Michtav MeEliyahu, Lesson 2

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, this is challenging the very assumption that pleasure is always the result of overcoming difficulty. So we talked about that a bit last time too. And now I’m talking about another assumption that I haven’t discussed yet. That’s the assumption that pleasure is universal. There aren’t different kinds of pleasure; there are only different quantities of pleasure. And in the end, what determines the amount of pleasure, or the level of pleasure, is the intensity of the difficulty I overcame. It doesn’t matter what kind of difficulty it was, and it doesn’t matter what I was striving for when I overcame that difficulty—whether I was striving for something material, something spiritual, or what kind of material thing, what kind of spiritual thing. So there’s some terribly simplistic model here of the concept of pleasure. Meaning, even if I accept the assumption that pleasure is overcoming difficulty—so what? After all, overcoming difficulty in order to finish the entire Talmud may be different from overcoming difficulty in order to finish the Zohar, or to finish eating chocolate, or to steal money, or I don’t know what. Both because the goal I’m striving toward is different, and because the difficulties I overcame are difficulties of a different character, and even the overcoming itself may have a different flavor when the difficulty is of a different kind. Even leaving morality aside. What? Like there’s no morality? It doesn’t matter—overcoming the difficulty of stealing water and overcoming the difficulty of working hard to make the water. Like it doesn’t matter whether you stole or just made an effort. Yes, no, there’s no morality—why are you calling that “no morality”? Also, like, stealing is the same thing, it’s just—no, he’s not claiming that stealing is as good as studying Torah. He’s claiming that the degree of pleasure I derive from these two things is the same. That’s not a value judgment; it’s a psychological claim. He also has a simplistic model of human beings. What do I mean? He starts from the assumption that any person, if he only knew the truth—that the main pleasure does not come from the thing itself but from the overcoming—then he would not choose a forbidden thing. Why? Aren’t there people who would choose a forbidden thing? What, it’s all the same, just in different colors? What? He himself, for example—did he never choose a forbidden thing? Here he knows this; he wrote the article. So he himself never chose a forbidden thing? If they were to internalize this deeply, if it were clear to them—okay, “knows” is “knows,” meaning—no, but the pleasure, the pleasure grows only if the effort increases the lack. If the effort doesn’t increase the lack, the pleasure doesn’t grow. No, so that’s his initial assumption, and I already discussed that last time, but here I’m adding another layer that he also assumes: that it doesn’t matter what the nature of the difficulty is and what the nature of the goal is that I’m striving for—the pleasure is measured in the same units, and that pleasure is determined only by the question of how intense the difficulties were that I overcame. Wait, why does he need to assume that it’s the same pleasure? After all, what is the lack—what? That contradicts itself, it contradicts the claim that it also depends on the level of lack. Fine, on the level of lack—what does that mean, either this or that? The level of lack—what do you mean? Lack and effort are not the same thing. Ah, lack and effort—the effort increases the… the lack. Let’s say that if it’s measured in days, but if it’s measured in intensity and force, then apparently here he means some kind of weighting of the two things, meaning the lack and the effort. So he doesn’t bring in the question of good and evil at all? Effort is not… not with respect to pleasure. But why would you enjoy something good and something bad in the same way? That’s his claim. The value judgment between good and evil is something else. But it doesn’t affect the pleasure. Yes, meaning, pleasure is a separate realm. In a moment we’ll see what he does with that, but after all, in the end he’s trying to reach the conclusion that we are supposed to value the good person more than the bad person. So somehow it does have to connect to the world of judgment, the ethical world. Fine, okay.

A great and important principle in the ways of the evil inclination we learn from this. The evil inclination seduces a person to aspire to materiality and magnifies its value in his eyes, and makes him imagine that the forbidden thing itself gives him the pleasures, while concealing from him the truth—that the main pleasure comes only from overcoming the obstacles to attaining it. Yes, this is a continuation of the explanation of the Talmudic text. That’s why a person doesn’t know that “stolen waters are sweet,” because a person thinks he enjoys the sexual relations themselves. He doesn’t understand that the pleasure comes from… also from… or not even also, but perhaps only, according to his view, from the path he goes through, from the difficulties he overcomes in order to attain the thing.

Wait, according to his claim, if a man committed adultery with an unattractive woman he has no connection to, then he would also enjoy it to the same extent because that too involved effort? Seemingly yes. Unless you combine it with what Yossi said earlier about the lack, and maybe here he lacks her less than in the other case. You need some weighting of overcoming difficulties together with the lack. This woman—he enjoys her because she’s not his, supposedly. Yes, but he says that it doesn’t matter who the woman is. All that matters is that she has a husband. So it doesn’t matter at all who the woman is. That causes his pleasure? Yes. No, and that’s why I said—no, that’s what Arik said, so that’s why I said you need to add what you said earlier: a weighting of the lack with the difficulties, with the overcoming of the difficulties. “Stolen waters are sweet” doesn’t have to mean that this is the pleasure itself; it can be an addition to the pleasure. Isn’t there something much more important here in the case of chocolate? Okay. There’s nothing “more important”; for him it’s all the same—chocolate and forbidden relations, it makes no difference. Today I heard that in the coming years there’s expected to be a shortage of chocolate. So when I eat chocolate then, will it taste better to me? Of course! Of course! It’ll be more expensive. It will definitely taste better to you. Eat ten chocolate bars and of course that multiplies the pleasure. Because then the difficulty of obtaining the chocolate also increases. You pay more money, so then there’ll really be pleasure here. So we have to thank those who create the chocolate shortage, because that will only increase our pleasure from eating chocolate. And it will taste better? Apparently—that’s what he means, not me. Why would it taste better? Why do people enjoy it more? Maybe it tastes better? I’m talking about enjoying it more. Fine, “tastes better” here simply means enjoying it more. You enjoy it—you can enjoy things you eat for reasons besides the taste itself, like the satisfaction involved. Ah, okay, fine. You’re saying that the taste… yes, fine. Maybe that’s the reason they keep making apartments more expensive, so that there’ll be more enjoyment. Okay. How do you enjoy the first cream-filled marshmallow treat or the twentieth? Okay. He still hasn’t gotten to the twentieth cream-filled marshmallow treat, so that’s a theoretical question. Ask me, Yossi—he hasn’t reached the twentieth one yet. The twentieth one you can’t eat at all. I once made a bet and lost. Okay. Really? So Yossi… fine.

