Is Commitment Rational?

Levinas on the Promethean Secret

It is well known that when the Israelite people were given the Torah, they said, “We will do and (then) we will understand” (na’aseh v’nishma). That is, according to conventional understanding, they affirmed their willingness to obey before understanding why they ought to.

For Levinas, commenting on a Midrash, the primacy of commitment before understanding is not a naive, child-like act, but an angelic secret.

For Levinas, to commit before understanding is a Promethean discovery. Why?

Levinas writes about this passage in an essay called “The Temptation of Temptation.” His core thesis is that in the West, the great temptation is the pursuit of new experience, new efforts to understand. It’s a temptation because there is always more to discover, and the never-ending nature of the pursuit means one never commits to anything, since one always needs to know more, first. The great heroes of the West are restless wanderers.

If commitment without understanding is a form of blind faith and understanding without commitment is a kind of rootless scientism, how do you find the balance between the one and the other? Levinas was a philosopher, first; yet he was a philosopher who thought he had found in the example of Judaism, an antidote to the excesses of philosophy. That this antidote is depicted in the Midrash as coming from angels means it can’t be reasoned to; commitment is pre- or post-rational. For this reason it is both necessary and difficult.

---

What is Called Thinking? is a practice of asking a daily question on the belief that self-reflection brings awe, joy, and enrichment to one’s life. Consider becoming a paying subscriber to support this project and access subscriber-only content.

You can read my weekly Torah commentary here.