Russ Roberts on Hayek, Knowledge, and Jewish Tradition

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It is common today to hear those who are hostile to traditional religion accuse the pious of unwarranted certainty about the truths of the universe. Yet, in the Jewish tradition, one finds something else altogether. Jewish texts often tell the stories of men and women who strive for knowledge, divine and human, amidst a great deal of uncertainty. From Moses—who could not see the face of God—to Job—who was rebuked by the Lord for presuming to know too much—even the biblical figures who have the most intimate relationships with God demonstrate the limits of human knowledge.

The notion that some measure of ignorance is intrinsic to the human condition has been shared by many thinkers throughout history. In the 20th century, there was perhaps no better articulator of the idea than Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist and social theorist. He wrote frequently about the limits of what any one individual can know and criticized those economists and technocrats who exhibited what he derisively called “the pretence of knowledge.” For Hayek, true knowledge is dispersed and built up over many years and embodied in price signals, social customs, and traditions that have stood the test of time.

Hayek wrote and thought in the context of the social sciences, but do his insights about knowledge and ignorance point to understandings shared by the Jewish tradition? In this podcast, Tikvah Senior Director Jonathan Silver is joined by economist Russ Roberts to tackle this question. Roberts, host of the popular EconTalk podcast, is himself an observant Jew, and he helps us think through what Hayek’s epistemology has in common with the Jewish tradition as well as how they differ. As he does so, we will see how ancient Jewish philosophy and modern social thought can help bring each other into clearer focus.

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 as well as “Baruch Habah,” performed by the choir of Congregation Shearith Israel.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Some writers and thinkers look at religion as irrational belief, piety as superstition.
0:13.6	Devotion is really an atavism of the pre-modern pre-enlightenment age.
0:18.4	This is a portrait of religion as certainty without evidence. But when you look
0:22.6	at Judaism's most ancient sources, including throughout the biblical text, you'll find something else
0:28.3	altogether. You'll find the strivings of men and women who possess imperfect knowledge. You'll find
0:33.8	Judaism's greatest prophet and preeminent teacher Moshe Rabanu, Moses, being told
0:39.0	that he, even he, cannot see God's face. You'll find, in one of the most dramatic encounters
0:45.0	between man and God in the Hebrew Bible, God rebukes Job, thundering questions from a whirlwind.
0:51.9	Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell, if you know,
0:55.0	understanding. Who fixed its measures? Do you know? Or who stretched a line upon it? In what
0:59.9	were its socket sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together?
1:05.8	God's questions go on verse after verse. Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you fix their rule on earth?
1:13.2	God asks Job, who placed in the hidden parts wisdom, or who gave the mind understanding?
1:19.2	The essential point is that the biblical figures closest to God are not the ones most certain
1:25.3	in their knowledge of God, of God's ways, or of God's creation.
1:29.2	They, of all people, the ones most intimate with God, are the ones most acutely aware of the
1:34.8	limits of human knowledge. Welcome to the Tikva podcast and great Jewish essays and ideas.
1:40.7	I'm your host, Jonathan Silver, and our topic today is the limits of human knowledge.
1:46.1	We're going to explore that topic not primarily in the biblical text or in the writings of
1:51.3	the medieval Jewish philosophers. We thought it'd be interesting to be in a religious state of
1:56.0	mind, but to have a conversation about the limits of knowledge or what's sometimes called
2:00.5	epistemological humility. In the work of knowledge or what sometimes called epistemological
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.