It is among the ways of the evil inclination to mislead us and magnify in our eyes the material lack, until we imagine there is nothing else in the world besides it. And more than that: when we feel a lack, whose true source is the absence of spiritual acquisitions, the needs of the soul, it misleads us into replacing the source of the spiritual lack with a material one, and urges us to increase our efforts to fill an imaginary material lack. Again, there’s an assumption here—which also appeared a bit earlier—that even when we crave something material, that’s really some kind of displacement. What is actually lacking for us is something spiritual, but we displace it into material directions, and the evil inclination of course intensifies this too, and then we end up… living inside some illusion that this is where our pleasure will be. And again, I don’t know where this comes from, this assumption that only spiritual lacks motivate us. I do agree that such a phenomenon certainly exists. Meaning, it’s clear that people whose lives have no purpose, who are bored, find themselves an outlet somewhere else, in other ways, sometimes harmful and bad. No, he’s not saying it all comes from that; he’s just saying such a thing exists. No, he says every lack is always fundamentally rooted in a spiritual lack. When you speak about… why? And more than that: when we feel a lack whose true source is the absence of spiritual acquisition. Meaning, the assumption is that lack always fundamentally lies in spiritual acquisitions. Yes, this is in the lack, it’s not—it’s only an expansion. They say everything is in the head, right? Everything is in the head. Fine, but the question is what’s in the head, that’s the point. Fine, so that’s what he claims, and therefore the evil inclination somehow does some kind of displacement and intensification of the lack for us, and that’s how we derive more pleasure from it.

That’s the end of the preliminaries. Now we move to the second page, and here he goes back to answering the difficulty with which he opened. “Now let us turn to the question we raised at the beginning of our words, and we shall see that the assumption on which it is built is entirely mistaken.” Now he’ll clarify what the mistaken assumption is. “The direct aim of choice is not pleasure.” That is basically the key sentence. Meaning, the mistaken assumption he spoke about at the beginning is that we choose something in order to derive pleasure, in order to enjoy, and that is the basic mistake. It’s not true. Meaning, we do not choose in order to derive pleasure. What does he do with all the introduction he gave earlier? In a moment we’ll see.

“A person’s choice is most profound, for a person chooses the lack that he will strive to fill, and only in this is the essence of the person expressed. A person can choose to concern himself only with his material lack, which is more visible to the eye because of that evil inclination he spoke about earlier, and to silence the feeling of his spiritual lacks; or it is in his power to choose and incline his ear to the needs of his soul and strive to complete them as much as he can.” Meaning, the claim is that a person does not choose a certain action in order to derive pleasure. A person chooses the lack, and once there is a lack, I act in order to fill that lack, and then I derive pleasure. I am not choosing the production of pleasure; the production of pleasure is a side effect. And I have a choice regarding which lack—which lack I decide to place before my eyes and strive to fill. And then of course when I fill it, I will derive pleasure, but the choice is not in the pleasure but in the lack—that’s the claim.

“Pleasure is not the reason for striving, but its result.” Pleasure is not the reason I choose to do something; pleasure is the result of the fact that I do that thing. “The fulfillment of the striving, the completion of the lack, is what gives rise to pleasure.” Meaning, basically I choose which lack will stand before my eyes, what I will strive for, which lack I am trying to fill. After I strive and arrive at the thing, after I have overcome the difficulties, that gives me pleasure. Meaning, pleasure is a result and not the reason—the result of the choice. In fact, not even exactly the result of the choice, but the result of striving toward the value you chose. Okay?

Isn’t pleasure also in the process? It is in the process too, but it’s a result of the fact that I’m in the process. It’s at the end, it’s at the end. Yes, it’s at the end—meaning when I’ve overcome the difficulties, the overcoming of the difficulties gave me pleasure; but it’s not that I took the path in order to produce pleasure. The opposite: the pleasure came because I took the path. Right, but along the way I also have pleasure according to this, because I think Nietzsche says this—that in love the process is more important than the end, yes. Okay, the question is chronologically when the pleasure comes—after you’ve overcome the difficulty. If you’ve overcome a little difficulty, you have a little pleasure. It’s at the end, it’s at the end. Yes, but that end, that end is made up of lots of stages. When you overcome a difficulty there are many stages along the way; each such stage is already overcoming part of the difficulty, and it already gives you some pleasure. So I assume there may be some model here that is not so sharp but more continuous.

In any case, he reverses the direction here, and again this is a very important lesson in many contexts. Very often—we’ve spoken, I think, about this too before—about directions of correlation, or the question of what is cause and what is effect. When we see two things that always come together, we have some tendency to see one as the cause of the other. First of all, it’s not at all certain that this is true. It may be that the two things have some correlation that is not based on a causal connection. I gave the example, if you remember, of synchronicity—not synchronicity, astrology. Astrology? No—what’s it called? Yes, astrology, yes. Meaning, astrology where the claim is—and Ephraim Smilansky suggested this possibility—that maybe there is some correspondence between what happens in the stars and what happens here on earth, not because one affects the other or vice versa, but because there is something else that synchronized the two processes in advance, so that there is some correspondence between them. And then if I look at one, it can indeed tell me what will happen in the other. Not because one causes the other, but because there is a correlation between them. Okay, so this denies the necessity that there must be a causal relation at the root of a correlation. But there is a smaller denial: even if there is a causal relation, the question is which is the cause and which is the effect. Up to now I said it’s not at all clear there’s a causal relation at all, but even if there is a causal relation, who says that one is the cause and the other is the effect? Maybe the second is the cause and the first is the effect.

Now we know that whenever we choose, we derive pleasure from it—at least that’s his assumption. Does that mean I choose for the sake of pleasure, that pleasure is the cause of the choice? No. Pleasure is—so he claims—the result of the choice. On the contrary, the choice is the cause of the pleasure. Now here too, we need to pay close attention: there’s another important point here. Cause and effect here are very complicated, because when I say I choose because of pleasure, does that mean the pleasure preceded the choice? Of course not. I choose in order to derive pleasure later, right? That’s the thesis he is dealing with. There is no simple temporal reversal here. Meaning, when I say pleasure is the cause of the choice, I do not mean that pleasure came first and therefore I chose. I mean to say that the purpose of the choice is the production of pleasure—not cause in the sense of a cause that precedes the effect, but rather that I choose to take a certain step in order to derive pleasure from it afterward.

He is actually dealing with exactly this. I spoke about it a bit last year too: desire turns a goal into a cause. I want to set up a meeting with a friend tomorrow morning, and therefore I reach for the phone now to call him. So what causes what? The phone call is the cause of the meeting tomorrow, right? But the desire to have a meeting tomorrow is the cause of the phone call made now. So in some sense the meeting tomorrow—which is the goal of the phone call—constitutes a kind of cause of the phone call. How does this miracle happen? That is the unique characteristic of desire. Desire manages to turn goals into causes. Meaning, I want to have a meeting, and the desire translates that future meeting into something that creates electric currents that create an action here: making a phone call, lifting the hand, dialing, speaking, and so on. Okay, so here too, same thing. He is not reversing the order of time here. This is not a discussion of who came first, pleasure or choice. He is dealing with another question: not that pleasure causally precedes the choice, but that the choice is made in order to derive pleasure. He claims that is not correct. Pleasure comes after the choice, but pleasure is not the goal of the choice. I do not make the choice for the sake of pleasure. For what then? To fill the lack. Yes, to fill the lack. In fact, even more than that—I’m not even choosing to fill the lack. I’m choosing what the lack will be in the first place. Why do you choose? He doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t answer that. In the last sentence, I think, he touches on it, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Meaning, the claim is basically that he is not dealing with the question… I choose which lack to emphasize. Exactly. I choose which lack will stand before my eyes. Once that is the lack that is significant for me, I will of course strive to fill it, and here it’s not even exactly a kind of choice, at least according to his view—though here too it may be that I have a lack and choose not to fill it. But that’s not important right now; that’s a minor part of choice, not the important part. The important part is that I choose which lack is significant for me. And pleasure is… after that I strive to fill the lack because by definition, when I have a lack I want to fill it. Pleasure is the result of striving toward the lack, or of overcoming the difficulties in striving toward the lack. Basically a by-product. Yes, exactly. It’s not that filling the lack is the pleasure, but… it causes the pleasure. Not filling the lack? Why? The goal… the action… the fact that I filled a lack is what gave me pleasure, not the action. But even during the process the pleasure exists. Yes, I said chronologically it could be that every moment I fill a bit of the lack, there is additional pleasure.

