Peter Kreeft on the Philosophy of Ecclesiastes

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Jews celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, during which it is traditional to read one of the most philosophically interesting books of the Hebrew Bible, Ecclesiastes. The narrator of the book, known by Jewish tradition to be King Solomon, has spent his life exploring the many corners of human endeavor, from the responsible life of politics to the pleasures of body and mind, and he has come to say that each corner, no matter how satisfying to certain parts of us, cannot answer our deepest needs—or perhaps cannot answer anything at all. Everything is vanity, the book whispers famously, and nothing more.

This week’s podcast guest, the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, admires Ecclesiastes not for its ultimate answers to the fundamental questions of life but for its honest look at human problems. As he writes in his own commentary, “honest hedonism is spiritually superior to dishonest self-delusion.” In conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he mines the biblical book for the wisdom it may offer.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week, during the Hebrew month of Tishrae, Jewish families and communities are celebrating the holiday of Sukkot,
0:15.0	during which it's common practice to read one of the most philosophically interesting books of the Hebrew
0:21.9	Bible, Kohelet, or as it's known in English, Ecclesiastes.
0:27.7	In the book, Kohelet identifies himself and then begins with these famous lines.
0:34.1	I'm reading Robert Alter's translation.
0:36.6	Merest breath, said Kohelet, merest breath.
0:40.0	All is mere breath.
0:42.0	What gain is there for man in all his toil that he toils under the sun?
0:46.6	I'm going to read on in the first chapter so you can get a summary sense of its poetry
0:51.8	and the bold idea it puts forward.
0:54.8	A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.
0:59.8	The sun rises and the sun sets, and to its place it glides and there it rises.
1:05.3	It goes to the south and swings round to the north, round and round goes the wind, and on its
1:10.7	rounds the wind returns. All the rivers go to the north, round and round goes the wind, and on its rounds the wind returns.
1:12.8	All the rivers go to the sea, and the sea is not full. To the place that the rivers go,
1:18.3	there they return to go. All things are weary. A man cannot speak. The eye is not sated with
1:25.9	seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which was is
1:29.9	that which will be, and that which was done is that which will be done. And there is nothing new
1:35.0	under the sun. There is a thing of which one would say, see this, it's new. It already has been
1:41.3	in the eons that were before us. There's no remembrance of the first things, nor of the last things that will be.
1:48.1	They will have no remembrance with those who will be in the latter time.
1:52.4	I, Kohelet, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I set my heart to inquire and
	...

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