in that act. The assessment of the roots of the concept of Tikkun ha Olam must thus proceed on two fronts.
On the one hand, consideration is given to Hegel’s Science of Logic, that builds up the theory for the ethical category of Good. Here, the Good is Notion, i.e., takes the form of three aspects that cannot exist independently: Universal, Particular and Singular. “Good” is also Idea, meaning that Life is aware of itself as made of these three components, and acts properly when it is aware of its intimate structure. On the other hand, the assessment takes Hegel’s treatise on Good in the Philosophy of the Spirit into account. Here, the discourse on the Good is not limited to the “State”, on the contrary, it ends up including the relationship between national states, the history of the world and the historical prospects that had arisen in his time.
For the first time, according to Hegel’s vision, this world, our world, can embrace the histories of the people that preceded it and value each of these histories. In this first, truly global context, a shared sense of ethics can finally rise where the presence of the “Spirit of God” can emerge. As interpreted by Hegel, more than marking the end of history, this age indicates its beginning. As a result, it is not the end of history, but history’s end that becomes the cipher of this new Messianism. The “Messianic issue” in Hegel consists in the fact that everyone through their acts can give meaning to the world, and this is only possible when the dignity of all humans is acknowledged.
There is a crucial difference in Hegel and Scholem’s notions that must be highlighted. In Hegel, the People of Israel, as exiles, conquer a sense of interiority for the entire humanity, although up to a certain extent they remain prisoners of this same dimension. In the history of the Spirit, the universal transformation of this interiority is accomplished later on by Germanic people (not only German). Scholem on the contrary underscores that in Jewish tradition, interiority is “immediately upturned to become exteriority”: a Jew recognises himself in the Jewish people. Again, according to Scholem, the People of Israel find themselves as they go along their way, and understand that their outreach is in time and not in space, thus perceiving themselves as history. The end of Jewish history is to prepare to the future advent of the Messiah, namely to accomplish the Tikkun ha Olam: a non-violent apocalypse to start giving meaning to past and present history. In this, the Jewish world regains its universal role.
To “give a meaning” means to “make a difference”, to acknowledge the right value of every single aspect of reality in its uniqueness. From this perspective, the form taken by radical evil is indifference. Each and every individual and good act, on the contrary, shows the presence of the Good in the world and changes its global meaning. If this is possible, then it means that evil never wins, not even in Auschwitz, because even in Auschwitz it is possible not to be inert facing the ethical vacuum. When this happens, that is when Teshuvah starts.