Why? Take for example people who get a job so they won’t be bored. Okay. But they could just occupy themselves somehow. Yet no—they choose some job in order not to be bored, and in that job they strive toward the goal of the job, say a salary. If they didn’t have that goal, then there wouldn’t be the same pleasure in the job. But in fact the source of the work was… now the question is what gives them the pleasure? The kind of work, or the overcoming of the difficulty and the striving toward a goal? Toward the money, or whatever it is? Exactly, because there is this to-and-fro there. He doesn’t—he doesn’t talk about that. It’s connected to what I remarked earlier: whether this simplistic model of pleasure as merely overcoming difficulties, period, is really a full model. I don’t think that’s true. First of all, there’s what Yossi pointed out—that there is the lack, the lack itself, not only the height of the difficulty I have to overcome. Some weighting of those two things. But even that, I’m not sure, fills the whole gap here.

But also, a person does not choose the most significant lack. He makes some calculation of what he can overcome and what he can’t, and then he chooses. No, there are many things he can overcome. He can overcome… he says this explicitly. The main choice before a person is to choose which lack will be primary for him. Meaning, it is not necessarily the most significant lack. It may be that I have a very significant lack, but I make some calculation about my ability and choose not to deal with it. No, he didn’t say ability. I also don’t think ability is really important here. I have many options I could choose, and they are all within my power. I don’t do all of them. I choose one of them. I choose that one because it is primary in my eyes. That’s what he says. He does not make it depend on ability. What difference does it make if the lack is imposed on you? You choose. Yes, I choose the type of lack that stands before me. Yes, but that’s not the main point—not because it’s primary in my eyes, but because it’s what I can cope with. No, he doesn’t say that. You’re proposing it. Are you saying he says that? He doesn’t say that. No, I’m saying he also doesn’t say what you’re saying. Why? He says because it is primary for him. He says, which lack will be primary for him. Primary for him out of a calculation of what he can or can’t handle. No, he said nothing about calculation. That’s something else. He said nothing about calculation, and I didn’t say anything about calculation either. But it—that has to be brought into the equation. You’re talking about the calculation. I said that in the last sentence he’ll talk a bit about the question of why. So far he hasn’t mentioned anything about the why. He says he chooses which lack will be primary for him, which lack—toward the filling of which lack—he will devote all his powers throughout the days of his life. Okay? That is the choice.

Now he says: and therefore one must not ask, “After all, the person of kindness does it for his own pleasure,” because the person of kindness is one who chooses kindness for the sake of kindness, since he feels his lack in the area of performing kindness. And for the genuine person of kindness, the pleasure that comes from filling the lack is not considered in his thought or intention at all. What is he saying, basically? The person of kindness chooses kindness for the sake of kindness. Fine? He’s now just applying the general principle he stated earlier; he’s detailing it. Now let’s take someone who chooses good—he chooses to do kindness. So now let’s apply to this the model we just learned. I do not really do kindness in order to enjoy doing kindness. I do kindness because first of all I chose that doing kindness is the thing that matters to me. That is the lack standing before me, the one I want to fill. Now I strive to do it because that is my lack. When I do that thing, it will give me pleasure, because it is filling—or overcoming difficulties toward filling—the goal I chose.

Now he says, “since he feels his lack in the realm of doing kindness.” That too can be interpreted in a way we have to be a little careful about. What does it mean, “since he feels his lack”? So he doesn’t choose it? He’s just built that way? He is built as someone who feels a lack in kindness? He chooses to feel his lack. Yes, meaning of course he doesn’t mean that. He means to say he chose to feel that this is the primary lack, not that because he feels it we have done anything here. Meaning, he’s trying to set up here some other lacks, but he decides that this… yes, but that decision does not come because he feels it. The decision to choose this rather than something else—he feels that too, but he chooses to do this because in his eyes it is primary. Because it is a value choice. Not because… in order to fill just any lack. Okay? But if the lack did not exist, he would not do kindness. Fine, so it may be that he chooses among the lacks he feels. If there’s no lack, fine—but still, among them, the choice between them is because he thinks this one is primary. Okay? Something completely worthless—a person won’t choose it, if that’s the point.

So the genuine person of kindness. In contrast—wait, before I continue—if a person wants, say, chocolate, for example, then does he not choose it for the sake of the chocolate? Or does he? Is this only characteristic of one who chooses kindness, or is it also true of one who chooses non-kindness—chocolate? Take something bad even, not something neutral. What? He chooses—his goal is bodily pleasure; that’s one of the options. So he also chooses, exactly the same thing. Meaning, everything he says here about kindness is also true of another choice. No, that’s a need, not a choice. Ah, so if that’s so, then we need to rewrite this. Because he does not make that distinction. He makes a value distinction. Meaning, he doesn’t make the distinction between good and bad such that here it’s a need and here it’s a value. He says in both cases—at least I think so. The good and its value is that I will enjoy and that I will do… No, that’s why I said, leave chocolate aside; let’s talk about evil. Not chocolate—chocolate is neutral. Let’s talk about evil, okay? So I don’t think that when he speaks here about choosing kindness he means to exclude choosing something else. No, choosing evil, or the material, or evil—doesn’t matter—it’s also the same thing. A person decides that this is the lack that is primary in his eyes, and now he strives toward it. That’s not the novelty here. Meaning, the novelty is not that in kindness it is different than in some other choice, but that since choosing kindness or choosing evil is not done in order to derive pleasure—rather, choosing kindness is for the sake of kindness, and choosing evil is for the sake of evil, and the pleasure comes afterward—then there is room to value the person of kindness more than the person who chooses evil. Because the person who chooses kindness didn’t do it in order to derive pleasure; he did it because he believes kindness is important. That’s a pure value choice. Exactly. That’s what he wants to say. He does not mean to distinguish a choice of kindness from some dragged-along behavior that is not choice. That’s not the point. He is setting up two options here, both of which are choice. Choosing kindness—except that he shifts the center of gravity from what he thought at the beginning. At the beginning, when she asked the question, he assumed that in both cases I choose in order to derive pleasure. So if that’s the case, what is the difference between choosing evil and choosing good? I am always striving for pleasure. One person is built so that evil gives him pleasure; another is built so that good gives him pleasure—so what? They’re just built differently. There’s no reason to value one more than the other. What does he answer? He says no—the person chooses the kind of lack he places before his eyes. Okay, but wait—at the time of placing it there, he places kindness before himself. What happens at that moment? At that moment it gives him some kind of spiritual pleasure that kindness fits for him with something very positive. And already at that stage you could say he has some sort of pleasure. So you’re calling that pleasure. It seems to me this is another important remark about what he’s saying. He does not call that pleasure. He calls that a sense of value. Because “pleasure,” for him, is apparently understood as the thing that we usually… although even those things can also be called a kind of pleasure. And the model is much more complicated than he says. But for our purposes it doesn’t really matter. When he makes the distinction between good and evil—leave that aside, it’s not important. In both cases there are these side effects. Meaning, in the end I choose good or choose evil because I believe one should do good, or because I believe one should do evil. And therefore there really is room to value the one who chooses good more than the one who chooses evil.

