I love the Jewish phenomenological philosophers. Their earnest truthfulness is only secondarily why I love them. What I love most is their vision of divinity within the inter-subjective. This could only have come out of a tradition who has known and overcome extremes of social vulnerability, and perhaps because of this origin the inter-subjective borders on a preoccupation, maybe even a distorting exaggeration. A more even balancing of the elements that constitute truth would not only be more true, it would also be a fuller realization of the Jewish ideal. It is possible that this adjustment, performed originally for the sake of respecting and recognizing other conceptions of truth, could reveal a broader, deeper, more ecumenical vision.

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What matters is not openness to any particular kind of truth but openness to reality in all its unexpected richness. Ideology can manifest in any number of forms, not only in the suppression of certain particular facts but also ontologically, by excluding or minimizing certain categories of being or experience from due consideration. For instance, a scientist can be non-ideological in regard to his scientific activity (capable of acknowledging and responding to experimental anomalies) while being a political or religious ideologue.

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There are cases where the horizon of a person’s perspective remains intact by virtue of never having been tested. Nobody is obligated to go out looking for a test, but at the same time the failure of the test is the refusal to accept the validity of the test when it comes to you. Ignorance has its own kind of innocence and guilt.