Reasons for Discord

By Rabbi Dovid Markel

Maimonides, in his Guide to the Perplexed (1:31) enumerates four causes for argument and discord. While his words were written almost 900 years ago, it is clear that not much has changed in the axioms of human nature:

Maimonides reckons three reasons in the name of Alexander of Aphrodisias and adds an additional one that is pertinent to his own time:

• Pride and the desire to triumph prevent an individual from perceiving the truth as it is.
• The difficulty and abstraction of the idea in and of itself preclude it from being properly understood.
• The feeble-mindedness of the individual which prevents him from comprehending that which is able to be understood.

Maimonides then mention an additional cause for discord that was not mentioned by Alexander.

• The habit of one’s upbringing causes him to have a bias to that what he is used to—even if it is objectively abhorrent. According to Maimonides a person would rather the filth and squalor that they are accustomed to then delicacies that are strange to him.

It seems that Alexander and Maimonides were only discussing individuals that were honest in their discord. In our times it is pertinent to realize the post-modernist reasons for discord—and just about everything else—postulated by Michael Foucault.

It is essentially—according to Foucault—coercive power that drives almost everything in society—especially discord.

Being sentient of these reasons for debate gives us the ability to transcend them. For when we know where our biases lie, we can ensure—as much as possible—that we not fall into their trap.