Meaning, the claim—this is basically where the answer ends—the claim is that I do not choose in order to derive pleasure; first of all I choose, and then the pleasure comes after I actualize what I chose. So therefore it is true that in both cases I derive pleasure. It is not true that I chose in order to derive pleasure. And then it is true that in both cases you can compare them in the sense that in both I derive pleasure, but there is another element or component which, from his standpoint, makes them incomparable: this is choosing good and that is choosing evil. And choosing pleasure isn’t a choice? It is also a choice. So who says a person does not choose because of pleasure? There are people who choose pleasure. No, what do you mean? Who says? He claims not. After all, there is a supreme level here—if not pleasure, can’t you say that pleasure itself is one of the choices? What do you mean? He says no—according to his model, you can’t choose pleasure, because pleasure is always overcoming difficulties. So you first have to place some lack before yourself. Chocolate—I see the chocolate—can’t I choose it because of the pleasure? I like chocolate—can’t I choose chocolate because I like it? So we discussed that last time. His model is that pleasure is always overcoming difficulties. No, but then don’t you have to throw away the whole… if there’s no pleasure then there’s no choice of pleasure at all, and if there is pleasure then there is only pleasure. At the beginning he said pleasure is the driver, the drive. Now he says pleasure is not. Right? But you could say that pleasure itself is also the choice—that one of the choices is a choice of pleasure. No, he claims that according to his model there is no such thing. You don’t choose to enjoy. You choose a lack. Now, when you strive to fill that lack, pleasure emerges. That’s his model. Again, you can dispute many assumptions in this simple model. But there are things I know I’ll enjoy in the future. There are such things. I didn’t understand. Fine, so that too is intellectual pleasure like chocolate. What, I have a lack for chocolate? Why define it that way? No problem—you’re going back again to challenging his model. I already challenged it myself last week too. You want to fill a lack that came through chocolate? Not as you spoke about before, but pleasure as a lack. Because pleasure has another meaning, as some kind of lack you want to fill, not as that elevated pleasure. But that’s the assumption from which he starts. The assumption from which he starts is that pleasure is the lack for the sake of which I act. That’s why I choose. And his claim—I say again, I’m not arguing with his models, I’m explaining him—is that every serious action is filling a lack. What can I do if pleasure too derives only from filling a lack? But in fact, pleasure comes as a by-product, not as the motive. My motive, my cause, is to do something, to act. That is his claim. It also produces pleasure for me, but I did not choose it because of pleasure. Right—that’s his claim. He says what to complete, but he does not seek pleasures. Correct.

And what is the reason of the person who chooses bad traits and lusts? What… Because he places that lack before himself due to the counsel of the evil inclination, whatever it may be. Maybe they say that the lack is pleasure? Like the lack is some kind of wanting to eat chocolate. No—again, if you… you can add that to his model, but that is not his model. No, in his model everyone had some sort of goal. Right. So what was the goal of the one who chose bad traits? He wants evil. He wants evil. A lack of evil, so to speak? He lacks… someone who chooses evil. Chocolate isn’t evil. Someone who chooses evil. Someone who wants—someone who chooses evil does not usually choose evil for the sake of evil. It seems to me that someone who sins does not… So I’m saying this can fit into all his stories; it goes into all these stories of the evil inclination—what the evil inclination does to us and how it portrays things to us. Just as with the material, perhaps so too with evil. It doesn’t matter. In the bottom line, that’s how he frames it.

Also with respect to chocolate, by the way, his claim is that you do not choose the pleasure. You… let’s put it this way: you choose the pleasure of eating the chocolate itself. But you don’t understand that the pleasure that eating the chocolate gives you is not really from the eating of the chocolate, but from the striving toward the eating, which involves overcoming difficulties. “Stolen waters are sweet.” Again, because it’s like with forbidden sexual relations, where a person thinks he enjoys the act itself—and he doesn’t understand that in fact the theft involved there is the central part of the pleasure, the overcoming of difficulties.

But if now he says that we seek… that we choose the lack and not the pleasure—so? Then why, if the adulterer knew that the pleasure comes from filling a lack, would he not commit adultery? The lack is to fill the… no, again—not that he would not commit adultery. He would commit adultery; he just wouldn’t save the husband. Earlier he said… he wouldn’t save the husband, not that he wouldn’t commit adultery. Why? He says… he says earlier: the adulterer, because he has this woman every day—well, another woman he has once a year. So because of the lack, he commits adultery, because he can’t attain her. Right. A woman he can attain every… what the Talmudic text says is that he would not save the husband, not that he would not enjoy it. No, but earlier he said, on the previous page, “For if a person knew the truth, that the main pleasure does not come from the thing itself, but from overcoming the difficulties that stand in the way of attaining it, then he would not choose a forbidden thing, and would also not aspire to materiality, since the same pleasure can be attained from overcoming the difficulties involved in attaining a holy thing.” Okay. So from here… that sentence is built on the assumption that what a person seeks is not the thing itself but the pleasure it will bring him. Okay. If now he says that… that the pleasure it will bring… that a person does not choose in order to attain pleasure, but chooses the thing… then the evil inclination will not be able to turn his attention to pleasures, because he will understand the evil inclination’s counsel, so to speak. Meaning, you won’t be captive to the idea that you are striving toward pleasure; you will understand that pleasure is really overcoming difficulties, and if pleasure is overcoming difficulties, then why not do good? Since the evil inclination is what takes you to do that—that’s his claim. Now again, as I keep saying, his model is terribly simplistic. There are lots of problematic assumptions here. But at the base there is, I think, a statement here that is correct. Meaning, if for the moment we neutralize all the kinds of remarks that came up here and also came up last time, at the base this simplistic model is enough to explain what he wants to explain. It doesn’t matter at the moment whether there are other aspects of pleasure, and not all his assumptions are always correct, and one can think of additional options. But at bottom, he is making here a kind of shift that is an important shift. Namely, that a person does not act in order to produce pleasure; rather, he chooses a goal and the pleasure comes automatically.

