Mark Washofsky
129. To this point, I have offered what I think is a descriptive account of halakhic practice, and [ do not now want to muddy the waters by switching to normative language, an advocacy of what ought to be rather than a discussion of what is.(Advocacy has its proper place, but that place is not here.) When I speak of“aspirations,” I am saying that a conception of higher standards of practice-the best that the practice can be-is an integral part of the work of any discipline. The members of that community do in fact evaluate each other’s work critically against such standards. For example, Ronald Dworkin argues that this sort of aspiration lies at the basis of the activity of literary interpretation; see 4 Matter of Principle(Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press , 1985), 149ff(on the“aesthetic hypothesis,” the notion that the activity of literary interpretation aims at showing“which way of reading...the text reveals it as the best work of art). My idea of“aspiration” here is quite similar: halakhists aspire to produce a halakhah that is“the best it can be,” that meets the highest standards of evaluation that exist within the practice.
130. See Mark Washofsky, Jewish Practice(New York : UAHC Press, 2001), xxii-xxv. I do believe that the concepts and values I set forth there(such as our commitments to gender equality, the moral dignity of all human beings, and our openness to innovation and creativity in the forms of religious life) are integral to any decent understanding of the practice of liberal halakhah. Yet they are at the same time necessarily vague and general. They are descriptive of our practice, in the sense that any ruling or essay in liberal halakhah will most likely have to
explain itself in accordance with them. But they cannot prescribe just what decision a liberal halakhist ought to reach on any particular question. The meaning of any rule or criterion of liberal halakhah-like the meaning of rules and criteria in any other discipline--can take shape only in practice, through argument carried on among a community of interpreters.
131. See, for example, Perelman and Toulmin in the works cited in note 120, above. Both of these authors criticize the tendency among prior theorists to evaluate the validity of argumentation on the basis of formal, analytical logic. And if argumentation is, as they suggest, a matter of practical reasoning(contextualized to the audience it addresses or to the field within which it functions), then it is much less likely that we can agree upon any formal standard by which to judge its correctness. See also Dale Hample ,“What Is a Good Argument?” in W. L. Benoit, D. Hample , and P. J. Benoit, eds.. Readings in Argumenation(Berlin: Foris Publications, 1992), 313-336. Hemple examines three foundations upon which rhetorical theorists might establish criteria for evaluating argument: public(that is, the audience to whom the rhetor directs his or her address); logic(that is, the rationality of the argument itself); and “field”(that is, the specific discipline within which the argument takes place. He concludes that no general theory based upon any of these foundations can predict which arguments will be “good” ones in particular cases. This is another way of saying that there is no“method” by which to judge the correctness of an argument.