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PARTISAN REVIEW
the particular interpretation that the historian provides. Fiction is the
medium that allows for a multiplicity of perspectives, a contestation of
views, a freedom for characters to speak their minds and act out their
convictions without the intrusion of an objective narrator who pre–
sumes to tell us where the truth lies.
Fiction is antithetical to dogma. This opposition plays itself out indi–
rectly in one of the major themes of the book: naming. Early in
The
Rock,
Ishaq and his father engage in a dialogue about the relationship
between a name and the thing it names. Ka'b insists that the name is the
thing it names, its very essence. So he refuses to call the Rock by any–
thing other than its oldest name, the Rock of Foundation. (shaq, still a
child and a student, notes that the Rock has been given other names:
Precious Stone, Rock of Atonement, Adam's Sepulchre, Navel of the
Universe, Stone of Stumbling, Rock of Fear and Trembling, and so on.
When Ka'b asks his son to say whether he believes that the Rock is one
thing or many things at once, Ishaq says he is uncertain. He may be
uncertain because he is too young to know or perhaps too wise to be
dogmatic in his answer. Ka'b dogmatically conflates name and thing.
Elsewhere, however, Ka'b takes the opposite line when he resists the
idea that God can be reduced to his aspects and attributes; he cannot be
reduced to his ninety-nine names. The view that all names are provi–
sional or partial (reflecting perhaps aspects of things and not their total–
ity) is the anti-dogmatic view. And the difference between the views is
momentous.
It
can become the difference between tyranny and freedom,
war and peace.
In
naming a thing (a rock, building, or piece of land),
the Jew, Christian, or Muslim takes possession of it.
If
he believes that
the name that he gives the land is final and irrevocable, it remains for–
ever his. No change or accommodation or compromise is possible. On
the other hand, if names are provisional so is possession.
In
the Middle
Ages the doctrine that the name was the essence of a thing was called
realism (a doctrine quite difference from modern realism), which in the
religious sphere promotes dogmatism and in the political imperialism.
There is a connection between naming and another theme in the
book, idolatry. Idolatry has always been anathema to the monotheisms
of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ka'b cautions his son against exces–
sive enthusiasm for the Temple. "Idolatry run amok," he calls it, though
Ishaq remarks to the reader (not to him) that his father forgets his own
idolatrous passion for the Rock. What is idolatry? The dictionary
defines it as the worship of idols or images, the immoderate attachment
to or veneration for any person or thing. An insufficient definition, for
it doesn't say what makes for immoderation. Idolatry, from the point of