I’m not sure that’s true. I am sure that a person chooses goals and not only pleasures. To say that he does not choose pleasures at all but only goals—again, that is once more too simplistic a model. He basically wants to get out of the criticism that says a person studies Torah… yes, so he sets up the alternative. One studies Torah and one plays soccer, apparently. So the person is… he does not study… if he only studied Torah he would not study… that’s not true. He would study in every… right, right. But again, on the way to that, he passes through models that are too simplistic. Meaning, since I don’t think every pleasure is the completion of a lack, I don’t think pleasure has no role in what I choose and only goals do—the matter is more complicated.

Give me an example—give me an example of pleasure that is not the completion of a lack. There is no such thing. There is no such thing. If a person ate twenty chocolates and I want to see him enjoy chocolate. Someone addicted to chocolate—put him in a room with half a ton. No, no—you’re already getting to a definition here. You’re already defining… enjoying chocolate without filling a lack of chocolate. But you’re defining the lack of chocolate as pleasure in it, so of course you won’t find an example. You’re turning it into a definition. That’s what I spoke about last time—the question whether this is a claim or a definition. You can define it so that only the completion of a lack… there is no such thing; if you don’t have a lack you won’t enjoy it. No, but I’m saying again: obviously, because you define the lack as a lack of pleasure. So then of course by definition pleasure always is the completion of a lack. Right—but that’s a definition, not a claim. He does not mean to define; he means to claim. There are different kinds, there are different kinds. There is pleasure, for example, when a person… how would you define the pleasure of eating something sweet? He’ll tell you no—someone who ate fifty sweet things throws it all up. No, but someone who ate one or two does enjoy it. But that’s not a lack. No, it just tastes good. No, but someone who ate one or two and values chocolate does enjoy it, right? Yes, so? Now is that a lack? Yes, he has a lack for the third one. What? What lack? In pleasure—the pleasure is what he lacks. Because if you’re at the third cup, that’s the best. But Yossi, listen to what I’m asking you. Listen to what I’m asking you, Yossi—you’re translating it into a definition. You’re basically saying that what I lack is the very pleasure I derive from the chocolate or from the wine. If you say it that way, then of course you’re right—it’s a tautology. Of course, because you’re defining the lack as the absence of pleasure. So therefore, obviously lack always comes with pleasure and pleasure always comes with lack—that’s by definition. He doesn’t mean to say a definition; he means to make a claim. That’s why I spoke about it last time. He says you do not enjoy a thing if you don’t have a lack. Right. Not a lack of pleasure. What can I do if actions too are the filling of lacks? For example, kindness is the filling of a lack of kindness. So I fill the lack of kindness not in order to enjoy it. As a by-product you enjoy it, because every filling of a lack gives me… someone who performs acts of kindness all day and all night—sometimes he no longer enjoys it at all. Right. So that’s one direction. That’s one direction: the direction that says filling the lack gives me pleasure. But you said pleasure always comes from filling a lack. No—I’m saying there are no other pleasures besides the filling of a lack. No, I don’t agree. I don’t agree, no. That’s a claim; it’s not a definition. It’s a claim. You are turning it into a definition, and therefore I say: the moment you turned it into a definition, you said nothing. I say: if someone gives me one example of pleasure that is not the filling of a lack. But I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you an example. For example, I do kindness. We spoke last time—if you receive chocolate for the first time, you didn’t know such a thing existed, it wasn’t lacking to you, and then you got it and enjoyed it. So what? And that’s it—you enjoyed it. No, but you’ll define that too as filling a lack, because now suddenly it became clear to you that this pleasure had been lacking to you beforehand even though you didn’t know it. Exactly—that’s what shows that you’ve simply shifted it into a definition. But he is not making a definitional claim here; he is making a claim. This is not a definition. You define every absence of pleasure as a lack. He isn’t talking about that. Pleasure is a by-product. First there is a lack, and the lack can also be a value-lack that has nothing to do with pleasure at all. A value-lack meaning something I think ought to be done. That is what he calls a lack. And sometimes one enjoys it and sometimes not. Exactly. So therefore it is not a definition; it is a claim. And therefore it can also appear without pleasure, in principle. Not every filling of a lack causes pleasure. What? Not every filling of a lack causes pleasure. Okay, so that’s the claim—that pleasure comes only through filling a lack. Okay, that’s exactly what I said. So that’s the claim. So now his comparison between someone who chooses good and someone who chooses evil is not a comparison in the mechanism of how one gets there. The mechanism, on his assumption, is exactly the same. Whether one chooses good or chooses evil, the pleasure comes after I overcome the difficulties. But then why can one nevertheless prefer the one who chooses good? Because that very same mechanism that leads me to choose good entitles me to appreciation. If by that same mechanism I choose evil, then I am not entitled to appreciation. Why should I get appreciation when I choose evil? Earlier the claim was that I don’t choose at all; I merely pursue pleasures. So if I pursue pleasures, what difference does it make which pleasures I pursue? But here, once I am already choosing, then clearly the choice is valued differently if I choose evil or choose good.

“Let us explain the matter more clearly, for it is a great and deep principle. The person who directs the aim of his soul toward giving and kindness, since his hunger is to increase acts of kindness and therefore he strives to perfect himself in the trait of kindness—that is a person possessing the virtue of kindness. He chose to feel as a lack the absence of an act of kindness and strives to fill it.” Notice: he chose this. It’s not that this simply lacks for him. It may be lacking for him, just as many other things are lacking for him, but one of them he chooses. Meaning, he decides to go with this. This choice is not the result of… But here it speaks about doing kindness as filling a lack in the act of kindness, and not as filling the… making that person happy. Yet he was still a Litvak. He was still a Litvak. You—yes, we’ve already spoken about how the Lithuanians give charity because there is a commandment of charity, not because the poor person needs it. Where’s the practical difference? Where’s the practical difference? The practical difference is in… yes, the poor person who goes looking for a “properly certified poor man” on Purim so that he can give gifts to the poor. If there is no poor person, he’ll rob someone just so there’ll be someone to whom one can give gifts to the poor. He’ll rob someone for the sanctification of God’s name, just so there’ll be someone to whom he can give charity—someone who isn’t even poor—and then he hasn’t done the commandment. Right, of course. But that’s not because of the commandment or not-commandment, because he really didn’t do it. The opposite—it means that the purpose of charity is to benefit the other, not that I perform a commandment. Because if the purpose is that I perform a commandment, what difference does it make who the other person is? If there is no lack—no one needs kindness—then it has no meaning. Yes, but not “there is no commandment”; those are two different things.

