Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…I think that Judaism has the same problem that any thick civilization has in a world in which, as you say, context is stripped away. And not only is context stripped away, but attention to any one thing is scanter and less than it used to be. So, for example, a lot of Jewish commentary is based on your recognizing the reference that I make. Who recognizes references anymore? Because people don’t spend years studying books. The optimistic take on that is that the availability with ease of the vast libraries of Jewish learning at your fingertips will create a more conversant community. And in some ways I think that has happened. The negative is that Jewish culture will get thinner and thinner, and Judaism, as you said, depends on a very deep and thick culture. If I look at the history of the arts in other areas, I see a tendency for centralization of the past. So I think today, actually, many more people read Shakespeare than they did 30 years ago. But older plays and fiction are in general less read. More people read Jane Austen, but the second-tier authors from that time are less read. Maybe from the 1960s it will be the Beatles, but the Byrds will fall away. Whatever. Do you see that happening with Jewish philosophy and with the Hebrew Bible? There’s a centralization of what people know and a falling away of what superficially appears to be less important. I think what you’re describing is something that is a normal historical process. The commentary that we have is a small fraction of the commentaries that were written. There were always people diving into obscurity. And people who wrote, and their books — like Hume said — his book was stillborn from the press. There were always such people. And you never know what’s going to survive. So I have no idea who from the 20th century, for example, will survive. There’s a sense in which, I think . . . when they say history’s the final judge, the final judgment is never written because authors are being revived, they’re being rediscovered. And the same thing is true with certain commentaries and books and ideas. So, as long as they are available and accessible, and in this, the Internet is an invaluable addition to the continuity of learning. Somebody will be able, in 500 years, to rediscover a book that we may think is gone forever, and suddenly it will live again.…

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