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The Principle of Humanity vs. Emunas Chachamim
At the beginning of Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Jonathan Lear mentions the Principle of Humanity: “that we should try to interpret others as saying something true – guided by our own sense of what is true and of what they could reasonably believe.” The very short Wikipedia article has a different formulation:
[When] interpreting another speaker we must assume that his or her beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her “the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances.”
A third formulation, stated in the Wikipedia article on the nearly identical Principle of Charity, includes negatives: “to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies, or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available.”
Compare all of that to “emunas chachamim,” which the braisa (Avos 6:6) identifies as one of the 48 qualities through which the Torah is acquired. Some might explain "emunas chachamim" to mean “faith in the wisdom of the Sages,” which suggests an uncritical acceptance of the truth of the Sages’ words. According to my understanding, it would be more accurate to render “emunas chachamim” as “faith that the Sages are chachamim.” In Darchei ha’Talmud, the relatively unknown Talmudic methodology manual by R’ Yitzchak Kanpanton (1360 – 1463 C.E.), the author expounds in detail on what emunas chachamim looks like in action:
At the outset of your analysis, you should establish as a premise of your thinking that each of the speakers – the one who asks and the one who answers – that both of them are intelligent, and that all their words [were spoken] with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, without anything twisted or distorted. This is what [the Sages] mean when they [rhetorically] exclaim: "Are we dealing with idiots?!" (Shevuos 48b). Therefore, you must analyze all their statements and see if they are statements with sound reasons, "as strong as a molten mirror" (Iyov 37:18) or whether [they are] weak statements, [like] "bland food without salt" (ibid. 6:6), and whether they are intellectually probable or improbable. One must strive to make their words probable and to adjust their ideational content so that [the statements] will be beautiful and acceptable and intellectually feasible; [one must also strive] not to ascribe to them the guilty iniquity of a tenuous or weak sevara (theory). None of their words should fall to the earth, for they are all "the words of the living God." And if they are "empty," [the "emptiness"] is from you. (Darchei ha’Talmud 1:3)
There are clear similarities between the Principle of Humanity and emunas chachamim. Both prompt the reader to grant the text in question the benefit of the doubt, interpreting it in the best light possible. Both effectively counteract the “strawman” fallacy by encouraging a “steelman” approach.
It is the differences between these two principles which interest me. The Principle of Humanity dictates that our interpretation of the text should be guided by “our own sense of what is true” as the first version has it. The second goes further and says that we must “attribute to him or her the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances.” In other words, we interpret the words in light of our own ideas. In contrast, emunas chachamim prompts us to move outside of our current understanding, recognizing that we are dealing with superior minds who will expand our horizons of understanding.
The limitation, of course, is that whereas the Principle of Humanity can and should be applied to everyone, emunas chachamim applies on a sliding scale based on the extent to which the author is deemed a chacham. This necessitates a prior judgment to be made by the reader – one which, unfortunately, the reader is not always equipped to make. At least the Principle of Humanity can act as a failsafe for when emunas chachamim misfires.
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