He makes it depend—he says, I do the kindness. For example, let me just give you a case. I’m on Purim and I want to give gifts to the poor. Okay? I live in an unwalled city, and there is a poor person in a walled city. Okay? Now I want to send him gifts to the poor. Should I do it on the fourteenth or on the fifteenth? The Litvak does it on the fourteenth because the commandment to give charity is because he has to give charity on Purim. What does he care about the poor man? Let him burn. I have to give charity, fulfill my obligation, accumulate merits. It’s all about me. But if your goal is the poor person, then you should send it on the fifteenth, because he needs the money for the Purim meal, and his Purim meal is on the fifteenth. Okay? That’s not because of “me”; it’s not selfishness. It’s formalism. Pure formalism. So if there is no poor person, he won’t give charity. Of course he won’t. Of course—that’s not charity. If he gives on condition… he won’t rob someone and turn him into a poor person. No, no—I was just joking. No, but the Litvak is a formalist. He’s a formalist in black and white. I’m not claiming the Litvak is wicked. I’m also not claiming the Litvak is selfish. I agree—the Litvak is a formalist. But he needs a poor person. And if there are no poor people in the world? No poor people in the world? Well then, no problem. Of course, of course.

There is a Talmudic text in tractate Bava Batra. The Talmudic text in Bava Batra brings two passages right next to each other. In one passage Turnus Rufus asks Rabbi Akiva: if the Holy One, blessed be He, loves the poor, why doesn’t He support them? Like the comedy sketch with the fish. Why doesn’t He support them? So Rabbi Akiva says: because the Torah was given only in order to refine people through it, and so that through it we should merit the life of the world to come. Okay? Basically He wants to grant us merit through the commandment so that we will merit the world to come… so that the other person will be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom—that’s what it says there. No, it’s also in order to feel the taste of heresy. Someone wanted to feel the taste of heresy, they told him: no problem, here’s a poor person. There is no God, He can’t do it; you have to give the money. That’s how you feel the taste of heresy. Not only the taste of commandment. Okay. So that story, that story seemingly says that the purpose of giving is me—me with an aleph. Right? Because basically I need to be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom. If the need were simply to solve the problem of the poor person—the poor person with an ayin—then the Holy One, blessed be He, would just give it to him directly. Why does He need me? In contrast, right after that, or before—I don’t remember—there is another story with the prophet Jeremiah, who asks the Holy One concerning the people of Anatot, “Cause them to stumble with unworthy men.” Because he wanted revenge on them, he asks the Holy One that even when they give charity they should not receive reward for it. Meaning, it should not count as the commandment of charity, because this “poor person” is a fraud; he isn’t really poor. Okay? Now here, in fact, there is an emphasis on the recipient. If the recipient is not truly receiving, then there is no commandment. In the first passage everything depends on… because if really the whole point is just to test me, whether I am righteous or wicked, then what difference does it make if he deceived me? After all, I did a good act, I intended to give charity correctly, I didn’t know he wasn’t poor—so what? So there are different emphases here.

With Maimonides this is an interesting point; I once spoke about this in the synagogue. Maimonides writes—and I think that’s his source—that when he discusses the prohibition of “do not harden your heart” or “do not close your hand,” he says that this is so that we not acquire the trait of stinginess. And therefore one must give charity. Meaning, the purpose of charity there is me—not to be stingy. Yes. So there the purpose of charity is the giver. But in the positive commandment he writes that the purpose is that the poor person should have something to eat. And I think the source is this Talmudic text. Because when it says “so that we will be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom,” being saved from the judgment of Gehinnom pertains to prohibitions. Gehinnom is for violating prohibitions. So being saved from the judgment of Gehinnom speaks about the prohibition. And being saved from the judgment of Gehinnom puts the giver at the center. So the prohibition—its purpose is to improve the giver’s character traits; it is for the giver. The positive commandment—what does it say there? “Cause them to stumble before unworthy poor people,” and then they won’t receive reward. Reward is what one receives for positive commandments. Okay? Therefore in the positive commandment the purpose is really the recipient. And then it emerges that in charity there really are these two sides. There is the side of charity for the giver, and the side of charity for the recipient. According to Maimonides, one is the prohibition and one is the positive commandment.

One more remark. It is true that the argument as such is not a necessary argument. Meaning, when we say—as Turnus Rufus asked—if the Holy One, blessed be He, loves the poor, He should support them Himself. Why does He need us for this? So the answer is: in order that we be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom. But clearly, once there are already poor people, then when I give them charity, the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world this way. He created the world such that if I do not give them charity, that poor person will have nothing to eat. Why did He do that? That was explained there. But now that is what He did. So right now there is a poor person who, if I don’t give him charity, will have nothing to eat. So the possibility is still open to me to give charity for the sake of the poor person, not for myself. Meaning, there is a difference between the question of why the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world such that the poor need the rich—He could have sustained them directly, made a communist world. He didn’t do that. Fine? That is an argument about the prohibition, about why He made the commandment. But now, in practical terms, there are poor people who without me will have nothing to eat. I can give charity in order to fill the poor person’s lack, not only for myself, even if I accept Rabbi Akiva’s argument. Yes.

There are two possibilities here, and one has to remain open to both. Always. It’s true that the Holy One, blessed be He, does this, creates such a world for me so that I… But what the Holy One wants for me—that doesn’t mean it’s for me. You made a leap and translated it to mean that it’s for me. No. The Holy One wants this for my sake, but I’m not now supposed to say that it’s for my sake. Rather what? You were already focused on the question—that’s what I said in the last three sentences. No, I don’t think so. That’s what I said. I said: a world was created, and now what do I… no, it’s not for me. The first question is why the Holy One created the world so that the poor would need the rich—for me. Good. But the second question is: what is my motivation when I give charity? Is it filling the poor person’s lack, or meriting the world to come? No, it includes—but there’s something here that I’m saying, a substantive claim. You may not make the leap from the situation in which the Holy One wants to grant me merit through a commandment, to the situation in which I want to grant myself merit through a commandment. I don’t. I want to fulfill the commandment. He wants me to fulfill the commandment, but I don’t… meaning, oh okay, He wants for my benefit so therefore I too want for my benefit? No, of course not. That’s the distinction we made. No, that’s a different claim. It’s not that I give charity so that the poor person should have, or otherwise; rather, I give charity in order to fulfill the commandment. No, it doesn’t matter. Is that specifically the distinction you meant? Fine—here it remains open. It could be this way, it could be that way. In any case, it does not follow from this that I must give for my own sake. Meaning, it does not follow that because the purpose of the Holy One… with all due respect. I act in a given world. The world is already built this way. It’s not because the world is given, but because you are not allowed to make that leap. Because what He wants for me is not what I want for me. Fine, that’s another consideration. I act in a given world. Therefore both possibilities exist. Now I do the calculation of what is more correct. More correct is to give for the poor person. I’m not supposed to be troubled by the fact that the Holy One didn’t make the world that way but this way. Okay? He made it this way. Fine. Okay.

So the answer should be that if, say, you can give to lots of charities or to one charity that you know will definitely be effective, then you should give to the effective charity. And not work on your trait of mercy by giving to everyone who asks. I think that from the standpoint of Jewish law one does have to give. It may very well be that this dispute depends on the question of how one understands charity. Although it’s not entirely clear. Let’s put it this way: more plausible is that charity has both faces—both for me and for the poor person. And now when you make the…

“It follows that there is no room for the difficulty at the beginning of our words, for the difference between the one who chooses materiality and the one who chooses spirituality is obviously from one extreme to the other. Neither of them intends pleasure in choosing his actions.” You see, here he says it explicitly: both of them—even the one who chooses materiality and the one who chooses spirituality—both of them are not choosing for the sake of pleasure. Rather, each one expresses in his actions his essence, his values, in other words, which he chose. Namely, what he feels as a lack and therefore strives to fill. And the pleasure of both is the result of filling the lack, not the cause of their choice.

