Q&A: Several Questions About Morality
Several Questions About Morality
Question
Hello to the Rabbi, may he live long and well.
1. Is it possible to forbid things that belong to personal morality, such as forbidding a person because he watches pedophilic pornography (today they put people in prison for things like that)? And if so, how is that different from homosexuality or full nudity and the like, which today are considered “fashionable”?
2. Can one also learn from this that universal human morality (as you like to call it) is not only about things that harm society, but also about improper (deviant) things that corrupt the soul and in the end will also bring about the destruction of society.
3. And what is morality בכלל in your opinion? Is it like an inner compass that points toward the good side? After all, in every person there is good and evil, and the compass indicates that things like cruelty or abuse are bad, whereas compassion and kindness are good. Do sociopaths not have these things, in your view? Don’t they think that killing is bad? (It’s just that they can’t overcome their desire.) Or do they simply not understand what one is talking about at all?
4. In the world it is customary to breach the boundaries of morality for reasons of “state security” and the like. Does that mean that these things were forbidden because they are harmful to society and not because they are truly bad (since in a state of war the prohibition of murder is nullified)? And if they are bad and corrupting, why don’t they corrupt the soldiers or agents who carry them out?
Answer
- I didn’t understand. What does “it is possible to forbid” mean? In law? Morally? In Jewish law? And what is the comparison to homosexuality? Fashionable or not fashionable—it’s all Chinese to me.
- There are such principles, but not everyone would agree that they belong to morality. It seems to me that this falls into the category that Maimonides calls “conventional notions” (of the disgraceful and the pleasing, in Guide for the Perplexed I:2). If in your opinion this will lead to the destruction of society, then it goes back to ordinary morality.
- As far as I understand, there are all kinds.
- What? Of course not. It is intrinsically forbidden, but it is overridden by another value. And who said they are not corrupted? About this it was said regarding the idolatrous city: “And He shall grant you compassion and have compassion on you,” so that you should not be corrupted through fulfilling the commandments.