Alan Mittleman teaches Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. He works in the areas of ethics, political theory, and modern Jewish thought. He is the author of six books, most recently “Human Nature and Jewish Thought: Judaism’s Case for Why Persons Matter.” His current research is on the concept of holiness in Jewish thought with particular attention to holiness as a value.
Trusting God and Being Ourselves 
Descartes, in the First Meditation, famously tried to vanquish skepticism by appealing to the indisputable reality of the cogito. The brute facticity of one’s own thought, however, cannot get one beyond thought. For the perceptions of an external world to be real rather than illusions caused by an evil demon, Descartes had to rely on the existence of a wholly good, infinitely perfect God; a God who, unlike the demon, would not lie. In Descartes’ “perfect being theology,” the perfection of God plays a crucial epistemic role. Without holding to divine perfection, the world that we think we know or are capable of knowing could collapse into a skein of illusions.
In this paper, I will try to extend the scope of Descartes’ claim to a broader array of things that we care (or should care) about. Epistemic, aesthetic, and moral values, I will argue, have their greatest strength and stability when associated with divine perfection. Indeed, belief in other than a perfect being jeopardizes the status of our other commitments, introducing warrants for skepticism of a radical kind. If God, as a putatively less than perfect being, can lie, then there is little reason to believe in the non-illusory nature of the world or, indeed, of God. The movement toward a rich concept of divine perfection rises in tandem with reason’s claim to be adequate, in principle, to explain the world. The claims of reason and the concept of divine perfection are deeply related. This paper will seek to clarify that relation and to defend it.
Oliver Crisp, Fuller Theological Seminary
James Diamond, University of Waterloo
Lenn E. Goodman, Vanderbilt University
Zvi Grumet, The Jerusalem College
Moshe Halbertal, NYU and Hebrew University
Ed Halper, University of Georgia
Yoram Hazony, The Herzl Istitute
Brian Leftow, Oxford University
Berel Dov Lerner, Western Galilee College
Michael Miller, University of Nottingham
Alan Mittleman, Jewish Theological Seminary
Heather Ohaneson, Columbia University
Randy Ramal, Claremont Graduate University
Shalom Rosenberg, Hebrew University
Eleonore Stump, Saint Louis University
Alex Sztuden, Independent Scholar
Alan Torrance, University of St. Andrews
Shmuel Trigano, University of Paris X
Joshua Weinstein, The Herzl Institute
Matthew Baddorf, University of Rochester
Pavel Butakov, Russian Academy of Sciences
Yehuda Efune, Rabbi, Chelsea Synagogue of London
Yoshi Fargeon, Bar-Ilan University
Miri Fenton, Conservative Yeshiva
Szilvia Finta, Jewish Theological Seminary, Budapest
Valerie Oved Giovanni, California State University
Justin Hawkins, Yale Divinity School
Ahiad Hazony, Herzog College
Avital Hazony, Ben-Gurion University
Dino Jakusic, The University of Warwick
Joshua Martin, University of Toronto
Michael Miller, University of Nottingham
Stephanie Nordby, University of Oklahoma
Heather Ohaneson, Columbia University
Benjamin Schvarcz, Hebrew University
Chris Shrock, Oklahoma Christian University
Eric Wagner, The Catholic University of America