“This also removes the well-known difficulty that supposedly a person’s choice is under psychological laws of cause and effect, and therefore is not free. For we have learned that pleasure is not the cause of choice, as those who raise the difficulty think; rather, the chooser is free to choose the essence he wants.” This is a very important point, because indeed he said we do not choose because of pleasure but choose for the sake of value. But this distinction is not only a shift of the center of gravity from pleasure to value. There is another very important point here that changes between these two models. At the beginning we thought pleasure dictated the outcome—not that I choose for pleasure, because then that too would be a choice, but rather that I am compelled to choose because this is what gives me pleasure. That is the assumption there. Because if I were choosing for pleasure, then what would the problem be? One could still value me for what I chose. The point is that in the difficulty, when he says there is no reason to value the one who chooses good over the one who chooses evil, the assumption is that the person does not choose to derive pleasure but is driven by pleasure to do what gives him the most pleasure. And here the answer is not only that the focus is not pleasure but value, but also that the path I take is the result of my own free choice and not the result of the circumstances in which I act—such as what gives me pleasure. Okay? And since that is so, then indeed I deserve appreciation or lack of appreciation if I choose good or choose evil. Meaning, it’s not just a shift of the focus from pleasure to value; it also means that I choose and am not merely driven.

Now in order to say that… what? It’s a bit like the “choice to choose” that you mentioned. Right. But now I’m saying I’ll go back to that place before I continue. Yes. But now I’ll go back, because if I accept this point, then I’m not sure I need his whole move at all. Because basically what I’m saying is this: it may be that I really do an action in order to derive pleasure, okay? But I still have choice. Pleasure does not dictate what I do. And choice between what and what? I can choose not to strive to derive that pleasure and do something else. Another pleasure? Or another pleasure, or something else—it doesn’t matter, something that does not bring pleasure. But when I say that everything involves pleasure and I want it and I do it from the outset for pleasure, it may be that the very fact that I choose to derive this pleasure makes all the difference. Because if I choose to derive pleasure from evil, then people come to me with a complaint: why did you… yes, it’s true that you are built in such a way that evil gives you pleasure, but you should have overcome it because you understand it is evil. You didn’t overcome it; you deserve negative judgment, maybe sanctions, whatever. In contrast, one who chooses pleasures that come from good—what’s the problem? So he chooses that also because it is good; if it weren’t good, maybe he wouldn’t do it.

Therefore I think that behind the question—if you pose the question—it is not enough to assume that a person chooses because of pleasures; you also have to assume that he does not choose at all, but is driven by pleasures. And once I retreat from that, I’m not sure I need the whole shift he made from pleasures to values. It may be enough to give up the assumption that pleasure drives me against my will to do the act, and instead say: no, pleasure pushes me toward it, but I could also resist. I could refrain and I could do it—the whole model I spoke about last year. And once that is so, then once again I do deserve appreciation. And perhaps the opposite: a person who enjoys evil and chooses to do good—we spoke about this—maybe he deserves even more appreciation. All in all, he fights more, overcomes more. Earlier. So therefore here, once I reached his bottom line—and there’s no choice but to reach it, because otherwise the question simply goes one step back and we ask now: so why do I choose this thing as the lack and not that thing as the lack? Maybe because that’s what will give me pleasure. Again I return to the same thing. So it has to stop somewhere. Meaning, once he says, “No, I choose the lack and not the pleasure,” I also have to assume that choosing the lack itself is a value choice, not a means to produce pleasure, because otherwise I haven’t gained anything. But if it is a value choice, and once I accept that there is such a thing, then I’m no longer entirely sure that we need his whole model—the claim that pleasure is filling a lack and that all the difficulties determine the pleasure. I can say everything without saying all those assumptions. I could simply have answered this way: yes, a person often derives pleasure from what he chooses, but it is not true that pleasure dictates what he chooses. In the end he must also take into account whether it is good or evil.

Meaning, even at the very beginning he did not say that pleasure dictates the choice. So what is the question? The question is that both enjoy, so why are you better than he is? Because I chose to do this and he did not choose to do that. All in all, you chose to enjoy and he chose to enjoy. So? But he chose to enjoy even though it’s evil, and I chose to enjoy even though it’s good. So doesn’t he deserve negative evaluation? What do you mean? Because you’re the same egoist—you want to enjoy, he wants to enjoy. No! But that’s exactly the point—no. The moment you assume that that’s not what caused him, if it didn’t cause him, then why assume he chose in order to enjoy? Maybe he chose it because it’s good, and it just brings him pleasure. So the whole move collapses. No, you don’t need the whole move, because once I say—suppose I say pleasure is not the filling of a lack, okay? I’ll give up all his assumptions. Pleasure is not the filling of a lack. Overcoming difficulties is not the cause of pleasure; the result is what gives the pleasure, okay? Not the path. And still I say: fine, but I did not choose for pleasure; I chose because it is good, and he chose because it is evil. Or even if I didn’t choose because it is good, I chose because it is pleasure—fine—but that is legitimate because after all it is good. In contrast, he who chose to enjoy even though it is evil—that is not legitimate, because despite the fact that it gives you pleasure, you should have overcome it because it is evil. Therefore you deserve the negative evaluation. So once we get there, we don’t need all his assumptions. No, but for that I need to assume there are people who choose good not for the sake of pleasure. What? Right. Fine, then I still say I choose values and not only pleasure. Or that there are people who derive pleasure from evil and do not choose it, alternatively. And they do not choose it. Okay, so the assumption is that I do choose values too and not only pleasure. No, of course. But you don’t need this whole model that says you first need to choose the value and then pleasure is this kind of by-product. No, it could be something else; it need not be built like that at all. And still that addition is enough: pleasure does not dictate the outcome, but you have choice—which is exactly what I said last year. Once you accept that, I don’t see why the whole route was necessary. Determinism. Yes. Once there is no determinism, there is no longer any need for all these psychological models about where pleasure comes from, spiritual pleasure and material pleasure. I don’t see why you need it. To answer this question, the last paragraph is enough.

Now let’s read the… I want to finish with this now. “From now on we can understand the illusion of humanity’s dream of a world perfected in all material needs, without war and without dispute, and also without holiness and the service of God. If the whole world were to reach such a state, and peace were to prevail among them by way of the peace of partners because it serves everyone’s need, and not by way of pious graciousness toward one another, there would no longer be any striving in the world. For without lack there is no striving, and consequently the world would lack all life of delight and joy and pleasure.” So what is he basically saying? There are two kinds of peace. There are always these homilies—peace like a pot and peace like… a Talmudic text in tractate Berakhot. Is peace interest-based—both sides fill their lack and thus arrive at peace—or is peace a value? A peace of pious graciousness, as he calls it here. So he says there is an illusion in humanity’s dream—an illusory dream, as it were—that the world will be perfected in all material needs, we’ll have all our needs, there won’t be war, there won’t be disputes, and there also won’t be holiness and the service of God. No need for anything, no need to do good, no need to do evil, everything is fine, there’s nothing to struggle over. So if the whole world were to reach such a state, and peace prevailed among them by way of the peace of partners—that is, just interests: why should I fight if there’s no need to fight? I have everything. And the assumption in the background is that people fight for interests. And not by way of pious graciousness toward one another. But then, he says, the world would lack all life of delight and joy and pleasure. After all, delight and joy and pleasure come from my overcoming difficulties in order to attain the thing, not from my simply having the thing. Okay? Which of course, if I give up that assumption in the previous move, then this conclusion doesn’t follow either.

“For all material aspirations have a limit. And even if we assume that human beings have already succeeded in removing all the obstacles that make it difficult to attain the means for a life of comfort, that they have discovered all the secrets of nature and conquered the whole world, and everything stands at their disposal, and all their work and all their industrial needs are done by various machines, with one or two hours of work a day—then the more the lacks diminish and the difficulties in filling them shrink, the more pleasures and the happy life of life also shrink.” So what emerges from our words? Yes—without anything in the world to die for, as in the song? There’s sports. What? There’ll be an iPhone 6, and then there’ll be some device that lets you run as fast as you want. That’s not pleasure, that’s not challenge—say, a marathon. Then there’ll be some way to finish it automatically, also to run a marathon automatically, to finish a doctorate automatically—they’ll inject the knowledge into your brain with electrical means. And how will we derive pleasure from that? They’ll inject you with pleasure too, and everything will be fine—they’ll inject it into his brain. You’ll have pleasure. What? I’m saying they’ll inject some hormone so that he won’t despair at all, some hormone in the brain. Yes.

“What emerges from our words is that pleasures in this world cannot exist without wars and disputes and without difficulties that one must overcome. Lasting happiness is possible only if everyone’s aspiration is to rise in the levels of holiness.” By the way, there is a very interesting assumption here—or not assumption, but a very interesting orientation—that one must combine pleasure with what is proper, the pleasant with the proper. Meaning, it has to be that a repaired world is also a world in which there is pleasure. I would say: fine, I aspire to arrive at a repaired world—true, no one there will have pleasure, so what? But it is the repaired world, so I want to get there. He works hard to insist, like Rabbi Kook in this sense, always to bind together the pleasant and the good. Meaning, a complete world in the moral sense must also be a world in which everyone feels better. In contrast, in the Kantian conception it is not necessarily so. A complete world is a world in which everyone does what is right. In fact, very often living next to a moral person in Kant’s style is quite hard. A very idealistic person who constantly demands of himself and of others to uphold values and strive for them—not certain that this makes for such pleasant living. But it is living that is, as it were, more value-laden, more worthwhile. And he somehow, in that sense, is a bit like Rabbi Kook, in that he says it cannot be that the world is morally complete but not complete in terms of the pleasure we derive from it. And also lovely and beautiful. What? Yes, also beautiful. Everything has to come together, basically.

Okay, I just want to finish the reading. “This is the deep explanation of the translation of the verse…” right, did I get there already? I don’t remember now, but no matter. The point is: “This is the deep explanation of the translation of the verse in Isaiah.” The spiritual part specifically is important. What? The previous section—we haven’t read it yet. “What emerges from our words is that pleasures in this world cannot exist without wars and disputes. Lasting happiness is possible only if everyone’s aspiration is to rise in the levels of holiness, which is the matter of the coming of our righteous messiah speedily in our days. Only in this way is there no end to the possibilities of progress and self-perfection.” Yes, because even in the messianic era, obviously we will not be at the maximum spiritual level, because otherwise what will remain for us to do? What will there be in the messianic era? What there will be is that only spiritual challenges will remain. Therefore “there is no difference between this world and the days of the messiah except subjugation to the kingdoms.” Meaning, the spiritual challenges will remain. It’s not that the world will be completely repaired. But why? Because a completely repaired world is not really a completely repaired world. Meaning, there is a kind of paradox here. It’s like Rabbi Kook’s problem of perfection and perfecting. How can the Holy One, blessed be He, be perfect if He cannot perfect Himself further? After all, if He is perfect then He cannot perfect Himself, but if He cannot perfect Himself then one of the perfections is lacking to Him. So something like that is basically here. Maybe we’ll talk about that too sometime.

And that is what he says: “This is the deep explanation of the translation of the verse in Isaiah: ‘For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest’—‘Until redemption is wrought for Zion I will not let the nations rest, and until comfort comes to Jerusalem I will not let the kingdoms be quiet.’” Yes, no one will sit quietly until there is redemption for Zion. Meaning, there can be no quiet and peace for the nations in the way they dream—whether in the East or in the West—because their path brings only a lack of striving, and consequently the negation of pleasures and happiness. It is somewhat similar, by the way, to postmodernism, to the postmodern vision. The postmodern vision says that once there is no truth, there will be no wars, because there will be nothing to fight over. We are all equally right, so there will be no… wars always come from those who think they are right and others are wrong. So the postmodern vision says: let us build a world in which there are no truths. Everyone is right. The goal is a moral goal. The question is whether you are willing to pay the price. The price is that a person will not struggle for truths, will stop believing in truths, and so on. I, for one, am not willing to pay that price.

Like after Yigal Amir they said: you see where religious faith leads. Someone who does not believe so fanatically never murders. And that’s true—someone who believes in nothing does not commit ideological murder. He may murder for money, but ideological murder belongs only to someone who has an ideology. Right? Someone with no ideology will never commit ideological murder. So because of that, should I give up ideology? There were many arguments like that after Rabin’s assassination. If the ideology is evil, then abandon it. No—if the ideology is evil, one should give it up regardless of whether it leads to murder. It’s evil. But if the ideology is good, only that people take it too far and murder because of it—so what? Should I throw out the baby with the bathwater? Give up ideology in order to spare murders? And if you don’t want to give up ideology because it causes pleasure? No—because it is what is right. The answer is not only for his sake. I don’t know—if people murder for money, should we give up money? No, fine, true. But I’m talking about murder for truth, not murder for interests. The vision of postmodernism is not to give up money—that is the vision of communism, or nihilism, or anarchy from the other side; it’s the same thing from two different directions. But the vision of postmodernism speaks about ideological struggles, struggles for truth. So let’s give up ideology and truth, and no one will struggle. They’ll just murder each other out of boredom. And therefore it leads to dissatisfaction and quarrels.

“Only through the path of Torah, which is an aspiration directed toward filling spiritual lacks, are limitless lives of delight possible even in this world, as we have heard: ‘Such is the way of Torah… happy are you in this world, and it shall be good for you in the world to come.’” We will return to you. Finished.